Ricoh announces "new" GPS-enabled digital camera

As you may have noticed, we tend to get all hot and bothered when we see announcements for exciting new products. But when we get an announcement that basically consists of a manufacturer hyping an old product by renaming or "repositioning" it, we just get bothered. Case in point: the "new" Ricoh Pro G3 digital camera. According to a press release sent out by Ricoh on January 18, this is "the world's first GPS-ready digital camera." The problem is, not only is it not the first GPS-ready digicam (Kodak had one out ages ago). It's not even a new camera. As far as we can tell, it's identical to Ricoh's Caplio Pro G3, which was released almost a year ago. The Caplio Pro was mentioned in an article we linked to in an item we ran about DIY digicam GPS setups last year, and was also mentioned prominently by our pals at the Digital Photography Weblog back in December. In fact, the helpful link provided in Ricoh's press release about the camera leads to a page on the site of distributor GeoSpatial Experts that includes an announcement from last April that they've got the Caplio Pro G3 (we've heard from at least one potential customer who called GeoSpatial that it is indeed the same camera). It's not that we don't like the cam; the idea of an off-the-shelf GPS-camera solution is something we dig. We can just do without the hype.

[Justin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

This is good for when you're so drunk you don't remember where you were when you took an awesome photo.

[Chris Kawalek @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

This is going to be awesome with Mappr: http://www.mappr.com/

[Dave @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Just make it cheap, call it whatever you like...

There has to be a great market for a sub $400 version of this thing. Me, I want one for work to document potential construction sites. (even big companies bauk at $800 for the peons)

I also want one for play, I would like to make chronological slide shows of interesting hikes showing locations and map locations against time.

[Mark @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Maybe the product doesn't need the hype, but the concept sure does. I've never heard about a camera with builtin GPS, but I've several times told friends there should be such a thing.

So, let them spend their buck to tell the world about this great concept. Then someone else can do it right.

[Twist @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

Cool. We need more camera's like this that fill in the GPS tag in the EXIF data.

[Misty Arbo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I had one of the Kodak camera,and belive me, it was anything but GPS-ready. You needed to tether a cable to a Garmin (and only a Garmin) GPS unit. Try taking a picture while holding a gps unit in one hand and a heavy camera in the other. Looks like Ricoh is truely GPS-ready to me. But a little to expensive for casual use, I might add.

[matt @ Dec 19th 2005 1:37AM]

I too have thought quite a bit about the patents involved with functionality that auto GPS stamps digital photos (just like time/date are today). Fascinating to find that this camera already exists... As far as hype, I too am blown away that this camera is here. I think someone is going to have to FIRST offer a KILLER application for photos with gps in order for the mass to realize the potential. Flickr with tags of gps data is a perfect start.