[nakedrobot2]

Here is my rant, as an experimental (panorama, gigapixel) photographer: Canon, Nikon, and the rest of them will go to their graves keeping their firmware closed and un-scriptable. It is a tragedy. Mobile phones and the Gopro are eating their lunch. The fact that there is even a (niche) market for things like the Eye-fi (wifi sd card) goes to show how utterly clueless and behind the times these dinosaur camera companies really are.

[wpietri]

Yeah. A great example of how people go wrong when makers focus on the product they're building rather than the people they're building it for.

As a programmer, my natural inclination is to sit in my fortress of arrogance and build the thing that I "know" they need. But learning how to do user testing, user interviews, and customer development has persuaded me that the important moment isn't when the product ships, it's when somebody actually uses it.

I almost never use my non-phone camera anymore because the point for me isn't taking a picture, it's doing something with it. Which camera companies would know if they treated anthropologists with the same respect as CCD scientists.

[beagle3]

That's a nice thought. But the real reason they do it is market segmentation; e.g. when I looked at it two years ago, the Canon T3i was infinitely better and cost less than any IP camera out there. If they let you stream out of it live, it would kill the ip camera market. So they don't.

[wpietri]

If they did it only for purposes of market segmentation, they would have long ago made something that about the size of a point-n-shoot but that was as convenient for getting the photos up and out as a smartphone.

They haven't. That doesn't mean they have forced me into buying a fancier camera, and therefore getting more money. Instead they've pushed me into doing almost all my casual shooting with an (inferior) smartphone.

Besides, market segmentation is a good idea only as long as nobody else is going to disrupt your precious segments. If they will, then you might as well disrupt them yourself.

Established organizations have trouble thinking like that, though, because their ignorance of actual use combines with political desire to avoid change. Thus, Kodak.

[jlarocco]

I'll believe it when I see it.

Nikon and Canon's target market, photographers, want to spend their time taking photos, not writing code for their camera.

Besides, most of the "possibilities" listed in the article are already available on a lot of cameras (like the intervalometer), better done in post processing (like previewing on ipad), or easily done using a $20 wireless remote control.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool that he's hacking on his camera, but I don't see Nikon and Canon ever promoting it or going out of their way to make it easier.

[aortega]

Some Canon cameras are scriptable natively ( http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Canon_Basic ) and also using the CHDK extension. I understand the vendor's position on this, the market for scriptable cameras is tiny, you can easily destroy your camera with the wrong script and as any programmable device, your scriptable camera could catch a virus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ZJ4cmc2o8)