3 ms·

Also, many more people buy phones than standalone cameras, so they can afford a lot more software R&D.

by astrange 3y ago

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.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Good points. > 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. This is not really an option. There were actually clip-on cameras back in the day when cameras were new on phones. But there were several problems: - Software support tended to lag with updates - Phones change form factor very regularly and phones in general are replaced much more often than camera hardware, leaving you a highly expensive paperweight - I don't think any phones have thunderbolt yet, just some tablets - Dealing with issues is a nightmare because you don't control the hardware end to end
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      I think the limiting issue has been I/O. The recent iPhone 15 has 10gbps usbc which might be close but RAW images are quite big - not sure and too lazy to do the math. The form factor issue feels tractable - just have the housing that you slot your phone into be a cheap bit of molded plastic that adapts it to the thing you sell that contains the sensor, battery etc. That makes it a ~$50 part at most that you can support nearly every phone on. There’s also spring loaded designs (look at all the spring based universal car mounts). Now that even iPhones are usbc, this also standardized the I/O connector port which would have been harder/impossible to solve and a bigger obstacle. The SW support thing doesn’t seem real - the R&D cost for maintaining the camera OS with its own custom gui is going to be much more expensive than just hiring some mobile app developers. Form factor feel might be an issue (ie wright distribution / Feel in the hands) and that might be a real issue. Not sure but also feels solvable. But the biggest issue is that computational photography in a mobile form factor just isn’t relevant to the space that these manufacturers are in. The creators will use tools like darkroom and newer generative AI tools to post process and the value add of computational photography isn’t relevant there. “Computational photography” techniques to help capture and set up shots might be but I’m not enough in the space to know whether or not there always doing that (eg automatically being able to capture back to back shots with different settings for later compositing, providing automatic tips on lighting, etc etc)

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.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Good points. > 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. This is not really an option. There were actually clip-on cameras back in the day when cameras were new on phones. But there were several problems: - Software support tended to lag with updates - Phones change form factor very regularly and phones in general are replaced much more often than camera hardware, leaving you a highly expensive paperweight - I don't think any phones have thunderbolt yet, just some tablets - Dealing with issues is a nightmare because you don't control the hardware end to end
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    I think the limiting issue has been I/O. The recent iPhone 15 has 10gbps usbc which might be close but RAW images are quite big - not sure and too lazy to do the math. The form factor issue feels tractable - just have the housing that you slot your phone into be a cheap bit of molded plastic that adapts it to the thing you sell that contains the sensor, battery etc. That makes it a ~$50 part at most that you can support nearly every phone on. There’s also spring loaded designs (look at all the spring based universal car mounts). Now that even iPhones are usbc, this also standardized the I/O connector port which would have been harder/impossible to solve and a bigger obstacle. The SW support thing doesn’t seem real - the R&D cost for maintaining the camera OS with its own custom gui is going to be much more expensive than just hiring some mobile app developers. Form factor feel might be an issue (ie wright distribution / Feel in the hands) and that might be a real issue. Not sure but also feels solvable. But the biggest issue is that computational photography in a mobile form factor just isn’t relevant to the space that these manufacturers are in. The creators will use tools like darkroom and newer generative AI tools to post process and the value add of computational photography isn’t relevant there. “Computational photography” techniques to help capture and set up shots might be but I’m not enough in the space to know whether or not there always doing that (eg automatically being able to capture back to back shots with different settings for later compositing, providing automatic tips on lighting, etc etc)