The recent release of the Kodak V610 will tip the point for the release of Bluetooth enabled cameras. But why only now? It did make sense from the cameraphone point of view, where one could send out pictures to a wireless printer kiosk, laptop or PDA. So it should make sense to have the actual Bluetooth device be a full-featured camera! Some issues come to mind such as demand for these wireless printers. But another factor to be considered would be battery life. Consumer digicams don’t have exceptional battery life and beaming pictures via BT could already eat up more juice.

I was talking to the country manager of Kodak Philippines, Mr. Raymond Albert and he said that in keeping with the “EasyShare” brand, Kodak cameras should be well .. easy to share! Which, as an aside, is why they don’t delve much into the DSLR bracket for cameras. It’s one of those “you push the button, we do the rest” type of thing.

Decided to take a break from mobile phones and play around with a Kodak V570 which is the first consumer dual lens camera out in the market. Dual lens you say? Well yes. The V570 comes equipped with a second lens that switches the digital viewfinder to an ultra-wide view.

Just for fun, I kept the fishbowl distortion on. Here are some shots of myself and friends:

My favorite shooting mode was Night Landscape, which removed flash while capturing as much ambient light as possible. Subjects (and your hand) have to remain really still though.

Here’s night landscape combined with the ultra-wide lens:

When the subjects move: (Argh!)

And when they stay still:

Overall, a fun camera to have in the ~ $600.00 line. What I love about it (aside from the UW lens) is that it has instant on and off upon pressing the power button.

You might have been noticing the erratic posts lately. That’s mostly due to the holiday stupor. I’ll be back up and blogging after the New Year’s fireworks.

Till then I’ll be posting when I can. The thing about the nature of tech is that the difference of one day can spell a whole lot between what’s new and what just became obsolescent yesterday.

In the meantime you might want to check out an initial overview of the Olympus Sp-500UZ camera. The “UZ” stands for ultra-zoom, akin to Olympus’ said core competence of having great zoom lenses.

I love Samsung. They make great phones. They also make fairly okay point and shoot cameras, but nothing compared to what Olympus and Sony have to offer.

So while I was browsing this entry in Engadget, I couldn’t help but put an imaginary letter “u” somewhere between the word “DMB.” It gets even DMB-ER when you read this:

“Our DMB cameras will compete against phones as we will arm them with a screen as large as 3 inches diagonally, much larger than today’s DMB phones at about 2.2 inches.”

Not sure if I’ve been away from the Internet for too long (one day). But the last time I bought a phone, I remember wanting it to make great phone calls. Last I bought a camera, I wanted it to take good pictures.

The Angel in me: Wow! Convergence technology is truly the way to go. It seems that the market is changing once more, where the demand for a gadget that can do video and audio on the side is truly feasible.

The Devil in me: Wow! Convergence technology is truly the way to go. It seems that the market is being flooded with gadgets that can do things which other devices can do better. Don’t we hate these jack of all trades devices. Consumers want a device that can do just one thing really well.

There’s only one convergence device that stores pictures, plays movies, and surfs the web while you’re at it. Some even take photos. It’s called the notebook computer.

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