There wasn’t any new mirrorless tech announced at CES with the D5, but Nikon’s Snapbridge with BlueTooth does get a nod from us for a company paying attention to how photographers are working now. As I’ve shared here and for DP and DPP, I’m no longer traveling with a laptop. Instead, just a camera and mobile devices: phone and tablet. My workflow has also changed from using an iPhone primarily to shooting with a Sony — Alpha series and Cyber-shot — and then grabbing the photos from the camera with a wifi connection. What Snapbridge does is connect the camera to a phone with BTLE and upload it to a server. Dropbox, Google, Flickr, Apple all have similar camera roll services so I don’t see what Nikon can add in the cloud, but an always-connected, energy-saving tech is very promising. I’d like to see BTLE on future iterations of the Alpha and Cyber-shot cameras. Here’s an example of that awkward moment when you’re in a casino hotel and see water pour out of the ceiling above the grill station of a restaurant and wonder what’s going on and why no one is running and then go outside and see the rows and rows of firetrucks outside and realize you were just standing trying to figure this out from under the hotel fire. It turns out there wasn’t a fire, but I got some shots and shared them within a 1/2 hour of the incident. If this was a new story for me, BTLE would’ve met within minutes instead of the hour. If you haven’t connected and transferred photos with WiFi, it’s several steps compared to “in your camera roll” as you take them.
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My daily shooter is Sony A1 with a vertical grip and various Sony lenses attached like the FE 20mm F1.8. Find more gear recommendations in our shop. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.