51–56 of 56 posts
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I find the wifi connectivity between Sony camera and my iPhone quite painful, mostly down to the fact that it creates its own wifi access point that my iPhone must switch to. Why can't it just connect to my home access point (so it can reach my iMac, and the cloud)
Requiring an access point doesn't work in the field.
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Cameras that integrate well with phones already exist. I have a Sony camera that can: * Wirelessly transfer images to my phone using wifi-direct. * Do so with a tap, as it has an embedded NFC tag. * Be remotely controlled by my phone, including a laggy but usable viewfinder display on my phone screen. This mode also automatically transfers pictures taken to the phone. Partially reposted from: https://news.ycombinator…
I find the wifi connectivity between Sony camera and my iPhone quite painful, mostly down to the fact that it creates its own wifi access point that my iPhone must switch to. Why can't it just connect to my home access point (so it can reach my iMac, and the cloud)
Fine, but if this guy's proposals fuck up my RAW workflow then he and all his ideas can burn in hell. I want quality, not speed, and I could care less whether the image lives on an SD card or in the cloud. Nevermind the fact that a lot of photography happens away from the cloud, out in the wilderness, and if we march forward into this brave new world of thin devices and cloud integration then these photographers will…
Part of the article was about how the professionals were getting beaten to the punch by kids with smartphones. I agree with his point that the pro camera gear should, at the very least, be better at sharing than a cheap smartphone. No pro (or amateur?) is going to buy a camera that doesn't support SD cards for a while now anyway so your precious RAW workflow will be safe regardless, even if they finally add usable sh…
The 'kids with smartphones' thing is so much deeper than simply the ability to publish quickly. One of my siblings does photography for a locally-based national newspaper and the biggest reason for iPhone journalism is cost (aside from integration). To that end press photographers are being issues iPhones and told to capture most of their work that way. Photography is adapting to the future just fine, just not in the way some money-hungry entrepreneur would like
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Part of the article was about how the professionals were getting beaten to the punch by kids with smartphones. I agree with his point that the pro camera gear should, at the very least, be better at sharing than a cheap smartphone. No pro (or amateur?) is going to buy a camera that doesn't support SD cards for a while now anyway so your precious RAW workflow will be safe regardless, even if they finally add usable sh…
That's one class of professional. Photography is a very large field -- kids with smartphones aren't supplanting model shoots, or fine artists, or wedding photographers, or even the party/event people. It's frustrating to watch naive technologists make broad pronouncements about narrow observations, particularly when they want to disrupt a "precious" process (contemptuous much?) that isn't necessarily broken for many.…
I don't think the author was intending to do anything that would break existing workflows though, he was just lamenting the fact that pro camera gear doesn't have the ability to share as easily as you would be able to from a phone (and why not?).
I presume he still would think that the cameras should have SD cards/usb tether if you need them.
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I don't have that camera but I assume it's the same as one I have. First I have to enable wifi on the camera, then wait maybe 10 seconds for the phone to connect to that network. Then find the camera app and open it, then it takes maybe 5 seconds to connect. The quickest I could probably do all this is maybe 15 seconds or so, but it's usually about 30 I'd say for me when I'm not racing or concentrating. 30 seconds is…
Yeah I agree it's definitely a pain in the ass if you're switching networks and you have a bunch of devices already connected. Side anecdote: It took two of my friends, a CS guy and a PhD student in MechE -- both at MIT -- thirty minutes to figure out how to set up the connection on the PhD guy's Canon so that they could send photos to a phone. I feel like they could hire two people with UI experience and drastically…
I work with some super-intelligent people (Professors, Doctors, etc), and it's amazing the things you find that they are unable to do, mostly because of crappy UI in software. There should be a lot more thought put into UI design. If the enduser can't work out how to use your software, your software is essentially useless (or possibly even dangerous).
With apps/webpages all having so many options for flexible UIs now, there's too many options for programmers to create their own cryptic UI that nobody understands but them.
I feel like in the old days things were much more predictable. Not that I'd like to go back to those days, but we've certainly taken two steps forward, one step back.
One thing that especially irritates me is the trend for everything to be an icon, especially on phones. I do understand why this happens, but it has the effect that if you can't remember or don't know what a particular icon signifies, there's (usually) no way to hover to get a tooltip to tell you before you press it. I say "usually" because my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has what could have been a great feature that it senses when you finger comes near to the screen without pressing it, but unfortunately it only works in the stock browser and SMS app (both of which I don't use!). I guess Samsung has not released the API for it to work in other apps? It really could have changed how phone UIs work for the better.
Edit: the hovering feature is called Air view. It's slightly creepy how it can sense your finger even when you're not physically touching the screen. I've read some webpages that said it should work in Chrome, but for me it only ever worked in the stock browser, but I just tested that and now that doesn't even work, although it still works in the stock SMS app. I think it may have broken since the Android 5.0 update. I'm using a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Android 5.0.
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> Making a case for XXX workflow should always be grounded in the contexts present. Here's the context: camera makers are getting the shit kicked out of them. The market is plummeting. It caters to the myopic needs of people who want to pretend that, to be a photographer, you have to work like it's a 1950s darkroom, only with computers. Compact cameras a being destroyed by cellphones, which is where all the imaging i…
> The market is plummeting. If there were a niche that wasn't being served, then sure, pocket camera / cell phone could fill it where previous consumers only had a DSLR. That said, that same niche that provides an entry point to photography will yield people that begin to understand why you can only achieve certain aesthetics via larger format sensors and optics. At that point, DSLRs are purchased again. Canon isn't…
The facts - sales volumes and profitability - don't actually agree with you.