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I think you’d be surprised how much phones have encroached on the fancy camera space. Also, the limiting factor in phone camera quality is more the lens than an

I think you’d be surprised how much phones have encroached on the fancy camera space. Also, the limiting factor in phone camera quality is more the lens than anything else. The SW backing it is much more powerful than what you get in standalone cameras although those manufacturers are trying to keep up (that’s why phone cameras can be so competitive with more expensive ones). I expect within the next 10 years we’ll see meaningful improvements to the lenses used in phones to the point where dedicated cameras will have shrunk even more (i.e. decoupling the size of the lens / sensor from the surface area on the back of the phone).

FalconSensei 3y ago
> The SW backing it is much more powerful than what you get in standalone cameras that is very due to camera makers not giving a sh*t though. Maybe now they do, but it's overdue. And I'm not even talking about the phone apps for connection, or image processing, but more on a user interface and usability PoV, and also interesting modes for the user. Fuji and Ricoh are the only ones that I see are trying to make things easier or more fun or interesting for non-professionals. Fuji has the whole user customization that people use for recipes and film simulation (on top of the film simulations they already have), and Ricoh is the only one (I know of) that has snap focus, distance priority, and custom user modes that are easy to switch to, and to use. But even Fuji and Ricoh could still improve a lot, since there's always a detail or another that I'm like... why did they made it like that? or... why didn't they add this thing?
- wkat4242 3y ago
  I don't think it's only that. The processing in a phone is expensive. If you'd build a high end camera with a Snapdragon 8 gen 3 it would raise the price a lot. In a phone that's not an issue because you need the chip there anyway for other tasks. So there's just much more compute power available, not to mention a connection to the cloud with even more potential compute.
  - astrange 3y ago
    Also, many more people buy phones than standalone cameras, so they can afford a lot more software R&D.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      Well yes but a lot of that can be reused across devices I would guess.
      - vlovich123 3y ago
        Naw, astrange is correct. At peak in 2010, 121 standalone cameras were shipped worldwide. By 2021, that number was down to ~8 million. By comparison, 83 million smartphones are shipped each quarter (~1.4 billion for the year). Those kinds of economies of scale means there's more R&D revenue to sustain a larger amount of HW & SW innovation. Even though smartphone shipments should come down over the next few years as they incremental jump each year is minimal & the market is getting saturated, there's always going to be more smartphone shipments. Individual camera vendors just can't compete as much and I don't think there was possibly anything they could have done to compete because of the ergonomics of a smartphone camera. The poor UX and lack of computational photography techniques doesn't matter as much because the pro market segment is less about the camera itself and more about the lenses / post-processing. Even professional shoots that use smartphones (as Apple likes to do for their advertising) ultimately tend to capture RAW + desktop/laptop post-processing when they can because of the flexibility / ergonomics / feature set of that workflow. The camera vendors do still have the advantage of physical dimensions in that they have a bigger sensor and lenses for DSLR (traditional point & click I think is basically dead now), but I expect smartphones to chip away at that advantage through new ways of constructing lenses / sensors. Those techniques could be applied to DSLRs potentially for even higher quality, but at the end of the day the market segment will just keep shrinking as smartphones absorb more use-cases (interchangeable lenses will be the hardest to overcome). Honestly, I'm surprised those device manufacturers haven't shifted their DSLR stack to just be a dumb CMOS sensor, lens, a basic processor for I/O, and a thunderbolt controller that you slot the phone into. Probably heat is one factor, the amount of batteries you'd need would go up, the BOM cost for that package could be largely the same, & maybe the external I/O isn't quite yet fast/open enough for something like that.

FalconSensei 3y ago

> The SW backing it is much more powerful than what you get in standalone cameras that is very due to camera makers not giving a sh*t though. Maybe now they do, but it's overdue. And I'm not even talking about the phone apps for connection, or image processing, but more on a user interface and usability PoV, and also interesting modes for the user. Fuji and Ricoh are the only ones that I see are trying to make things easier or more fun or interesting for non-professionals. Fuji has the whole user customization that people use for recipes and film simulation (on top of the film simulations they already have), and Ricoh is the only one (I know of) that has snap focus, distance priority, and custom user modes that are easy to switch to, and to use. But even Fuji and Ricoh could still improve a lot, since there's always a detail or another that I'm like... why did they made it like that? or... why didn't they add this thing?

wkat4242 3y ago
I don't think it's only that. The processing in a phone is expensive. If you'd build a high end camera with a Snapdragon 8 gen 3 it would raise the price a lot. In a phone that's not an issue because you need the chip there anyway for other tasks. So there's just much more compute power available, not to mention a connection to the cloud with even more potential compute.
- astrange 3y ago
  Also, many more people buy phones than standalone cameras, so they can afford a lot more software R&D.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Well yes but a lot of that can be reused across devices I would guess.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      Naw, astrange is correct. At peak in 2010, 121 standalone cameras were shipped worldwide. By 2021, that number was down to ~8 million. By comparison, 83 million smartphones are shipped each quarter (~1.4 billion for the year). Those kinds of economies of scale means there's more R&D revenue to sustain a larger amount of HW & SW innovation. Even though smartphone shipments should come down over the next few years as they incremental jump each year is minimal & the market is getting saturated, there's always going to be more smartphone shipments. Individual camera vendors just can't compete as much and I don't think there was possibly anything they could have done to compete because of the ergonomics of a smartphone camera. The poor UX and lack of computational photography techniques doesn't matter as much because the pro market segment is less about the camera itself and more about the lenses / post-processing. Even professional shoots that use smartphones (as Apple likes to do for their advertising) ultimately tend to capture RAW + desktop/laptop post-processing when they can because of the flexibility / ergonomics / feature set of that workflow. The camera vendors do still have the advantage of physical dimensions in that they have a bigger sensor and lenses for DSLR (traditional point & click I think is basically dead now), but I expect smartphones to chip away at that advantage through new ways of constructing lenses / sensors. Those techniques could be applied to DSLRs potentially for even higher quality, but at the end of the day the market segment will just keep shrinking as smartphones absorb more use-cases (interchangeable lenses will be the hardest to overcome). Honestly, I'm surprised those device manufacturers haven't shifted their DSLR stack to just be a dumb CMOS sensor, lens, a basic processor for I/O, and a thunderbolt controller that you slot the phone into. Probably heat is one factor, the amount of batteries you'd need would go up, the BOM cost for that package could be largely the same, & maybe the external I/O isn't quite yet fast/open enough for something like that.