{"id":1917,"date":"2012-01-08T16:24:12","date_gmt":"2012-01-08T07:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2012-01-08\/1917"},"modified":"2012-01-08T16:24:12","modified_gmt":"2012-01-08T07:24:12","slug":"in-camera-geoencoding-and-the-nikon-d4-case-study-in-product-development-costs-ignorance-and-naivete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2012-01-08\/1917","title":{"rendered":"In-Camera Geoencoding and the Nikon D4: Case Study In Product-Development Costs, Ignorance, and Na\u00efvet\u00e9"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n<div class='resize_warning' id='arw1917'>\n<b>NOTE<\/b>: Images with an <img class='raw' width='19' height='18' src='\/i\/s\/red_zoomup.gif'\/> icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Now that Nikon has <a\nhref='http:\/\/www.dpreview.com\/news\/2012\/01\/06\/NikonD4launched'>announced\nits next flagship pro SLR<\/a>, the <b>Nikon D4<\/b>, with <a\nhref='\/blog\/2012-01-06\/1916'>much flowery prose<\/a> but\nfew hard details, discussion and debate and speculation and flames and\npraise have filled camera circles.<\/p>\n\n<p>This post is long, but here's the two-sentence summary for the &#8220;<i>tl;dr<\/i>&#8221; crowd:<\/p>\n\n<div style='margin-left:4em'>\n<b>Nikon didn't include built-in geoencoding in their new camera.\n<br\/>I wish they did, but perhaps this will help you understand why they didn't...\n<\/b><\/div>\n\n<p style='margin-top:50px'>As with most any technology release (hardware or software), folks tend\nto frame their personal whims and desires as &#8220;absolutely required!&#8221;, while features that they don't personally care about become\nunneeded fluff. Photographers who don't care about video, for example,\nlament the assumed cost of all the new video features.<\/p>\n\n<p>This is human nature, and in this respect <span class='nobr'>I am<\/span> human (why on earth\ndoesn't Lightroom have geoencoding built in!?), but my moral outrage at the\nomission of personally-desired features is tempered by many years of\nexperience with product design, and <span class='nobr'>a long<\/span>-learned understanding that in\npractice things are much more complex than they might seem from the\noutside.<\/p>\n\n<p>A feature <i>not<\/i> included in the D4 is built-in geoencoding, an omission that\nsome people find unfathomable, as evidenced by <span class='nobr'>a thread<\/span> at DPReview started with <a href='http:\/\/forums.dpreview.com\/forums\/read.asp?forum=1021&amp;message=40250644'>this message<\/a>:<\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\">\ndiv.e1917 {\n    background-color: #666666;\n    border-color: #CC8888;\n    border-style: solid;\n    border-width: 1px 1px 1px 8px;\n    color: black;\n    font-size: 95%;\n    margin: 20px 5em 20px 3em;\n    padding: 15px 2em;\n}\n<\/style>\n<div class='e1917'>\n<b><a href='http:\/\/forums.dpreview.com\/forums\/read.asp?forum=1021&amp;message=40250644'>D4 no internal GPS? Seriously?<\/a><\/b>\n<hr\/>\n<p>I mean... No words...<\/p>\n<p>Those who don't care for it can just turn it off.<\/p>\n<p>Those who do... Gosh. <span class='nobr'>I really<\/span> hate saying this, but what is nikon thinking?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>This rant is clearly emotional, by someone who doesn't realize that it's\nemotional, nor that others may not share their particular emotions on this\nissue, so it's easy to dismiss. However, it started <span class='nobr'>a long<\/span> thread &mdash; one of many, I'm sure &mdash; where people\ndebated the usefulness of having <span class='nobr'>a GPS<\/span> receiver in camera, and the business\ndecision of having omitted it.<\/p>\n\n<p>Of course, the responses included equally emotional rants on the other side of the aisle, such as this gem\nfrom <a href='http:\/\/www.curtissmithphotography.com\/main.php'>Curtis Smith<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n<div class='e1917'>\n<b><a href='http:\/\/forums.dpreview.com\/forums\/read.asp?forum=1021&amp;message=40255536'>4 real?<\/a><\/b>\n<hr\/>\n<p>Are you that stupid you need the camera to tell you where you are? <span class='nobr'>Its a freaking<\/span> camera! <span class='nobr'>Not a swiss<\/span> army knife!!! <span class='nobr'>Who gives<\/span> <span class='nobr'>a rats<\/span> a$$ about GPS? <span class='nobr'>I so sick<\/span> of you old farts complaining about this ,that and you don't even have the camera. <span class='nobr'>Yes a was<\/span> complaint <span class='nobr'>a while<\/span> back for nikon to hurry up and give us the D4 and they have so guys give it <span class='nobr'>a rest<\/span> its not going to have all the tricks you wanted as its just <span class='nobr'>a camera<\/span> and by the looks of it <span class='nobr'>a Dam<\/span> good camera!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Personally, I've been geoencoding my photos for the better part of <span class='nobr'>a\ndecade<\/span> (the ones I've posted, mostly in Kyoto, are <a\nhref='\/blog\/map'>mapped here<\/a>) and would love to have\nit built into the camera.... but only if done well. <span class='nobr'>I understand<\/span> enough to\nknow that it's not necessarily easy to do well, so <span class='nobr'>I followed<\/span> up the initial message with one of my own\nabout <a\nhref='http:\/\/forums.dpreview.com\/forums\/read.asp?forum=1021&amp;message=40254187'>some\nof the likely costs<\/a> that came to mind &mdash; costs such as the\nphysical space the GPS unit would add to an already bulky camera body, and\nhow it would lower the value\/cost benefit ratio (that is, the marktability) for those not interested in\ngeoencoding their photos.<\/p>\n\n<p>Each specific &#8220;cost&#8221; has its own level of impact, but the manufacture\nmust weigh them as <span class='nobr'>a whole<\/span> against <a\nhref='http:\/\/forums.dpreview.com\/forums\/read.asp?forum=1021&amp;message=40255084'>their\nbenefits<\/a>, and at this point in Nikon's product roadmap (at this point\nin the economy, at this point in their market research, perhaps in light of\nMother Nature's harshness in 2011), built-in geoencoding didn't make the\ncut. Maybe it will when they reevaluated everything for the next camera. <span class='nobr'>Or maybe<\/span> not.<\/p>\n\n<p style='margin-top:50px'>Anyway, as is common on faceless online\ndiscussions, some folks mix in <span class='nobr'>a healthy<\/span> dose of ignorance and antagonism\nwith their emotion, such as this bit of arm-chair logic from <a\nhref='http:\/\/www.robincasady.com\/Photo\/index.html'>Robin Casady<\/a>\nreplying to a &#8220;there are costs&#8221; post similar to my own:<\/p>\n\n<div class='e1917'>\n<a href='http:\/\/forums.dpreview.com\/forums\/read.asp?forum=1021&amp;message=40259660'><b>Re:Seriously? <span class='nobr'>But you don<\/span>'t really want to face the facts... <\/b><\/a>\n<hr\/>\n\n<div style='color:#888; border-left: 4px solid #888; padding-left:1em'>\nCost (1): Adding it to the camera (system) entails engineering costs.\n<br\/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;:\n<br\/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;:\n<\/div>\n\n<p>The software aspect must already be done because you can plug-in <span class='nobr'>a Nikon<\/span> GP-1 and geotag each image.<\/p>\n<p>So, fact #1 = bogus.\n<br\/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;:\n<br\/>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;:\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>Here, Robin is referring to a small <a\nhref='http:\/\/www.bhphotovideo.com\/c\/product\/580877-REG\/Nikon_25396_GP_1_GPS_Unit.html'>add-on\nproduct that Nikon sells<\/a> that includes <span class='nobr'>a GPS<\/span> antenna; when you plugin\nit in to the camera and it has any kind of satellite fix, photos are geoencoded\nautomatically. This has been available for years, and if <span class='nobr'>I were<\/span> to use it\nwith my current camera, it would replace what <span class='nobr'>I actually<\/span> do (which is carry <span class='nobr'>a\nseparate<\/span> GPS receiver while out with the camera, then sync its tracklog to the photos in\nLightroom, with <a href='\/blog\/lightroom-goodies\/gps'>my\ngeoencoding-support plugin<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n<p>I don't choose to use Nikon's add-on because <span class='nobr'>I feel<\/span> it's an ugly wart on\nthe camera, <span class='nobr'>I worry<\/span> about its speed and accuracy, and it lacks the ability\nto display its status beyond more detail than <span class='nobr'>a blinking<\/span> light. <span class='nobr'>And even if<\/span>\n<span class='nobr'>I did<\/span> use it, <span class='nobr'>I'd still<\/span> need <span class='nobr'>a way<\/span> to geoencode after the fact, for\nlocations where <span class='nobr'>I didn't<\/span> have it with me, to geoencode the photos <span class='nobr'>I get<\/span>\nfrom others on the same outing with me, for locations it couldn't get <span class='nobr'>a\ngood<\/span> signal, and for times where <span class='nobr'>a depleting<\/span> battery prompted me to turn it\noff.<\/p>\n\n<p style='margin-top:50px'>Anyway, at first blush Robin's logic may seem reasonable... Nikon\nalready has the hardware as <span class='nobr'>a separate<\/span> product, and the cameras have had\nfor years the firmware needed to geoencode the photos, so the simple step\nto include the hardware inside the camera takes almost no work, so citing\n&#8220;engineering costs&#8221; seems unreasonable, Robin concludes.<\/p>\n\n<p>But that's an exceptionally na\u00efve, ignorant point of view, even when\nlimiting the scope of &#8220;engineering costs&#8221; to the\n&#8220;software aspect&#8221; that Robin brings up.\n\n<span style='color:#999'>(<b>Update:<\/b> In light up the updates noted below, &#8220;<i>exceptionally na\u00efve, ignorant point of view<\/i>&#8221; is <span class='nobr'>a perhaps<\/span> harsher characterization than Robin's statement merits. <span class='nobr'>See more below<\/span>...)<\/span>\n<\/p>\n\n<p>For example...<\/p>\n\n<ul><li>\n\n<p>If you move it from an external dongle to an internal component, you've\nlost all UI (&#8220;user interface&#8221;), so now you've got to come up with <span class='nobr'>a way<\/span> to\ninteract with the user. <span class='nobr'>You have to<\/span> come up with <span class='nobr'>a way<\/span> for the user to turn\nthe GPS feature on and off, and you have to come up with <span class='nobr'>a way<\/span> to indicate\nto the user whether the unit is on or off.<\/p>\n\n<\/li><li>\n\n<p>Let's look at just that latter point for <span class='nobr'>a moment,<\/span> the oh-so-simple\n&#8220;indicate to the user whether the unit is on or off&#8221;. That might naturally\ngo into the viewfinder display, but since that very-limited real estate has\nbeen staked out by other UI needs for years, you're forced to change or\nremove things that until now were considered critical. Maybe just make\neverything else slightly smaller to squeeze in one more indicator, but\ngeez, that was done the last several iterations and now things are starting\nto get way too small....<\/p>\n\n<p>So that's not straightforward, and the same angst applies to the LCD displays.<\/p>\n\n<p style='color:#999'><b>Update:<\/b> In a <i>touche!<\/i>-worthy reply, Robin <a\nhref='http:\/\/forums.dpreview.com\/forums\/read.asp?forum=1021&amp;message=40263398'>points\nout<\/a> that there's already <span class='nobr'>a GPS<\/span>-related indicator in both the viewfinder\nand LCD-body displays, which flashes to indicate that it's on but has no\nposition fix, and is solid if it has any kind of fix. This clearly makes\nthis bullet point of mine completely moot and <span class='nobr'>I have<\/span> learned something, but\n<span class='nobr'>I don't<\/span> think removing one or two points removes the idea that there's <span class='nobr'>a\ncost<\/span>\/benefit balance that most of us don't fully understand.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/li><li>\n\n<p>Then you're faced with the fact that &#8220;on&#8221; and &#8220;off&#8221; are not really\nsufficient... you need to be able to communicate to the user whether the\nunit is actually getting <span class='nobr'>a signal,<\/span> and if so, how accurate. <span class='nobr'>If I recall<\/span>\ncorrectly, the hardware dongle uses <span class='nobr'>a bi<\/span>-color LED to indicate the\ndifference between &#8220;on with good signal&#8221; or &#8220;on but no good signal&#8221;, and\nthis is really very minimal because &#8220;good signal&#8221; means different things to\ndifferent people (100m accuracy vs. 3m accuracy, for example). Also, &#8220;Not\ngood signal&#8221; may really mean &#8220;warming up&#8221; or &#8220;can't see satellites&#8221;. <span class='nobr'>So if you<\/span>'re going to bring it in house, you'll naturally want to tackle that\nissue to provide the user with <span class='nobr'>a more<\/span>-usable level of information, but\nmaybe all of that doesn't need to go into the viewfinder, so now you've\nbifurcated the information (some in the viewfinder, and some somewhere\nelse... likely in the menu system), so finding the balance there is another\nissue.<\/p>\n\n<\/li><li>\n\n<p>Then you've got to consider the situation of when the battery is getting\nlow... it makes no sense to run the battery into the ground just so the GPS\nreceiver can keep its fix while the camera is idle.... what good is it to\nhave had <span class='nobr'>a good<\/span> fix for the last hour if you now don't have enough battery\nto take <span class='nobr'>a shot<\/span>? So you've got to come up with some measures to handle this\nsituation (perhaps GPS auto shutoff when battery is below X% full), and\nthis means that you have to have <span class='nobr'>a whole<\/span> new UI to communicate to the user\nwhen this has happened, what the current status is, and perhaps to allow\nthe user to make adjustments to the heuristics for their specific\nneeds.<\/p>\n\n<p style='color:#999'><b>Update:<\/b> In the same reply noted above, Robin cites that there is already\nan option just as <span class='nobr'>I postulated,<\/span> that turns off the GPS receiver when the exposure meter\nturns off, some user-selected time (default: six seconds) after the\nshutter button is released. <span class='nobr'>I offered<\/span> the idea merely as an example of\nsomething that might be done, but I'm quite dismayed to find it's actually\nthere in that form because one would generally want the GPS receiver to be\nactive <span class='nobr'>a lot<\/span> longer than the exposure meter; the exposure meter comes back\non instantly when you press the shutter button half way, but Nikon's GPS\nreceiver takes <span class='nobr'>a minimum<\/span> of five seconds to get <span class='nobr'>a fix<\/span> when already hot, but\n     is rated at 45 seconds when warm (unused for more than 15 minutes, <span class='nobr'>I think<\/span>). <span class='nobr'>I'd like to<\/span> the GPS unit remain on much longer than the exposure meter, and would like the ability\n     to have it wake up every 14 minutes or so to keep itself &#8220;hot&#8221;...<\/p>\n\n<\/li><li>\n\n\n<p>But we've forgotten the more common situation of power management... should\nthe unit be on all the time, or should it auto-shutoff in the same way the\nimage review shuts off, coming back up when the shutter button is half\ndepressed? (I'm half depressed just thinking about this.) Both make <span class='nobr'>a lot<\/span>\nof sense, each applied to its own situation, but no one solution makes\nsense for everyone, so again you need to add UI to allow the user to\nindicate their wishes, and more UI to communicate to the user this\nadditional status of the settings chosen and the current state within the\ncontext of those settings.<\/p>\n\n<\/li><\/ul>\n\n<p><strike>Notice how the &#8220;simple software aspect&#8221; immediately\nturned into <span class='nobr'>a hardware<\/span> aspect: both the viewfinder display and the LCD\ndisplay require physical hardware manufacturing changes to update. There\nare other hardware aspects one could turn to (such as the LED seen in the\nexternal GPS unit), or one could keep it all software by burying everything\ninto the menu system, but these are substantially less\ndesirable.<\/strike><\/p>\n\n<p style='color:#999'><b>Update:<\/b> So, with my first viewfinder\/LCD point\nhaving been completely wrong, the previous paragraph is pretty clearly\nunreasonable. <span class='nobr'>You do still<\/span> need to handle on\/off for the GPS unit, but in\nmy experience as <span class='nobr'>a geoencoder<\/span> <span class='nobr'>I think<\/span> it'd be sufficient to have it in the\nmenu system.<\/p>\n\n<p style='margin-top:50px'><b>All features have costs<\/b>. <span class='nobr'>The ones above<\/span>\nare just what came to my imagination at first blush, but because <span class='nobr'>I have<\/span> no\nexperience with embedding GPS receivers inside cameras, <span class='nobr'>I'm sure there<\/span>'s <span class='nobr'>a\nwhole<\/span> litany of additional problems I've neglected to consider.<\/p>\n\n<p style='color:#999'><b>Update:<\/b> And it's because of this ignorance\nthat we all have (at least those of us who are not camera-design engineers)\nthat <span class='nobr'>I characterized<\/span> Robin's curt conclusion of &#8220;Bogus!&#8221; as <span class='nobr'>I did.<\/span> <span class='nobr'>In light<\/span> of my own ignorance on the viewfinder\/LCD issue when <span class='nobr'>I wrote<\/span> it, my use of\n&#8220;<i>exceptionally<\/i>&#8221; seems overdramatic. Sorry about that, Robin.<\/p>\n\n\n<p>Then there are the followup costs, such as the need to document all this\nin the user's manual, and translate that to all the languages that Nikon\nsupports. (Of course, they'll have had to translate all the related UI in\nthe camera menus.) Then there's the recurring need to provide support: more\nfeatures mean more support calls, etc.<\/p>\n\n<p><b>None of this is unsurmountable<\/b>, and it's all certainly trivial compared\nto all the video features that <i>did<\/i> get added, so it wouldn't have\nsurprised me in the least to have seen Nikon include this in the D4. <span class='nobr'>But to do<\/span> that they would have had to shift resources from something else, and if\nthey had done that, we'd see these same online flamefests about whatever\nthat &#8220;something else&#8221; was that got the short stick.<\/p>\n\n<p>We'd also see additional flamefests about whatever GPS support did get built in\nand how lame it is...<\/p>\n<center>&#8220;<i>What, GPS only?\nNo <a href='http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/GLONASS'>GLONASS<\/a>? What is\nNikon thinking?!<\/i>&#8221;<\/center>\n\n<p>This applies to pretty much every new hardware and software product\nyou'll come across (<span class='nobr'>I see<\/span> it every time Adobe releases <span class='nobr'>a new<\/span> version of\nLightroom, or Apple releases <span class='nobr'>a new<\/span> phone), so the next time something near\nand dear to your heart is released, realize that like everyone else you're\ntalking to, <i>you don't know it all<\/i>, and take care to frame your\nwishes and opinions as just that, <i>wishes and opinions<\/i>.<\/p>\n\n<p class='subtle'>(And as <span class='nobr'>a matter<\/span> of courtesy, don't point out my own advice to me when <span class='nobr'>I don't<\/span> follow it. :-)) <\/p>\n\n<p>By the way, several years ago <span class='nobr'>I read<\/span> an excellent writeup from <span class='nobr'>a software<\/span>\ndeveloper about the extensive ripple of high-impact ramifications that he\ncame across while trying to implement a &#8220;trivial&#8221; feature request from his\nusers. <span class='nobr'>I think<\/span> it was about some kind of email-notification aspect of an\nonline forum of some sort. My web-search kung-fu is weak on this one....\ndoes anyone have <span class='nobr'>a link<\/span> for this article?<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now that Nikon has announced its next flagship pro SLR, the <b>Nikon D4<\/b>, with much flowery prose but few hard details, discussion and debate and speculation and flames and praise have filled camera circles.<\/p> <p>This post is long, but here's the two-sentence summary for the \"tl;dr\" crowd:<\/p> <p style='margin-top:50px'>As with most any technology release (hardware or software), folks tend to frame their personal whims and desires as \"absolutely required!\", while features that they don't personally care about become unneeded fluff. Photographers who don't care about video, for example, lament the assumed cost of all the new video features.<\/p> <p>This is [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7,1,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1917\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}