8 ms·

As said in this [1] article, one of the worst thing camera makers are guilty of is not slapping Android on their cameras to open up th instant publication, phot

• planteen 9y ago
  If Android is on a camera, I want some sort of a hypervisor situation where it does not interfere with real-time operations. My Canon T4i will very responsively snap a picture once I have locked the focus, aperture, and shutter speed. I do not want to lose that and "gain" lagdroid.
  • NegativeLatency 9y ago
    Also battery life considerations. I wouldn't want to have to carry extra batteries/ wait for android to boot if I go on a hike and need to conserve battery
  • fhood 9y ago
    That would be pretty easy. Lazy solution would basically to just stick an extra processor in the existing hardware that would just poll the camera for data and time critical operations would be handled by the original system
    • arethuza 9y ago
      Would that "extra processor" not be better off just being your phone?
      • Piskvorrr 9y ago
        If I had a pair of extra hands, perhaps. Note that this goes double into the other issues - now you're worrying about compatibility with the other device, and the communication link.
      • cjbillington 9y ago
        Sure but you'd wanna duct tape the phone to the camera so you don't have to hold two devices simultaneously. I can see the merits of putting android in the actual camera.
        • jdmichal 9y ago
          Why would you duct tape them? My phone and camera establish a wireless connection with an NFC touch point to activate it. From there I can transfer photos or use it as a remote viewfinder and shutter.
    • Piskvorrr 9y ago
      And now you're up to your neck in a networking swamp that also drains the battery like it's going out of style. But yeah, it's easy.
      • fhood 9y ago
        Quick google search tells me that I can power a model 2 b rpi for 5 hours off of a camera battery. And you can better than an rpi for power consumption. I could be missing something here, but I used to do a lot of work that boiled down to building linux control units for machines and it genuinely isn't that difficult most of the time.
        • sliverstorm 9y ago
          A DSLR can "sleep" with the power switch on, waiting for a shutter press for weeks. I actually have no idea how long it can go, because the drain seems to be practically zero...
          • ISL 9y ago
            This is an incredible feature. Coming from a mirrorless background, the ability to pull the camera from a waist pouch with a gloved hand, put it to my eye, and press the shutter has been a revelation. It is many seconds faster, making shots possible that I never would have taken with my mirrorless body.
          • deleted 9y ago
            [deleted]
        • stordoff 9y ago
          I used to cover long events with my DSLR - on a single charge, I could do two back-to-back 12-hour events, taking hundreds of images at each with the camera on the entire time, and still have some charge in reserve. Five hours isn't a lot by comparison.
    • digikata 9y ago
      You don't even need a separate processor, grab one of the ARM SoCs with Big/Little cores, control the camera in bare-metal /hard real time in the little core, and keep Android on the big core(s). There's some low-level driver/hal type work to get that setup - but it isn't magic or even a particularly large investment of resources.
• dguaraglia 9y ago
  Battery life could be a concern. While using my Nikon DSLR I won't turn it off at all until I'm done for the day and that seems to barely affect the battery. I can leave it in a drawer for months, pick it up and snap a hundred pictures and put it back in the drawer for a few more months and the battery is still fine. In fact, I'd be surprised if I charge it more than once a year (mind you, since phone cameras became good enough I have very little use for my DSLR.) I love Android (I've only had Android phones since my first smartphone), but battery efficiency is definitely not its strong suit, even on a clean install on a flagship phone.
  • bitexploder 9y ago
    Perhaps it just needs to be a separate system completely that shares a display and storage. Separate battery. Keep the existing highly tuned photo system. Augment by having an onboard computer. I think people are missing the point of DSLR to some extent. They aren't meant for this sort of thing. If you want onboard editing, don't use a DSLR. It is meant to be very good at one thing. It doesn't /want/ you to edit photos in place. It wants you to load them up onto a secondary computing system. I like my D90 the way it is. It can sit for weeks and not need a charge, and it is an instantly responsive camera, that happens to have a computer.
  • ashark 9y ago
    A way to connect your phone (any phone) to the camera with some kind of sync app seems like it'd be way better than putting all of freakin' Android on the camera. Phone makers can't even keep that updated and secure, plus battery life concerns, plus it's waaaay overkill for the job. Putting it on cameras is a bad idea. Add a wired or wireless sync-to-phone option, put the phone in your pocket, snap pictures, then do the editing or whatever on the phone if that's what you're into. Less work to implement that feature, more secure, easier on the hardware and the camera's battery, more future-proof.
  • IgorPartola 9y ago
    I don't understand. A phone that's 7mm thick and the size of your hand can operate for like 16-24 hours on a charge. A 1.5 lb hunk of plastic that's nearly a cubic foot in volume can't? Maybe we need better camera batteries.
• gambiting 9y ago
  So a camera released just 5 years ago would be now running....Android 2.0? Slowly losing any ability to publish anything over time as services like google and facebook are cutting off support for older Android devices each year? It's the same argument as saying that PS VITA should have had Android - I disagree. If it did, it would be a horribly outdated piece of tech today, while as it is now it runs just as well as the day it came out.
• TheSoftwareGuy 9y ago
  I feel like it might make more sense to put a cheap Bluetooth module and let it just stream to your actual phone
  • bshep 9y ago
    This! or develop a bluetooth SD card similar to the wifi ones that already exist, and have it communicate with your phone/tablet.... instant upgrade for all cameras
  • nogridbag 9y ago
    I believe Sony already has this starting with the A6300. While my A6000 doesn't have bluetooth, it supports NFC and wifi and I can easily transfer photos to my phone. Sony's PlayMemories Android app is actually pretty cool. You can use it as a remote control - seeing exactly what the camera sees. You can adjust aperture, focus, set a timer, etc.
  • eropple 9y ago
    Panasonic's GH series has a WiFi connection (not ad-hoc, but an infra point) that you can connect to and use their app. It's not a DSLR, but that's part of why the GH cameras are awesome. Panasonic, full-stop, makes really good gear that feels pretty modern; it has a couple of things I'll beef with, like what feels like really flimsy mini (GH3) and micro (GH4) HDMI connectors, but for the most part, I love 'em.
    • photojosh 9y ago
      How fast do you find the WiFi, when it comes to browsing and transferring photos over to the phone? My camera (Oly OM-D E-M5) just predates all the cameras getting WiFi as standard. :(
      • eropple 9y ago
        I only use it for remote viewfinder control, but it's snappy.
• nakedrobot2 9y ago
  The issue is startup time. Do you want to wait 30 seconds after you turn on your camera?
  • nakedrobot2 9y ago
    By the way, some cameras do run linux, and they take 5-15 seconds to start up. If a camera does take long to startup, it is because it's running linux. These are typically security cameras, which are switched on basically only once, or as a periodic power cycle. Consumer cameras always use a RTOS. Ambarella makes chips for both cases. for example the H2 is for linux, while the S5 is the same chip but for RTOS.
    • silly-silly 9y ago
      There is no reason you can't have boot in under a second.
    • chiph 9y ago
      My first digital camera was a Kodak DC220 [0] and it ran the Digita operating system. [1] Boot time was in the 20-30 seconds (good for the time) but you would often miss shots. "Spontaneity" wasn't in it's vocabulary. Photos were surprisingly good for a 1 megapixel camera with fixed-focus. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DC_Series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DC_Series [1] http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/DC220/DC220Acgi.HTM http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/DC220/DC220Acgi.HTM
      • mod 9y ago
        Flash memory, wow. I'm almost certain my first digital camera wrote to floppies.
• mtgx 9y ago
  Even better, they should've started selling smartphone camera components to smartphone makers 5 years ago. Ride the disruptive innovation and all that, instead of fighting it (and now losing). To be honest, I don't know if putting Android on DSLRs would've helped that much. Samsung tried a bit of that, too, and it didn't really work. Panasonic did, too. Eventually the smartphones just ate them up, from the bottom up. It's what disruptive innovations typically do. Incumbents usually can't win by slapping parts of the disruptive tech onto their older incumbent tech and call it a day. That doesn't seem to work usually. So DSLRs makers becoming lens, sensor, ISP, etc makers for the smartphone industry would've probably been a more successful approach. But they were too afraid of "cannibalizing themselves". But what disrupted incumbents who fear cannibalization always seem to miss is that the cannibalization will happen whether they do it or not. Staying out of the market won't help them that much in the long term.
  • babesh 9y ago
    Isn't that what Sony did? Don't they make the lens for many of the iDevices?
    • mtgx 9y ago
      Kind of, but I think it was more of an "accident" and not something they purposefully set out to do when they were getting disrupted, because they already had their own mobile division, so they probably made the decision to make sensors for their own division way before they decided to sell to companies like Apple. Once Apple knocked on their door with a huge bag of cash, they decided to take it and then they saw there could be real money in it. But Canon and Nikon never had a mobile division to realize that they need to do that, too.
  • fooker 9y ago
    The real physical limitation is the sensor size. Whatever innovation you can come up with for a tiny smartphone sensor, they would work proportionally well to improve a bigger sensor.
• gaius 9y ago
  The shutter lag on my Nikon is 40ms. Can Android do that?
• jlarocco 9y ago
  The pro photographers and photo journalists who spend the most money on "pro" cameras don't care about instant publication and on camera manipulation because they already have better workflows for those. Android isn't required for those features, anyway. My Nikon allows quite a bit of manipulation and pre-processing before generating a JPEG. For some context of what a big name pro photographer might be working with, check out [1]. He's spending a lot of money, and he's not manipulating pictures on camera and sending them to Instagram in real time. [1] https://petapixel.com/2017/05/06/heres-one-photographers-camera-kit-kentucky-derby/ https://petapixel.com/2017/05/06/heres-one-photographers-cam...
• Pxtl 9y ago
  I wish the Moto Z's mods became a standard - an Android phone that you can slap onto a device to make it "smart" would be best of both worlds. Sadly, the Hasselblad camera mod available for the Moto Z is widely considered an overpriced joke, but it demonstrates how you can make a "have your cake and eat it too" design using the Mods concept.
• kfriede 9y ago
  I personally wouldn't care as much about that being on the camera if there was an instant and automatic way to transfer it to my phone (e.g. via bluetooth). I'd find it to be more useful that way.
• rhinoceraptor 9y ago
  I don’t think people really want or need that. A big pro DSLR is a big investment, it will last 5-10 years easily. Any SoC will be ancient by the time it’s 5 years old, and no one will want to support it. And who would want to edit photos on a big, heavy DSLR when they have a much more convenient smartphone, or iPad with a better screen? The battery drain is also an issue. DSLRs use a mechanical shutter, which is sort of antiquated today. But it means one camera battery can last for hundreds or thousands of shots, and days of standby since the main screen is rarely on.
  • Pxtl 9y ago
    The challenge then is that quality camera chips historically vastly outdid the ability of corresponding communication chips. So if you went for the "camera as peripheral" approach, its ability to talk quickly to the phone is critical... and my 8-year-old camera produces large file sizes that would be painful over slow bluetooth of its day.
    • rhinoceraptor 9y ago
      I have the lightning SD card adapter, I find it (as a hobbyist) to be pretty convenient when I want to immediately have my photos on my phone.
      • photojosh 9y ago
        USB adapter here. Went on a family holiday to a tropical island recently. On the way home I downloaded all the photos and videos on our 'tough' camera. They had GPS data recorded, so they just slotted into my iOS photo library easily and got added in to the 'memories' auto-grouping. 30 minutes on the plane produced an awesome little 90 second clip I could show everyone without boring them to tears.
• mizaru 9y ago
  Sony cameras run Linux and contain an Android subsystem (mostly 2.x AFAIK). A "cold boot" takes a bit longer (3-4 seconds), the main UI and camera functions are implemented natively as far as I can tell and Android is only used for apps. It's possible to write homebrew apps [1], but there's currently no way to access the proprietary image processor, so there's not too much you can actually do. I don't think they'll open up the platform, unfortunately. [1] https://github.com/ma1co/OpenMemories-Framework https://github.com/ma1co/OpenMemories-Framework
• brudgers 9y ago
  I found Filloux article thought provoking. The argument reminds me of Polaroid film. There were two primary use cases. Ordinary snapshooters could at one point buy a new Polaroid camera for about $10. High end photographic systems accommodated Polaroid backs. A third use case was addressed by a few specialized camera models with robust high quality construction and dedicated Polaroid film paths. But for most people, 126 or 135 or 120 or sheet film was the a happy path. The situation is similar today. Cameras running Android are ubiquitous and popular and widely used and the happy path for many many people. High end camera systems should probably be seen as including a laptop/desktop computer as part of the pixel pipeline. And there is an increasing middle ground of dedicated quality instant publishing camera equipment with a variety of engineering priorities (drones, gopros, point and shoots, and APS-C and fullframe DSLR/mirrorless). The most useful feature of a cellphone camera is that it is always with people.
• balls187 9y ago
  From the article, the use case is being able to post photos to Instagram? Rather than junk up my camera with Android, why not just enable it to easily sync with the smartphone of choice, and I can Instagram/Fb the pic from there?
• tomc1985 9y ago
  Ew. Open up the OS but please don't replace it with Android.
  • Pxtl 9y ago
    I feel like we need a good standard "light" OSS OS to fill the role for such devices - both for IOT and peripheral devices like this.
• nradov 9y ago
  The camera doesn't need to run Android itself, and Android is probably too slow and power hungry to make sense in dedicated cameras. Instead think of the camera as a peripheral to the user's existing smartphone. There is a lot of room to improve connectivity and usability for that mode.
  • Pxtl 9y ago
    In that case the question becomes how? Bluetooth? USB? A proprietary solution like Moto Mods?
    • nradov 9y ago
      Bluetooth is probably the best option now since the bandwidth is high enough now to allow fast transfer of images and videos. Some cameras use WiFi, but that tends to be worse because then you have to drop your smartphone's WiFi connection and connect specifically to the camera's access point. USB cables are too fragile and awkward.
• TheRealPomax 9y ago
  I don't want android on my camera. I just want it to be able to send all data that it's curating to my android device (which has an actually useful screen size and powerful enough cpu/gpu to do real editing) in a browsable fashion where I can see what's on the camera, and pick what to transfer. Kind of like, say... FTP over bluetooth/wifi? (or sFTP, of course). And of course, a full input mapping for all "buttons" on the camera so that I can "press" any of them from my android device. Don't even bother labeling them appropriately, just have a button signal protocol that says "the following numbers will work, and have the following N-step granularity" and then simply supply the relevant profile both on-camera (it's a USB device after all) and as download for each camera model that can be used to resolve "number" to "name of actual button on the camera". In fact why stop there: I want that standard to be so open that any windows, linux, osx, raspi, android, iphone, etc. user can communicate with any camera. Got a Sony and a Nikon? Why would you care, just switch profile, done. While Android on the camera itself would be a terrible idea (it would only be useful in such a stripped down config that user apps would be pretty much impossible), seemless interoperability backed by at least two open standards would be fantastic. I guess we'll see how long it takes IKEA to make a good camera. None of these things are new, they've all been around for decades, camera makers just can't be bothered to make cameras for people. They purely make them for money.
  • NegativeLatency 9y ago
    Bluetooth might not be great. The max transfer rate is something like 24 Mbit/s (3 MB/s), and say a single RAW file is 20 MB, then you'd be looking at about 7 seconds of transfer time for each photo. With high quality jpegs ~5MB it would be closer to 2 seconds per picture. I think you'd need some kind of direct cabled connection for good perf for professional photographers. Not to mention getting all the camera and app providers to standardize on a protocol and set of features.
    • wingworks 9y ago
      I wouldn't mind using a cable if it was fast and went somewhere useful on my phone. e.g. not get stuck in a shitty Canon app. My Canon 6D "has" WiFi but it's so slow and terrible to use it may as well not be there.
• hyperbovine 9y ago
  Yes that's what cameras need... Java. Ever used Android TV? Or Android for that matter? Lags and crashes on the camera OS would absolutely bug the shit out of most photographers.
  • jstarfish 9y ago
    Ha! One of the biggest reasons I still lug a DSLR around is because of how unpredictable the Android camera can be. After I click the shutter button, I never know how long it's going to be for it to finish auto-focusing on every object at once, balancing colors, downloading updates, reticulating splines and whatever the hell else it's doing in the background. By the time it finishes my kids have started wandering and come out as smears on a landscape. iOS seems to be a little better at this. Versus the DSLR-- Set exposure, push button, take picture. Fix errors in post.
• knolan 9y ago
  Having used the Lytro Illium, which appears to run in some flavor of Android I have to disagree. I expect my cameras to be mechanically fast. I don’t want software getting in the way.
• mozumder 9y ago
  Android isn't really designed for fixed-function devices like cameras. The App model isn't suitable here. What you really need is an API set that attaches to each function of the camera that third-party developers can use process/publish photos. So, instead of turning on the camera and seeing a grid of apps, each one you have to figure out separately, you should turn on the camera and see the camera interface. Apps can then add additional functionality to this interface. And when it comes time to review the photo, a third-party app can enhance this section as well, perhaps to post on Instagram or other effects. But the grid-of-apps is a horrible model for a fixed-function device like a camera. You're ALREADY in the camera, don't need to add another separate layer to interface to it. Just add the ability to enhance these sections.
• monksy 9y ago
  That's dead on. There is a video on Digital Review where they compared someone using their iphone to post an instagram photo vs a good camera and copying it via wifi to the phone to post. With my LX10 you can batch transfer the photos so that it makes it easier. But it's still a pain. (You have to manually connect with the phone etc) There should be a service connection on Panasonic's side to say: this camera id is configured for these services and accounts and I should be able to view the photo on the camera and post directly to say imgur. (No phone needed)
• michrassena 9y ago
  I've actually seen a camera which runs some flavor of android. It was a few years ago at Best Buy, maybe it was a Samsung, but I'm not certain. My first impression was turning it on and waiting for it to boot which took some seconds. If you've never used a digital SLR, that might seem acceptable. My Nikon D80, from a decade ago, takes some number of milliseconds (like 400) to become fully functional from a cold start. Here's an article from 2007 touting the D3s startup time of 120 milliseconds. https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9148811427/nikond3 https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9148811427/nikond3 That's a cold start, pop in a new battery and go times. Waiting seconds, puts the camera into the toy category. The other factor is updates. I've had that Nikon D80 for 10 years, never had to worry about updates and never had to hook it up to a computer. Why trade in something with a offline, baked-in firmware for a constantly moving security target, or worse, as we see in the mobile space, an OS and app landscape that will be abandoned after two or three years and left vulnerable.