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The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

photographylife.com

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Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#21

Post by bitL »

adrr wrote: post #5

I don’t get why the camera industry doesn’t implement phone camera technologies into the cameras. They could easily do smart HDR features and merge multiple exposures into an image. Also they could make exposure smarter which smarter phone cameras tend to nail. Sure you can fix most of it with raw files but that inconvenience is why i reach for my phone instead of DSLR especially when taking pictures of my kids.

Look up camera industry margins/profits, world-class SWEng salaries and you have your answer. Also look up how many gens behind their chip manufacturing process is to keep costs low.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#22

Post by CarVac »

adrr wrote: post #5

I don’t get why the camera industry doesn’t implement phone camera technologies into the cameras. They could easily do smart HDR features and merge multiple exposures into an image. Also they could make exposure smarter which smarter phone cameras tend to nail. Sure you can fix most of it with raw files but that inconvenience is why i reach for my phone instead of DSLR especially when taking pictures of my kids.

The inconvenience of processing raw files is why I wrote my own software [0] to do the tonemapping to truly make a wide dynamic range scene look natural on a low dynamic range display.

Now I spend mere seconds processing each raw image, and they look way better than I can get with the default processing on a smartphone.

When you have the benefit of a large sensor, you don't actually need multishot HDR capture; even older cameras have plenty of dynamic range, as long as you expose properly.

Now if only there were a camera with a beefy processor that I could port my software to run on...

[0] https://github.com/CarVac/filmulator-gui

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#23

Post by bmarquez »

nradov wrote: post #18
reaperducer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Sony a6400 does this if the Sony app is running on the smartphone, but it drains the camera's battery fairly quickly.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#25

Post by starky »

Maybe because this is something very close to my wheelhouse, but this article seems to be overly wordy for something obvious.

Smartphones are simply more convenient than a standalone camera can ever be. Add on top of that the incredible computational imaging capabilities that have been developed over the past few years and the quality of images you can get from the size of optics and pixels that these devices have is amazing and more than good enough for 99% of people. There is nothing that the camera industry can do to access this market in any meaningful way.

The standalone photographic camera industry is going to be reduced to professionals and enthusiasts that need/want things like reliability and ruggedness, long focal lengths, creative control, and the process of taking a photograph.

Sony and Fuji are really the only two companies that really get the current camera market IMO. Sony is putting out technologically amazing cameras that are bringing smart auto-focus systems, high resolutions, video, etc. that catch the eyes of tech enthusiast photographers and professionals alike. Fuji is selling a whole experience of the art of photography. Canon and Nikon are selling to... Canon and Nikon users.

At the same time, these companies also obviously don't get it. I still can't figure out why someone hasn't added computational photography and a smartphone-like user interface for the enthusiast crowd (Why are you still not listening Sony? Your cameras were literally built on Android!). Why do we still have to mess about with camera tethering when it should be seamless to have photos transfer to a device for professional shoots, or to your smartphone for posting to social media?

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#27

Post by asciident »

starky wrote: post #25

Maybe because this is something very close to my wheelhouse, but this article seems to be overly wordy for something obvious. Smartphones are simply more convenient than a standalone camera can ever be. Add on top of that the incredible computational imaging capabilities that have been developed over the past few years and the quality of images you can get from the size of optics and pixels that these devices have is…

Camera companies are user hostile and the people buy them are used to it. Terribly menus and interfaces, and they don't even care. Even their key features, like video recording are reduced to a 29 minute limit due to an old expired regulation (hello Sony A7iii). USB-C ports for data transfer that can't be used for charging. The list goes on.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#28

Post by grawprog »

starky wrote: post #25

Maybe because this is something very close to my wheelhouse, but this article seems to be overly wordy for something obvious. Smartphones are simply more convenient than a standalone camera can ever be. Add on top of that the incredible computational imaging capabilities that have been developed over the past few years and the quality of images you can get from the size of optics and pixels that these devices have is…

Ran into this problem pretty recently actually. We've got a machine that was set up 10 years ago to use a canon DSLR camera to take scaled images we can use to program with. After ten years the body and lens are dying. We replaced the lens about a month ago after it refused to take pictures due to focussing issues. We wasted half a day recalibrating the grid used to scale the image. It worked well until last week when we started getting focus problems again. We're going to replace the body this time and likely the lens too just to be sure.

There is zero reason a DSLR camera is needed for this setup. Ten years ago it was the best option, but for our application we really don't need it. Sadly, the software we use is 10 years old, usupported and half written in German. Calibrating was a fucking nightmare, more than half the variables in the configuration file were German and the machine support people stopped supporti.g it years ago and don't have any staff familiar with it any more. Anyway tangent aside, a high quality cell phone cameram that's easy to interface with and doesn't have the problems associated with a ten year old DSLR camera would be so much of an improvement.

I also learned because of all of this, cabin cameras have a finite internal memory because of the way pictures are stored internally on the camera's storage and the only way to get more than 10,000 pictures, even if the pictures aren't being stored on the camera is it insertt an SD card which will work once to reset the camera's interal counter which should give you another 10,000 pictures.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#29

Post by CarVac »

starky wrote: post #25

Maybe because this is something very close to my wheelhouse, but this article seems to be overly wordy for something obvious. Smartphones are simply more convenient than a standalone camera can ever be. Add on top of that the incredible computational imaging capabilities that have been developed over the past few years and the quality of images you can get from the size of optics and pixels that these devices have is…

I think the problem is that there are two nearly polar opposite desires for UI and processing, that require totally different approaches to a camera.

One is the smartphone user who desires good quality for whatever the situation, who just wants a photo uploaded to Instagram or whatever, NOW. They don't want to learn how to adjust exposure compensation to expose-to-the-right for optimal raw image quality.

This user wants lots of R&D spent on computational photography, lots of processing power on the phone, and a simplified UI that just gets out of the way.

The other is the enthusiast photographer who shoots for either pleasure or maximum quality.

This user wants all the control, all of the time: they've invested time and effort into nailing exposure, mastering autofocus, all while composing beautiful shots. A smartphone interface is not what you want: the best images are often captured in difficult environments where a touchscreen just gets in the way and you must have hard control points.

As far as processing goes, they don't really need any of it; they'll often just process in post. Just gimme the raw data and that's all I need.

Can any manufacturer manage both? Much less in the same camera? For a competitive price?

I'm not sure.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#30

Post by eigen »

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…

>Edit I forgot to add that I believe Sony just introduced a new $1400 flagship camera, the a6600. https://www.dpreview.com/articles/6975583891/sony-a6000-a610.... It has a 4-5 year old sensor in it and software that is even older.

how often does Sony release new APS-C sensors?

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