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The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

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Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#191

Post by wlesieutre »

jacquesm wrote: post #132
wlesieutre wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sony smartphone I used to have put its low-light noise reduction behind DRM keys and if you unlocked the bootloader it irreversibly turned the camera into a piece of shit. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I buy another smartphone from them, especially for anything camera related. Plus the built-in camera app was awful to use, but 3rd party camera apps had awful image quality. I don’t know if that was Sony’s fau…

After the rootkit debacle I'm surprised that anybody on the tech side would still buy Sony gear. As a brand they're burned for me and I used to be quite the fan.

I should add that I do own a pair of Sony headphones that I like quite well. But there's an app for configuring some settings, meaning they're starting to border on "smart" gadget enough that Sony could find a way to screw it up if they tried hard enough. Definitely wouldn't have bought them without thoroughly checking reviews for anything dumb.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#192

Post by theOneTrueOld »

mamp wrote: post #88
tjr225 wrote: post #24

And yet the photos I take on my 7 year old mirror-less camera look eons better than anything I take on my iPhone?

If that's the case you're not using all the features of your phone correctly — at least the iPhone 11. I was shooting Canon for about 12 years and now have a Sony A7rIII because of it's amazing eye-autofocus, and a heap of lenses. With the DSLR I take the picture, download it to the computer and then play with it on Capture One, often using the great smart masking feature to add some punch to people's faces vs backgr…

The eye focus on the a7iii is amazing. There is no way I would capture in focus images of children without it. It's so fast and so accurate.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#193

Post by dharma1 »

nikhizzle wrote: post #166
dharma1 wrote: post #163

I wish there was an external usb-c video/stills camera module that would work with smartphones and still fit in your pocket. Something the size of a matchbox. Just the sensor (and maybe fast storage) on the camera module, everything else on the phone - battery, processing, software, display - all on the phone. Would be great if it supported raw stills and video, or at least 10bit h265. Camera manufacturers can't make…

You are describing the dxo one.

If it was open source (or had some way for users to keep improving it) and had 4k video with a 10bit codec, I would be all over it. Now it looks abandoned by dxo

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#194

Post by speedplane »

matwood wrote: post #128
speedplane wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've been expecting ... that Apple will figure out that selling just 1 device to people with too much money is bad business. ... You buy it and then you replace it after a few years. Creating a device that every person needs to replace after a few years is a very sound business model. The issue is how many years you generally need to replace it. Apple used to be able to convince folks to replace their phone every t…

> This is significant, if 50% of folks move from replacing their phones every 2 years to 3, that's a 16% drop in sales. Which is why Apple has pushed in to services and other halo devices (Apple Watch, AirPods) around the phone. People incorrectly think that a drop in iPhone sales means fewer people using iPhones. While that may happen at some point, I think the iOS user base is steady/still growing. It will take tim…

> People incorrectly think that a drop in iPhone sales means fewer people using iPhones. ... Apple is already working to make themselves less dependent on the 2 year upgrade cycle.

We should not be cheering this initiative, it's a sign of bad things to come. It means that hardware innovation is slowing, and to compensate, there has to be more software innovation. Software innovation is relatively easy to copy, and the most profitable business models involve selling personal data to advertisers. It'll be harder for Apple to compete in this market, and they will be strongly tempted to make compromises with user privacy to satisfy growth and revenue expectations.

However, the root cause of this, is that hardware innovation is slowing, which is largely due to the death of Moore's law. Few are thinking about the profound changes that will arise if Moore's law does indeed come to a complete stop, Apple's business strategy is just one small example. If Moore's law does hit a dead-end (it's currently on its last dying wimper), there will profound affects through society, our economy, and our general expectations for the future. It's frightening that more people aren't sounding the alarms about it.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#195

Post by sudosysgen »

Swizec wrote: post #37
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…

As a semi-enthusiast I really really like the photos my Canon takes. It would be beyond amazing if I could get them on my phone immediately without having to faff around with a weird wifi tether or waiting until I'm at a computer to mess about with SD Card transfers. edit: Yes even when I just post to instagram you can immediately tell the difference between a DSLR photo and a phone photo. Even with all the computati…

Well, I can transfer images from my A7ii to my phone in a few seconds. It's been done.

Re: The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry

#196

Post by sudosysgen »

greggman2 wrote: post #106
kaffeemitsahne wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then when something moves, it will look weird, right?

At 960fps all 10 shots were taken in a 1/100th of a second. So same as 1 shot at 1/100th. Probably good enough for most shots except sports/action and my guess is the computational photography can deal with that too in various way.

No, you can't do full sensor readout at 960fps. You can only do 960fps by shooting at 2MP and keeping only 8 bits of data per pixel (or even less). Full sensor readout rates on phones are closer to 20-30 fps IIRC. And even that comes with caveats (no exposure adjustment, shutter speed must be faster than a certain amount, etc..). And that's at the low resolutions phones have. And then when you start hitting the limits of readout speed you start increasing rolling shutter issues and so on.
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