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Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

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Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#361

Post by jbarham »

whowouldathunk wrote: post #351

The dumbest is that their "auto" modes aren't as good as phones. I bought a Fuji X-T20 and am really disappointed with it; it is definitely capable of much better results than my phone as long as you have the time to switch all the knobs, which is way more annoying than I thought it would be and often not possible depending on your subject. I have no desire to do any post-processing and didn't realize that most of th…

With a bit of effort it's possible to create very nice images without doing any post-processing. See e.g. the book "In Camera" by Camera Labs editor Gordon Laing (https://www.cameralabs.com/in-camera/).

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#362

Post by photojosh »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #337
TheRealPomax wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want android on my camera. I just want it to be able to send all data that it's curating to my android device (which has an actually useful screen size and powerful enough cpu/gpu to do real editing) in a browsable fashion where I can see what's on the camera, and pick what to transfer. Kind of like, say... FTP over bluetooth/wifi? (or sFTP, of course). And of course, a full input mapping for all "buttons" on…

Bluetooth might not be great. The max transfer rate is something like 24 Mbit/s (3 MB/s), and say a single RAW file is 20 MB, then you'd be looking at about 7 seconds of transfer time for each photo. With high quality jpegs ~5MB it would be closer to 2 seconds per picture. I think you'd need some kind of direct cabled connection for good perf for professional photographers. Not to mention getting all the camera and a…

WiFi, 802.11ac, direct connection between devices. Would be screaming fast.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#363

Post by photojosh »

IgorPartola wrote: post #193
dguaraglia wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery life could be a concern. While using my Nikon DSLR I won't turn it off at all until I'm done for the day and that seems to barely affect the battery. I can leave it in a drawer for months, pick it up and snap a hundred pictures and put it back in the drawer for a few more months and the battery is still fine. In fact, I'd be surprised if I charge it more than once a year (mind you, since phone cameras became…

I don't understand. A phone that's 7mm thick and the size of your hand can operate for like 16-24 hours on a charge. A 1.5 lb hunk of plastic that's nearly a cubic foot in volume can't? Maybe we need better camera batteries.

The batteries for a typical DSLR are around the 1800 mAh hour, not that different from a phone battery.

I used to get around a thousand shots out of my Canon 5D3 per battery; there's a lot of mechanical power and ~25GB of processed data going into that usage. That could be either over 2-3 hours (event coverage) or over days (landscapes). So DSLR battery life isn't really measured in hours.

I don't think the batteries need to be better, particularly since you can install a grip to let you have 2 in the camera at once, and it only takes a second to swap them.

That said, adding a separate Android subsystem (that doesn't always have an LTE radio on) shouldn't add too much drain. You could easily get 4-5 hours of screen-on time to use for photo editing and processing.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#364

Post by photojosh »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #308
Pxtl wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The challenge then is that quality camera chips historically vastly outdid the ability of corresponding communication chips. So if you went for the "camera as peripheral" approach, its ability to talk quickly to the phone is critical... and my 8-year-old camera produces large file sizes that would be painful over slow bluetooth of its day.

I have the lightning SD card adapter, I find it (as a hobbyist) to be pretty convenient when I want to immediately have my photos on my phone.

USB adapter here. Went on a family holiday to a tropical island recently. On the way home I downloaded all the photos and videos on our 'tough' camera. They had GPS data recorded, so they just slotted into my iOS photo library easily and got added in to the 'memories' auto-grouping.

30 minutes on the plane produced an awesome little 90 second clip I could show everyone without boring them to tears.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#365

Post by photojosh »

eropple wrote: post #239
TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it might make more sense to put a cheap Bluetooth module and let it just stream to your actual phone

Panasonic's GH series has a WiFi connection (not ad-hoc, but an infra point) that you can connect to and use their app. It's not a DSLR, but that's part of why the GH cameras are awesome. Panasonic, full-stop, makes really good gear that feels pretty modern; it has a couple of things I'll beef with, like what feels like really flimsy mini (GH3) and micro (GH4) HDMI connectors, but for the most part, I love 'em.

How fast do you find the WiFi, when it comes to browsing and transferring photos over to the phone? My camera (Oly OM-D E-M5) just predates all the cameras getting WiFi as standard. :(

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#366

Post by eropple »

photojosh wrote: post #365
eropple wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Panasonic's GH series has a WiFi connection (not ad-hoc, but an infra point) that you can connect to and use their app. It's not a DSLR, but that's part of why the GH cameras are awesome. Panasonic, full-stop, makes really good gear that feels pretty modern; it has a couple of things I'll beef with, like what feels like really flimsy mini (GH3) and micro (GH4) HDMI connectors, but for the most part, I love 'em.

How fast do you find the WiFi, when it comes to browsing and transferring photos over to the phone? My camera (Oly OM-D E-M5) just predates all the cameras getting WiFi as standard. :(

I only use it for remote viewfinder control, but it's snappy.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#367

Post by nradov »

brudgers wrote: post #357
nradov wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My old point-and-shoot camera with a built-in GPS receiver can go from completely powered off (battery out) to an accurate GPS fix in under 4 minutes as long as it has an unobstructed view of the sky. So your time estimate is way too high in most cases. Cell phones are even faster because they pick up an initial approximate location from the cell phone tower and also automatically download GPS satellite ephemeris dat…

To me , four minutes seems to fall in the range of "several to tens of minutes."

Sorry, I misread your earlier comment.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#368

Post by jasomill »

dpark wrote: post #359
ew6082 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you're taking serious action shots on a violently shaking platform, even a hand tight 1/4-20 isn't going to shake or blow loose. Is loosening a theoretical or actual problem?

Depending on what you're mounting the camera on, it can be a real problem. A moderately-heavy lens attached to a tripod head turned 90 degrees for a portrait can definitely put enough torque on the screw to loosen it. This is most likely just going to be an annoyance, though, because the camera will droop but won't actually come loose. On the other hand, if you're using a "rapid" bottom-mounted camera strap, the poss…

I'll second this, and note that this is a problem more significant in practice than in theory.

Speaking as a physically inept "software and pure maths" person with consequently no authority whatsoever on this matter, I believe this is mostly on account of the usual "thumb-screw and rubbery no-slip pad" construction of typical non-camera-specific mounting hardware: while it's hard to imagine any lens without its own tripod mount is capable of enough torque to loosen even a hand-tightened bolt, as soon as the non-slip pad ceases to be effectively rigid, very little torque is required to loosen the bolt. And as with most (all?) "rubbery" materials, stiffness of a given non-slip pad at constant compression is a function of temperature.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#369

Post by photojosh »

eropple wrote: post #366
photojosh wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How fast do you find the WiFi, when it comes to browsing and transferring photos over to the phone? My camera (Oly OM-D E-M5) just predates all the cameras getting WiFi as standard. :(

I only use it for remote viewfinder control, but it's snappy.

Thanks.

Re: Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

#370

Post by fooker »

mtgx wrote: post #215
wazoox wrote: post #164

As said in this [1] article, one of the worst thing camera makers are guilty of is not slapping Android on their cameras to open up th instant publication, photo manipulation, etc. It's a shame that a professional camera is 90% of the time simply not as useful as a smartphone, even ... as a camera. [1]: https://mondaynote.com/memo-to-camera-makers-put-android-in-...

Even better, they should've started selling smartphone camera components to smartphone makers 5 years ago. Ride the disruptive innovation and all that, instead of fighting it (and now losing). To be honest, I don't know if putting Android on DSLRs would've helped that much. Samsung tried a bit of that, too, and it didn't really work. Panasonic did, too. Eventually the smartphones just ate them up, from the bottom up.…

The real physical limitation is the sensor size. Whatever innovation you can come up with for a tiny smartphone sensor, they would work proportionally well to improve a bigger sensor.
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