Ricoh Releases New GPS-Ready Digital Camera

January 18th, 2007 · 20 Comments · GIS

Now this is a camera I would have asked Santa to bring me!

I won’t bore you with Press Release garbage so you can read it on your own time. The link to the brochure is here. This is the first “true” GPS camera I’ve seen and I hope it is just the start of something big.

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20 responses so far ↓

1 -Rob // Jan 18, 2007 at 9:22 pm

Seriously, what is the big deal about this camera? I’d much rather have a good Nikon or Canon with quality glass and a notebook to record lat/longs.
2 Matt Priour // Jan 18, 2007 at 10:48 pm

@Rob
Take several hundred photos of nest boxes, man hole covers, pot holes, veg monitoring sites or other things that look damn near alike and all need to be matched with known objects or geo-located. Then tell me how much fun it is to match them up doing it your way.
For people that are interested in these camera models, publication quality photos are usually not needed (we do this kind of work with 2.1-3.2 megapixel cameras). This is for documentation or scouting purposes. Situations in which where you took the picture is as or more important than what you took a picture of.
3 Paolo Corti // Jan 19, 2007 at 2:09 am

I think this is great!
Every photo in the future will have the TAG about geoposition, so there will be always track where the photo has been taken.
I already can see Picasa that is doing a geographic search of my photo library, integrating the catalog with Google Earth…
I won’t need anymore to put labels with the location, as this info will be embebbed in the photoes…
4 Gerry // Jan 19, 2007 at 6:14 am

This is pretty cool. However, I think it would be better if in addition to Lat/Lon it would also provide a compass bearing.
5 Chaz // Jan 19, 2007 at 6:50 am

Yes, compass bearing would be critical for my intended purpose. The baseline reports I do require Lat/Lon as well as bearings.
6 -Rob // Jan 19, 2007 at 8:35 am

Matt- So why not get a good camera for this purpose? Nikon D2H?

http://www.nikonusa.com/template.php?cat=1&grp=2&productNr=25219

https://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/gps.mspx
7 Matt Priour // Jan 19, 2007 at 9:46 am

@ Rob
Very cool stuff indeed. But this camera and your suggestions are all like using a nuclear bomb to blow up a mouse for me.
8 Morten // Jan 19, 2007 at 11:51 am

Hmmmm… I don’t know… it still lacks an electronic compass so I also can get the direction I’m looking in.
9 Steven Citron-Pousty // Jan 19, 2007 at 1:41 pm

according to this it does do bearing - read towards the bottom of the page - and it has a plugin for ArcGIS and GE

http://www.geospatialexperts.com/productadv.html
10 Gerry // Jan 19, 2007 at 2:26 pm

Steven - thanks for the link, however, the way I read that they are just talking about manually entering that bearing data after the fact. In fact, the software they are talking about is meant for use with the Ricoh Pro G3 camera.

It does not appear that the 500SE camera has the built-in electronic compass that could provide that info automatically when the photo is taken.
11 rmcculley // Jan 19, 2007 at 4:04 pm

I’d rather see it have integrated GPS and an electronic Compass. I have a few situations where it just isn’t that handy to pack around a GPS unit just to locate the pictures. If I wanted to pack around a GPS with the camera, I’d just use the photo-link software with either a cheaper, or a better camera (which is what we currently do).

I’d love it if I could give my fire chief a camera that had integrated GPS and compass so pictures he takes at an incident are automatically geo-located. If it requires additional steps for him, it isn’t going to happen.
12 James Fee // Jan 19, 2007 at 4:14 pm

This is the first step along a path to that type of camera. While it is true other camera’s can/have done GPS, this is the first integrated one that isn’t an arm and a leg.
13 Valery35 // Jan 20, 2007 at 3:22 am

It is not very news.

See 7 months before:
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/06/digital_camera.html

About next realtime geoimages technologies:
http://gisplanet.blogspot.com/2007/01/real-time-hi-res-images-for-google.html
14 James Fee // Jan 20, 2007 at 8:23 am

Valery, I’m lost with line of thinking. No one has said this is not the first such attempt.

I’m saying this is the first truly integrated GPS into a consumer level (price) camera.
15 Valery Hronusov // Jan 21, 2007 at 7:48 am

James, this camera is nice gift ( i am want one also ). My congratulations and best regards!

I more about professional software and datamining, not fun.
16 Martin Daly // Jan 22, 2007 at 1:22 am

@Gerry, @Chaz, @Steven

We (Cadcorp) have one of the older generation of Ricoh cameras and it does provide bearing. It does not have a compass, but instead infers the direction from the most recent fix(es).

So, you stand somewhere and get a fix, then step or walk towards what you are photographing, then take the picture. It is crude, but it does seem to work.
17 MidNight Mapper // Jan 23, 2007 at 2:37 pm

For those interested in Nikon or SONY spatialized you might want to take a look at the Red Hen DX-GPS or the VMS-AIX products respectively.

http://www.redhensystems.com
18 Ole // Jan 28, 2007 at 4:06 pm

James,
I’m with you: the 500SE is the first truely interesting model integrating GPS in a professional manner.
It’s for sale now in Europe as well http://www.alta4.com/de/produkte/gps/index.php (sorry, the page is currently in German only but we’re working on a translation). And in Germany it ships with the free Foto-KML-File translator Fodysseus RE.
Fodysseus is also good for track-matching and therefore spatially enabling all kinds of cameras. (http://www.fodysseus.com).

About the bearing: the 500SE comes in different versions:
- 500SE B (B=Bluetooth to connect to a Bluetooth GPS device) => bearing = GPS bearing. If you’re shouting to the side, the bearing in your photo will be off 90°.
- 500SE with a clip-on-GPS (as you see on the photo you’ve posted). This is supposed to have a digital compass integrated so it gives you the correct photo bearing (however this works only on horizontal images, not on vertical ones). The GPS is supposed to go into manufacturing in early February and should be available by the time of the business partner conference.

Hope to see you all and discuss this further at the BP and DevConference in Palm Springs.

Ole
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