Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

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Cameras had gps for a moment but they all dropped it because it sucks. GPS takes a long time to get a fix so unless you want to turn the camera on and sit for 5 minutes before taking the photo, it doesn’t work. Meanwhile an app on your phone can ping the current location to the camera for free. Your phone always has a location lock and it’s super power efficient at getting it.

And the rest of it is essentially features for a market that doesn’t exist. People buying cameras today don’t want to send straight to Facebook. They want to sort through raws, edit in Lightroom and then post from a laptop. The market for the features you want all moves to phones long ago.

Sony also has a bunch of the features you are asking for. It can connect to the internet and live sync files to an ftp server. It can even upload proxy videos so your editors can start work before you get back to copy the master copy over. Cameras are sold to prosumers and actual professionals now so the featureset reflects it.

> Your phone always has a location lock and it’s super power efficient at getting it.

So why can't cameras do it? They are the same form factor, could be a feature to enable. My smart garmin instinct can track gps for a day, and it's a tiny sportswatch.

Because they don’t have internet access to download the gps almanac or ping the apple/google servers to ask where the wifi ap they saw is located. And they aren’t always on so they have to get the gps fix from scratch rather than maintaining it which is faster.

Sure you could put a mobile modem and internet connectivity on a camera, but it adds price, reduces battery life, and doesn’t really have any advantages over a phone companion app

> People buying cameras today don’t want to send straight to Facebook.

Pretty sure that's the main point of Fuji camera, the output and built it filter is decent enough that you can upload to Social network without any editing.

I'd think even the JPEG shooters still prefer to sort through the results on a computer and don't need to fire off instagram posts direct from the camera. At any rate, most cameras these days have a companion app that let you grab the photos from your phone without pulling out an SD card.

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