A new breed of cameras incorporates elements of the cellphone and comes with app icons and Wi-Fi hotspots, says David Pogue.
Android
camera.” Wow, that has a weird ring, doesn’t it? You just don’t think
of a camera as having an operating system. It’s like saying “Windows
toaster” or “Unix jump rope.”
But yes, that’s what it has come to.
Ever since cellphone cameras got good enough for everyday snapshots,
camera sales have been dropping. For millions of people, the ability to
share a fresh photo wirelessly – Facebook, Twitter, email, text message –
is so tempting, they’re willing to sacrifice a lot of real-camera
goodness.
That’s an awfully big convenience/photo-quality swap. A
real camera teems with compelling features that most phones lack:
optical zoom, big sensor, image stabilization, removable memory cards,
removable batteries and decent ergonomics. (A 4-inch, featureless glass
slab is not exactly optimally shaped for a hand-held photographic
instrument.)
But the camera makers aren’t taking the cellphone
invasion lying down. New models from Nikon and Samsung are obvious
graduates of the “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” school. The Nikon
Coolpix S800C ($300 or Rs 16,521) and Samsung’s Galaxy Camera ($500 or
Rs 27,535 from AT&T, $550 or Rs 30,288 from Verizon) are fascinating
hybrids. They merge elements of the cellphone and the camera into
something entirely new – and, if these flawed 1.0 versions are any
indication – very promising.
From the back, you could mistake
both of these cameras for Android phones. The big black multitouch
screen is filled with app icons. Yes, app icons. These cameras can run
Angry Birds, Flipboard, Instapaper, Pandora, Firefox, The New York
Times, GPS navigation programs and so on. You download and run them
exactly the same way. (That’s right, GPS. “What’s the address, honey?
I’ll plug it into my camera.”)
But the real reason you’d want an
Android camera is wirelessness. Now you can take a real photo with a
real camera – and post it or send it online instantly. You eliminate the
whole “get home and transfer it to the computer” step.
And as
long as your camera can get online, why stop there? These cameras also
do a fine job of handling Web surfing, email, YouTube videos, Facebook
feeds, Skype video calls and other online tasks. Well, as fine a job as a
phone could do, anyway.
You can even make Skype video calls,
although you won’t be able to see your conversation partner; the lens
has to be pointing toward you.
Both cameras get online using
Wi-Fi hotspots. The Samsung model can also get online over the cellular
networks, just like a phone, so you can upload almost anywhere.
Of
course, there’s a price for that luxury. Verizon charges at least $30
(Rs 1,652) a month if you don’t have a Verizon plan, or $5 (Rs 275) if
you have a Verizon Share Everything plan. AT&T charges $50 (Rs
2,753) a month or more for the camera alone, or $10 more if you already
have a Mobile Share plan.
If you have a choice, Verizon is the
way to go. Not only is $5 a month much more realistic than $10 (Rs 550) a
month, but Verizon’s 4G LTE network is far faster than AT&T’s 4G
network. That’s an important consideration, since what you’ll mostly be
doing with your 4G cellular camera is uploading big photo files. (Wow.
Did I just write “4G cellular camera?”)
These cameras offer a
second big attraction, though: freedom of photo software. The Android
store overflows with photography apps. Mix and match. Take a shot with
one app, crop, degrade and post it with Instagram.
Just beware
that most of them are intended for cellphones, so they don’t recognize
these cameras’ optical zoom controls. Some of the photo-editing apps
can’t handle these cameras’ big 16-megapixel files, either.
Unfortunately, you won’t really know until you pay the $1.50 (Rs 82) or
$4 (Rs 220) to download these apps.
The cameras themselves, each
available in black or white, are clearly designed to flaunt their
superiority over cellphone cameras. You get 16-megapixel resolution. You
get a true built-in flash, rather than the feeble LED built onto the
backs of phones. And these cameras have incredible zoom ranges, even
while recording video – 10X for the Nikon, an impressive 21X on the
Samsung. Phones, of course, generally don’t have any optical zoom at
all.All the usual touch-screen tricks work: tap to take a photograph;
swipe to view the next or previous shot; spread two fingers to zoom into
a photo.
Neither camera has an eyepiece viewfinder. Both offer
automatic, self-stitching panorama mode, where you create an ultrawide
photograph (as wide as 360 degrees, in fact) just by swinging the camera
around you.
The Nikon S800C is compact and attractive. To the
right of its 3.5-inch touch screen, physical plastic buttons appear for
the standard Android functions: Back, Home and Menu. (On the Samsung,
they’re on-screen buttons that sometimes disappear.) Cleverly enough,
Nikon made the camera turn on very quickly so that you can start taking
pictures; Android itself takes another 30 seconds to load behind the
scenes, during which the Home button doesn’t work.
Touch buttons
for exposure, self-timer, macro (close up) and flash flank the left side
of the screen. That’s handy, because unless you intervene, the camera
fires its flash too often. The Smart Portrait mode is handy; it doesn’t
take the shot until your subject smiles.
The Home screens look a
little dated, because the S800C runs a nearly 2-year-old version of
Android. But the sharing options are plentiful: Pinterest, Facebook,
Gmail, Google Plus, Instagram, Picasa, Skype or Twitter. You can post to
Flickr by email or certain add-on apps.
The Samsung Galaxy
Camera is a completely different beast – and beast it is. It’s huge and
heavy, as befitting a camera with a 4.8-inch screen. (Samsung asserts
that it’s the largest on any available camera.) You won’t fit this baby
in your pocket unless you’re wearing overalls.
It runs the more
recent Jellybean version of Android, and it teems with features. Voice
control is truly useful: you can say “zoom in,” “shoot” or “capture,”
which is much better than any self-timer.
Only the Samsung offers
full manual controls, and its scene presets are far more interesting.
There’s slow-mo video; a mode that lets a buddy draw against darkness
with a flashlight or sparkler; and Best Face mode, which lets you choose
the best face from each of several group shots. The camera assembles
the different heads into a single perfect shot.
As convenient as these cameras are, you probably shouldn’t buy them. For three reasons.
First,
the battery life is terrible: 140 or 280 shots on a charge (for the
Nikon and Samsung). And that’s assuming you don’t use any apps (surf the
Web, navigate with GPS, play Angry Birds), which slurps up juice even
faster.
Second, the price is very steep. If that sharing-online
business intrigues you, here are two words that must make these cameras’
product managers shudder: EyeFi card.
The EyeFi X2 series are
standard SD memory cards ($30 for the 4-gigabyte model) that add Wi-Fi
to any camera. Turn on the Direct Mode feature, and boom: your camera
now sends every new photo to your smartphone as it’s taken, ready for
uploading. Setup is far more complicated, but it gets your freshly shot
photos online at a fraction of the price, and it works in any camera you
choose.
Finally – and this is the heartbreaker – the pictures
just aren’t very good. The digital “noise” (mottled pixels) and softness
of the images are what you’d expect from a camera that costs half as
much. And no wonder; both of these cameras are based on non-Android
models from the same companies that cost hundreds less. For the $500 (Rs
27,535) you’d pay for the Samsung, you could buy an SLR-like camera
that delivers absolutely spectacular pictures, like Sony’s NEX-5N.
But
don’t hate these cameras because their price-performance ratio is
appalling. Love them for what they really are: bold 1.0 pioneers – grand
experiments – that hint at the very happy place cameras may go in the
next few years.
