Ricoh 500SE GPS Digital Camera

Integration of GPS technology with digital image capture is brand new, but now that Ricoh has announced the 500SE GPS-ready digital camera, I bet it won’t be long before all major manufacturers begin releasing their own models with this feature.

The Ricoh 500SE was specifically developed for outdoor location-based photography, so it has a very rugged, waterproof exterior to protect the precision GPS module and the high resolution image sensor.  The integrated GPS module provides a fully featured device for geo-coding both still images and video at the time they are captured.  

The 500SE is designed for a very specific market, but I expect that the integrated GPS feature will be extremely popular with almost any digital photographer.  It’s probably not a feature you would use on every shot, but just like it’s nice to “time-stamp” your photographs, there will be times when almost anyone would like to be able to precisely record the location that a photo was taken.

If you need even more precision, the camera can also receive NMEA data streams from external GPS devices via its on-board Bluetooth radio.

The Ricoh 500SE provides the ability to integrate location-based multimedia files into mapping software and overcomes the limitations of other methods of associating pictures or videos with a point on a map.  Once the captured image and video files are transferred to a PC, they can be converted to shape files or merged into geo-databases for integration into Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

The 500SE’s shell is waterproof and shock-resistant, protecting the 8 mega-pixel image stabilized sensor.  It has a super fast shutter response, GPS track log capability, GPS lock (to record the position of an object as opposed to the position of the photographer), and the ability to send images wirelessly to handheld devices via Bluetooth or WiFi.

The 500SE is available from Authorized Ricoh Geo-Imaging resellers, and you can download the Ricoh 500SE brochure.