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I’ve been doing a lot of extreme low temp (-70C ambient) photography with a Sigma FP. It’s basically a full-frame box hybrid movie camera. The addon EVF works w

by joshvm 2y ago

I’ve been doing a lot of extreme low temp (-70C ambient) photography with a Sigma FP. It’s basically a full-frame box hybrid movie camera. The addon EVF works well long after the LCD freezes. I really don’t want multi touch. I do want at least two physical dials with chunky detents. I don’t want auto-everything. USB charging is nice but I use a cabled external battery most of the time. The battery will die in minutes outside and for whatever reason Sigma decided not to add USB power pass through in the EVF. A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts. The power solution I came up with is a modified battery charger with a removable base (Wasabi Power). I added teflon coated cables and a connector to go to the (also butchered) dummy battery. Real battery gets stuffed into a pocket or up a sleeve. The camera doesn’t care how cold it gets, from experimenting. It’s also small and the display is most of the back. If you make the display bigger, the camera gets bigger. At some point you aren’t serving pro photgraphers or people who would just use an iPad. Really you want a good OLED display or a high-res viewfinder. The FP has a weird loupe accessory back. An on device editor? I don’t understand the need, if you can sync to a phone or computer. The same goes for wifi - a lot of new cameras have 2.4Ghz in them (my OM-D EM5ii from almost a decade ago can sync to an app). This project looks super cool though.

cyberax 2y ago
> A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts. Yeah, cameras also need to be vacuum-proof with a passive heat spreader (1 square meter should be enough), support depths up to 3 kilometers (what if you want to visit Titanic?), and be rad-hardened (everybody loves taking photos inside the Fukushima reactor). These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.
- joshvm 2y ago
  You can ignore the Antarctica side of things, but the features that are useful here are useful everywhere. More cameras are moving to OLED rear displays (sunlight visible), full-frame mirrorless with electronic shutter (mechanical reliability), USB-C charging (took ages for this to become widespread), out-of-the-box UVC support for webcam mode, etc. These sorts of features have led to cameras that are not skeuomorphic representations of cameras from the 80s. They don't need a hump for a penta-prism and they can drop bulky mirror and shutter assemblies. I can fit my fp and the kit lens into a coat pocket. > These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations. > Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups. I think having WiFi+GPS alone is sufficient for this (irritatingly few pro cameras have GPS receivers). Then you can do the editing on a device which is actually suitable for it, and you reduce the risk of obsolescence in the camera. TV manufacturers have shown they're unwilling to support changing APIs long-term. The interim solution is probably a smartphone with an add-on lens system like Moment's, and better RAW support.

by joshvm 2y ago

cyberax 2y ago

> A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts. Yeah, cameras also need to be vacuum-proof with a passive heat spreader (1 square meter should be enough), support depths up to 3 kilometers (what if you want to visit Titanic?), and be rad-hardened (everybody loves taking photos inside the Fukushima reactor). These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.

joshvm 2y ago
You can ignore the Antarctica side of things, but the features that are useful here are useful everywhere. More cameras are moving to OLED rear displays (sunlight visible), full-frame mirrorless with electronic shutter (mechanical reliability), USB-C charging (took ages for this to become widespread), out-of-the-box UVC support for webcam mode, etc. These sorts of features have led to cameras that are not skeuomorphic representations of cameras from the 80s. They don't need a hump for a penta-prism and they can drop bulky mirror and shutter assemblies. I can fit my fp and the kit lens into a coat pocket. > These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations. > Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups. I think having WiFi+GPS alone is sufficient for this (irritatingly few pro cameras have GPS receivers). Then you can do the editing on a device which is actually suitable for it, and you reduce the risk of obsolescence in the camera. TV manufacturers have shown they're unwilling to support changing APIs long-term. The interim solution is probably a smartphone with an add-on lens system like Moment's, and better RAW support.