Bluetooth is a technology to connect electronic devices on short distances, usually under 30 feet.

It is seen often in computer-peripherals like mice and keyboards. It’s also used a lot in phones to connect headsets and transfer data from one phone to another or to a computer.

Now, it’s available in digicams, too: for instance the Ricoh 500SE. However, how much use is it? Bluetooth is a simple, well standardized protocol using very little energy from your batteries — but it’s also rather slow, as people with multi-megapixel cameraphones have discovered.

If you are lucky, bluetooth transfers 15 KBytes per second or 1 megabyte per minute. No problem for small pictures, but a large one with high detail can take 5 minutes per image! So yes, it’s cheap, handy and easy, but has it’s restrictions.

Another technology, available for some time already is WiFi, introduced by Nikon in it’s P1 and P2 models. This is a very fast technology, but also more complicated and energy-hungry.

However, this one is going to stay and has in fact a good future if manufacturers start implementing the technology better. Sending a picture to a printer is easy, but WiFi has far more potential.

The easiest technology to start with is a small embedded webserver, so your camera can act like a wireless website sharing pictures with others.

In the old days the sensitivity of film was a fixed value. Digicams offer a broad range of settings to suit many light conditions.

At the heart of your digicam is a chip that collects light on millions of elements. Each element delivers one pixel of every image you make. But they are not perfect: they produce light information, but also a bit of what we call noise - that’s the specke effect on some pictures. If you use the lowest sensitivity (ISO 50 or 80) there is not much noise, but increasing the ISO value gives more and more noise until some pictures are too speckled to use…

So why would you raise the ISO? Well, to catch more light! If it is a bit too dark, there is a risk of pictures getting shaken. So yes, you have to find the optimal setting for best results!

Many camera’s don’t offer the choice on ISO when set to “auto”. On a “manual” or “program” setting the camera offers you a choice. In bright conditions, always use a low value, but in the evening or inside, consider raising it a bit. Or a lot: never hesitate to experiment with your digicam and simply try all those settings until you find the best one.

Some cameras also offer ranges like “low ISO” or “high values” in which you order the magnitude and the camera has some freedom to choose.

Talking about values: the larger the CCD chip, the lower it’s noise. That’s why DSLR’s can go to ISO values of 1600 or even 3200!

Compact cameras with their small chips don’t go that far. 400 is common, 800 can be seen frequently on new models.

And, there’s that nice Fujifilm Finepix F30 with a very clever design. The elements, put in a honeycomb structure give low noise and you can go to ISO 3200! Do not expect perfect pictures at 3200, but at parties you may be the only one without blurred memories!

Casio is developing what it describes as ultra-high speed burst shooting techniques to capture 60 still images per second, together with high speed movie recording, at 300 fps, catching motion faster than the human eye.

The press release says :

“LONDON UK, August 31st, 2007 – Casio Computer Co., Ltd., announced today that it is developing an entirely new digital camera with unseen high speed performance and image capture functions that make the most of its cutting-edge digital technologies. This revolutionary camera of the future will be able to take still images at an astonishing shooting speed, to catch fast-moving subjects at the crucial moment. It will also take movies that capture movement so fast that it cannot even be seen by the human eye.”

The first prototype was on display at the IFA, a consumer electronics trade show, in Berlin, Germany, which opened on August 31, 2007.

Canon has just announced a top-of-the-range addition to its G-series of digital cameras, the PowerShot G9.

The press release gives us a lot of informtion :

“LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., August 20, 2007 – Canon U.S.A., Inc. announced today that its acclaimed G-series has a new top-of-the line model - the PowerShot G9 digital camera. The PowerShot G9 digital camera offers serious shooters and value-minded professionals a feature-packed camera with many of the advanced photographic capabilities of a high-end Digital SLR camera, in a lightweight, compact package at an affordable price. …

“The PowerShot G9 digital camera features class-leading 12.1-megapixel resolution for stunning, deeply detailed images that allow enlargements up to poster size with cropping. A 6x optical zoom lens brings the photographer right into the action, and by incorporating Canon’s Optical Image Stabilizer (OIS), excellent-quality images are assured in situations prone to camera shake and image blurring. So, whether you are shooting outdoors at dusk or inside without a flash, camera shake is detected and effectively canceled. …”

It will be interesting to read independent reviews of this camera when they arrive.