foolography

I just read an interesting interview by imaging-resource with Nikon’s General Manager of Design: Toshiaki Akagi, amongst others. After talking about several aspects of the D4 and other general topics, they got to the topic of why there is no built-in GPS in the D4:

Dave Etchells, Publisher, Imaging Resource: We had a number of readers, also, asking about GPS, and why you can attach a GPS receiver, but people are saying why wasn’t GPS built into the camera?

Toshiaki Akagi: We always have a GP-1 GPS accessory, then we want to use a GP-1, and if we include a GPS function in the camera, the camera would be bigger. And GPS still has a little problem, so for example indoors, we cannot get GPS data, then we are considering now to adapt the GPS to the next model, in the future. While you are indoors, the performance is not stable, so that’s why we gave up to install the function in the body as of now.

There is more, so read the rest at imaging-resource.com (found via nikonrumors.com).

We were at PMA@CES, exhibiting our products. On a slow morning I wandered over to the CES, heading straight to the Nikon booth. After admiring the D4 for a while, I seized the opportunity, to gather proof for everyone, that our Unleashed D200+ is compatible with the D4. I took my favorite GPS, which managed to keep a fix even inside the Convention Center hall and plugged an Unleashed into the D4. It fits beautifully.

After 3 seconds, the Unleashed had connected to the GPS, and the GPS icon on the LCD lit up:

Took a photo, and what do you know: it’s geotagged with our location in Las Vegas!

View Larger Map

So there you go: Proof that our Unleashed D200+ is fully compatible with the new Nikon D4!

PS. I went to see Canon’s GP-E1, which they announced 3 months ago! They did not have one with them! Can you believe it? I certainly couldn’t! On top of that, no-one at the booth had any knowledge about it, other than having heard it exists.

photokina 2010 is over. We were there and had a great time!

Photo by our new customer Eddy Westveer – Thanks for sending us the picture!

The launch of our new products went really well, and these new Unleasheds for the D3100, D5000, D7000 and D90 were very well received by the visitors.

Finally the entire current Nikon DSLR Lineup is equipped with GPS capabilities!

The newly announced D7000 (it is still unclear where in Nikons lineup it belongs) and even the entry-level D3100 announced just a few weeks ago, both have a GPS port, for directly connecting a GPS to it for geotagging your images. Along with the D5000 and the D90, which already had such a port, and of course all of Nikons professional cameras, which have had one for several years. This means that all of Nikons current DSLRs are capable of direct geotagging!

Of course, you’re wondering when our Unleashed will fit these new cameras… but you might just have to wait a few more days to get that answer ;-)

D7000 GPS port (dpreview.com)	D3100 GPS port (engadget.com)

Starting date of this year’s photokina is coming up fast, and we’re extremely busy with preparations. We will finally launch a new product you have all been waiting for ;-)

If you want to be one of the first to see it live and in action, you’re very welcome to visit our booth in Hall 5.1 Stand F014. We’re looking forward to the show and hope to see you there!

That’s right, we did it again. Our new, wireless direct barcode scanning solution for Nikon DSLRs, the Unleashed – Barcode Edition, won the DIMA 2010 Innovative Digital Product award, which was presented to us at the Sneak Peek Press event of PMA2010.

The Unleashed – Barcode Edition is a by-product of our main product – the Unleashed. However, instead of connecting to a Bluetooth GPS, it connects to a Bluetooth barcode scanner. The photographer scans in a barcode, which is embedded in the EXIF data of all of the following photos, until the next barcode is scanned.

Until now, Direct barcode scanning was only possible with the Fuji S5, which has been discontinued, and no successor was announced. The Unleashed – Barcode Edition enables direct barcode scanning with all high-end Nikon DSLRs – from the D200 and up. On top of that, the setup is entirely wireless.

We will be exhibiting at PMA 2010 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California from February 21st to 23rd, and just like last year we will be part of the German Pavilion.

If you would like to meet us or are interested in seeing our products, you’re very welcome to visit us at our booth #1909-6.

We’re excited to announce our newest product at PMA 2010: the Unleashed – Barcode Edition. Detailed news about this device will be added to our website after the trade show. It will revolutionize the volume photography market – stay tuned!

For the new year, we were able to work out new conditions and to lower our prices.

The next batch of Unleasheds has been produced, production costs have slightly decreased, and we were thus able to reduce the final price. At the same time, we decided to offer two great new Holux GPS receivers bundled with the Unleashed, pre-paired for your convenience.

These are the Holux M-1000C or the tiny M-1200E. They are both based on the MTK MT3329 low power consumption GPS chipset, meaning great reception quality and very long battery life. Also, both include logging features for documenting travelling routes, or even for indirectly geotagging photos taken with your backup camera, that might not have an Unleashed.

The new prices are:

Unleashed:
199.00 €
167.23 € excl. VAT

Unleashed+M-1000C or Unleashed+M-1200E:
199.00+70.00=269.00 €
167.23+58.82=226.05 € excl. VAT

If the price was holding you back and you have not done so already, go get one in our online-shop.

If you’d prefer to buy the Unleashed from your local dealer or favorite online-retailer, tell them to contact us – we have great conditions for retailers and distributors, and are just setting up our worldwide distribution network. They can become a part of it.

Nikon just issued firmware updates for their D3 and D700 – these add a new cool GPS feature:

• “Use GPS to set camera clock item has been added to the GPS item in the setup menu. When Yes is selected, date and time information acquired via connection to a GPS device is used to set the camera’s internal clock. After selecting Yes for the first time, turn the camera off and then on again to reacquire GPS data.”

Oddly, the updates for the D300s and D3X don’t include this new feature. – A quick check on the D300s showed that the feature was not already present, which was my first thought. The firmware update did not change anything either.

see all the details here or here.

I wonder if they thought of the 19 second offset between GPS Time and UTC? (read about it here)

It seems almost unbelievable, but after a long time of preparations, and a lot of hurdles we had to overcome, we have finally reached the point where we can proudly announce the availability of the new Unleashed – our tiny wireless geotagging solution for Nikon D200 and up.

While we’re setting up world-wide distribution to bring the Unleashed to retailers near you, we’ve set up a small online-shop for your convenience in the meantime. You can find it here: www.foolography.com/shop

Since we have quite a few prospective customers waiting for the availability of the Unleashed, we are expecting to be out of stock fairly soon, so don’t hesitate. However, production for the next batch has already begun, and will be available shortly.

We’re very glad to have finally come to this point and we hope you’re as excited as we are. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.

We wish you a happy holiday season, possibly including a lot of fun with your new Unleashed!