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Disposable Digital Cameras Have Arrived
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Thu Jul 31, 2003 04:02 PM
from the and-here-it-is dept.
from the and-here-it-is dept.
damiangerous writes "American chain Ritz camera has begun offering disposable digital cameras for $10.99. The price includes 4x6" prints and a Photo CD of the camera's 25 photo memory. Pictures can be deleted, but there's no LCD."
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Disposable Digital Cameras Have Arrived
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It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.jgc.org/ | Last Journal: Friday August 22 2003, @11:31AM)
Ritz Camera store where the pictures inside are downloaded to a CD
or printed. The camera itself is kept by Ritz and recycled to another
customer. In other words your $10.99 is a _rental_ of the camera
with processing of the pictures included in the rental price.
There's a picture of one of these cameras here [technogadgets.com].
The USA Today article has some more details [usatoday.com]
on the camera and its use including the fact that it is likely to be sold at Walgreens
and Walt Disney theme parks (seems like a good idea to me).
The camera has a 2-megapixel sensor.
John.
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/ | Last Journal: Thursday December 06, @01:45PM)
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be interesting if that wasn't a good business model.
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Since there's essentially no processing cost, you can take pictures EVERY DAY, and keep an album of the good ones. These are the kinds of shots you don't bother to take with a film camera.
I suspect that after a few rentals most people would decide that they want one of their own, so I doubt there's much of a long-term market for this.
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Tuesday December 30 2003, @07:21PM)
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a feeling these suckers'll be hacked faster than a Cue:Cat
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Tuesday November 26 2002, @07:28PM)
The camera costs $10.99, and then the photo processing is another $10.99. The camera contains no LCD, but you can delete the last picture taken. The image is still stored on regular film, and the capacity is 25 images. There is a self-timer on it for when you want to take pics and have yourself in it. That's pretty much it. The camera's film is unloaded by Ritz personnel, and the empties are sent back to the manufacturer to be reloaded with new film.
Aside from the ability to delete the last picture before it's stored on film and the self-timer, there's nothing new about them. However, the ability to kill that picture you know sucked might be worth the extra dollar or two.
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.dasmegabyte.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday June 22 2004, @11:41PM)
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder if you could snag other peoples pics (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.penney.org/)
Re:I wonder if you could snag other peoples pics (Score:5, Interesting)
Encryption? Proprietary image format? (Did they manage to persuade a digital camera manufacturer to design a new chip, for what price?)
Oh wait, but but it doesn't necessarily need memory cards, most (usually cheaper) cameras offer on-board memory, I'm guessing that's what they probably have. It'll be pretty hard trying to get access to what's in that RAM chip soldered to the PCB. That and a proprietary plug should stop a lot of people.
Re:I wonder if you could snag other peoples pics (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.dacels.info/ | Last Journal: Monday January 05 2004, @10:45AM)
2 minute thought on this: Have an RFID tag with a key that emits to the camera. If the camera doesn't sense that, and the case-removal screws are taken out erase the pictures. If the RFID key doesn't match a checksum, erase the pictures.
You could even, rather easily, destroy the hardware after deleting the pictures.
I think this would be rather silly to do, but it's possible. You just have to make it more expensive to hack a single camera than it is to buy a real camera. If the station for unloading cost $200 in parts, they still make a profit (many cameras to one base station) but the user would take a hit spending $210.99 for a 2mp digital camera with no LCD.
Re:I wonder if you could snag other peoples pics (Score:5, Funny)
We're on slashdot --- it's worth spending your life savings just to get the proprietary camera working as a normal $100 camera. Or getting it to play OGG files, or running linux, or
35mm is cheaper and better then digital (Score:5, Insightful)
Coming from an ex-Ritz camera employee, if you want to go through the work of engineering all of that, printing them out and all the rest of that work Ritz does, it will cost you more (in time and materials) then it will to have Ritz do it in 1 hour.
Then again you will spend less money and get better quality images if you buy a 35mm disposable camera (about $5 for 24 exp)and then get them to burn you a CD at 1600x1200 resolution (1.92 mega pixel equiv.) for ~12 dollars.
just my opinion
dave
Nearsightedness is fatal (Score:5, Interesting)
To which I say "Print them out? WTF d00d?"
Ritz' target market is "Less-technically-inclined people who want to print their pictures out and look at them in photo albums with their friends."
There is another market out there, however: the market for "Ten-dollar 2-megapixel digicams, and who the hell ever prints their photos to dead trees anyways when it's cheaper/faster/easier to just email the pics to your friends?"
The relative sizes of these two markets is what will determine whether Ritz' business plan succeeds or fails.
Netpliance of I-Opener fame made the same mistake - their target market was "people for whom AOL was too complicated and who didn't want to buy a $799 eek-its-scary e-machine computer thingy when they could have a $99 flat-screen appliance that'd give them the ability to do email and teh intarweb for $20/month."
Part of why Netpliance failed was that there was a small - but sufficiently large - market of people who thought "$99 flat-panel PCs that can be h4x0r3d to run Linux! Wow, I gotta get me some of that! The parts alone are worth $500!"
Moral of the story: Don't be nearsighted when it comes to your target market. Think ahead and make sure you're aware of any other markets, particularly non-target markets that break your business model.
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm trying to figure out what keeps the user from permanently "renting" this camera (downloading the pics to the computer and then deleting them off camera). Anyone want to fill me in?
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday November 02, @02:49PM)
As I read it, you can delete the pix in the camera and re-shoot, but you can't view it.
The viewing software is for the CD you get when you bring the camera back - at which point they dump the RAM onto the CD, give you the CD and prints, and keep the camera.
My guess on what keeps you from keeping the camera forever:
1) You can't get the pix out without cracking the camera software, which no doubt includes some serious access control as well as undocumented and perhaps non-standard interfaces, connectors, and protocols. (And they might hit you for DMCA violation by a number of routes, including claiming copyright to the pix themselves until you return the camera.)
2) Eventually the batteris will run down if the camera is not returned for recharging.
Still: I bet there will be a crack within a few months - after which it may go the way of the cue cat. (Depends on whether the loss rate from crackers keeping 'em is higher than their budgeted loss rate - which MIGHT not happen even if they ARE cracked.)
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:5, Funny)
The DMCA, maybe?
I'll take that bet. (Score:5, Insightful)
My bet: Standard ports, nonstandard pinouts. Standard protocol. Standard format for the data on the media.
Rationale:
1) Nonstandard ports = cost to develop a new controller from the ground up.
2) Nonstandard pinouts = no cost.
3) Nonstandard protocol that can't be trivially reverse-engineered: cost to code and test.
4) Nonstandard format for the data on the media: Cost to develop controllers and firmware.
Summary: "Oh, fuck it, use a two-pin connector and a standard USB controller. We'll supply +5 and GND at the photo lab. Nobody'll ever suspect it's USB with only two pins! Rot13 the bits as they go onto the chip. Nobody'll ever look for permutations of known plaintext like 'JFIF'. Everything else can be the reference design from the chipset's datasheet."
(Alternate: "Oh, fuck it, use a 3-pin headphone jack and RS-232 signals. Nobody'll ever guess. And Rot12 it, just in case anyone looks for ROT13.")
Re:It's not disposable... it's reusable. (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://bigmoneyjim.com/content/blogcategory/24/46/ | Last Journal: Tuesday March 28 2006, @07:41PM)
The current 'disposable' film cameras have some reusable innards (I think), some breakable innards and a cardboard outer shell. From the pic at Technogadgets it looks like this camera has a molded plastic shell, but perhaps it is molded shut and has to be broken to get to the interface. That could be one control to discourage 'permanent renting'. Perhaps the breakable shell holds the lens in place or maybe if the shell is broken too much light will leak and ruin the picture quality of future pics.
Or, maybe the I/O interface is proprietary and/or the processing lab has a device that contacts the chip package leads directly. Sure, a few web pages would go up describing how to read from it, but look at Xbox and Playstation. They're cracked, but it doesn't seem to be significantly impacting their business plans.
Cheap rental (Score:5, Interesting)
Walmart runs prints from a digital camera (bring in your own cdr or flash card) for $0.29/print. That runs about $7 for 25. Index print and cd-r will be an extra $1-2.
That's $8 in product, for $11, or only $3 for the rental of a 2MP digital camera, which makes perfectly good 4"x6" prints. (Bearable, but not good, 8"x10"s.)
That's not bad at all, for people that primarily want prints, and not just digital images. Myself, I have a digital camera, and my preferred output is just the cd-r with image files. I get prints made, but far fewer than I keep image files on cd-r.
I'm curious how many rentals each camera has to make to pay for itself. $3/rental, camera probably costs... less than $100. Say about 30 rentals to pay for the camera and related labor expenses?
I can see how this would be a good thing at theme parks, where people are likely to rent and return them in the same day, possibly several times per day... They'd reach break-even in a month, and after that actually start making money.
The nice thing from the business point of view is that the continuing costs are lower. You just wipe the storage card and recharge the batteries, and you rent it again. Don't have to pay a couple bucks in film every time you rent the camera. The battery cost is higher than for a "disposable" film camera because the power draw is higher, but without the LCD, not that much higher.
More recyclable than disposable... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.penney.org/)
Not being able to review the pics instantly is a drag too as its one of the main reasons I like using digicams (well that and not having photo guy check out my, um, arty pics) and I'm also a little dubious of their claims that a 2 megapixel camera can give you decent prints at 8x10, all that being said having a self timer is neat and I'm sure they'll be pretty popular.
In fact thinking about the recycling a bit more, I wonder if you could ever grab somebodies old pics off of a recycled unit.... I know you can recover deleted pics from a normal digicams media.... Something to think about..
um, a 2mp camera for 10.99 (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.ocean7motel.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 07 2007, @07:50AM)
how hard could i tbe to determine the method used to download the pics, and then sell a cable & driver for 20$?
Re:um, a 2mp camera for 10.99 (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you think these guys might be related to the Digital Convergence [slashdot.org] guys?
Re:um, a 2mp camera for 10.99 (Score:4, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:um, a 2mp camera for 10.99 (Score:4, Funny)
(http://rjmarq.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday October 02 2003, @07:19PM)
(Wow, that was terrible. I'm sorry to subject you to that...)
--RJ
Re:um, a 2mp camera for 10.99 (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 11, @09:31AM)
Hacking stuff is neat and all, but this would be like hacking xboxes for linux. You spend twice as much for a second rate result.
It's not stealing. (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.frontrowcrew.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 16 2004, @09:55AM)
If I can provide said value on my own, I have no reason to return it to them.
Simple economics ^_^
Re:This is Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 03 2004, @06:02PM)
Nonsense. They are advertising this as a disposable camera. When I buy a disposable camera at a store I am under absolutely no obligation to return the camera. I can keep it, or develop the film myself, or any number of other things.
The article didn't say that the cameras were rented (meaning a rental agreement, a promise to return the camera, etc) though it may be an ommission on the writer's part. If they are sold like disposable cameras than I see nothing either illegal or immoral about buying one and using it in a manner the seller didn't intend me to.
If I rent a digital camera (which sounds like a pretty good thing to try actually) I'd be under obligtaitons to return it, not to mess with its innards, and so forth.
This is exactly like MS selling the X-Box below production price and then whining when people use their legally purchased hardware in a way that MS doesn't like. There is absolutely no legal or moral obligation to support a business model that doesn't work.
If its a purchase, not a rental, than it can't be stealing to use it any way I want to.
Same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
The 35mm disposable camera may be less expensive today, but every beautiful picture you take of the mountains contributes to the destruction of those same mountains. The digicam only needs to be manufacturered once, so the environmental impact is reduced. Prices will quickly fall as vendors compete for market share.
Misnomer? (Score:3, Informative)
(http://www.thebark.com/)
How long until.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If Ritz can get the pictures out why can't I? (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.theschmoejoes.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday June 19 2004, @02:56PM)
Wait. That's an MS idea. Damn.
Re:I'd love to know more (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't this seem like a bit of a semi-useless feature? Most of my bad shots, I can't even tell are bad until I get 'em on my laptop. There's a couple I can decide to delete just from the camera's screen, but I'd say that with most of my bad shots, I didn't know they sucked when I took the shot.
So without a preview (review?) unless someone walks in front of you right as you take the shot, or some other way you know it's screwed up, it's just like a disposable film camera, in that you pay out the nose, only to get your shots back and have 2/3 stink.