I agree that built in wi-fi is highly desirable for some applications, but one does not have to pay $20,000 for a Phase One camera to obtain this capability. It is available in many less expensive cameras as discussed in this article. Was Phase One really the first to offer this capability?
The first wireless transmitters were released
many years ago. But with these solutions you lose the cohesiveness of the workflow and have to choose between either wirelessly sending:
- Small JPGs; pretty fast, but no focus checking and you'll have to reconcile any editing when you download the raws from the CF card later
- Large JPGs: you can check focus, but it's pretty slow, and you'll have to reconcile any editing when you download the raws from the CF card later
- Send raws; very slow to send and very slow to work with on a mobile device, but you don't have to reconcile any edits later on
With Phase One's solution you get the speed of sending small JPGs, the focus checking of sending a full JPG, and your ratings are applied directly to the raw files. This is because Phase One itself is controlling all parts of this workflow (the camera firmware, the wifi module, and the iOS software) and is having the back act as a SERVER for two way communication rather than just a one-way transmitter.