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This product is definately directed at a very niche market. The Ricoh 500SE camera looks a bit oversized, but there is a good reason why. It has a built in GPS chipset inside of its camera body. Also, the body is big because it has been made for rugged use. If you’ve ever dropped a camera and it went kaput, that probably won’t happen with this heavy duty camera. Its GPS capabilities come in through the integrated Blutooth radio. So Bluetooth can do more than GPS, right? And so can the 500SE. Along with the GPS, the ability to transfer images wirelessly to other gadgets that can communicate with the 500SE. So apart from the GPS capabilities, this camera has an 8 megapixes sensor that allows for pretty high resolution pictures. So is this oversized camera worth the exorbant prices that resellers are asking? If you are constantly camping and want to take better pics with a camera you don’t have to worry about, then possibly. If this isn’t your situation, then there isn’t much reason for you to buy this camera. — Nik Gomez
Ricoh 500SE GPS-ready Digital Camera [via UberGizmo]
Actually the 500SE gives you the choice of having either Ricoh’s GPS clip on tho the side and to of the camera’s body (as you see on the image, so GPS isn’t really built into the camera) or use any bluetooth gps mouse you may already have.
Anyway the unique thing is that the firmeware writes those GPS coordinates directly into the image’s header file (exif).
The 500SE is available in Europe through alta4 Geoinformatik AG, Trier, Germany.
alta4 ships the camera with the free software Fodysseus RE for viewing the geo-photos in Google Earth.