4 ms·

I'm a shoot-on-the-run travel photographer. If I had to guess I probably have less than 5 seconds to setup and take the average shot. With a "real" camera, you

by bane 11y ago

I'm a shoot-on-the-run travel photographer. If I had to guess I probably have less than 5 seconds to setup and take the average shot. With a "real" camera, you can get all the knobs and buttons and such down to muscle memory and with a few manipulations usually get set to something you want. After taking something like 100,000 photos with my current camera, I barely even look at it to get it set how I want for a shot. I've tried, really tried to get into the habit of using the camera I have, my phone camera. It's a decent 13MP, f2.2 camera with lots of familiar settings, but it takes so long to set up a shot with any of the camera apps I've tried that I usually miss what I want. Or there's some kind of weird "processing" delay after I shoot where the sensor stays on long after I've taken the shot and I end up with a blurry stupid mess. With my real camera, I'd say that I'm probably really happy with about 1% of the shots I make, and decently happy with about 5%. With all the phones I've used, those number easily get cut by a fifth. The workflow is also, for some reason, fussier with my phone than my camera. I'm usually traveling overseas when I shoot, so internet access is spotty, and I can't wait for my phone to sync over some craptastic Italian hotel wi-fi. Popping an SD card into my computer to transfer a day's shots off is much quicker and easier. (and yes, I've toyed around with just connecting up my phone to my computer to copy off of, but there's usually some kind of fuss over it being seen as a USB drive so I can copy off of). Also, bokeh, I can get such beautiful creamy effortless bokeh with my long lens, and those photos look omg fantastic most of the time. My phone at best requires me to get right up on something and then I just get a blur on everything else. Whatever optical magic is happening in my camera, filters in photoshop just don't make up for it.

artmageddon 11y ago
I'm thankful to always be able to get a picture with my phone, as I'm not always going to lug around my DSLR all day. I'm also thankful it can do certain dark-area shots better than my DSLR(my iPhone is f/2.2 and my kit lens is f/3.5). But without the ability to go full manual and keep the shutter open among other settings for beautiful night time shots, or to switch up a lens and capture something from far-out with my 300mm telephoto, there's no way I'm giving up my DSLR.
- leishulang 11y ago
  have you try photo-stacking? Even star trace can be done beautifully.
  - artmageddon 11y ago
    If you mean photostacking to get HDR-style photos on a DSLR, I'm familiar with the concept but I don't have Photoshop to play around with. Most of the situations that I find myself dealing with high-contrast light, where I'd want to use HDR, tend to involve those which I don't have a lot of time to set up and capture multiple shots(i.e. selfies(yeah I know) with my SO in the shade of a tree with a great view behind us). Not sure what you mean by star trace - are you referring to something like this? [0] [0] http://www.dimijianimages.com/More-page1/star-trails-Botswana.jpg http://www.dimijianimages.com/More-page1/star-trails-Botswan...
    - Sanddancer 11y ago
      If you have gimp, there are a couple ways of doing HDR there as well. For quick and dirty stuff, I found the exposure blend plugin [1] to work pretty decently. For more complicated stuff, doing the exposure masking yourself [2] also leads to real good results. As far as speed, there are a few apps out there that will let you bracket and do an automatic hdr sequence out there if you have a phone with an IR diode, yeah it means fumbling with two devices, but the results would almost certainly be well worth it. [1] http://tir.astro.utoledo.edu/jdsmith/code/exposure_blend.php http://tir.astro.utoledo.edu/jdsmith/code/exposure_blend.php [2] http://www.instructables.com/id/HDR-photos-with-the-GIMP/ http://www.instructables.com/id/HDR-photos-with-the-GIMP/
      - artmageddon 11y ago
        Thanks for the links! I'll have to try them out. I've worked with exposure bracketing before so I get the idea, I just never really tried doing the parts thereafter in software. I'll have to give this a try soon.
SomeCallMeTim 11y ago
I also cart a "real" camera around with me when I go on vacation. My phone camera is pretty awesome for what it is, but nothing compares to a dedicated camera. Bokeh is important. Low-light performance is important. RAW capture is important. High burst rate is important (I'm often taking pictures of kids--my "real" cameras take 5-6 FPS in burst mode, all at full RAW resolution). Real optical zoom and stabilization is important. Being able to control ISO, aperture, and exposure time is important. Having a flash you can bounce off the ceiling is important (and no, a phone flash isn't NEARLY strong enough). Time to first shot is important (my camera can take a picture within about 600ms of turning it on in programmed-auto mode). I have RAW capture on my phone if I use the right app, and some control over exposure, but none of the other options. If I want to document something and I don't have a real camera handy, sure I'll pull out my phone. Android 5 gets the time between pulling the phone out of my pocket to first shot down to 7 seconds, which still isn't nearly fast enough. My old Canon 10D took 3 seconds to first shot, and I often missed shots as a result. When traveling I usually carry around a micro-four-thirds camera with a couple of lenses; very small, very fast, and great low-light performance (as well as all the other features listed above).
- bane 11y ago
  > my camera can take a picture within about 600ms of turning it on in programmed-auto mode Yes, thank you for mentioning this. I have an older Nikon I get great shots with and from power on to picture is about as fast as I can raise the viewfinder to my eye. There's just no comparison to any phone I've tried and most point-n-shoots are about 2-3x as slow.
leishulang 11y ago
With the manual modes coming into Android and IOS recently, the weird "processing" delay will be gone and there isn't really anything to justify showing off your Leica in public.
- tjr 11y ago
  Even if true, why should obsolete technology be banished from the public sphere? Should I avoid being seen in public with my mechanical wristwatch? My mechanical metronome? My 2010 Mac Book Pro? My 1963 Fender Jazz Bass?
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    I'd go further and say, mechanical knobs dials and switches can be operated without looking at them. with touch devices, i have to look at them, both to find what i want to do, and verify what i wanted to happen, happened. Fundamentally, they're not obsolete. These are features that can't be duplicated without some clever additional device.
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    Welcome to HN, where I have heard sincere claims that someone who pulled out a "Thinkpad Thinkpad from 10 years ago in a full Starbucks if you like, but most people wouldn't enjoy doing it - and even apologize for it, if they got curious stares." From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6322397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6322397
- Sanddancer 11y ago
  The lenses your phone has, made by the lowest bidder, will not match a good zeiss lens, or even soviet lenses. You'll also be stuck with whatever the phone maker has decided is a good enough aperture because there's not an easy way to change the aperture size on a device that small. So the depth of field will always be exactly the same. No tiny apertures leading to crisp fields where everyone's in focus, no wide open images where the one, and only one, object you want to study is in focus. So yes, there are quite a few justifications for a discrete camera even after phones fix their processing delays. A smartphone will displace the snapshot camera used 10 years ago, but it's not going to be physically possible to replace the versatility of a changeable lens camera.
MichaelGG 11y ago
Even the Nokia Lumia "42" mp phone-camera was just far, far too laggy to use. Microsoft was on the right track, requiring a dedicated camera button (they later killed this off). But the software and everything else meant I'd still miss most shots.
semi-extrinsic 11y ago
> Whatever optical magic is happening in my camera ... is called 9 mechanical aperture blades. Apertures are magic, until you study optics and it suddenly all makes sense.

by bane 11y ago

artmageddon 11y ago

I'm thankful to always be able to get a picture with my phone, as I'm not always going to lug around my DSLR all day. I'm also thankful it can do certain dark-area shots better than my DSLR(my iPhone is f/2.2 and my kit lens is f/3.5). But without the ability to go full manual and keep the shutter open among other settings for beautiful night time shots, or to switch up a lens and capture something from far-out with my 300mm telephoto, there's no way I'm giving up my DSLR.

leishulang 11y ago
have you try photo-stacking? Even star trace can be done beautifully.
- artmageddon 11y ago
  If you mean photostacking to get HDR-style photos on a DSLR, I'm familiar with the concept but I don't have Photoshop to play around with. Most of the situations that I find myself dealing with high-contrast light, where I'd want to use HDR, tend to involve those which I don't have a lot of time to set up and capture multiple shots(i.e. selfies(yeah I know) with my SO in the shade of a tree with a great view behind us). Not sure what you mean by star trace - are you referring to something like this? [0] [0] http://www.dimijianimages.com/More-page1/star-trails-Botswana.jpg http://www.dimijianimages.com/More-page1/star-trails-Botswan...
  - Sanddancer 11y ago
    If you have gimp, there are a couple ways of doing HDR there as well. For quick and dirty stuff, I found the exposure blend plugin [1] to work pretty decently. For more complicated stuff, doing the exposure masking yourself [2] also leads to real good results. As far as speed, there are a few apps out there that will let you bracket and do an automatic hdr sequence out there if you have a phone with an IR diode, yeah it means fumbling with two devices, but the results would almost certainly be well worth it. [1] http://tir.astro.utoledo.edu/jdsmith/code/exposure_blend.php http://tir.astro.utoledo.edu/jdsmith/code/exposure_blend.php [2] http://www.instructables.com/id/HDR-photos-with-the-GIMP/ http://www.instructables.com/id/HDR-photos-with-the-GIMP/
    - artmageddon 11y ago
      Thanks for the links! I'll have to try them out. I've worked with exposure bracketing before so I get the idea, I just never really tried doing the parts thereafter in software. I'll have to give this a try soon.

SomeCallMeTim 11y ago

I also cart a "real" camera around with me when I go on vacation. My phone camera is pretty awesome for what it is, but nothing compares to a dedicated camera. Bokeh is important. Low-light performance is important. RAW capture is important. High burst rate is important (I'm often taking pictures of kids--my "real" cameras take 5-6 FPS in burst mode, all at full RAW resolution). Real optical zoom and stabilization is important. Being able to control ISO, aperture, and exposure time is important. Having a flash you can bounce off the ceiling is important (and no, a phone flash isn't NEARLY strong enough). Time to first shot is important (my camera can take a picture within about 600ms of turning it on in programmed-auto mode). I have RAW capture on my phone if I use the right app, and some control over exposure, but none of the other options. If I want to document something and I don't have a real camera handy, sure I'll pull out my phone. Android 5 gets the time between pulling the phone out of my pocket to first shot down to 7 seconds, which still isn't nearly fast enough. My old Canon 10D took 3 seconds to first shot, and I often missed shots as a result. When traveling I usually carry around a micro-four-thirds camera with a couple of lenses; very small, very fast, and great low-light performance (as well as all the other features listed above).

bane 11y ago
> my camera can take a picture within about 600ms of turning it on in programmed-auto mode Yes, thank you for mentioning this. I have an older Nikon I get great shots with and from power on to picture is about as fast as I can raise the viewfinder to my eye. There's just no comparison to any phone I've tried and most point-n-shoots are about 2-3x as slow.

leishulang 11y ago

With the manual modes coming into Android and IOS recently, the weird "processing" delay will be gone and there isn't really anything to justify showing off your Leica in public.

tjr 11y ago
Even if true, why should obsolete technology be banished from the public sphere? Should I avoid being seen in public with my mechanical wristwatch? My mechanical metronome? My 2010 Mac Book Pro? My 1963 Fender Jazz Bass?
- jfoutz 11y ago
  I'd go further and say, mechanical knobs dials and switches can be operated without looking at them. with touch devices, i have to look at them, both to find what i want to do, and verify what i wanted to happen, happened. Fundamentally, they're not obsolete. These are features that can't be duplicated without some clever additional device.
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  Welcome to HN, where I have heard sincere claims that someone who pulled out a "Thinkpad Thinkpad from 10 years ago in a full Starbucks if you like, but most people wouldn't enjoy doing it - and even apologize for it, if they got curious stares." From: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6322397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6322397
Sanddancer 11y ago
The lenses your phone has, made by the lowest bidder, will not match a good zeiss lens, or even soviet lenses. You'll also be stuck with whatever the phone maker has decided is a good enough aperture because there's not an easy way to change the aperture size on a device that small. So the depth of field will always be exactly the same. No tiny apertures leading to crisp fields where everyone's in focus, no wide open images where the one, and only one, object you want to study is in focus. So yes, there are quite a few justifications for a discrete camera even after phones fix their processing delays. A smartphone will displace the snapshot camera used 10 years ago, but it's not going to be physically possible to replace the versatility of a changeable lens camera.

MichaelGG 11y ago

Even the Nokia Lumia "42" mp phone-camera was just far, far too laggy to use. Microsoft was on the right track, requiring a dedicated camera button (they later killed this off). But the software and everything else meant I'd still miss most shots.

semi-extrinsic 11y ago

> Whatever optical magic is happening in my camera ... is called 9 mechanical aperture blades. Apertures are magic, until you study optics and it suddenly all makes sense.