The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry • Hacker News Board

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#41

Post by kenhwang » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:36 AM UTC

CarVac wrote: post #29

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 wa…

I think Sony could realistically do both in one product. They already make flagship smartphones that are hardware-competitive with everyone else's flagships. They supply the camera sensors for everyone's flagship product. They have the best DSLM and reasonably competitive lenses.

Just take their current flagship smartphone, double the thickness to fit a halfway-between-smartphone-and-full-frame sensor, an SD card slot, ability to export RAWs, and a compact zoom lens, and sell it for like $2000. For extra credit, make a standard lens mount and make it swappable and now you have the manufacturer lock-in that keeping Nikon alive. The margins on the camera business plus the refresh cycle of the phone business might actually save both those divisions.

Instead Sony's camera division and smartphone division are too busy trying to not step on each other's feet and both are suffering for it.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#42

Post by kenhwang » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

i_am_proteus wrote: post #40

CarVac wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

The camera makers would be wise to just implement an API over Bluetooth or adhoc WiFi to pair with phones/tablets/laptops and offload RAWs and JPEGs. Lightroom mobile, etc., could then have the images swiftly processed and uploaded, and could probably be implemented with minimal changes to the newest models of camera.

Canon and Nikon and I'm sure others already have a WiFi adapter you can plug into the SD card slot that does exactly this.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#43

Post by CptFribble » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

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.

Some cameras do the multiple exposure combo thing: see the Panasonic G85.

For pro tier cameras, the problem is that no software manipulation can ever read the mind of the photographer and what they want, so you have to have a way to opt out of in-body post processing or there will definitely be times you're fighting the camera to get what you want. On professional shoots or at fast moving events like a wedding, no professional will tolerate their camera having a mind of its own and editing the files in a possibly-unpredictable way.

So if that's the case, why even include the options at all? Professional photographers have the technical skills to get what they want from the camera by turning the normal ISO/shutter/aperture knobs and don't need those headaches. Casual users don't know or care what's possible and just want a photo that "looks good" which usually means in focus and a little extra saturation. "Prosumers" or "techy users" are the hardest to pin down, but that market may be disappearing anyway.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#44

Post by zaroth » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:38 AM UTC

What's the TAM for a new iPhone model, versus the TAM for a new SLR? I'm guessing the iPhone wins by at least 2 orders of magnitude. EDIT: At the end of TFA they have this chart [1] which shows while camera sales peaked at 121 million units in 2009, in 2019 it's 1.4 billion smartphones sold versus 15 million cameras.

Camera performance continues to be a major differentiator / selling point and upgrade draw for smartphones. Therefore to draw in that next $100 billion in device sales, companies like Apple can spend orders of magnitude more dollars investing in the phone's camera performance than a legacy camera company can invest in their entire device.

Another major factor is that the massive processing power of the phone can be leveraged for image capture, just as it can be leveraged for gaming, and web browsing. Users can amortize the cost of all that computing power and fast storage across the several major categories of tasks that a smartphone can perform. So a processor that makes perfect sense in a smartphone is going to be very hard to justify in a SLR, versus integrating the minimum set of ICs required to process the image, with a low-power processor to run a bare-bones UI. Likewise the BOM for the screen on a smartphone is worth investing hundreds of dollars into, whereas the screen on an SLR is kind of like the backup for the viewfinder.

Finally, the raison d'être of a camera in 2019 is to share photos with friends and family, using perhaps the built-in Camera app, but most likely a dozen other social apps which all have their own custom UI, filters, and accoutrements. An SLR will simply never be as effortless and fun to use for this purpose as your smartphone.

[1] - https://www.instagram.com/p/B2b8pEDIBDb/?utm_source=ig_embed

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#45

Post by aeturnum » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:40 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…

>Camera makers have done some half-assed wifi, Bluetooth, and NFC integrations with smartphones, but for the most part the camera still lives on its own, still uses out-of-date SoCs, and generally behaves like the year is 2005

I've noticed this too and I have a pet theory about why.

It all comes back to the Canon 5DMk2. The Mk2 was an industry first: integrating video into a full frame sensor in an affordable body. It was an enormous hit. An entire generation of filmmakers grew up using the Mk2 and doing shots that were basically impossible on movie making equipment in the same price range. It made entire movies possible.

The problem is this: Canon also makes extremely high margin movie cameras and lenses. This equipment costs a lot more (and is probably what you want for a full production but I digress) and Canon makes a lot more on it. My impression is that the Mk2 killed an entire segment of Canon's product line and scared the shit out of them.

Since then, Canon has been extremely careful to roll out video features on prosumer cameras (like the Mk2) cameras slowly. They will only support lower quality video codecs on these cameras. They have made a new line of cheap-er video-first cameras.

I think that when the camera makers cannibalized their own products, a common move in smart devices, they got incredibly scared and ran away. The only one really making moves in this area is Sony and that's because Sony has nothing to lose - they had no business when they started making their name by releasing cameras with a lot of tech. Even so, they are not very good.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#46

Post by ip26 » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #42

i_am_proteus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera makers would be wise to just implement an API over Bluetooth or adhoc WiFi to pair with phones/tablets/laptops and offload RAWs and JPEGs. Lightroom mobile, etc., could then have the images swiftly processed and uploaded, and could probably be implemented with minimal changes to the newest models of camera.

Canon and Nikon and I'm sure others already have a WiFi adapter you can plug into the SD card slot that does exactly this.

You don't even need an adapter anymore, it's been native for years on many bodies.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#47

Post by starky » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:43 AM UTC

CarVac wrote: post #29

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 wa…

Agreed, I know that personally I would like a camera that offered me both paradigms depending on the scenario. Not having used or looked into it much at all, something like the Hasselblad X1D seems to tread that line between dial control and a touchscreen interface in a way that is much closer to what I'm thinking.

What I would really like to see from a camera is the ability to take a photo, say when travelling, and having it automatically end up on your phone with computational imaging already applied. Then with a tap, be able to pull the RAW for more in depth processing if required. I know that I do most of my processing in DxO Photolab precisely because it takes a guess at the editing for a photo before I even touch it, and therefore I spend less time post processing.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#48

Post by bobbylarrybobby » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

kenhwang wrote: post #42

i_am_proteus wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The camera makers would be wise to just implement an API over Bluetooth or adhoc WiFi to pair with phones/tablets/laptops and offload RAWs and JPEGs. Lightroom mobile, etc., could then have the images swiftly processed and uploaded, and could probably be implemented with minimal changes to the newest models of camera.

Canon and Nikon and I'm sure others already have a WiFi adapter you can plug into the SD card slot that does exactly this.

That’s already too complicated. My phone uploads photos to the cloud (which my computer is hooked up to) automatically. Needing to attach a piece of hardware to my camera to achieve the same thing is arcane and absurd.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#49

Post by kenhwang » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:47 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.

My 5 year old DSLR has GPS tagging for every photo. I mostly keep it off because it kills the battery. I suspect most serious photographers don't care about geotagging.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#50

Post by jiggawatts » Sat, Nov 02, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #31

asciident wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Even their key features, like video recording are reduced to a 29 minute limit due to an old expired regulation That's not entirely true. The usual excuse is that transcoding generates significant heat and without sufficient cooling the cameras will be damaged. To some extent this is true. It tends to depend on the bitrate; 4k will get hotter faster than 1080, and 480 will go for long enough to not be a problem gen…

That's entirely true. There was a tax regulation that said that any camera that could record over 30 minutes was a "video" camera and was taxed higher.

For an example of idiocy that's not government-enforced, see the arbitrary 30 second limit exposures on a lot of cameras. If you want to take a 5 minute long exposure, most companies will make you go buy a shutter release cable, which is just the most idiotic thing I've ever seen.

I'd love to see basic camera control from a decent iPhone app over Bluetooth LE, but nope... gotta buy a cable like it's the 1980s.

Check out the Nikon app: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/wireless-mobile-utility/id5541...

WiFi only, so it'll eat your battery, and the review score is 2.2 out of 5!

The overheating thing is also just an excuse. Video encoding is not that power hungry, as long as they're using modern chips with an efficient process such as 7nm or 10nm. Most cameras are made with a legacy stepping size on the order of 22nm or larger to save money. That's why they can't fit in a bunch of formats, can't do 10-bit, and can't do 60 fps. Because they're saving $15 of parts on a $4,000 camera.