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I think the camera industry has yet to realize the amount of processing power that's available in modern chips. Once they do, the very concept of lenses as we

I think the camera industry has yet to realize the amount of processing power that's available in modern chips. Once they do, the very concept of lenses as we know them is likely going to evolve drastically: at the end of the day, the signal captured by the physical CCD needs not in any way to look like the finished product (the final photo). They've realized that for color already (CCD captures a signal that's heavily processed for color before final delivery, eg debayering + color correction). Wait till they realize they can pull off the same trick with geometry, the entire discussion in this thread will become moot in a heartbeat.

mmaunder 5y ago
You still need the data. And most pro film and still shooters shoot raw which is either pre debayering or partially debayered as is the case with BMD.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > You still need the data. You're entirely missing my point. The "data" as you call it can come in all shape and forms, as long as it contains enough information to rebuild what the camera "saw" The "data" could come from 150 sensors arranged in a geometric pattern that completely alleviate the need for a traditional lens (see telescope arrays).
lm28469 5y ago
Physics > algorithms. Just look at iphone bokeh (background blur), it's utterly disgusting. Nothing beats real world light rays hitting a large sensor, the larger the better (that's why 4x5 cameras still shit on modern 150mpx sensors). CCD aren't used btw, they all migrated to CMOS
- ur-whale 5y ago
  > Just look at iphone bokeh Does the human eye have bokeh? Or are you just enamored with an artifact produced by existing sub-par technology after having been exposed to it for long enough that you now have Stockholm syndrome?
  - mmaunder 5y ago
    Ever wondered why modern digital film is still shot at 24fps and a shutter speed of 1/48th of a second when a faster shutter and higher frame rate would produce a technically superior product? It’s because audiences are enamored with the feeling that sub par technology created decades ago and want that feeling to continue. It’s also why guitarists use tube amps and digital tube amp emulators are so popular. Art is context and film and photo has over a century of context.
    - Zak 5y ago
      A faster shutter speed would not produce motion blur that looks similar to how human vision perceives it in reality. A higher framerate without changing the shutter speed (i.e. 48 FPS with a 1/48s shutter duration) produces a smoother result with the same motion blur, but may still be rejected by audiences because "that's not how movies should look".
  - Zak 5y ago
    > Does the human eye have bokeh? Yes. When your eye is focused on something close, point sources of light in the background will look larger and blurry. You'll also see two of them if you have two eyes open and have a sense of depth that a single lens projecting the scene onto a flat sensor cannot capture in the same way. 3D photography using two lenses has existed for a while, but viewing the result requires compromises relative to a print on paper or conventional screen technologies. The ability to have a shallow depth of field is valuable as a compositional tool to focus the viewer's attention where the photographer wants it. Bokeh - how the defocused area looks is an artistic quality, and so far the digitally-created version I've seen produced by smartphones is not aesthetically pleasing to me. I imagine that will change as the algorithms get better. I think some of the trends currently popular in photography using dedicated cameras are driven by what smartphones can't do, which includes (optical) shallow depth of field.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    > existing sub-par technology It's pure physics, every lens based optical system has them including your eyes. Also, photography is art, bokeh is considered pleasing for portraits, that's a fact of life and it doesn't look like it's going away, it's so visually pleasing that phones are trying to replicate the effect. There is a reason why hollywood movies aren't shot on iphones, and also a reason why "shot on iphone" rigs look like that https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphone-800x465.jpg https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphone-80...
ruined 5y ago
cameras are a dedicated tool for sampling visual data. they are very tightly designed to be good at that, and have been optimized to a nearly ideal form over the course of more than a century. cameras won't provide a decent ergonomic experience for anything else without significant change. on the professional end, the camera will always remain strictly a sampling tool, and processing the sample is done with full attention, usually later. the level of detail and control that is already demanded by post-processing requires a complex interface, and often dedicated control surfaces. additional creative complexity will not be attempted at point of capture with worse control. in every other use case, of course there is room for experimentation, but there is no reason to put that on the camera. every user is carrying a more powerful device with a bigger display and better touch surface in their pocket. the camera will remain an optimized sampling tool.
- ur-whale 5y ago
  Strictly none of the things you said contradict what I said. There are very many ways to conduct sampling, the current method just being one of them, and the past 100 year of optimizations were conducted under the rather punishing constraint of "no math allowed at then end of the pipeline".
Rapzid 5y ago
> I think the camera industry has yet to realize the amount of processing power that's available in modern chips. I find this incredibly unlikely. What leads you to believe this?

mmaunder 5y ago

You still need the data. And most pro film and still shooters shoot raw which is either pre debayering or partially debayered as is the case with BMD.

ur-whale 5y ago
> You still need the data. You're entirely missing my point. The "data" as you call it can come in all shape and forms, as long as it contains enough information to rebuild what the camera "saw" The "data" could come from 150 sensors arranged in a geometric pattern that completely alleviate the need for a traditional lens (see telescope arrays).

lm28469 5y ago

Physics > algorithms. Just look at iphone bokeh (background blur), it's utterly disgusting. Nothing beats real world light rays hitting a large sensor, the larger the better (that's why 4x5 cameras still shit on modern 150mpx sensors). CCD aren't used btw, they all migrated to CMOS

ur-whale 5y ago
> Just look at iphone bokeh Does the human eye have bokeh? Or are you just enamored with an artifact produced by existing sub-par technology after having been exposed to it for long enough that you now have Stockholm syndrome?
- mmaunder 5y ago
  Ever wondered why modern digital film is still shot at 24fps and a shutter speed of 1/48th of a second when a faster shutter and higher frame rate would produce a technically superior product? It’s because audiences are enamored with the feeling that sub par technology created decades ago and want that feeling to continue. It’s also why guitarists use tube amps and digital tube amp emulators are so popular. Art is context and film and photo has over a century of context.
  - Zak 5y ago
    A faster shutter speed would not produce motion blur that looks similar to how human vision perceives it in reality. A higher framerate without changing the shutter speed (i.e. 48 FPS with a 1/48s shutter duration) produces a smoother result with the same motion blur, but may still be rejected by audiences because "that's not how movies should look".
- Zak 5y ago
  > Does the human eye have bokeh? Yes. When your eye is focused on something close, point sources of light in the background will look larger and blurry. You'll also see two of them if you have two eyes open and have a sense of depth that a single lens projecting the scene onto a flat sensor cannot capture in the same way. 3D photography using two lenses has existed for a while, but viewing the result requires compromises relative to a print on paper or conventional screen technologies. The ability to have a shallow depth of field is valuable as a compositional tool to focus the viewer's attention where the photographer wants it. Bokeh - how the defocused area looks is an artistic quality, and so far the digitally-created version I've seen produced by smartphones is not aesthetically pleasing to me. I imagine that will change as the algorithms get better. I think some of the trends currently popular in photography using dedicated cameras are driven by what smartphones can't do, which includes (optical) shallow depth of field.
- lm28469 5y ago
  > existing sub-par technology It's pure physics, every lens based optical system has them including your eyes. Also, photography is art, bokeh is considered pleasing for portraits, that's a fact of life and it doesn't look like it's going away, it's so visually pleasing that phones are trying to replicate the effect. There is a reason why hollywood movies aren't shot on iphones, and also a reason why "shot on iphone" rigs look like that https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphone-800x465.jpg https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphone-80...

ruined 5y ago

cameras are a dedicated tool for sampling visual data. they are very tightly designed to be good at that, and have been optimized to a nearly ideal form over the course of more than a century. cameras won't provide a decent ergonomic experience for anything else without significant change. on the professional end, the camera will always remain strictly a sampling tool, and processing the sample is done with full attention, usually later. the level of detail and control that is already demanded by post-processing requires a complex interface, and often dedicated control surfaces. additional creative complexity will not be attempted at point of capture with worse control. in every other use case, of course there is room for experimentation, but there is no reason to put that on the camera. every user is carrying a more powerful device with a bigger display and better touch surface in their pocket. the camera will remain an optimized sampling tool.

ur-whale 5y ago
Strictly none of the things you said contradict what I said. There are very many ways to conduct sampling, the current method just being one of them, and the past 100 year of optimizations were conducted under the rather punishing constraint of "no math allowed at then end of the pipeline".

Rapzid 5y ago

> I think the camera industry has yet to realize the amount of processing power that's available in modern chips. I find this incredibly unlikely. What leads you to believe this?