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If a mirrorless digital camera company ever made their software anywhere near as good as this, or if Apple ever brought their software expertise to a device wit
by hughes 6y ago
If a mirrorless digital camera company ever made their software anywhere near as good as this, or if Apple ever brought their software expertise to a device with a full-frame format sensor and lens mount, they would absolutely dominate that market.
- hughes 6y agoAre there even any camera companies that even have ambitions of reaching a level like this?
- altarius 6y agoAFAIK a good chunk of digital camera processing is still done in ASIC/hardware and mindshift to GPU/CPU SIMD/software will take time, so it will probably be a while until camera manufacturers even begin to catch up. That said, Olympus does a couple computational photography approaches (handheld multishot high res) and Fuji recently introduced in-camera HDR - but I tried neither.
- 67868018 6y agoOlympus is dead now, though
- akuma73 6y agoThey should drop their custom ASICs and just stick a Qualcomm Snapdragon as a replacement. They could use Android and create a platform with an app store with APIs to access their sensor. Opening up the hardware in this standard way to developers would really add a lot of value to their cameras. I have no idea why they haven't done this already.
- srsm 6y agoThis is a huge area for disruption IMO. Using a Snapdragon chip plus an FPGA/ASIC to translate SLVS-EC to MPI and buying a sensor would allow for a camera with much better performance characteristics possibly even at a lower price, and the programmable hardware would open up an insane amount of possibilities and allow for incredible value. If anyone wants to consider doing this, shoot me a message.
- rektide 6y agoSony cameras secretly are Android devices. You can write your own Android apps for them[1]. Why this isn't advertised, promoted, & made available? Why digital cameras seem to want to get their lunch taken by phones? Not sure! I think it was way too soon, but Samsung had a good go with a series of Samsung Galaxy Cameras[2] that were proud Android brandishing devices. Android has gotten better, mobile chips have gotten way better. But even something more like the unofficial OMF that I linked, a Sony camera, that doesn't look like an Android system, it looks like a camera, but is really Android and can run Android? That makes hella-sense to me. [1] https://github.com/ma1co/OpenMemories-Framework https://github.com/ma1co/OpenMemories-Framework [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_NX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_NX
- srsm 6y agoWell, only the older ones, the A7iii and onward don't have an accessible Android subsystem. But even for those before the A7iii, it's more of a subsystem and doesn't have access to a lot of functions that are done by specialized chips.
- knolan 6y agoI’m sorry but I cannot fathom using Android (or iOS) on a professional camera. My Canon gear is extremely fast and responsive and Android is anathema to that. It powers on instantly and I can flip through menus as fast as I can physically turn the control wheel. I can change batteries in less than a second. My cameras will run for years without slowing down. My 7D is ten years old and as performant as the day I bought it. (It’s actually better since a firmware update lets me hotswap memory cards with my 5Dmk3.) They can process raw images in body and display them at any zoom level without lag, loading or any other issue. My R5 has a touch screen but it’s faster and more comfortable to use the physical controls, especially since you can change settings without actually having to even look. It’s almost identical to my 5Dmk3 except they moved a couple of buttons because of the articulating screen hinge. This is exactly what most photographers want. Familiar hardware that doesn’t get in the way. That gives the best optical quality that accurately and faithfully captures a scene giving total creative freedom to the photographer not the processor. The idea of ruining a perfectly good system by pushing Android onto it ‘because apps’ or whatever it is such HN/disruptive nonsense. Look at any smartphone photo on a large screen and they’re basically mush when it comes to detail. This is fine for most people, these phone cameras are far better than the point and shoot market they have rightfully destroyed. People edit professional camera photos on large screens and nobody wants to use their camera to edit. Nobody wants their professional camera to introduce computational artefacts onto their exposure. Nobody wants to wait for it to boot. Nobody wants battery life to fall through the floor. Lytro made a light field camera that ran Android. It was a fun gimmick and is now gathering dust on my shelf. Now Zeiss is making one for $6k and no one who actually cares about photography will buy it.
- AussieWog93 6y agoI have no idea why this was downvoted. Android is bloated and clunky, and far too many manufacturers put it in devices where it solves precisely zero problems and creates hundreds.
- jsjohnst 6y agoI’m not one who did, but I’m assuming the confrontational tone of GP is likely a cause.
- altarius 6y agoThey don't even need to go full smartphone processor and OS, adding something GPGPU-esque to offload the computations to would work. Deep Neural Nets brought us many "edge TPUs", I don't see why they wouldn't equally work to process images quickly and they're reprogrammable.
- jsjohnst 6y ago> AFAIK a good chunk of digital camera processing is still done in ASIC/hardware I’m not authoritative on this topic, but I can’t think of a camera produced by one of the majors which isn’t mostly or entirely ASIC based for image processing. > Fuji recently introduced in-camera HDR Canon has had in-camera HDR for years, but I’m not sure I’d really put the output in the same category as a modern smartphone.
- rimliu 6y agoAlso Live Composite and friends, focus stacking.
- centimeter 6y agoHaving demosaicing and complicated features like shot compositing happen before “raw” encoding disqualifies this from use in professional-oriented cameras.
- redvenom 6y agoIn most situations that photographers actually care about (i.e. capturing beautiful, good light), ILCs already murder the iPhone. Computational photography may be cool but it is just helping the iPhone emulate ILCs.
- lmilcin 6y agoiPhones make good photos because they stand out from competition. People look at them and see they are different. Soon everybody is going to be fed up with dramatic lighting, extended dynamic range because competition will be doing the same. Good photos stand the test of time because they are interesting, not because they have pumped colors and HDR.
- unicornporn 6y ago> iPhones make good photos because they stand out from competition. People look at them and see they are different. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbeEkwlTeqQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbeEkwlTeqQ
- SigmundA 6y agoImagine a Magsafe camera lens / sensor with some kind of high speed wireless interconnect to iPhone: https://daxpix.medium.com/can-the-magsafe-hold-a-camera-lens-b82e856610c https://daxpix.medium.com/can-the-magsafe-hold-a-camera-lens...
- Cactus2018 6y agoSony was thinking of this too - DSC-QX series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSC-QX100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSC-QX100
- myself248 6y agoThe Olympus AIR is the same thing. Minimal sensor-and-battery behind a lens mount, do everything from your phone.
- altarius 6y agoOhh, I just remembered the long-delayed Zeiss ZX1 ($6000 fixed-lens 35mm f/2.0 camera) that has Adobe Lightroom built in. I like the concept, I bet the implementation is quite flawed though. If I were spending that money on a fixed-lens camera, it'd be a Leica Q (thanks, craigmod :/ ) but the concept is interesting.
- vmception 6y agoThe iPhone 12 Pro is better than EVIL & DSLR cameras, and that mostly comes down to software. Introducing ProRAW in a software update is already going to solidify that. If digital cameras want to compete here is what they need to do: - add live photos as a default If photography enthusiasts wants to gatekeep: - buy an older camera and stick with that... collectible. If Apple wants to continue making their devices more appealing than dedicated cameras: - Add live photos to portrait mode
- redvenom 6y agoThe iPhone 12 may have some cool auto computational features, but in no way is it better than an ILC camera like a DSLR. If you actually compare image quality side by side, a DSLR typically will smoke an iPhone. Not to mention there is no way to go past ~100mm on even the best phones.
- geerlingguy 6y agoYou can go past 100mm (35mm equivalent), but the quality really turns to mud even with the best adapted lenses!
- vmception 6y agoOh I forgot, I only do portraits and stopped taking interchangeable lens cameras with me places over half a decade ago. I don't do landscapes or wildlife photography, nor did I ever have a desire to to make rivers look like smudges with a long exposure. For portraits, iPhone 12 Pro in okay lighting is the first one where I say, yeah good enough and often times better. I don't care about DXOMark, I care about what humans think, and across mediums a photo from an iPhone 12 Pro absolutely is good and great enough.
- sudosysgen 6y agoWell, if you take one single kind of image that the software is optimized to almost fake, yes you can get close. But you'll never get to the level of, say, an a7iii+85mm1.4 even for portraits, even in good light. In any case, good enough and better are two very different words. I really enjoy taking pictures on an ILC much more and the results I get are noticeably better even in portraits, including by people that don't know what I took it with. For example, good luck emulating the look of a 135mm f/2.8 (at night) with an iPhone if we're talking about portraits, or good luck doing better than a 50mm 1.4 for street, good luck doing better than a 70-200 2.8, and so on. But yes, it has a much lower skill ceiling and often more consistent results, and it really does get close.