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

Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

dslrbodies.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 393 posts

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#61

Post by arghwhat »

madshiva wrote: post #10

1/4" tripod socket is the best common option. I use it. No point there because the user don't use it. Don't undertand why remove a standard? Optical remotes? I don't take selfie. I press the button. Wifi? lol, no thanks. I want a camera not a phone and I don't want 1 hour of battery. Battery problem? where? just buy battery pack...

1. 1/4" is a common, but terrible option. The suggestion is to replace it with a builtin plate for the current status-quo, the common Arca-Swiss mount.

2. Optical remotes aren't for selfies. Smartphones on stupid sticks are for selfies.

3. Most new cameras have WiFi. It doesn't affect battery life when you're not using it. They're just usually really slow, so picture upload/sync that should take 1 min tops take 1 hour instead.

Remote live-view and exposure/focus control works quite well, though, as it doesn't need that much bandwidth. There's also BLE, which in my camera allows remote control from smartphone without affecting battery life in any measurable way (BLE consumption is negligible).

4. Camera batteries are insanely expensive (and no, they don't contain anything magic or special, unlike what they want you to believe—apart from DRM, they're completely standard batteries worth about $20 retail when branded), they're DRM'd to avoid third-party manufacturing (which leads to more recent battery copies being unable to show charge level due to skipping this circuitry), they're often change shape just to force you to buy new batteries and chargers instead of reusing them, they don't support common charging specs (USB and Qi, for example—it would be practical to be able to juice up the camera while its in the bag between shootings), ...

There is nothing but battery problems.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#62

Post by Terretta »

mschuster91 wrote: post #27

Tangentially related: I plan on buying a Sony a7s Mk2 this year. Aside from the screwmount and the battery issues, how is this camera affected by the other problems mentioned in the article (vibration, especially)? Is there anyone here who regularly shoots video with this camera?

If you didn't purchase yet, did you consider the a9 mentioned a few times in this blog? You might not need the extra MP of the a7s II.

Comparison for video:

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/2661726126/alpha-better-so...

Field notes:

Used one on a trip in Europe. The light gathering is astonishing, both photos and video. Street shooting at night in dimly lit rural towns, almost every shot looks better than it did to naked eye.

Only took two very small lenses, FE 2/28 and FE 1.8/50, both gave results that belie their size and cost. It autofocused down to light levels that would need a 15 second exposure at f2 (candlelight is EV 4, autofocuses down to EV -3). It autofocused on stars.

The main thing I can't get over is its uncanny ability to nail tack sharp focus on the iris of either the main face in my image or the preferred registered face among many faces, at arbitrary distances from face larger than frame to far enough away focus doesn't matter.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#63

Post by ekianjo »

wjnc wrote: post #43

As an economist: isn't this 'just' an example of software eating the world? One the one hand, quality camera's should keep upgrading the periferal hardware to keep match with modern IT-supplies and on the other hand keep a focus on durable products. Why wouldn't producers do this? Cost savings and probably price competition. The competition (smart phones) have a whole different market. They have a product that people…

> The competition (smart phones) have a whole different market. They have a product that people (regretably?) replace every 2-3 years. The market dictates the newest techniques. Pictures are sensors + software. Software has a much shorter improvement cycle. Hence, I would expect a continuously larger part of the camera market to 'fall' for the smartphone camera. Heck, the 'official' advice from my preferred reviewers is not to buy a small camera anymore, but use the savings for a better smartphone.

The old corporations in the field (Canon, Nikon, Sony) should make you pay for better firmwares (i.e. plugins or at least revisions) so that they have an incentive to keep improving their existing DLSRs. I think on my previous body there was only ONE update in x years and that did not bring anything new on the table.

Thanksfully nowadays we have MagicLantern for Canon DSLRs at least, which brings a ton of additional features for photo and video. It's still not at a parity level with the software available on phones and the like, but it's a big jump vs the base firmware nonetheless.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#64

Post by taejo »

madshiva wrote: post #10

1/4" tripod socket is the best common option. I use it. No point there because the user don't use it. Don't undertand why remove a standard? Optical remotes? I don't take selfie. I press the button. Wifi? lol, no thanks. I want a camera not a phone and I don't want 1 hour of battery. Battery problem? where? just buy battery pack...

> Optical remotes? I don't take selfie. I press the button.

The OP had a specific complaint about cameras not having an IR receiver at the back, i.e., for non-selfies. Remotes are useful for bulb shots, for reducing camera shake, and many other things.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#65

Post by Terretta »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #57

I'm just a consumer ofcourse but I don't get it. If Sony would stop making as many smartphone models and add a couple of those engineers to their DSLR team, they should be able to solve most of these issues pretty quickly. Sony makes about 5 different smartphone models each year. If they focused on shipping just one or two I guess they'd have more time to develop a better DSLR? This would give them a big advantage ov…

Seems like they mostly did this with the a9, though the dig in the article about the upper card slot being slow is annoying, and Sony's mobile app for WiFi image transfer is bizarre, requiring the phone and camera to join a camera-created network, even though the camera can be manually configured to join your own access point.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#66

Post by leejo »

clra wrote: post #37
leejo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes you don't notice, and there goes your shot. That's because you're not using the EVF, which you should be. The single most useful feature combination I find on the x100 series cameras is the EVF combined with the exposure compensation dial. This relates to the following annoyance from the article: > No focus information in viewfinder Any need for this is negated by a well implemented electronic viewfinder.…

> That's because you're not using the EVF, which you should be. The single most useful feature combination I find on the x100 series cameras is the EVF combined with the exposure compensation dial. That's a fairly strange assumption to make. A performant EVF is one of Fuji's greatest innovations, and also one of its most conspicuous. Of course I'm using it. Unfortunately, sometimes you're shooting from the hip (liter…

If you're shooting from the hip then, by definition, you're not using the EVF. I'm surprised you've had problems in bright sunlight, I can't ever recall the EVF being hindered by that (I've spent three years shooting a project with the local ski club with the camera so it's fair to say I've seen plenty of bluebird days).

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#67

Post by ekianjo »

dflock wrote: post #22
askafriend wrote: post #7

I could only imagine if Apple took all of their camera expertise from the iPhone and all of their existing Chip expertise and all of their Operating Systems expertise to create a Semi-Pro Mirrorless camera. Imagine full iOS integration, super fast A-11 Bionic chip (same as iPhone), high throughput wireless components, custom OS (like WatchOS), developer API, W2 chip for Bluetooth pairing, OLED screen, and beautiful l…

It's a fairly small and rapidly shrinking market - mostly because of camera phones, so this is incredibly unlikely, obviously

The Full Frame and above DLSR market is not really shrinking though. It's certainly not a huge market, but it's ripe for disruption since the pace of innovation of the current incumbents is very, very slow.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#68

Post by bryanlarsen »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #49
dheera wrote: post #2

Another thing I hate about a lot of recent camera hardware is the move toward cheap plastic, everywhere. I shoot pretty much only with old manual-focus lenses from days of yore. Most of my lenses are older than I am. They're all made of metal, built like a tank, and way easier to use. No fidgety UIs or menus to manipulate, perfectly calibrated infinity focus (slap the focus ring to the end until it stops and landscap…

At the time that was my deciding factor picking between canon rebel something vs nikon d80 (2006, when it was brand new). Photo quality-wise they were so well matched, until i read a review where the author said, the canon is plastic and the nikon metal and the metal makes you feel you have a real tool in your hands instead of toy. (also i'm not the most careful person metal stronger then plastic, typically)

Given that you're often hand holding a camera, being lighter is a significant advantage, it can often be the difference between a stable or a blurred shot.

And good plastics are plastic in the traditional sense of the word: if you drop them, they'll absorb the force by deforming and then spring back into place. Metals deform permanently. In a car that's an advantage, you can just hammer it back into place. With a precision instrument a bent tool is just as bad as a broken one.

I don't know how a Rebel compares against a Nikon in a drop test -- I've dropped my Rebel without issues, but no major drops, luckily. But I can compare the pre-unibody MacBook Pros with Thinkpads from the same era. In the store, the original MacBook Pros felt and looked a lot more solid, but they were really crappy cases. OTOH, the ThinkPad's were tanks. Their plastic cases had a magnesium frame, giving them the best of both worlds. Of course, once Apple switched to unibody and ThinkPad's have started to compromise to compete on thickness the story hasn't been so clear.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#69

Post by richardknop »

newsbinator wrote: post #34
askafriend wrote: post #7

I could only imagine if Apple took all of their camera expertise from the iPhone and all of their existing Chip expertise and all of their Operating Systems expertise to create a Semi-Pro Mirrorless camera. Imagine full iOS integration, super fast A-11 Bionic chip (same as iPhone), high throughput wireless components, custom OS (like WatchOS), developer API, W2 chip for Bluetooth pairing, OLED screen, and beautiful l…

Apple could take their MacBook experience and make a phenomenal netbook. There's no argument that it would be the finest netbook of all time. But that, too, would be moving in the wrong direction.

What about Macbook Air? That should count. Or what do you imagine as a "netbook"? Something even smaller? Or something cheaper?

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#70

Post by MrZeus »

jrimbault wrote: post #26
Steve44 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of the problems relate to the experience of the person behind the camera. Often you can see the choppiness when things are moving. That to me looks like they are using a high shutter speed which is inappropriate for cine work. In still photography if you take a picture of a waterfall on a bright day at 1/1000 you'll see every crisp drop, shooting at 1/30th will give a little bit of smoothing motion blur…

Maybe someone here can answer my question: During panning shots (horizontal, vertical), in recent films the image is blurry and uncomfortable (for me). Similar panning shots in earlier films seem cripser and more "comfortable". Is there a technical reason (shutter speed fashion) ? Or is it in my head ?

There is always https://photo.stackexchange.com/ too :-)
Post reply on HN