Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan • Hacker News Board

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#361

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #359

sudosysgen wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your camera doesn't actually boot in 0.2 seconds, it just wakes up from sleep. My Sony runs Android and never hangs nor has an shutter lag. Instant response in everything. It can be done.

How did you measure the shutter lag? .05s is like a couple hummingbird wing flaps.

Using test equipment, I'd imagine the way to do it would be to sync a microphone and a logic analyzer and then short the shutter button. For the Sony A7 Mark I it's around 0.023 seconds : https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/sony-a7/sony-a7A6.HTM

Granted, it's not "no shutter lag", but 2.3ms might as well not exist.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#362

Post by sudosysgen » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

jjav wrote: post #241

KineticLensman wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion crops up every so often: "Wouldn't it be nice if a camera had a full OS behind it". Personally, I'm very pleased that my camera (a Nikon D850) boots instantly (approx 0.2 seconds) and has a shutter lag of 0.05 seconds (when pre-focused). It essentially never unexpectedly hangs when I need to take a shot. For my preferred subjects (wildlife) a consistently instant response is far more important than ar…

Exactly! Consider how incredibly slow it is to take a photo on a phone. And how short the battery life is. And how few capabilities the phone photo editing has compared to desktop photo processing where CPU, RAM and battery life are not constraints. Why would I ever want any of that in a DSLR? A DSLR can go from sitting on the shelf to having taken a focused photo in less than a second. The battery life is measured i…

The reason phones have those issues is because they have to compensate. I have a FF camera that runs android, and it lasts on standby for a month, takes a picture in 0.023 seconds, and so on. It's just that phone cameras are not optimized for latency and phones in general are not designed to be cameras.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#363

Post by nomel » Tue, Dec 22, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

Baeocystin wrote: post #334

nomel wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is what you get with a mirrorless system, has its benefits I never found those benefits. What would you say they are? Early on, the problem was mirrorless were slow in autofocus, and they had relatively terrible EV quality. Now they have better autofocus than mirrorless, and more importantly, with the very high resolution EV displays they have now [1], what you see is exactly what you end up getting. You don'…

The true colors of what you're shooting, the true dynamic range, and the ability to see to edges of the focal plane with greater clarity. What you see in a mirrorless camera has already gone through a great deal of processing to approximate what you'd see naturally with an SLR system. Which is fine for what it is! If you aren't shooting in a studio, the reduced mass of equivalent lenses with mirrorless systems is a b…

> The true colors of what you're shooting

I don't understand this. The EV displays are calibrated. It's what you're going to get on your high end monitor when you get home. Eyes do not work like camera sensors, so I don't see how this is a plus. White balance being a great example.

> the true dynamic range,

How can your eye tell you this though? Unless your'e doing HDR/exposure stacking, dynamic range from the perspective of the sensor is all you're going to get. With the EV, you get clipping/black indicators, and even a histogram. I'm never wondering if I'm going to blow out the sky or crush some details in shadows anymore. I can see if I am, without having to snap then preview.

> the ability to see to edges of the focal plane with greater clarity.

I don't understand this at all. The new EVs give you 100% crop (with some slightly reduced zoom so it fits), with complete clarity edge to edge.

I would suggest giving a new high end EV another try.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#364

Post by Baeocystin » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 12:15 AM UTC

nomel wrote: post #363

Baeocystin wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The true colors of what you're shooting, the true dynamic range, and the ability to see to edges of the focal plane with greater clarity. What you see in a mirrorless camera has already gone through a great deal of processing to approximate what you'd see naturally with an SLR system. Which is fine for what it is! If you aren't shooting in a studio, the reduced mass of equivalent lenses with mirrorless systems is a b…

> The true colors of what you're shooting I don't understand this. The EV displays are calibrated. It's what you're going to get on your high end monitor when you get home. Eyes do not work like camera sensors, so I don't see how this is a plus. White balance being a great example. > the true dynamic range, How can your eye tell you this though? Unless your'e doing HDR/exposure stacking, dynamic range from the perspe…

Perhaps I'm not doing a good job of explaining. Let me try again.

1. The color space of the EV's display (and even the wide-gamut monitors available for desktop use) do no fully encompass the colors we can see. https://i2.wp.com/digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/... for a diagrammatic example of common colorspaces vs. what our eyes are capable of perceiving. In particular, the greens and purples are abbreviated, and I prefer composing with the true colors in my eyepiece.

2. Knowing the condition of the light before it hits the sensor lets me compose more accurately. If I'm looking at the true light, I can tell at a glance if there is detail worth working to preserve in the highlights or shadows (by using a split neutral density filter, for example, to bring the sky brightness down some) or not.

3. I'm not talking about edge-to-edge clarity. I'm referring to the depth of the focal plane, and the rate of falloff. If you're shooting with a very wide aperture before infinity-focus distance, the plane is going to be very narrow, and seeing the rate of the falloff is easier when it isn't pixelated.

Hope that helps.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#365

Post by rangibaby » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 1:27 AM UTC

leadingthenet wrote: post #358

megablast wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a different market at all. I hate that phrase. Apple watches are updated every few years. Swiss watches last a lot longer. Price might not be that different over 10 to 20 years.

Sure, but since getting an Apple Watch, I haven’t felt the need to wear a mechanical watch anymore. They are good enough looking, and I need to close my rings, damnit! They just do so much more...

> They just do so much more...

That's a bug, not a feature! My Gshock is indestructible and tells the time, and that's about it. Perfect for me.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#366

Post by souprock » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

lorenzhs wrote: post #118

criley2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I've seen superthin flat lens, with a marginal cost of production around ~$2 in a university facility, that work better than some $500 lens -- and the latter are expensive because they are hard to make the traditional way. I find this very fascinating because while I enjoy my ever-increasing smartphone camera and use it as a daily driver, I have a about 13 year old Canon DSLR (one of the first one they made now)…

I can't relate to this at all. I have a Canon EOS 450D (Rebel XSi, 2008 model year) with a few lenses that I used to love, but haven't really used for years now. Its low light performance sucks, it's almost impossible to photograph people at night. My phone does a much better job of that. Yes, the DSLR's optics run circles around any phone, but the sensor really does show its age. And since you specifically mention t…

The bad low-light performance wasn't universal at that time. I made low-light performance a priority, so I got the Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D.

Contributing factors may be that the pixels on the sensor are physically larger, and that the sensor-shift image stabilization helps with longer exposures.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#367

Post by Wistar » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 3:24 AM UTC

tomatocracy wrote: post #355

Wistar wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooh. I'd love to try that lens. I have both the 70-200 2.8L II and the 100-400 II and I love them both. That 70-200 is one of my all time zoom faves but the 100-400 is not too far behind it.

Yes. I have the 70-200/2.8 as well and had the 100-400 mk 1 years ago. The 100-400 mk I isn't a patch on either quality-wise but I gather the mk 2 is significantly better so not sure how it compares. Where the 400DO perhaps really shines is paired with a 1.4x TC - it's much more handleable than a 600/4 and paired with a decent body gets results as good as bodies 10 years ago would have got with the 600/4.

I have both a ~1999 Mk 1 and 2018 Mk 2 100-400. The Mk 2 is waaay better in almost every way: focus accuracy, no push-pull, better bokeh (marginally) better contrast… just better results with less effort. Also a lot more expensive.

I have three different TCs which I got from a friend who switched to Sony. I haven't really used them much because they seem to drastically change the optic behavior in ways I don't like. Maybe I should give them another chance as they never come out of their cases.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#368

Post by rob74 » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #182

rob74 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a lot of "first-world" companies that have copied this approach. See also "Design and Quality: IKEA of Sweden. Made in [insert cheap-manufacturing country here]."

I've never met anyone who equated 'quality' with IKEA. Cheap, yes. Practical, maybe. Convenient, certainly. But quality? Sorry but haha. No.

It's only when you are confronted with really crappy furniture that you start to appreciate "IKEA quality". You shouldn't of course confuse "quality" with "luxury", but for the price you pay, you (usually) get stuff that looks Ok and will do its job reasonably well for a pretty long time. Also, everyone likes to complain about how difficult IKEA furniture is to assemble and how bad the instructions are. We recently ordered a custom-made bed from a smaller company, and the quality was undeniably better than IKEA (OTOH it also cost about 5x as much as the average IKEA bed), but still the instructions skipped about half of the information required...

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#369

Post by varispeed » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

ngokevin wrote: post #257

varispeed wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I wish this AI photo craze died out. I see that it may appeal to some people as a kind of "nicerising" effect, but without the context a casual viewer may take the picture as unaltered snapshot of the world. Of course the alterations are rather minute in the grand scheme of things, but if we continue looking at these taking them without context, I wonder how our perception of the world will get detached from reali…

There's no "real thing". All photos are processed, through the lens, by the software on the device, and by the photographers' workflows. When you shoot JPG, there's already a lot of processing that happens, and when you shoot RAW, you need to process that yourself from a dull, flat image. Photographers rarely post un-processed images. Even before all of that, settings are chosen which alter the exposure, depth of fie…

I understand that all images are processed, but AI for me is crossing the line as it is adding things that come from the trained model rather than derived from the image itself - these elements otherwise wouldn't be there regardless of lens, colour grading and so on.

Re: Nikon Is ending 70 years of camera production in Japan

#370

Post by miskin » Wed, Dec 23, 2020, 12:15 PM UTC

krooj wrote: post #288

buildbot wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting relationship between Leica, Sinar, and Panasonic for sure - Panasonic is seems to be behind the firmware in even the older Leica M series cameras, which are definitely made by Leica. The SL2 is essentially a Panasonic SR1 with a nicer body. The Leica S series medium format cameras use similiar looking firmware, and the the internals of the newest S3 power the Sinar S30|45 digital back. The Lux…

Agree on M models not being worth the money new. I've always bought gently used bodies 2 years after release. Still, the M-system is capable of nothing that any other non-rangefinder can do: which is to capture the decisive moment. There's no blackout period and you see what's beyond the framelines, such that you can anticipate the composition. The Fuji X100 comes close.

Fuji X-Pro line is direct Leica competitor. I never owned Leica, but I love my X-Pro cameras. Rangefinders are so interesting to use and X-Pros give you variability - you can use optical rangefinder, mix of optical/digital rangefinder with focus peaking, fully digital view finder or back screen, if desired. This gives you a lot of flexibility as different things works best for different lenses. Physically, camera is very nicely built and joy to handle, because all important settings can be set mechanically.