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Its crazy to me that there isn't a modern version of this kind of camera. Sony and Cannon could be doing a lot to take away from the smartphone share if they ma

Its crazy to me that there isn't a modern version of this kind of camera. Sony and Cannon could be doing a lot to take away from the smartphone share if they made cameras more usable and modern: - Built in GPS for location tagging in photos(a few cameras have this but for many you need an external dongle attached to the camera) - Automatic backup of photos to cloud/network storage locations - built in flash storage for redundancy - Wifi that isn't trash so you could transfer photos at a meaningful speed - LTE for the same reason when on location - Run apps for upload to a variety of services - More computational photography features

glial 2y ago
+1 I would absolutely buy this.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Many of us would. I love my little Olympus PEN EPL8 camera, the form factor beats the crap out of phones, the quality of the pictures way better (despite "only" 16MP), etc. But the ... software experience is awful. I could come up with dozens of ways to improve the experience that would have been possible even in 2016 when it was made... (In fact I wasted a couple days writing my own custom WiFi remote control program for it a few days ago, hoping to snap birds at the feeder while I sit at my desk, cuz the "OI Share" Olympus/OM Systems one is terrible) But there's not enough of a market at all to make it justifiable. Software developers are expensive. The interchangeable lens camera market is tiny, and the professional people who spend serious money care less about things like that and more about stellar optics and sensors. The consumer (and even "pro-sumer") level tier of the camera market has almost disappeared. Even in Japan, which is camera crazy, it's in free-fall still. Take Panasonic's new GH7, for example, a new rather nice Micro Four Thirds camera with a bunch of advanced features, but kind of targeted towards the video segment (so great for YouTubers, etc)... They announced the production numbers and it's only 4000 a month. That's... basically nothing... in the consumer hardware segment. That said, I think this segment will come back in a bit. The digicam craze is evidence at least that young people (like my teenage daughter's age) can see the value in the camera form factor over using a phone. The ergonomics are way better. And Fujifilm can't keep the X100V series in stock, it keeps flying off the shelves. Phones themselves are becoming less "cool."
brokensegue 2y ago
If you have all that why not also make it a phone?
- glial 2y ago
  Phones have relatively terrible lenses and sensors.
  - delecti 2y ago
    That isn't an inevitability. The modem doesn't negatively affect the lenses and sensors, choices by people in companies are what result in worse sensors/lenses in phones.
    - samcat116 2y ago
      It largely is due to physics. There's a reason a Canon 24-70 f2.8 lens is the size that it is.
      - hef19898 2y ago
        My Pixel takes reasonably good images, even printed some in A4, at A3 they suffer. That is for the camera generated JPEGs, the RAW files are all but unusable. It shows that smartphones use small, and crappy, sensors behind even smaller, and crappier, lenses. Phone got a long way, and there is a reason they replaced point-and-shoots. They are still a far cry from "real" cameras.
  - Zambyte 2y ago
    I think you may have missed the "also" in their comment.
- jsheard 2y ago
  Because the thinness of a phone and the optics of a real camera are mutually exclusive. Anything with proper optics is going to be way too chunky to use as a daily driver.
pphysch 2y ago
It sounds like you are describing a smartphone with a traditional camera form factor?
- samcat116 2y ago
  Thats basically what the Galaxy NX was.
ge0rg 2y ago
It seems like the consumer market was completely destroyed by smartphones, used by people who don't particularly care about image quality, and the professional market is people who do RAW shooting with image file sizes of 40..90MB, with post-processing on a PC. Seems like the niche between those markets never was large enough to warrant this functionality, given that both mobile standards and cloud service APIs change multiple times over the lifetime of a camera.
- BobaFloutist 2y ago
  Also given that phone cameras have absurdly high image quality at this point.
  - ge0rg 2y ago
    They only have absurdly high resolution. The optical quality is rather mediocre if you need to zoom or shoot in low light.
  - chillfox 2y ago
    I can pull out my decade old Sony and it absolutely beats a new iPhone on image quality. Zero contest. Phone images only look ok because they are mostly viewed on a small screen.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    As sibling says... they have high resolution, but terrible optics. Fixed aperture, bad in low light, and all the photos get a similar.. flat... quality to them that they then alter heavily in software with various computational photography / "AI" techniques that ... well, they're fine, and good for the market they're after, but it's limiting. Even a 15 year old interchangeable lens camera with a lower MP sensor can produce better pictures than a phone, esp if you want to do things like background blur / bokeh which is not possible at all with a phone (though they emulate it in software). Hell lately I've dug up an old Canon Powershot 12MP CCD digicam out of a box, and put a hacked firmware on it (that can shoot RAW and let you do proper manual control of the lens), and gotten really interesting results. That thing has a tiny sensor, but having actual aperture control makes a big diff.
ge0rg 2y ago
Samsung actually released multiple Android-based cameras: the Galaxy Camera range with built-in zoom lenses (https://www.zisman.ca/blog/2013-01-05.html https://www.zisman.ca/blog/2013-01-05.html) and the Galaxy NX with interchangeable lenses: https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/ https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/ They all suffered from running Android 4.x with no major upgrades from Samsung.
- hef19898 2y ago
  If I want a camera running a smartphone OS, I use a phone. A camera should be by definition running on dedicated camera firmware, and nothing else.
  - roblabla 2y ago
    > A camera should be by definition running on dedicated camera firmware, and nothing else. Says who? There's no intrinsic reason a camera couldn't run with an Android OS. In fact, there's a lot of good reasons why you would want that - simpler development platform, reusing existing drivers, etc...
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      Take a look at the Alice camera: https://www.alice.camera/ https://www.alice.camera/ Basically an add-on for your phone that adds a serious interchangeable lens sensor.
    - account42 2y ago
      > There's no intrinsic reason a camera couldn't run with an Android OS. There is: battery life and startup time. DLSRs have no problem being being on standby for weeks if not months with minimal battery drain and then springing to life within a second at the press of a button. Android phones do no even come remotely close to that level of efficiency.
      - tracker1 2y ago
        A lot of that comes down to the always-on radio on the phone... When I've done road trips, I've used my phone mostly as an mp3/podcast player and had it in airplane mode, and it lasted much longer than when it was just in normal operation. Standby for several days. My M1 air is in standby for weeks at a time on a single charge. There's no reason you can't do similar with a phone. Maybe not months, but definitely for extended periods of time.
jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Sony used to have a whole Android subsystem on their Alpha cameras. It kind of surprised me more 3rd party stuff didn't come out that took advantage of this programmability. https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE
- morsch 2y ago
  It's incredibly slow and clunky. They're just bad at software. Even if the third party app was good, just getting to it through the camera interface would make it agonizing to use.
thih9 2y ago
Stating the obvious, the market decided that the opposite would happen, i.e. that the smartphones would take away the market share of camera manufacturers instead. Smartphone camera experience is good enough for most people and smartphones offer other features as well.
- samcat116 2y ago
  I don't know if there was ever really a shot at the form factor I'm describing in the market, but you are likely right.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  It's not dissimilar to back in the pre-digital camera era... most people were fine with having a crappy point&shoot or disposable camera, and then we all had that nerdy uncle or friend who was really into cameras and willing to spend the money on a real 35mm SLR or rangefinder or whatever. Phones have taken the place of the old point and shoots. That doesn't mean that manufacturers of pro-sumer interchangeable lens cameras couldn't do a better job with software, though...
  - kwhitefoot 2y ago
    > most people were fine with having a crappy point&shoot or disposable camera, No they weren't. There just weren't any other options that were as affordable or convenient. A kilo of SLR does not compete in the same space as a Kodak Instamatic.
    - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
      You just repeated my point. It's a different market segment and always was. Phones are now sitting in that segment of casual photography. And are "affordable" and convenient. Those of us who are nerdy about pictures, go and buy a mirrorless. But that's always going to be a small and different segment. This may not last forever. Phones are becoming less "cool" to people. They might come around again to carrying multiple specialized devices.
yial 2y ago
So, a lot of what you list is missing. But the canon 6d mkii has WiFi, and GPS. Allowing some of those features if tethered / connected to another device.
- samcat116 2y ago
  I own the 6D MKI and am sad that I didn't wait for the MKII!
chillfox 2y ago
Their cameras weren’t actually all that good at being cameras. Having used one it was a frustrating experience of constantly missing shots because of how slow it was to turn on. In comparison Sony was near instant.
TechDebtDevin 2y ago
Uh sir. I already have a phone that does this.
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
While it doesn't tick all the boxes you're talking about, you might be interested in the Pixii rangefinder cameras. Damn expensive though.
brk 2y ago
I used to do a lot of shooting with my Canon 5D. I had thousands of dollars in various lenses, plus some specialized flashes, etc. It took great pictures, but all that gear was bulky and heavy. 99% of the time I wasn't taking pictures with the intent of blowing them up to poster-size prints, or selling them to major publications. I was just taking pictures to document and share elements of day to day life. (You probably see where this is going). Smartphone cameras have kept up well enough with most consumer needs that it would be really hard to justify carrying a dedicated camera. Further, that camera would need to have all of the features of a smart phone camera (eg: filters, touchscreen, lightweight editing, etc. As you also pointed out) that it makes it unlikely to exist in a practical manner. I will say I'm slightly surprised we haven't see an external "lens and sensor only" gadget that pairs with a phone. Use this gadget to capture a better raw image, and then use the phone to do everything else. Could be a USB/cable tether, or even some form of wireless (bluetooth is probably too slow though?). tl;dr - I'm not carrying a dedicated camera around, no matter how much better the images might be.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  "I will say I'm slightly surprised we haven't see an external "lens and sensor only" gadget that pairs with a phone." We have. They've all failed. Olympus tried (2016): https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/olympus-air-a01 https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/olympus-air-a01 Alice Camera is a kickstarter thing that might be about to ship now finally? https://www.alice.camera/ https://www.alice.camera/ And there's another recent one, SwitchLens: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halohub/switchlens-power-up-your-smartphone-into-a-pro-camera https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halohub/switchlens-powe... There's others that have been tried too I think?
  - vel0city 2y ago
    Sony also had a product line of these kinds of devices a decade ago. You know its an old review when one of the cons listed is "No support for Windows Phone." https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/sony-cyber-shot-dsc-qx10 https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/sony-cyber-shot-dsc-qx10
  - dingaling 2y ago
GJim 2y ago
> Its crazy to me that there isn't a modern version of this kind of camera You can bluetooth-pair (most) modern 'pocket' cameras with your phone to get this functionality. (And for the uninitiated; such cameras will have infinitely better picture quality than can be provided by lenses than fit in a phone. I always take such a camera where carrying a full-blown SLR would be a pain the in the arse).
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
Almost everyone already has a camera that has all of these features in their smartphone that they already carry with them. That limits the market for a second device that is a better camera with all those features but not a smartphone. Of course, computational photography combined with a proper lens and better sensor would be amazing, but it'd be a niche product and expensive (since it would be made in small numbers, and require expensive compute and much more RAM than current phones tend to have).
tqi 2y ago
Battery, space, and startup time limitations probably. As it is mirrorless cameras can only get like 350 frames per charge, so adding more power hungry features like GPS or LTE would only make thay worse. Camera bodies are packed as is, so having a limited amount of fixed storage (when there is perfectly good removable options) take up valuable space is not an especially appealing trade off. And lastly / most importantly, I need a camera to be ready to go as soon as I turn it on, I don't have time to wait for a full OS to boot up. Standby mode could mitigate that but see previous concerns about battery life.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > And lastly / most importantly, I need a camera to be ready to go as soon as I turn it on, I don't have time to wait for a full OS to boot up. Standby mode could mitigate that but see previous concerns about battery life. Sony's Alpha series all run Linux, with standby.
- out_of_protocol 2y ago
  Just imagine taping cheap $100 android phone together
mschuster91 2y ago
> - Built in GPS for location tagging in photos(a few cameras have this but for many you need an external dongle attached to the camera) Sony's lineup actually has support for precisely that in the pinout of the MI Shoe which all their cameras since over a decade use [1]. Unfortunately, the <insert swear word of choice> at Sony never released a GPS dongle, and while there has been root available for all Sony Alpha models up until the A7S2 via the integrated (fossil and cut-down...) Android subsystem and they all run Linux, to my knowledge no one has reverse engineered the MI shoe comms interface, how to get that ruddy thing into being a wifi client instead of that temporary hotspot crap, or how to make it behave like a goddamn normal UVC webcam over USB instead of needing their brutally unstable client app. Sony makes truly best-in-class hardware (no one else has a competitor for the S series in a low-light scenario) at the best possible price point... but damn no matter what hardware they're dealing with, they're the typical Japanese company that cannot get software right. Rant over. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Interface_Shoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Interface_Shoe
- petepete 2y ago
  My Nikon D5300 had GPS back in 2013. It's the only thing I miss having upgraded to a D500 some years later.
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    I had a Sony Alpha 55 worth it in 2010. Long ago I read it's no longer built-in to simplify sales in places like China, which forbid personal GPS.
- FeistySkink 2y ago
  Recent Sony cameras work as standard UVC devices without any software, including on Linux.
Lammy 2y ago
> Its crazy to me that there isn't a modern version of this kind of camera. There is, I own one, and it has every feature in your list! YONGNUO YN455, Android-10-powered 20MP Micro Four Thirds camera: https://www.hkyongnuo.com/productinfo/660161.html https://www.hkyongnuo.com/productinfo/660161.html LTE band compatibility would be an issue for many, but I have it working successfully on T-Mobile US. I don't prefer using it for stills over my Panasonic/Olympus bodies, but I love it for video. Here's what it looks like: https://i.imgur.com/3mdBWXt.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/3mdBWXt.jpeg (my photo, with Laowa 6mm Cinema lens) And here's what it sees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzlBA2wSU7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzlBA2wSU7w
zokier 2y ago
At least Sony cameras can do automatic uploads either directly from camera, or tethered to phone. Afaik its primarily aimed at (sports) photojournalists who need to get photos out as quickly as possible, basically you can have editor pick up photos in near real-time. At least the couple models I checked advertise 2.4/5GHz 802.11ac wifi, so that seems like it should be decent enough. For geotagging, it should work fine if you have tethered to your phone.
seltzered_ 2y ago
- Sony briefly had a 'screenless' series of 'smart lens' cameras around 2014 - the Sony QX1 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_ILCE-QX1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_ILCE-QX1 ), QX10, QX30 and QX100 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSC-QX100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSC-QX100 ) where you brought your smartphone to act as the screen. I think the concept at the time was just too abstract and clunky since it meant clamping on the camera to a phone, and probably had latency issues. They've also tried to make some high-end smartphones with better camera apps but it was a niche audience. - RED also had some smartphones with a connector interface to supposedly add cameras, but the product line flopped pretty quickly.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  Samsung had a point-and-shoot with an android phone stuck to the back about 10 years ago as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Camera
  - ge0rg 2y ago
    And even one with interchangeable lenses: https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/ https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/
- DHPersonal 2y ago
  Nikon had an Android camera, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBL_FKY4Qzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBL_FKY4Qzo
petepete 2y ago
I think the Zeiss ZX1 has most of this, LTE aside (which shouldn't be a problem seeing as it runs Android) https://www.zeiss.co.uk/consumer-products/photography/zx1.html https://www.zeiss.co.uk/consumer-products/photography/zx1.ht...
- lytfyre 2y ago
  unfortunately discontinued. The 6000$USD price tag unfortunately made it hard to justify at the time.
beAbU 2y ago
Add the ability to make calls and you are really on to something here!
- darknavi 2y ago
  Don't forget to put an iPod in there!
kmfrk 2y ago
Rather than going by camera, wifi SD cards were a lot of fun back in the day. I wonder how much you can do with the modern smaller form factor of modern SD cards. Could pair it up with an app on your phone via Bluetooth etc to retrofit more features on. Much like an Apple Shortcuts/CloudKit. Would be a fun retrofuturist experiment to backport fun newer things to old tech with big SD cards. Sounds like things haven't improved much in the past twenty years based on links like these: https://nerdtechy.com/best-wifi-sd-card https://nerdtechy.com/best-wifi-sd-card https://old.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/12ocr4u/the_wifi_sd_card_market_in_2023_is_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/12ocr4u/the_wi...
- samcat116 2y ago
  I remember those! Yeah they were never that great.
sandworm101 2y ago
Cloud connection, wifi, flash storage, apps, computational photography, and I assume some sort of display screen ... You basically want a phone that does everything except make calls?
to11mtm 2y ago
It's not Crazy because you outlined all the ways it breaks or goes obsolete without a lot of maintanence... - GPS doesn't count, although 'corrections' can be interesting. - IDK you can totally do a workflow with a Sony camera to send to a phone/etc, may not be full-auto but I've done it. - As a 'shooter' I'd rather get proper SD card redundancy on less-high end models than see a flash buffer for that isn't already present in how things work - My a6000 had decent wifi speeds at the start, but it's hard to keep up with standards, also it's hard to get around the 'noise' of other wifi devices without making the camera larger or complicating the design for the sake of a wifi antenna. - LTE is a continually moving target, adds cost for a marginal set of users that will bother to set it up. - Everyone who's tried even a small amount of this never got far. - Moving target. You're better off using DxO PhotoLab or Lightroom and keeping that up to date. Mind you, this viewpoint is coming from the 'minmaxer'. Aside from my a6700 (and before that my a6000) I keep one 'main' camera as well as one or more 'cheap bodies' (i.e. store floor models or previous camera). This makes it easier to do shots with different focal ranges without a lens change... Pros will often have multiple bodies (but will be more discerning than 'oh hey 150$ with a lens lets goooooooo') and thus will have similar concerns...
mixmastamyk 2y ago
Funny, I don't want any of those features (besides storage), and turn off Location Services on my other devices. Not that the tech isn't cool, but you can't trust a tech company to not sell you out these days. I bought our recent camera and steered clear of any cloud or internet integration at all. USB-C is fine, and snappy as hell, thanks. SD Card as well.
justsomehnguy 2y ago
> - Run apps for upload to a variety of services ... why? You have a smartphone for photoing your food. Why there should be an option to upload to some service? What would you do when the service (or OS itself) became discontinued, just like in TFA? > Automatic backup of photos to cloud/network storage locations An another LTE modem which would be obsolete again in a couple of years? And eating money while it is supported?

glial 2y ago

+1 I would absolutely buy this.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Many of us would. I love my little Olympus PEN EPL8 camera, the form factor beats the crap out of phones, the quality of the pictures way better (despite "only" 16MP), etc. But the ... software experience is awful. I could come up with dozens of ways to improve the experience that would have been possible even in 2016 when it was made... (In fact I wasted a couple days writing my own custom WiFi remote control program for it a few days ago, hoping to snap birds at the feeder while I sit at my desk, cuz the "OI Share" Olympus/OM Systems one is terrible) But there's not enough of a market at all to make it justifiable. Software developers are expensive. The interchangeable lens camera market is tiny, and the professional people who spend serious money care less about things like that and more about stellar optics and sensors. The consumer (and even "pro-sumer") level tier of the camera market has almost disappeared. Even in Japan, which is camera crazy, it's in free-fall still. Take Panasonic's new GH7, for example, a new rather nice Micro Four Thirds camera with a bunch of advanced features, but kind of targeted towards the video segment (so great for YouTubers, etc)... They announced the production numbers and it's only 4000 a month. That's... basically nothing... in the consumer hardware segment. That said, I think this segment will come back in a bit. The digicam craze is evidence at least that young people (like my teenage daughter's age) can see the value in the camera form factor over using a phone. The ergonomics are way better. And Fujifilm can't keep the X100V series in stock, it keeps flying off the shelves. Phones themselves are becoming less "cool."

brokensegue 2y ago

If you have all that why not also make it a phone?

glial 2y ago
Phones have relatively terrible lenses and sensors.
- delecti 2y ago
  That isn't an inevitability. The modem doesn't negatively affect the lenses and sensors, choices by people in companies are what result in worse sensors/lenses in phones.
  - samcat116 2y ago
    It largely is due to physics. There's a reason a Canon 24-70 f2.8 lens is the size that it is.
    - hef19898 2y ago
      My Pixel takes reasonably good images, even printed some in A4, at A3 they suffer. That is for the camera generated JPEGs, the RAW files are all but unusable. It shows that smartphones use small, and crappy, sensors behind even smaller, and crappier, lenses. Phone got a long way, and there is a reason they replaced point-and-shoots. They are still a far cry from "real" cameras.
- Zambyte 2y ago
  I think you may have missed the "also" in their comment.
jsheard 2y ago
Because the thinness of a phone and the optics of a real camera are mutually exclusive. Anything with proper optics is going to be way too chunky to use as a daily driver.

pphysch 2y ago

It sounds like you are describing a smartphone with a traditional camera form factor?

samcat116 2y ago
Thats basically what the Galaxy NX was.

ge0rg 2y ago

It seems like the consumer market was completely destroyed by smartphones, used by people who don't particularly care about image quality, and the professional market is people who do RAW shooting with image file sizes of 40..90MB, with post-processing on a PC. Seems like the niche between those markets never was large enough to warrant this functionality, given that both mobile standards and cloud service APIs change multiple times over the lifetime of a camera.

BobaFloutist 2y ago
Also given that phone cameras have absurdly high image quality at this point.
- ge0rg 2y ago
  They only have absurdly high resolution. The optical quality is rather mediocre if you need to zoom or shoot in low light.
- chillfox 2y ago
  I can pull out my decade old Sony and it absolutely beats a new iPhone on image quality. Zero contest. Phone images only look ok because they are mostly viewed on a small screen.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  As sibling says... they have high resolution, but terrible optics. Fixed aperture, bad in low light, and all the photos get a similar.. flat... quality to them that they then alter heavily in software with various computational photography / "AI" techniques that ... well, they're fine, and good for the market they're after, but it's limiting. Even a 15 year old interchangeable lens camera with a lower MP sensor can produce better pictures than a phone, esp if you want to do things like background blur / bokeh which is not possible at all with a phone (though they emulate it in software). Hell lately I've dug up an old Canon Powershot 12MP CCD digicam out of a box, and put a hacked firmware on it (that can shoot RAW and let you do proper manual control of the lens), and gotten really interesting results. That thing has a tiny sensor, but having actual aperture control makes a big diff.

ge0rg 2y ago

Samsung actually released multiple Android-based cameras: the Galaxy Camera range with built-in zoom lenses (https://www.zisman.ca/blog/2013-01-05.html https://www.zisman.ca/blog/2013-01-05.html) and the Galaxy NX with interchangeable lenses: https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/ https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/ They all suffered from running Android 4.x with no major upgrades from Samsung.

hef19898 2y ago
If I want a camera running a smartphone OS, I use a phone. A camera should be by definition running on dedicated camera firmware, and nothing else.
- roblabla 2y ago
  > A camera should be by definition running on dedicated camera firmware, and nothing else. Says who? There's no intrinsic reason a camera couldn't run with an Android OS. In fact, there's a lot of good reasons why you would want that - simpler development platform, reusing existing drivers, etc...
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Take a look at the Alice camera: https://www.alice.camera/ https://www.alice.camera/ Basically an add-on for your phone that adds a serious interchangeable lens sensor.
  - account42 2y ago
    > There's no intrinsic reason a camera couldn't run with an Android OS. There is: battery life and startup time. DLSRs have no problem being being on standby for weeks if not months with minimal battery drain and then springing to life within a second at the press of a button. Android phones do no even come remotely close to that level of efficiency.
    - tracker1 2y ago
      A lot of that comes down to the always-on radio on the phone... When I've done road trips, I've used my phone mostly as an mp3/podcast player and had it in airplane mode, and it lasted much longer than when it was just in normal operation. Standby for several days. My M1 air is in standby for weeks at a time on a single charge. There's no reason you can't do similar with a phone. Maybe not months, but definitely for extended periods of time.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago

Sony used to have a whole Android subsystem on their Alpha cameras. It kind of surprised me more 3rd party stuff didn't come out that took advantage of this programmability. https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE https://github.com/ma1co/Sony-PMCA-RE

morsch 2y ago
It's incredibly slow and clunky. They're just bad at software. Even if the third party app was good, just getting to it through the camera interface would make it agonizing to use.

thih9 2y ago

Stating the obvious, the market decided that the opposite would happen, i.e. that the smartphones would take away the market share of camera manufacturers instead. Smartphone camera experience is good enough for most people and smartphones offer other features as well.

samcat116 2y ago
I don't know if there was ever really a shot at the form factor I'm describing in the market, but you are likely right.
cmrdporcupine 2y ago
It's not dissimilar to back in the pre-digital camera era... most people were fine with having a crappy point&shoot or disposable camera, and then we all had that nerdy uncle or friend who was really into cameras and willing to spend the money on a real 35mm SLR or rangefinder or whatever. Phones have taken the place of the old point and shoots. That doesn't mean that manufacturers of pro-sumer interchangeable lens cameras couldn't do a better job with software, though...
- kwhitefoot 2y ago
  > most people were fine with having a crappy point&shoot or disposable camera, No they weren't. There just weren't any other options that were as affordable or convenient. A kilo of SLR does not compete in the same space as a Kodak Instamatic.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    You just repeated my point. It's a different market segment and always was. Phones are now sitting in that segment of casual photography. And are "affordable" and convenient. Those of us who are nerdy about pictures, go and buy a mirrorless. But that's always going to be a small and different segment. This may not last forever. Phones are becoming less "cool" to people. They might come around again to carrying multiple specialized devices.

yial 2y ago

So, a lot of what you list is missing. But the canon 6d mkii has WiFi, and GPS. Allowing some of those features if tethered / connected to another device.

samcat116 2y ago
I own the 6D MKI and am sad that I didn't wait for the MKII!

chillfox 2y ago

Their cameras weren’t actually all that good at being cameras. Having used one it was a frustrating experience of constantly missing shots because of how slow it was to turn on. In comparison Sony was near instant.

TechDebtDevin 2y ago

Uh sir. I already have a phone that does this.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago

While it doesn't tick all the boxes you're talking about, you might be interested in the Pixii rangefinder cameras. Damn expensive though.

brk 2y ago

I used to do a lot of shooting with my Canon 5D. I had thousands of dollars in various lenses, plus some specialized flashes, etc. It took great pictures, but all that gear was bulky and heavy. 99% of the time I wasn't taking pictures with the intent of blowing them up to poster-size prints, or selling them to major publications. I was just taking pictures to document and share elements of day to day life. (You probably see where this is going). Smartphone cameras have kept up well enough with most consumer needs that it would be really hard to justify carrying a dedicated camera. Further, that camera would need to have all of the features of a smart phone camera (eg: filters, touchscreen, lightweight editing, etc. As you also pointed out) that it makes it unlikely to exist in a practical manner. I will say I'm slightly surprised we haven't see an external "lens and sensor only" gadget that pairs with a phone. Use this gadget to capture a better raw image, and then use the phone to do everything else. Could be a USB/cable tether, or even some form of wireless (bluetooth is probably too slow though?). tl;dr - I'm not carrying a dedicated camera around, no matter how much better the images might be.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
"I will say I'm slightly surprised we haven't see an external "lens and sensor only" gadget that pairs with a phone." We have. They've all failed. Olympus tried (2016): https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/olympus-air-a01 https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/olympus-air-a01 Alice Camera is a kickstarter thing that might be about to ship now finally? https://www.alice.camera/ https://www.alice.camera/ And there's another recent one, SwitchLens: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halohub/switchlens-power-up-your-smartphone-into-a-pro-camera https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/halohub/switchlens-powe... There's others that have been tried too I think?
- vel0city 2y ago
  Sony also had a product line of these kinds of devices a decade ago. You know its an old review when one of the cons listed is "No support for Windows Phone." https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/sony-cyber-shot-dsc-qx10 https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/sony-cyber-shot-dsc-qx10
- dingaling 2y ago

GJim 2y ago

> Its crazy to me that there isn't a modern version of this kind of camera You can bluetooth-pair (most) modern 'pocket' cameras with your phone to get this functionality. (And for the uninitiated; such cameras will have infinitely better picture quality than can be provided by lenses than fit in a phone. I always take such a camera where carrying a full-blown SLR would be a pain the in the arse).

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

Almost everyone already has a camera that has all of these features in their smartphone that they already carry with them. That limits the market for a second device that is a better camera with all those features but not a smartphone. Of course, computational photography combined with a proper lens and better sensor would be amazing, but it'd be a niche product and expensive (since it would be made in small numbers, and require expensive compute and much more RAM than current phones tend to have).

tqi 2y ago

Battery, space, and startup time limitations probably. As it is mirrorless cameras can only get like 350 frames per charge, so adding more power hungry features like GPS or LTE would only make thay worse. Camera bodies are packed as is, so having a limited amount of fixed storage (when there is perfectly good removable options) take up valuable space is not an especially appealing trade off. And lastly / most importantly, I need a camera to be ready to go as soon as I turn it on, I don't have time to wait for a full OS to boot up. Standby mode could mitigate that but see previous concerns about battery life.

mschuster91 2y ago
> And lastly / most importantly, I need a camera to be ready to go as soon as I turn it on, I don't have time to wait for a full OS to boot up. Standby mode could mitigate that but see previous concerns about battery life. Sony's Alpha series all run Linux, with standby.
out_of_protocol 2y ago
Just imagine taping cheap $100 android phone together

mschuster91 2y ago

> - Built in GPS for location tagging in photos(a few cameras have this but for many you need an external dongle attached to the camera) Sony's lineup actually has support for precisely that in the pinout of the MI Shoe which all their cameras since over a decade use [1]. Unfortunately, the <insert swear word of choice> at Sony never released a GPS dongle, and while there has been root available for all Sony Alpha models up until the A7S2 via the integrated (fossil and cut-down...) Android subsystem and they all run Linux, to my knowledge no one has reverse engineered the MI shoe comms interface, how to get that ruddy thing into being a wifi client instead of that temporary hotspot crap, or how to make it behave like a goddamn normal UVC webcam over USB instead of needing their brutally unstable client app. Sony makes truly best-in-class hardware (no one else has a competitor for the S series in a low-light scenario) at the best possible price point... but damn no matter what hardware they're dealing with, they're the typical Japanese company that cannot get software right. Rant over. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Interface_Shoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi_Interface_Shoe

petepete 2y ago
My Nikon D5300 had GPS back in 2013. It's the only thing I miss having upgraded to a D500 some years later.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  I had a Sony Alpha 55 worth it in 2010. Long ago I read it's no longer built-in to simplify sales in places like China, which forbid personal GPS.
FeistySkink 2y ago
Recent Sony cameras work as standard UVC devices without any software, including on Linux.

Lammy 2y ago

> Its crazy to me that there isn't a modern version of this kind of camera. There is, I own one, and it has every feature in your list! YONGNUO YN455, Android-10-powered 20MP Micro Four Thirds camera: https://www.hkyongnuo.com/productinfo/660161.html https://www.hkyongnuo.com/productinfo/660161.html LTE band compatibility would be an issue for many, but I have it working successfully on T-Mobile US. I don't prefer using it for stills over my Panasonic/Olympus bodies, but I love it for video. Here's what it looks like: https://i.imgur.com/3mdBWXt.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/3mdBWXt.jpeg (my photo, with Laowa 6mm Cinema lens) And here's what it sees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzlBA2wSU7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzlBA2wSU7w

zokier 2y ago

At least Sony cameras can do automatic uploads either directly from camera, or tethered to phone. Afaik its primarily aimed at (sports) photojournalists who need to get photos out as quickly as possible, basically you can have editor pick up photos in near real-time. At least the couple models I checked advertise 2.4/5GHz 802.11ac wifi, so that seems like it should be decent enough. For geotagging, it should work fine if you have tethered to your phone.

seltzered_ 2y ago

- Sony briefly had a 'screenless' series of 'smart lens' cameras around 2014 - the Sony QX1 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_ILCE-QX1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_ILCE-QX1 ), QX10, QX30 and QX100 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSC-QX100 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSC-QX100 ) where you brought your smartphone to act as the screen. I think the concept at the time was just too abstract and clunky since it meant clamping on the camera to a phone, and probably had latency issues. They've also tried to make some high-end smartphones with better camera apps but it was a niche audience. - RED also had some smartphones with a connector interface to supposedly add cameras, but the product line flopped pretty quickly.

madeofpalk 2y ago
Samsung had a point-and-shoot with an android phone stuck to the back about 10 years ago as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Camera
- ge0rg 2y ago
  And even one with interchangeable lenses: https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/ https://op-co.de/blog/posts/galaxy_nx/
DHPersonal 2y ago
Nikon had an Android camera, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBL_FKY4Qzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBL_FKY4Qzo

petepete 2y ago

I think the Zeiss ZX1 has most of this, LTE aside (which shouldn't be a problem seeing as it runs Android) https://www.zeiss.co.uk/consumer-products/photography/zx1.html https://www.zeiss.co.uk/consumer-products/photography/zx1.ht...

lytfyre 2y ago
unfortunately discontinued. The 6000$USD price tag unfortunately made it hard to justify at the time.

beAbU 2y ago

Add the ability to make calls and you are really on to something here!

darknavi 2y ago
Don't forget to put an iPod in there!

kmfrk 2y ago

Rather than going by camera, wifi SD cards were a lot of fun back in the day. I wonder how much you can do with the modern smaller form factor of modern SD cards. Could pair it up with an app on your phone via Bluetooth etc to retrofit more features on. Much like an Apple Shortcuts/CloudKit. Would be a fun retrofuturist experiment to backport fun newer things to old tech with big SD cards. Sounds like things haven't improved much in the past twenty years based on links like these: https://nerdtechy.com/best-wifi-sd-card https://nerdtechy.com/best-wifi-sd-card https://old.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/12ocr4u/the_wifi_sd_card_market_in_2023_is_bad/ https://old.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/12ocr4u/the_wi...

samcat116 2y ago
I remember those! Yeah they were never that great.

sandworm101 2y ago

Cloud connection, wifi, flash storage, apps, computational photography, and I assume some sort of display screen ... You basically want a phone that does everything except make calls?

to11mtm 2y ago

It's not Crazy because you outlined all the ways it breaks or goes obsolete without a lot of maintanence... - GPS doesn't count, although 'corrections' can be interesting. - IDK you can totally do a workflow with a Sony camera to send to a phone/etc, may not be full-auto but I've done it. - As a 'shooter' I'd rather get proper SD card redundancy on less-high end models than see a flash buffer for that isn't already present in how things work - My a6000 had decent wifi speeds at the start, but it's hard to keep up with standards, also it's hard to get around the 'noise' of other wifi devices without making the camera larger or complicating the design for the sake of a wifi antenna. - LTE is a continually moving target, adds cost for a marginal set of users that will bother to set it up. - Everyone who's tried even a small amount of this never got far. - Moving target. You're better off using DxO PhotoLab or Lightroom and keeping that up to date. Mind you, this viewpoint is coming from the 'minmaxer'. Aside from my a6700 (and before that my a6000) I keep one 'main' camera as well as one or more 'cheap bodies' (i.e. store floor models or previous camera). This makes it easier to do shots with different focal ranges without a lens change... Pros will often have multiple bodies (but will be more discerning than 'oh hey 150$ with a lens lets goooooooo') and thus will have similar concerns...

mixmastamyk 2y ago

Funny, I don't want any of those features (besides storage), and turn off Location Services on my other devices. Not that the tech isn't cool, but you can't trust a tech company to not sell you out these days. I bought our recent camera and steered clear of any cloud or internet integration at all. USB-C is fine, and snappy as hell, thanks. SD Card as well.

justsomehnguy 2y ago

> - Run apps for upload to a variety of services ... why? You have a smartphone for photoing your food. Why there should be an option to upload to some service? What would you do when the service (or OS itself) became discontinued, just like in TFA? > Automatic backup of photos to cloud/network storage locations An another LTE modem which would be obsolete again in a couple of years? And eating money while it is supported?