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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.
Good source for cheap CCDs (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.lbcpc.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday November 12 2003, @05:30PM)
Now I can build a camera for my telescope cheaply.
Re:Good source for cheap CCDs (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.misterorange.com/)
But I would not, however, like to shake his hand.
You can bet... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://douglas.mayle.org/ | Last Journal: Monday March 05 2007, @12:01PM)
You can bet that somebody is going to figure out how to open it and extract the images without destroying the camera, and then Ritz camera is going to have a loss leader on their hands.
It's going to be just like the cuecat. Many, many geeks are going to acquire them, and not recycle them in the way that allows Ritz to make it's money back...
Hacking them (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.andyring.com/)
Obviously, if the camera store can download the photos quickly, it can't be very hard for the rest of us. It's probably got either a hidden/internal USB connector, or some proprietary thing (unlikely, would require new equipment at all the places to print/burn the pics).
How long until... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.the-nextlevel.com/)
Missing the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Found out how they do that..... (Score:4, Informative)
One is properity IR connection. The other is a headphone jack that somehow sends/receives data. And it DOES connect through a usb dongle to either type of camera.
Wow.. Talk About Great Minds... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.frontrowcrew.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 16 2004, @09:55AM)
Honestly, I love slashdot. As we read, there are thousands of geeks pondering ways to circumvent whatever protection Ritz has installed on these things. Even better, odds are Ritz has no idea. It will probably take them a few weeks -after- the cameras are hacked before they even notice.
Then, the lawsuits will fly, but by then it will be too late. The cameras will be re-released with stronger protection, and shortly-after they'll be hacked as well. Ritz will at this point likely give up altogether and drop the product. End result: every geek on the planet gets a cheap digital camera (or three).
Buy them early, in case Ritz catches on! In five years, these things will be as "cool" and "old-school" as the old Cap'n Crunch whistles.
8x10? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.fireandknowledge.org/)
More information and pictures here (Score:5, Informative)
(http://cityofcity.com/)
Matrix EFX (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.sophont.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday September 18 2005, @02:13AM)
Now it's only a matter of time before it pops up in Bar Mitzvah videos.
PKI = unhackable (Score:5, Interesting)
Each camera has a UUID -- a universally unique identifier, like a MAC address.
Before sending the camera out, I'd create a pair of public/private keys. I store the public key on the camera, the private key at the camera store (or centrally, whatever, so long as it can be retrieved later during processing).
When the camera takes a shot, it is stored *only after being encrypted* using the public key.
When the camera comes back for processing, the private key is retrieved (thanks to the UUID) and used to decrypt the images.
W/O the private key, the data retrieved is worthless. Generate a new key set before sending it out again.
This being the case, I'd use standard USB or IRDA or whatever and not worry about people violating my rights by reverse engineering the system.
Mozo - DVD sharing networks [mozo.com]
Is it... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday February 17 2007, @08:39PM)
No!
Is it hacked yet?
No!
Is it hacked yet?
No!
Is it hacked yet?
Fine! Yes, it's hacked! Are you happy now?
Does it run Linux yet?
Arrrrgh!
DONT HACK THESE! ......waaaaaiiiiiiit a litttle... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.theschmoejoes.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday June 19 2004, @02:56PM)
Wait, plan, then strike!
Here are a couple more tidbits: I believe this is similar to a older kodak camera [broaddaylight.com], in which case the interface is probably a serial to 1/8th jack.
This /. post [slashdot.org] describes a possible icky drawback (60 bucks down, 39 refund on return ) Hope that isn't the case!
This is a little more detailed about the marketing [privatelabelmag.com] behind the camera, and it gives the location of the test store.
If this post is not karma-whorelicious, your money back!
Last act of a deperate company... (Score:3, Insightful)
With digital, that part of the business evaporates. Sure, they can sell printer ink and flash cards, but so does everyone, and they can't sell the 'service' of developing the film and printing, which has a huge markup. Last time I got film developed at Ritz, it was something like $25 a roll. When I got my first digital camera three years ago, I stopped using film -- and stopped going to Ritz. My story is typical, I'm sure.
I see this as the last act of a company clinging to a decades-old business model.
Good Grief, Charlie Brown... (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://ejksdesktop.homelinux.com/)
More specifically about this one-time digital camera - They removed the only real advantage that digital cameras have: the ability to preview. In this case, you still turn the stupid thing in when you're finished playing with it.
In Japan for at least 18 months (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.annexia.org/)
Rich.
I'm going to try it out... IF Has_Clue == True (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.dixie-chicks.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 24, @05:17PM)
That is, if I can get through the cloud of Clueless Salespeople.
Despite their positioning as photography experts, I haven't had the best of luck at Wolf Camera (part of the Ritz family). We took some film to them one time, in the hopes that they would push-process the low-light pictures, and got no better results than we would have had at Wal-Mart. Having to explain push-processing to the clerk should have been our first tip-off.
So this time, I called the big store in the industrial section of town (Harry Hines Blvd store). They sounded knowledgeable, but said they didn't stock them. I was referred to the suburban Irving location.
The clerk in Irving... didn't know what I was talking about. He said I'd have to hold for the "camera person"... hello, I thought the store was called [Wolf|Ritz] Camera, shouldn't they all be camera people? While waiting, I asked the non-camera person where he was located... he mumbled a bit and gave me a location several miles south of where I really, really thought the store was. Asked him for the store's address... boy, that really threw him for a loop! He found it, finally, and it was right where I thought it would be.
But when I talked to the "camera person", it turned out I didn't need to make the trip. At first, he said "Yeah, we have plenty of digital cameras." Explained the concept of "single use" to him. "Yeah, we have Fuji and Kodak, but we only develop the Kodak". Now, he was talking about the disposable film-based cameras that come with "free" developing to CD. It took a while to explain to him about this new product, big buzz on the 'net... so he gave me the number of another store. That's 15 minutes of my life I won't get back.
So I called location #3. This guy seemed very clueful, and assured me that yes, they have it... yes, they develop it... no, it's not the film-based version, it's the real single-use digital camera.
I'll head over there after work... details will be posted here! Hope my wife doesn't get upset about my new toy...
I just bought two of these at Ritz. (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.sendthemtomir.com/)
FREE Photo CD
FREE Index Print
* Camera price does not include processing
The I/O connector is a PCB card edge with 10 wires. Kind of looks like the cassette port on a C64.
Real price is $21.98 for 25 prints (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 03 2005, @10:21AM)
New! Available in June in selected areas
- Delete & Retake last shot
- self timer
- Return the camera to Ritz Camera or Wolf Camera and get:
-- 25 hires prints
-- index print
-- Your pictures on a Big-e CD
$10.99 Camera Only
Digiprint processing package: $10.99 (Frequent Foto Benefits not applicable)
Avalable at selected stores in the following areas: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Birmingham, Chicago, Dallas, North Carolina, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Tenessee, Washington DC.
I talked to the lady in the store, and she said that only the stores with a Pioneer system would be able to process it (whatever that is). There was only one store in the RTP area that had this, and they were already closed at 7:45 pm.
Since it's not technically rented. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
The only flaw with this theory is that they've likely got the pictures stored in some proprietary manner that makes it difficult to extract the images for the average consumer.