Press photographers surf the wireless wave

The UK's press photographers are leading the drive towards Wi-fi technology at the country's news publishers, according to the British Press Photographers' Association (BPPA).

Wi-fi is a high-speed wireless internet connection and is particularly useful for photographers who need to send large image files quickly while working on location.

Neil Turner is web editor for the BPPA and has been a staff photographer at News International for 10 years. He says that over the past six months there has been a significant increase in the number of photographers using Wi-fi.

"Photography is a wide bag but for hard news, I can’t think of a single photographer who doesn’t work digitally," he told dotJournalism.

"You’d be crazy not to. Combined with Wi-fi, the quality, speed and turnaround are superb - and if you don’t get your images in quickly, someone else will get there first."

National newsrooms have been relatively quick to pick up on the possibilities of Wi-fi, said Mr Turner, with most introducing a file transfer protocol (FTP) facility in the past few months. FTP allows users to transfer files directly to a password-protected web server.

"If I know where I'm shooting, I'll look up the location the night before and find a few Wi-fi providers," said Mr Turner.

"I can shoot, edit, caption and send 10 sample pictures within 45 minutes, but I could probably turn that around in half that time if I needed to."

Digital cameras store images on a removable memory card which can hold hundreds of images, depending on the size. Photographers transfer the card from the camera to their laptop to edit and caption the images.

Before Wi-fi, photographers working on location would usually send edited images to the publisher via a mobile phone connection, but this method could take several minutes per image. Wi-fi data speeds are much faster - up to 1MB/s depending on the service - and allow images to be sent straight from the laptop in seconds.

In October, camera manufacturer Nikon introduced a Wi-fi add-on for its professional D2H digital camera which allows images to be transmitted directly from the camera.

Most Wi-fi networks are password protected and require authorised users to logon, but users can also 'stumble' on networks that have not been secured. Free stumbler software will detect new networks and inform the user.

Users can also use a number of online hotspot databases, such as HotSpot Hotel and Wi-fiZone, to find Wi-fi networks around the world.

Mr Turner says that photographers are leading the move to Wi-fi, with many professionals encouraging friends and colleagues to use these new technologies.

"It only takes 20 minutes to learn. We’re just anoraks really," he said.

The technology is not without problems. Typical complaints are cafés with uninformed, unhelpful staff that cannot offer support, crowded networks and slow transfer speeds at peak times, and the lack of comprehensive coverage nationwide.

On behalf of the British Photographers' Association, Mr Turner has been involved in talks with UK telecoms firm BT to push for better wireless services across the country.

"It's in their interest to listen to us because photographers are big data users. and the incentive for us is to get the network as good as possible."

Fellow BPPA committee member Paul Stewart was the first UK photographer to send pictures using his mobile phone after leading beta trials with T-Mobile, then known as Mercury, in 1995. He said that Wi-fi has become indispensable.

"It's a bit like digital photography in that sense," he told dotJournalism.

"You can be as much of a luddite as you want, but once you've used Wi-fi there's no going back."

See also:
http://www.macstumbler.com
http://www.netstumbler.com
http://www.hotspothotel.co.uk
http://www.britishpressphoto.org
http://www.epuk.org
http://www.europe-nikon.com/newsdetail.aspx?countryId=20&languageId=22&editorialId=443
/news/story760.shtml
/news/story691.html
/news/story742.html
/news/story725.html
http://searchMobileComputing.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid40_gci838865,00.html

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