UMPC Digital Photography: Hi-speed photo publishing.

How far away do you think we are from the first digital camera with integrated Windows XP? Or perhaps the other way round. A UMPC with a detachable 5 mega-pixel optical camera, flash, flash sync output and tripod mounting point.

I think its closer than we think. If you take the best of the smartphone cameras (Nokia N93?) with the smallest UMPC (the Vega?) you already have something very useable and available today.

Have a look at the image below. What do you see? A bad photo? OK. But look at the content and not the quality (Try saying that to an HDTV owner!) Its a UMPC ready to take a photo of itself via an external cam. More specifically its a Canon PowerShot S2-IS connected via USB2.0 to a UMPC running the Canon remote shooting application. The preview window is live, you get remote release capability by touching the UMPC screen and the image is instantly downloaded into the editing window where you can do analysis, aditing and then publication. Its an amazingly efficient way to do certain types of digital photography and its available today.

Below is a screen-shot showing the Canon Capture Task preview window from the set-up above. Behind you see the ZoomBrowser editing window. The preview window needs to be a lot bigger to take advantage of the UMPC screen but you get the idea? Its even caught me touching the print-screen button. This image is a bit confusing. I’m surprised time didn’t speed-up during this!

Here’s a simpler one to understand. Here I’m using the UMPC as a preview window, storage and remote release.

One second later, image is available for editing on the same UMPC. A few seconds after that, I had docked the UMPC and had dragged the image into where it is in this blog. Woah. I just saw tomorrow!

Lets take it one step further. If you’re a photo journalist in the City and you follow current events you’ve probably tried to balance your laptop and mobile phone on a wall to send the image back to base. Think about this new scenario. If your camera recorded your images and video via a wireless link straight to your UMPC which had hi-speed cellular data capability built in. Bingo! You’ve just beaten the competition.

And the next step? A UMPC built INTO a pro digital camera. With hi-speed cellular data capability you could be taking, editing and sending near-live press-quality photos straight into the photo-pool. All with about half the weight that you carry today.

Another example: Here I am, writing this article on the UMPC in docked / extended screen mode and pressing the shutter release button on the Canon.

Lets see that close up.

That image took about 10 seconds to take and drag into Livewriter, including re-sizing. Really.

Lets run that in a mobile scenario. I’m going to undock the UMPC and walk outside with the camera and UMPC…

Under one minute later i’m back and the (terrible) image is in my article.

And again, because I’m really enjoying this ……

That took under 60 seconds including undocking, going outside, setting up, taking the picture, coming inside, re-docking and dragging the image into Livewriter. I could press the ‘Publish’ button now and that image would be on my blog in under 1 minute from taking it. Maybe i’ll try that after posting this article!

[update: I did. Here. 50 seconds!]

And finally, here’s the last step. Live video blogging. Multiple web-cams attached to a UMPC and controlled via software with compression and upload to a streaming server over a hi speed cellular data connection. Your video blog ready one second after you’ve finished it.

Could the 5″ UMPC space take another application? Not only PMP, Carputer, UMPC and Navigation device, but also DigicamPC? (digicampc.com and digicam-pc.com are free if you fancy a gamble!)

In the words of Austin Powers “…and I’m spent!”

Steve / Chippy.