The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry • Hacker News Board

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#11

Post by reaperducer » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 2:51 AM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #2

The strangest thing is the camera industry's non-response to smartphones. There's a fellow named Tom Hogan who writes in extreme detail about the camera industry and noticed years ago that camera makers should open up their APIs and work much harder to integrate with smartphones. Here's one recent example of that message: http://dslrbodies.com/newsviews/are-customers-asking-for.htm... Still, Apple discovered a user p…

Not to mention how every phone camera geotags every image automatically, but that's still a bulky $500 add-on for DSLRs, if it's even available for your model.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#12

Post by CarVac » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 2:58 AM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #8

> Thanks to all the CMOS sensor advancements, we now have cameras that can produce amazing dynamic range and very little noise i shoot with a pretty recent APS-C Nikon D7500 & good glass these days and i can tell you that its dynamic range is still nothing compared to what a new (or even older) iphone can get by bracketing a shot at 960fps and stacking it automatically for you. i would happily sacrifice half its reso…

The dynamic range is there in a raw file. You just need to apply tonemapping the way cell phones do it.

My 2008-era 1Ds3 still crushes a modern phone (I have a Pixel 2) in dynamic range when processed properly, and a D7500 is even better still, not to mention the latest full-frame models like the D850 and such.

Phones do, counterintuitively, have the advantage in extreme low light because they're able to stack multi-second exposures very reliably. But then again, I'm comparing my phone against a 2008 camera... the very best latest full frame cameras might be on par (at an extreme depth of field disadvantage though).

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#13

Post by intolerabletech » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 2:59 AM UTC

I'm so ignorant about cameras but have been curious... Smartphone manufacturers keep adding additional lens. Is that simply to compensate for not being a standalone camera? Am I complete idiot for looking at standalone mirrorless/DSLRs and wondering if Google's smart tech + Pixel 4's multiple lens are going to eventually eclipse standalone cameras? (My goal is to eventually carry a camera and non-smartphone).

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#14

Post by starky » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 3:01 AM UTC

btrettel wrote: post #7

I'm not an expert on optics, but one thing I remember from my high school photography class (using film, perhaps dating myself a bit) is that smaller depth of field basically requires a large sensor. I guess you could imitate this automatically with software, but it's probably not a coincidence that every photo in the linked page has very large depth of field. To me, this would be a fair reason to prefer a more "norm…

Depth of field is proportional to the aperture/focal length^2

For a given field of view your focal length must change for different sensor sizes so effectively you see a shallower depth of field.

While computational imaging is doing amazing things right now, I've yet to be impressed by any sort of portrait mode, they simply do a mediocre job at creating a realistic sharpness falloff and fail far too often at identifying the edges of a subject. Once they get it right however, they could theoretically do some absolutely amazing things by simulating different bokeh and as small of a DoF as you could ever desire.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#15

Post by CarVac » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 3:03 AM UTC

intolerabletech wrote: post #13

I'm so ignorant about cameras but have been curious... Smartphone manufacturers keep adding additional lens. Is that simply to compensate for not being a standalone camera? Am I complete idiot for looking at standalone mirrorless/DSLRs and wondering if Google's smart tech + Pixel 4's multiple lens are going to eventually eclipse standalone cameras? (My goal is to eventually carry a camera and non-smartphone).

It's to compensate for not having interchangeable lenses.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#16

Post by CarVac » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 3:08 AM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #2

The strangest thing is the camera industry's non-response to smartphones. There's a fellow named Tom Hogan who writes in extreme detail about the camera industry and noticed years ago that camera makers should open up their APIs and work much harder to integrate with smartphones. Here's one recent example of that message: http://dslrbodies.com/newsviews/are-customers-asking-for.htm... Still, Apple discovered a user p…

The A6600 sensor first appeared on the A6300, actually, not the A6000, so it's "only" three years old. That said, they've bumped into the upper limits of image quality; the newer 26MP sensor (which you'll find in the latest Fuji cameras) actually performs worse in low light than the preceding 24mp sensors.

>Imagine how many iPhones Apple would sell if the sensor were not much changed from the 6s and the camera software not changed at all.

Honestly, very little of the advances in cell phone cameras since the 6s have come from sensors; it's all computational. We're up against the brick wall that is photon noise.

Finally, the A6600 is very much not a flagship. The A9 II is the flagship, at three times the price ($4500).

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#17

Post by nradov » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 3:09 AM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #2

The strangest thing is the camera industry's non-response to smartphones. There's a fellow named Tom Hogan who writes in extreme detail about the camera industry and noticed years ago that camera makers should open up their APIs and work much harder to integrate with smartphones. Here's one recent example of that message: http://dslrbodies.com/newsviews/are-customers-asking-for.htm... Still, Apple discovered a user p…

The camera industry's failure to react effectively isn't strange at all when you look at the history of disruptive innovations. In fact it's the typical pattern. Incumbent market leaders usually lack the corporate culture to recognize a disruptive competitor or react effectively.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#18

Post by nradov » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 3:13 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #11

jseliger wrote: post #2

The strangest thing is the camera industry's non-response to smartphones. There's a fellow named Tom Hogan who writes in extreme detail about the camera industry and noticed years ago that camera makers should open up their APIs and work much harder to integrate with smartphones. Here's one recent example of that message: http://dslrbodies.com/newsviews/are-customers-asking-for.htm... Still, Apple discovered a user p…

Not to mention how every phone camera geotags every image automatically, but that's still a bulky $500 add-on for DSLRs, if it's even available for your model.

Ideally cameras should pick up location from the shooter's smartphone through a Bluetooth link.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#19

Post by jjav » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 3:13 AM UTC

jdhn wrote: post #4

I love how the author broke down the user journey for capturing images with a smartphone vs a camera, seems like there's still a lot of room to improve the UX of shooting with a dedicated camera. I wonder why camera makers haven't attempted to smartphone-ify (bad term, I know) their cameras yet, or have they tried and failed at it?

> smartphone-ify

Not sure exactly what you meant, but that sounds terrible.

On my Nikon DSLR I can adjust just about any setting using physical buttons, very fast, most often without even taking my eye off the viewfinder. The camera UX is optimized for speed and efficiency.

On a phone, I'd be scrolling through touch screen menus to do anything. By the time a shot is taken the subject is long gone (unless it's static scenery).

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#20

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 3:15 AM UTC

CarVac wrote: post #16

jseliger wrote: post #2

The strangest thing is the camera industry's non-response to smartphones. There's a fellow named Tom Hogan who writes in extreme detail about the camera industry and noticed years ago that camera makers should open up their APIs and work much harder to integrate with smartphones. Here's one recent example of that message: http://dslrbodies.com/newsviews/are-customers-asking-for.htm... Still, Apple discovered a user p…

The A6600 sensor first appeared on the A6300, actually, not the A6000, so it's "only" three years old. That said, they've bumped into the upper limits of image quality; the newer 26MP sensor (which you'll find in the latest Fuji cameras) actually performs worse in low light than the preceding 24mp sensors. >Imagine how many iPhones Apple would sell if the sensor were not much changed from the 6s and the camera softwa…

And, despite the a6600 not being a flagship, if the light is anything less than perfect, it will take pictures that are plainly higher in quality than anything coming out of a phone.