71–80 of 123 posts
Cameras are so far behind smartphones in terms of their software that it has become embarrassing. Paying $2000+ for a camera, only to find out your smartphone does a better job of autofocusing and handling noise is just annoying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Sony mirrorless cameras used to have some third party "apps" that were pretty cool but apparently are now all discontinued. And what the Magic Lantern team did for Canon cameras (especially the 5DmkIII) was absolutely amazing. I still miss features to this day. If you are looking for a new camera also definitely checkout the new Panasonic Lumix line of full frame cameras - they are damn amazing. Extremely intuiti…
Sony does have SDKs, They're just fragmented between older and newer models now. =/
Fuji has famously terrible app support, its a nightmare to set up and cuts out constantly, transferring images over wifi is slow and unreliable to the point of it being useless, the remote shutter is unreliable and doesnt have any of the extremely simple to program features that intervalometer's have. You can't shoot tethered unless you have one of the above very expensive cameras.
The whole software ecosystem around cameras is awful, I would love to see some open source community initiatives to be able to control these cameras and extend their functionality but I haven't seen much of that in the photography community.
> 5.2 YOU AGREE AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT, ONCE A PRODUCT IS USED OR CONTROLLED BY OR THROUGH THE DIGITAL IMAGING SYSTEM, SUCH PRODUCT SHALL BE OUT OF SUCH MANUFACTURER-WARRANTY WITH RESPECT TO THE PRODUCT AS SEPARATELY SPECIFIED BY FUJIFILM, FUJIFILM’S AFFILIATES, OR THEIR BUSINESS PARTNERS. Brutal. Consumer protections are lagging badly behind in the software era. It's bad enough that commercial software has broad discl…
Is that even legal? It seems similar to the "warranty void" stickers which are nothing more than an illegal scare tactic that many individuals are conned into believing. https://www.ifixit.com/News/11748/warranty-stickers-are-ille... https://www.ifixit.com/News/15464/warranty-voiding-stickers-...
For those looking to use something in between some of the horrible official camera apps and implementing something with this SDK, Cascable is really quite nice. I find it well worth the subscription.
Before the official SDK came out, I tried using this project that was working on reverse engineering the protocol for Fuji cameras:
https://github.com/hkr/fuji-cam-wifi-tool
Alas, I’m working with an X-T2 and it is not supported by the official SDK.
This SDK only works on the top end Fuji's, the cheapest one supported starts at £850 (body only) Fuji has famously terrible app support, its a nightmare to set up and cuts out constantly, transferring images over wifi is slow and unreliable to the point of it being useless, the remote shutter is unreliable and doesnt have any of the extremely simple to program features that intervalometer's have. You can't shoot teth…
Not to mention that the assertion in the title of this post is wrong, at least in the USA. We have a federal law called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act that makes it illegal to void the warranty of a product simply because the user modified it.
Canon cameras have enjoyed some fairly active open-source/hacker support. Check out Magic Lantern and CHDK (I can't tell if that one's still maintained).
I, for one, can forgive FujiFilm... because, even though recently finally discontinued, they gave us FujiChrome Velvia 100 (& 50).
My jaw hit the floor for a second. They appear to have only discontinued the sheet versions of Velvia 50, and still make 35mm and 120.
I am an amateur photographer, and I can't understand why the major camera brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc.) aren't open at least to the concept of SDK's to control their cameras (let alone opening the lens mount specifications)... It would make their cameras much more flexible and useful, thus perhaps gaining some users that currently use smartphones where it seems there is greater control over and integration…
Most big global brands are getting into rent seeking because the technology allows it, even company's like GE aka General Electric have diversified from making light bulbs to making money from finance activities so there is bound to be a reason for this avoidance to have an industry wide sdk. They may also want to avoid being labelled a cartel like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel because legisla…
I am an amateur photographer, and I can't understand why the major camera brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc.) aren't open at least to the concept of SDK's to control their cameras (let alone opening the lens mount specifications)... It would make their cameras much more flexible and useful, thus perhaps gaining some users that currently use smartphones where it seems there is greater control over and integration…
> I am an amateur photographer, and I can't understand why the major camera brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc.) aren't open at least to the concept of SDK's to control their cameras (let alone opening the lens mount specifications)... At least Canon and Nikon do. I use the Canon and Nikon SDKs in a product for work, and there are plenty of third party applications which allow control of their cameras. They might…
also interesting is the following clause > 5.3 BEFORE SELLING, LICENSING, PROVIDING OR DISTRIBUTING THE DIGITAL IMAGING SYSTEM TO YOUR CUSTOMER (IF ANY), YOU SHALL EXPLAIN AND MAKE SUCH CUSTOMER FULLY UNDERSTAND THE WARRANTY-EXCEPTION SET FORTH IN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH. this is a b2b2c term -- we need better tech for capturing consent up the chain and for surfacing contract terms to downstream clients (notwithstand…