Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

dslrbodies.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 56 posts

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#41

Post by RyJones »

JohnBooty wrote: post #35

I feel what this guy's saying about camera makers' goofy workflows. I've done that myself -- gone out and shot a bunch of stuff on my DSLR and let it languish on the SD card for months because importing and editing the photos on my laptop was a bit of a pain. Honestly though, now that I've plopped down the relatively small amount of money? The SD-to-Lightning adapter for iOS gets me about 90% of the way there. Sure,…

I won't quote myself at length[0], but the motivating quote at that startup was "pictures go to SD cards to die".

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11511905

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#42

Post by bemmu »

ak217 wrote: post #26

Personally, I think the biggest issue is that the DSLR makers just haven't taken integration seriously at all. My Canon 70D - with all its incredible ergonomics and amazing optics and sensors - has a wi-fi feature and attendant smartphone app that feel broken and tacked on, and ultimately don't work at all for me. If I didn't go out of my way looking for them, I wouldn't even know they exist. It's painfully obvious t…

I feel the same with my Nikon D5300. I bought it and saw "wi-fi" as a feature, so I assumed I can at least transfer photos over wi-fi from the camera to my computer, see each shot on the screen after taking it and perhaps use the camera as my computer webcam over wi-fi. Turns out you can do none of these things, at least with the default software.

You can transfer photos to your phone. You can also use your phone as a remote shutter, which is kind of neat at first. You don't really end up using it though, as a dedicated 1 dollar remote shutter button is faster than fiddling with your phone wi-fi settings and launching a dedicated app.

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#43

Post by pfranz »

ak217 wrote: post #26

Personally, I think the biggest issue is that the DSLR makers just haven't taken integration seriously at all. My Canon 70D - with all its incredible ergonomics and amazing optics and sensors - has a wi-fi feature and attendant smartphone app that feel broken and tacked on, and ultimately don't work at all for me. If I didn't go out of my way looking for them, I wouldn't even know they exist. It's painfully obvious t…

Software from hardware manufacturers is almost always terrible. DSLRs would often come with desktop image processing software. It took advantage of RAW files before Aperture/Lightroom existed and before Photoshop supported RAW very well. The software was garbage.

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#44

Post by totalZero »

bemmu wrote: post #42
ak217 wrote: post #26

Personally, I think the biggest issue is that the DSLR makers just haven't taken integration seriously at all. My Canon 70D - with all its incredible ergonomics and amazing optics and sensors - has a wi-fi feature and attendant smartphone app that feel broken and tacked on, and ultimately don't work at all for me. If I didn't go out of my way looking for them, I wouldn't even know they exist. It's painfully obvious t…

I feel the same with my Nikon D5300. I bought it and saw "wi-fi" as a feature, so I assumed I can at least transfer photos over wi-fi from the camera to my computer, see each shot on the screen after taking it and perhaps use the camera as my computer webcam over wi-fi. Turns out you can do none of these things, at least with the default software. You can transfer photos to your phone. You can also use your phone as…

You're 99% correct as far as I'm concerned, but.... how long does it take you to turn on wifi and start an app?

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#45

Post by foolrush »

rodgerd wrote: post #8
foolrush wrote: post #2

Would suggest the author is conflating a diversity of workflows for a single, monotheistic view. Professional imagers have large files, and they must post-produce them. Those things like card readers, additional ports, etc. ignore that particular audiences needs. To draw an analogy to another closely relation field in motion pictures, this too is mired in a divergence of needs and contexts. The author of the post wou…

> Making a case for XXX workflow should always be grounded in the contexts present. Here's the context: camera makers are getting the shit kicked out of them. The market is plummeting. It caters to the myopic needs of people who want to pretend that, to be a photographer, you have to work like it's a 1950s darkroom, only with computers. Compact cameras a being destroyed by cellphones, which is where all the imaging i…

> The market is plummeting.

If there were a niche that wasn't being served, then sure, pocket camera / cell phone could fill it where previous consumers only had a DSLR.

That said, that same niche that provides an entry point to photography will yield people that begin to understand why you can only achieve certain aesthetics via larger format sensors and optics. At that point, DSLRs are purchased again.

Canon isn't going anywhere with DSLRs. Nikon? No. Sony? Seems their foray into interchangeable lens cameras has grown, not receded.

In the end, no one is going to be able to sit and argue with someone that doesn't understand the differences and questions of qualia with you, but you know, keep pretending it's everyone else that is in the dark.

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#46

Post by brokenmachine »

totalZero wrote: post #44
bemmu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same with my Nikon D5300. I bought it and saw "wi-fi" as a feature, so I assumed I can at least transfer photos over wi-fi from the camera to my computer, see each shot on the screen after taking it and perhaps use the camera as my computer webcam over wi-fi. Turns out you can do none of these things, at least with the default software. You can transfer photos to your phone. You can also use your phone as…

You're 99% correct as far as I'm concerned, but.... how long does it take you to turn on wifi and start an app?

I don't have that camera but I assume it's the same as one I have. First I have to enable wifi on the camera, then wait maybe 10 seconds for the phone to connect to that network. Then find the camera app and open it, then it takes maybe 5 seconds to connect. The quickest I could probably do all this is maybe 15 seconds or so, but it's usually about 30 I'd say for me when I'm not racing or concentrating.

30 seconds is long enough for me to not bother using it most of the time.

If the phone is already connected to a wifi network, you have to manually go into the wifi settings and change to the camera network. This is the part that I find most painful because usually when I'm outside, my tablet is tethered to the wifi network of my phone which I have to disable to be able to have the phone connect to the camera's wifi.

My camera won't allow you to do any operations on the camera when you're connected to it's wifi though, maybe a highend SLR would allow you to have it's wifi network always available?

The whole thing is pretty clunky, it is pretty cool to have a wireless (unfortunately low-res) remote viewfinder though, much better than using a timer and you can get the framing better.

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#47

Post by brokenmachine »

pfranz wrote: post #43
ak217 wrote: post #26

Personally, I think the biggest issue is that the DSLR makers just haven't taken integration seriously at all. My Canon 70D - with all its incredible ergonomics and amazing optics and sensors - has a wi-fi feature and attendant smartphone app that feel broken and tacked on, and ultimately don't work at all for me. If I didn't go out of my way looking for them, I wouldn't even know they exist. It's painfully obvious t…

Software from hardware manufacturers is almost always terrible. DSLRs would often come with desktop image processing software. It took advantage of RAW files before Aperture/Lightroom existed and before Photoshop supported RAW very well. The software was garbage.

You'd think hardware manufacturers as large as Nikon and Canon could commission software that doesn't suck, but apparently not.

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#48

Post by brokenmachine »

tomc1985 wrote: post #37

Fine, but if this guy's proposals fuck up my RAW workflow then he and all his ideas can burn in hell. I want quality, not speed, and I could care less whether the image lives on an SD card or in the cloud. Nevermind the fact that a lot of photography happens away from the cloud, out in the wilderness, and if we march forward into this brave new world of thin devices and cloud integration then these photographers will…

Part of the article was about how the professionals were getting beaten to the punch by kids with smartphones.

I agree with his point that the pro camera gear should, at the very least, be better at sharing than a cheap smartphone.

No pro (or amateur?) is going to buy a camera that doesn't support SD cards for a while now anyway so your precious RAW workflow will be safe regardless, even if they finally add usable sharing options.

I am a tech nerd though, so I'm OK with it either way.

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#49

Post by totalZero »

brokenmachine wrote: post #46
totalZero wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're 99% correct as far as I'm concerned, but.... how long does it take you to turn on wifi and start an app?

I don't have that camera but I assume it's the same as one I have. First I have to enable wifi on the camera, then wait maybe 10 seconds for the phone to connect to that network. Then find the camera app and open it, then it takes maybe 5 seconds to connect. The quickest I could probably do all this is maybe 15 seconds or so, but it's usually about 30 I'd say for me when I'm not racing or concentrating. 30 seconds is…

Yeah I agree it's definitely a pain in the ass if you're switching networks and you have a bunch of devices already connected.

Side anecdote: It took two of my friends, a CS guy and a PhD student in MechE -- both at MIT -- thirty minutes to figure out how to set up the connection on the PhD guy's Canon so that they could send photos to a phone. I feel like they could hire two people with UI experience and drastically improve the whole system for less than a half million dollars.

Re: Denial About Workflow Among Camera Companies

#50

Post by brokenmachine »

0xCMP wrote: post #16

It's always kind of sad when they people who know their field the best are being disrupted because if they could just accept the ways things are changing they could create better products than those they're disrupted with. So many "better" products die because of inability of leadership to accept this quickly enough. Phone cameras will continue to get better. Phones will continue to have more space (You can get an iP…

It's different markets though.

Phone cameras are not going to get around the physics problems of the weight needed to make a quality lens. And barring some amazing breakthrough, computing power is not going to make the $1, 3mm diameter lens on your phone work as well as a big pro lens on a DSLR.

Most people would not be happy to cart around a kilo of camera body, plus kilos of lenses. Pro photographers have decided to make that tradeoff for quality photos.

There's no reason you can't add the phone sharing features to a quality camera though. But you still can't fit it all in your pocket, and I wouldn't carry it with me every day.

Post reply on HN