Camera manufacturers are institutionally incapable of writing good software.
I have experience with Sony, and their firmware barely changed in the last decade. Their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mostly doesn't work. Touch screens are from a bygone era: laggy, imprecise, and without multi-touch. They don't have resolution good enough to check if the photos came out sharp. Their phone apps are a clunky afterthought.
Smartphones are running circles around them with computational photography. "HDR" mode on Sony cameras is slow and primitive. I'm not a pro photographer, so I can't justify spending time manually tweaking every RAW file when smartphones do it well 99% of the time.
I can't speak for cameras specifically, but my partner is Taiwanese and apparently this hardware/software dichotomy is extremely prevalent there as well. Namely, there is a broad social perception that hardware design is "real" engineering, and that software is a joke. Thus, the best and most talented engineers go into hardware, and the jokers work in software, leading to this "good hardware, bad software" observed outcome and reinforcing the stereotype further. Rinse, repeat, and you eventually end up with decent hardware running absolutely garbage firmware.
Given the social cross-pollination between Japan and Taiwan, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar pattern held true there as well.
> Namely, there is a broad social perception that hardware design is "real" engineering, and that software is a joke.
Yup. Not just in Asia. The US suffered from that, as well. It may have changed (for the US), by now, as I spent 27 years at a Japanese hardware company.
I spent most of my career, as a software dev at hardware companies, and got the brunt of that crap. It was infuriating.
During my time, I wrote some very good software. In the early days, when my team was given a lot of leeway, it was sent out, and got [mostly] positive reviews.
As time went on, Japan got more and more involved with/in control of the software development that we did, and threw more and more restrictions at us.
We were forced to do a standard hardware-centric waterfall development process. If I even mentioned the word "agile," I might as well have just gotten up and left the meeting, because everything I said, after that, was ignored.
They took away all of the user interface from us, and we were just doing "engine" work, which was actually pretty cool, but, they sucked at UI.
Towards the end, I was reading terrible reviews about our software, and tried writing stuff that would directly address these gripes.
My work, and any similar work from my team, was ignored. Instead, they had some disastrous relationships with external companies, under (I assume) the impression that we were not capable of writing "modern" software, and these folks were (they were able to write "modern" software, because their work was terrible, and I have issues with the Quality of "modern" software, in general).
It is indeed exactly the reverse in the US currently. Pay ranges for software engineers tend to be higher than for hardware engineers at big tech companies, and many folks with electrical engineering backgrounds end up going into software as a result. Also similarly, people building hardware inside of software companies tend to have to put up with mismatches in expectations, including questions around why they can’t build hardware in an “agile” process!
Sometimes I feel that "Agile" has become so diluted to mean "there are feedback loops in the design/execute process" and if that's the case then 6σ is an "agile" process for hardware.
I like the spirit of the Agile Manifesto. I feel that the devil is in the details[0], though.
Nowadays, the word "Agile" means "Waterfall, but with different names," or "Tear off all your clothes and run naked through the bluebells! Do what you want!"
I'm really big on Discipline and Quality. It's entirely possible to have a flexible and iterative development process, but there's no way to avoid the difficult bits. They just get shifted around.
> Namely, there is a broad social perception that hardware design is "real" engineering, and that software is a joke. Thus, the best and most talented engineers go into hardware, and the jokers work in software, leading to this "good hardware, bad software" observed outcome and reinforcing the stereotype further.
Curious. In the US, the software people can usually make a lot more money so even many EE’s end up in software. I wonder if it’s the opposite in some of these countries, where software people are paid less than hardware people.
Actually, it still happens the same way in the USA as well -- for physical products. The hardware side of physical products is often well-supported, with higher budgets for R&D and engineering salaries, while the software side of the physical products is expected to be done barebones and as an afterthought at the end of the product development cycle.
Software engineers in the US who do not work on physical products are highly paid, because they can potentially create nearly infinite return on investment with near-zero marginal product costs.
But software for widgets doesn't have that infinite margin ratio. So firmware suffers greatly. Think auto infotainment systems, smart-home electronics, appliance interfaces, point-of-sale kiosks, etc.
Don't forget device drivers back in the day before all the chips got thrown directly into the motherboard. You might buy a nice soundcard, but the software that came with it (drivers and utilities both) were quite a mess.
I think a big part of Apple's success was getting both hardware and software right.
> Curious. In the US, the software people can usually make a lot more money so even many EE’s end up in software. I wonder if it’s the opposite in some of these countries, where software people are paid less than hardware people.
In Japan and Taiwan, both EEs and SWEs are generally underpaid. SWEs and some EEs go to the USA or (gasp) mainland China to make more money, since software talent is generally more appreciated in those two countries. The same applies in other Asian countries (e.g. HK and Singapore, where it is software vs. financial services rather than software vs hardware).
I think the US situation just reflects economics. The value of software scales up more than hardware. So software teams and companies get more investment.
Anyone who's worked with software management of commercial hardware like cameras, digital signage, time clocks, door controllers, I don't know 1,000 other products types, can attest to the horror-show software you're provided by these manufacturers.
Think: Windows only, often IE/Edge only, ActiveX, crashes constantly. Random UI strings are in Chinese. Barely, barely usable.
Why is this still true? I can understand in the past, but after the rise of all the tech companies and obvious important software they use everyday (Android and iOS) how can anyone at this point think software is a joke and lesser than hardware?
Most hardware companies are decades old and so are most of their established competitors. Until one of the old guard breaks rank or a new competitor manages to break into the industry using software as a clear competitive advantage (i.e. Tesla), the success of tech in general means nothing to them.
It doesn’t even matter how big the companies are or if they’re a “hardware” company. All the lumberyards in my area still use DOS era machines that I’m not even sure are networked. I know that at least one of them runs the whole thing by printing the day’s transactions from each computer and paying a secretary for data entry into their similarly ancient accounting/inventory management software. Cost of land and fuel overwhelm labor costs in the lumber business so there’s zero incentive to even try
While software is important, quality of software is usually not. There regularly are articles and comments on HN about how common software dev practices would not fly in real engineering.
I think this would change overnight if management were actually held accountable for quality. Right now all the incentives are on ship fast, ship early, ship often. A PM who delays a release to fix bugs (is a hero IMHO, but) looks terrible to management higher up. The PM who rushes to market looks good, even if the reputation of the company as a whole suffers because they shipped crap.
Millions of bridges have been built in human history, but only a handful of GPU drivers.
The bridge doesn’t need to withstand the river suddenly turning into lava or the atmosphere becoming sulphuric. The driver has to be prepared for whatever Windows and the hardware put up.
In those tech companies, that knowledge has arrived. Of course, among software people, similar is true, because who doesn't like being told they are important and valued. But there are various kinds of "tech" companies. Ones founded by hardware people and EEs, where the key innovation that made the company big was in hardware design. And ones founded by software people in their dorm room or something like that. Usually companies from the latter category offer respect to software engineering, while companies from the former category see it as a cost center and something that ideally you'd out source.
DSLR manufacturers got big by making great cameras. They didn't really feel the need for making good software. Compare this to Google which got big by implementing a clever algorithm and using distributed computing.
JS and frontend are terrible and you'll hear this loudest from frontend people themselves. It's an entire industry built purely around the inertia of an unexpectedly wildly successful product.
I think it's worth noting that the Web ate software largely because the ergonomics for new devs are vastly superior to building native apps, and can be used cross platform without downloading binaries. What language is easier to get moving in? If writing cross platform native apps was as easy as using a single html file with a script tag, they would be more in vogue.
To accommodate the greater scope of the web the language has evolved. It's fast, supports multiple paradigms, and never makes breaking changes, so your code will run the same 20 years from now.
Is this a real issue? I doubt the average new coder needs to worry about supporting 20 year old browsers today. I've never worked at a company that needed to support ie8 or whatever.
These are orthogonal. You can believe software is important and a great area to work in, and still think JS and frontend is terrible. In fact, the two are often correlated!
If you think frontends, as a general category, are terrible, and backend software, as a general category, is more "serious", "real", or "important", you have precisely the mindset that produces theoretically useful gadgets that are ruined by poor user interfaces.
That's not the point OP was making. On the contrary, you have to believe that frontends are important to be really mad about how terribly they are made.
In general, I think any engineering community that congregates around a particular set of issues is just trying their best to address their needs and build solutions to their problems, and it's important to respect those. Rather than being dismissive, exposure and cross-pollination is how we lift the boat together.
Just because it’s terrible doesn’t mean the haters have to suck at it. It makes the opinion more valuable if you’re good at something and then criticize the bad parts.
The issue is that the recent growth in the software field has caused people that would otherwise major in something else, and aren’t really interested in software, to be your coworkers and they don’t care about doing a good job. There are some areas of software which would be benefited (lower cost over time) to apply an engineering mindset. That’s not what happens with agile. The whole ethos is about being able to change the design around, shipping MVPs and quick iteration. In hardware it has to be correct when you ship it , leading to a more methodological approach. As a result, some software work in comparison to hardware work can come off as sloppy.
Define recent? I remember "too many new people are just chasing money in IT" already being a well-established trope 25 years ago, long before Agile or most of the modern stacks were even a thing.
In europe management is considered more important. Its all bullshit indeed.
If they design cameras from the users perspective and expectations there is still a lot of room to take on phones.
I just want to shoot, possibly edit, publish the images on my server and have some api to make the appropriate database entries.
In stead I have to hook up the cam over usb then pretend it is a slow drive??? Oh and the battery is draining while doing this??? Some models have replaceable batteries that you have to remove to charge???? As a hard drive it scores 0/10
I have to start up an editor, find the right image, load it and find a folder to store the edit???? what nonsens workflow!
Iphones let you shoot the images straight into the upload dialogue.. but its not using the wonderful hacks the photo app offers.
Maybe camera makers should just make a frankenphone the size of a brick with a few TB of storage, automatic wifi connectivity (with more options so that one never has to look at it), a week worth of battery. The extra weight helps making sharper images and probably a cloud account with a list of highly configurable API's
Ill be as weird as to suggest website names could have physical buttons on the top so that one can shoot things straight onto facebook and press delete later.
Why wouldn't it be true? All the software that ate the world did so from a very small number of places. Outside those few focal points of software wealth, if an area isn't essentially preindustrial, whatever is happening there related to hardware will greatly outshine any local software endeavors.
That's a bit odd. Are they unaware of the last 30 years of computer history?
Even as someone with a background in mechanical engineering the degree of complexity behind some software products, such as Windows, is really impressive.
I suspect "hardware is real engineering" is really just "hardware engineering is where you can find prestigious employment in this country".
It used to be quite similar in South Korea until the more recent rise of domestic software giants like Naver and Kakao Corp.
In a lot of the East Asian countries, there is a large gap in desirability between the large, established employers and smaller companies due to outrageous differences in pay grade, benefits and job stability. So new business has a tougher time making it to escape velocity and offering significant numbers of jobs.
+1. I have vague memories of my time at a Japanese automation vendor out of the uni. I had quit out of frustration that the software was super buggy, there was no one to help except just a couple of people in Japan who knew the software but would not reply to emails. I also remember feeling neglected as folks working on the hardware or on customer projects were paid higher than me.
A recent experience at a neobanking startup from SE Asia reaffirms the point. Despite the product built around an API-only model, the firm was operations heavy when it came to decision making and investing in people, as it was believed to be the core company strength (for a variety of reasons including the institutional bureaucracy, corruption in these markets, etc.)
TL;DR people work where the money flows. Companies get what they pay for. And the investors pay for what they think is the strength or is likely to sell at inflated valuations.
I have family members who consider themselves "real engineers" compared to me, an SWE. They have backgrounds in Mechanical and other "traditional" engineering fields.
About once a quarter I am subject to conversations where they remark condescendingly about how flabbergasted they are at SWE salaries. I stopped engaging beyond "Mmm if you're interested you should learn more about the field".
This interaction is beyond grating and is detrimental to our relationships.
Yep, sounds like one of those "agree to disagree" topics. Or diffuse using mild humor, like you have tried. Or redirect, and blame supply and demand, or social media.
I too have a background in Mechanical Engineering and while many software products are complex I wouldn’t categorize all of them as engineering projects in the historical sense of the word. That’s not to say there are not quality software products that satisfy real businesses requirements. But it is to say that a lot of software projects would be WAY too expensive if they were engineered the way a passenger jet or a skyscraper was engineered.
The software development field is quite new compared to the other engineering disciplines and many, many decisions are made on gut feel, intuition or out right personal preference. Alan Kay has some very good talks on this specific subject, referring to the current state of our field as a Cargo Cult.
However, I would also say firmware would be the least expensive to engineer because the requirements for that type of software are better known and more rigid.
I believe that a part of the problem with software engineering is the "we can always fix this later" mindset.
Even during development, the only cost of iterating over errors until you get it right is just time.
But HW engineers just don't have the luxury of making 100 iterations of a product until it works, nor the safety net of "we'll update it over the internet". They must put a lot of effort into testing and verification until they say "ok, this is good, let's ship it."
Also, failure modes of mechanical products are often known and intuitive.
I am guessing that before the advent of Internet, the average quality of shipped software was higher on average. Nobody would dare ship a hot mess like Battlefield 2042 if they knew it's the last version they ship.
Automotive and other mixed-criticality systems is where these two worlds butt together and have a lot to learn from each other.
Mech eng processes on one side, ASIL-style safety requirements in the middle, and someone wishing to pour a bucket load of Android apps into the same computer from the other end.
Are they ever really "the same computer"? I don't think that's true even in entirely software-mediated-control vehicles like Teslas.
The discipline of robotics (which is really what you're talking about here — cars are just very manually-micromanaged robots these days) is all about subsumptive distributed architectures: e.g. the wheels in an electric car don't need a control signal to tell them to brake if they're skidding; they have a local connection to a skid sensor that allows them to brake by themselves, and they instead need a control signal to stop braking in such a situation.
This is why, in anything from planes to trains to cars, you see the words "auxiliary" or "accessory" used to describe infotainment displays et al — the larger systems are architected such that even an electrical fault (e.g. dead short) in the "accessory" (non-critical) systems can't impact QoS for the "main" (critical) systems.
I really can't imagine a world where they've got engineers building the car that understand that, but who are willing to let Android apps run on the same CPU that's operating the car. They'd very clearly insist for separate chips; ideally, separate logic boards, connected only by opto-isolated signals and clear fault-tolerant wire protocols.
The point you're making is valid in general and you provide valuable context. A modern car does have many different computers, and there is a lot of intentional partitioning (and even some redundancy) into different CPUs, as well as guests under hypervisors.
For example, a typical headunit computer (the "infotainment computer") tends to contain two to three SoCs performing different duties, and one or two of them will run hypervisors with multiple guest operating systems. And that is just one of multiple computers of that weight class in the overall car architecture.
That said, there's an overall drive to integrate/consolidate the electrical architecture into fewer, beefier systems, and you do now encounter systems where you have mixed criticality within a single computational partition, e.g. a single Linux kernel running workloads that contribute both to entertainment and safety use cases. One specific driver is that they sometimes share the same camera hardware (e.g. a mixed-mode IR/RGB camera doing both seat occupancy monitoring tasks and selfies).
Safety-vs-not-safety aside, you also simply have different styles of development methodology (i.e. how do you govern a system) run into each other within the same partition. AUTOSAR Adaptive runs AUTOSAR-style apps right next to your POSIX-free-for-all workloads on the same kernel, for example.
What however is typically not the case in that scenario is that the safety workload in a partition is the only contributor to its safety use case, i.e. typically you will always have another partition (or computer) also contribute to assure an overall safe result.
In more auto terms, you might now have ASIL B stuff running alongside those Android apps on the same kernel, but you will still have an ASIL D system somewhere.
In general, you will start to see more of both in cars: More aviation- and telco-style redunancy and fault tolerance, and more mixed criticality. The trends are heading in both directions simultaneously.
> I don't think that's true even in entirely software-mediated-control vehicles like Teslas.
Tesla has been in the media for bugs such as flipping tracks on your Bluetooth-tethered phone or opening the wrong website in the headunit web browser rebooting the Instrument Cluster display. This is an example of mixed-criticality (done wrong). Many other cars are not architected quite as poorly. However, IC and HU/central displays sharing the same computer (not necessarily the same computational partition/guest OS) is increasingly common.
> perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away
In traditional engineering, there's at least a BOM and manufacturing processes that create pressure to keep things simpler. If physical items were engineered like software, you'd have people bolting a keyboard onto the monitor chassis they're designing because they needed an 'on' button, and keyboards have buttons. Obviously they'd then also have to add in an always-on raspberry pi to plug the USB keyboard into and emit a GPIO signal when the button is pressed. You'd get a lot more complexity, but for most of it, "impressive" would be the wrong word.
I think part of it is that hardware is tangible, software isn't, so for some reason people resent being expected to pay for software. Building software thus has less legitimacy in some peoples' minds.
I see this in the retro computing scene: people will quite happily fork over large amounts of cash to have an old bit of kit repaired, or buy a newly-developed expansion for old hardware, but those same people - even the people doing the repairs and building the new hardware - can be incredibly hostile to the idea of someone asking for money in return for new software for those old platforms.
It's hard to overcome preconceived notions. As we know from politics, emotions are much stronger than logic. You can't simply say, "be logical!" or "change your view".
The worst part is that, despite treating their software like a joke, every damn business guards their source code, protocols, etc. as if it were their crown jewels.
So end users end up having to reverse engineer it just to fix issues that the manufacturer should have addressed.
And - the real kicker - far too often it turns out to be based open source work, with a few random modifications, distributed in violation of the license.
Isn't that exaggerated by semiconductor manufacturing (TSMC et al) dominating the Taiwanese economy? If your nation's existence is driven by EE-type concerns, software engineering doesn't seem important.
I couldn't agree with this more. My small child received a compact camera as a gift. While it was a decent camera for a kid, she was very frustrated with how small the screen was and how non-intuitive it was to her compared to a smartphone. I too was very frustrated with it as it was slow, configuring the software on it was a massive pain and the process of quickly getting photos from the camera to a computer was laughable. So, what did I do? I put the camera on a shelf and bought my daughter an older smartphone. I proceeded to lock it down and remove everything I could with the exception of the camera and gallery app. My daughter is now happier than ever and taking non-stop pictures. She can also almost instantly see those pictures on a computer now too!
Thanks for the hint. I was just about to buy an old compact camera for my daughter as she sees me taking pictures with my sony a7. Maybe you are right compact cameras are awful usability.
What software did you use to lock it down? I have some older iPhones laying around.
The iOS built-in Parental Controls settings can be used to enable/disable access on an app-by-app basis; that's probably all that's needed here, since Camera + Photos by themselves don't give you any built-in web browsers. (Camera.app can scan QR codes, but it just pops a new tab in Safari when you click them, and Parental Controls would block that.)
In contrast, my daughter sees us use our phones and uses them as well. I simply uninstalled all the apps I could and used the Google Family link stuff to lock it down further.
You can get really creative with an Android phone. Install LineageOS with only the minimum gapps you want. Lock down everything, remove the play store, add Tasker to make the UI black&white when using apps other than photos/camera install a launcher like nova to further customize what apps are visible/easily accessible. You can even completely remove Chrome but still install the web browser component so things like your e-mail app work but you can't easily browse the web.
I did this for a while a couple years back to discourage myself from spending so much time on my phone. Worked great and I would have kept it up if it were not for my wife constantly complaining that I couldn't look anything up or use Yelp or Messenger or... :D
Before there were smartphones it was universal that anything other than a PC had a cheaper CPU but it was maybe 1/3 the price for 1/30 the performance. That is, off-brand CPUs of all kinds were a terrible bargain.
Then smartphones came along and there was another commodity platform that gave good price-performance. Around that time Intel also got interested in making low-performance parts with low sticker prices but that were highly uneconomical if performance or user experience mattered.
I am one of these luddites that still use a compact camera.
The firmware may be bad, yet I take a picture faster on my Sony compact camera than I do with my smartphone thanks to the physical buttons. I can also do it while cycling while doing the same with my smartphone is annoying as fuck in winter with gloves, in summer with sweat and expose the risk of losing and destroying my precious pocket computer.
Also for some my phone screen show as a black screen when using my polarized sunglasses while the lcd of my camera is still visible and allow me to point and shoot quickly. No idea what is the difference in tech on both that would explain that difference.
Most flagship smartphones may be super responsive but the average sub 200usd smartphone won't necessarily fire up the camera app faster than my Sony compact camera. And there is no way I will buy a 600 to 1000usd smartphone. I'd rather repair/replace either a 200usd smartphone or a second hand compact camera in the event I drop it and break it than a single 1000usd one.
Also from my experience with friends using flagships and apple ones, even the best smartphones are crappy under low light. Smartphones are great during the day, once it is dark they are pretty much useless.
> ...take a picture faster on my Sony compact camera than I do with my smartphone thanks to the physical buttons.
I will encourage you to check out the Google Pixel line of phones! A double tap of the power button starts up the camera immediately even if the phone is off and then a press of the volume button takes a shot. Can easily do it in gloves!
I've been carrying a Sony TX100V in my work bag for I suppose 11 years now. I'm on my second one. It has staggeringly good macro capabilities. I've had two 8x10 prints done this year and they're amazing.
It's a 2011 model and AFAIK the latest in the line. You have to go much bigger to get better quality. I'd buy an updated model in a heartbeat.
There is still a small market, but not enough to support many players.
I've got a compact around here somewhere, specifically because it can take getting dunked. With the pandemic my intended use case has gone away and I'm not sure where it is now.
> There is still a small market, but not enough to support many players.
Definitely.
And I can understand Panasonic and Nikon getting out of it when most people interested in a compact are looking for the Sony RX100 or Canon G*X cameras.
I think that last bit has been true until recent flagships. Recent iPhones are sluggish in the dark, but take pictures that are better than my eyesight.
YES YES YES. And they don't support such basic use cases as "open an access point and let the connected device do the work of selecting pictures" - no, you have to select the photos on the camera and then call them down from the mobile app. Super "great" when you're in the field that I am and document rallies etc. so you need to get a photo up to social media as fast as possible.
> They don't have resolution good enough to check if the photos came out sharp.
Yeah, same for lighting, another annoyance from hell. Personally, for shots in complicated conditions I've grabbed an used Blackmagic VideoAssist 4K... works way better.
> I'm not a pro photographer, so I can't justify spending time manually tweaking every RAW file when smartphones do it well 99% of the time.
Problem with smartphones, even modern ones, is the quality goes down dramatically in low-light scenarios. That's simple physics, the pixels are like 100x smaller. AI can cover for a lot of that, but it's noticeable enough to not make it worth my while - and for what it's worth, there are no Android tablets on the market with a halfway decent camera.
Sony's hardware is the best in class, there is no match at all for the A7S series from anyone in low-light, but the sorry state of their software is laughable. And the best of it is: it's all Linux under the hood. The older A7/A6000 series actually exposed parts of it via an Android subsystem layer where one could write apps for it after jailbreaking - too bad that the Android layer was/is fossilized (IIRC, Android 4-ish?!) and so they ripped it out after the A7S3 :/
If you don't want to pull with their app, your other option is UPLOADING TO AN UNSECURE FTP SERVER. I have a linux server hanging around (that's also the NAS where I store the raws) so this wasn't a huge deal, but like WTF.
I bought the camera (A7 IV) because it has ethernet support, which I thought, great. I'll just be able to scp or samba them off or something. Absolutely not.
> your other option is UPLOADING TO AN UNSECURE FTP SERVER.
... what? That's not an option at least for the models that I have. Hell, if the camera would automatically connect to my phone's hotspot and then transfer the photos, that would be a working solution for me.
Yep - that was an annoying own goal move on Sony's part. Having some sort of scripting layer in the OS would have made a big difference - they should have expanded the layer rather than abandoning it : (
Smartphones definitely beat cameras at night though. iPhones and Google Pixels in particular can make photos simply impossible with any kind of DSLR thanks to their computational magic.
I’m a photographer and your comment made me laugh. Everyone in photo circles hates the Sony menus on their cameras because they’re the worst.
Canon, Panasonic, and Fuji have substantially better menu systems that we all far prefer.
I find it funny your opinion has been informed by using the worst the camera sphere has to offer!
That being said, these menus and UIs are aimed at pros who do nothing else but take photos. It’s a coding IDE, not a simple text editor. It’s going to be foreign to the casual user. That is by design.
Also, the computational photography is a nuisance for our work. We want the LEAST edited photo file possible every time.
I understand your lack of interest in editing, it’s a chore that even we have to do, but it’s also one of our power tools. We choose this, it is not a step backwards for us!
It sounds like “professional” photography just isn’t for you!
However, before I start a bunch of arguments, I will say one thing. There is always room for improvement and they could likely do UX/UI analysis to further improve things. Though, from my use, I do find it to be very hardware focused which feels intuitive to me and those in my photo circles. I think it’s the prerequisite of knowing shutter, ISO, and aperture as well as focus pulling concepts. That makes me “know what to look for”.
(Canon user here) This response is very misleading. They're all bad. Other camera manufacturers are not substantially better than Sony in this regard. If Sony is a 1 and smart phones are a 10, the other camera manufacturers fall somewhere between 1 and 3. GPs comment is still spot.
edit: Please indicate when you make edits to your comments. Your comment is now very different to the one I responded to.
I know this may sound “misleading” but I’ve only started “real” photography for a year or two and I find the Canon and Panasonic menus quite straightforward.
I like the very hardware focused setup of DSLR/mirror-less cameras.
I would also politely ask you don’t call me “misleading” just because you disagree with my opinion. I’m not in here spreading misinformation to start polarizing discussions. I’m merely sharing my opinion.
You completely changed the comment I responded to, so how can we have a discussion about whether or not your comment was misleading? So no, I'm going to stick with "misleading". And the fact that you changed the comment so drastically without telling anyone makes me think you found something wrong with your original comment too.
And after you're edit, I'm going to add "condescending" to my description as well.
> It sounds like “professional” photography just isn’t for you!
As if the only reason anyone would disagree with you is because they are casuals
> You completely changed the comment I responded to, so how can we have a discussion about whether or not your comment was misleading?
I can understand your frustration. I was looking at other comments and felt I wanted to add further reasons why I feel the lack of usability (as they see it) is by design (which makes the UI good, not bad), and not because of laziness on behalf of camera manufacturers. I can see why you'd think I'm being misleading saying that camera UI's are good, also I still fully believe that a Canon/Pana/Fuji UI is substantially easier to navigate than a Sony one. This is only my personal experience though.
> And after you're edit, I'm going to add "condescending" to my description as well.
> As if the only reason anyone would disagree with you is because they are casuals
I don't mean to say the only reason is because they are casual. I meant to point out that because they want computational photography and also hate editing raws, that using a dedicated camera is unlikely going to be fun for them. If you hate two of the most important parts of a photographers workflow to ensure the creative ability to edit a photo exactly the way you want, then yeah, that likely means you're a "casual".
I can see how "bad UI" and "computational photography + editing RAW" was mixed up a bit though. I could have been clearer as to what specifically I was addressing, my apologies.
To clarify on "casuals" though, I don't think being casual is bad. I'm a casual gamer, a casual driver, a casual cook. That isn't a negative either. It's just the truth, I admit I'm not a pro who dedicates the time necessary in those fields.
When a casual person tells a pro "I hate the parts of your work that are necessary to do your job/hobby properly" and then further target their frustration at a UI that might be confusing to them by design (as its meant for a different type of user) seems like something other folks might find interesting. I see it as a very neat case of user targeting and persona analysis, similar to software.
Canon/Nikon/Fuji/Sony are targeting photographers who want a dedicated OS with cutting edge hardware. If the hardware is good, they'll tolerate a stripped down, minimal camera OS for the sake of speed. It's similar to why you don't often see people driving a Formula 1 car on their daily commute.
Something that really frustrated me with my camera purchase was how the hard interface was used to upsell higher priced models. I bought a D3500, the low end of that sensor line, and there's a lot of options I have to change through the menu. Things like ISO or timer delay (I also have to re-set this for every shot), things that typically are accessed through a dedicated or function button. The crux of it is that moving to a more expensive model with those buttons is not a strict upgrade: the camera is larger, heavier, and has worse battery life.
Yeah, price segmenting and protecting higher end models is unfortunately common with most technology companies. It becomes particularly obvious when folks install magic lantern (or similar) on their camera bodies and see what unlocked firmware will make use of on their camera.
I feel you, they definitely are out to make a profit and that definitely affects the value you get for your money (as opposed to what the hardware can actually do).
Right, but TFA is talking about the compact camera market. I agree with the comment that cameras haven't kept up with the ease of use and convenience of phones in any way.
The funny thing is that this translates over to Sony Xperia smartphone cameras too. On one hand, their custom camera app's UI feels like a Sony A7 variant. On the other, basic expected computational features such as night mode are missing.
> On the other, basic expected computational features such as night mode are missing.
Oh, how fast is progress in the world of technology.
I remember 6 years ago when google showed some prototypes of night photo from a smartphone using long expose. Meanwhile my Galaxy Note 4 made blurry unusable mess during the 14th of july nightly event I tried it at, while my gf DLSR were clear and great. Ah ah, smartphones will never be able to do that.
How 4 years ago Night Sight blew me away with their demonstration and almost made me go pixel.
How 3 years ago Samsung added a Night mode to my S9+ through a regular update and while the photo took a whole second to take the result was usually clean and crisp compared to the noisy mess on my previous Note 4, making it actually usable for static scene or portrait shot.
How the night mode on my Note 10 was genuinely great to the point it was just another mode as long as you avoid the usual night tricks like light sources.
How my new S22 Ultra for the first time passed my "smartphone will never really be good for night event shots" by taking picture during the 14th of july fireworks the quality of which I would scientifically classify as "pretty fucking great".
And now it's just a basic expected computational feature.
Sometime we forget how much progress is being made due to how incremental they all are, but damn, and that's just one feature on a piece of glass and plastic that's insanely powerful and filled with features in my pocket.
PS: the lack of Apple mention is merely because I'm not an Apple guy, I'm sure they had the same insane path
Among my devices I have a phone that unfolds into a tablet and has 3x optical, 0.6x optical, and 10x AI-assisted zoom that can take pictures like this (https://imgur.com/a/ITwdZSO) with a total 30x zoom from literally 20 miles away.
(Edit: for those curious, it's Samsung's "AI Super-resolution" tech, which I expect works similarly to AI upscaling tech e.g in Adobe's products. The phone I'm using in this example is the Fold 4)
Yeah when you sit down and think about it, it's nuts where we are today relative to last year, five years ago, and a decade ago. Especially considering 2019 still feels like yesterday because of COVID.
Not parent but the S22 Ultra has a 3x optical zoom, then up to 100x AI assisted that they call space zoom. No the same phone parent mention but it should answer your question: up to roughly 30x the photo is "real" in that the digital side is merely cleaning up noise. Above that you can clearly see a drop both in quality and in details, small errors that are actually there in reality start disapearing from the shot too.
Link to shots from a techradar article [1] (note that these are lossy compressed, even the 1x has artefact, so I put them only to compare between them / the zoom levels):
We can agree that the 100x shot is useless, and the 30x shot too except maybe in some specific situations, but the 10x shots are very much good. Perfect or worthy or a dedicated camera with a zoom ? No. But for every day use absolutely.
Probably Samsung's Z folds, one of the things Apple has so far no answer for and they are mighty usable as they are now. Ie split screen works very well.
I have S22 ultra and camera is even better there - 10x optical zoom properly sees much better than my eyes, so not only its great for catching kids running around moments without kids being tiny figures on each photo, but its usable ie if I want to check some remote street sign/name without walking 100m closer to read it myself.
Night cameras on top of the line phones these days sees much better than human eyes in the dark too - pics I snap during my night walks (one easy way how to clear my mind and actually do some light exercise) show so much more details than my eyes can resolve, once stopped me from falling down some nasty ravine when I saw just outlines of the terrain. All handheld in almost pitch dark.
Plus S22 ultra has this special mode it turns itself internally in when shooting moon on higher zooms (around 30x) - its more of a party trick since its just 1 subject, but within past few years it was the only time I could see (and produce in this case) literal jaw-dropping effect on folks around me. It looks nice, craters and seas in sharp details, also handheld (30x in the night, thats quite an achievement). They all rushed out with their latest xiaomis and apples just to snap the same, all ending up with small blurry white blobs and not much more.
The reason 10x shot look so great is because it uses the 50MP main AND 10MP telephoto lenses so it has enough details available to produce very clear shot.
I wonder how far we are from the phones running some sort of Stable Diffusion AI with the photo taken as an input to create various fixed and touched up scenes.
that is basically what happens, if you ever saw the raw image that the tiny sensor created it works look hideous, i guess it would just be adding a bit more to what's already happening
I upgraded from an iPhone XR to an iPhone 13 Pro. The differences are striking. Having multiple lenses and advanced optics for features like macro photography and zoom are great. Big advances in low light capability. I also got a great pic of fireworks on the 4th.
Looking back at pics from the iPhone 3GS is wild, totally different world.
This is why the iPhone is actually a good split here: The default camera App is bleeding edge on computational photography but then when you want the pro experience there is the app Halide which is just an incredibly well designed pro camera interface that would thrive on a Mirrorless body. I'm kinda shocked that no small camera manufacturer hasn't reached out to the team.
>"I can't justify spending time manually tweaking every RAW file when smartphones do it well 99% of the time."
As soon as one looks at photo on larger 4K monitor the difference is striking. And you do not even have to dick with raw files to see the difference. Plain JPEG coming out of my relatively ancient D800 puts best smartphone cam to shame. Size matters and full frame sensor vs one in smartphone are incomparable.
That is not to say that smartphone can not take decent photos and in many cases what is being photographed matters way more than the picture quality as long as it is not atrocious.
The issue is that the average person doesn't consume photos and videos on their large 4k monitors. That's an enthusiast niche at best. That alone a market sustaining a large multinational co does not make.
Sensibly, workflows optimize for the smartphone consumption use case.
And yes, that hurts as photographers who obsessed over sharpness and pixel-level fidelity since the invention of digital cameras, but that just doesn't seem to be where the zeitgeist is at anymore. People never really cared in the first place.
It's similar to how music producers obsess over whether a particular synth sound was made with analog gear or was a "cheap digital knockoff". The listener never cared in the first place. They just want to be moved wherever it is that they are, which happens to be on the phone 99% of the time in photography.
> The issue is that the average person doesn't consume photos and videos on their large 4k monitors.
If you want to further process the image you want the best quality input you can get. Think digitally zooming/reframing, or choosing from a bigger dynamic range to use the colors you prefer. In a lower quality input you might be stuck with whatever photo you took, while the high-quality input gives you more information to correct the picture, even if the end resolution ends up being the same.
P.S. Good printed photos also have more definition that most monitors (idk if 4k, but I believe comparable), for products like printed wedding photos.
I've noticed recently that a lot of smartphone cameras are doing a lot of heavy software upscaling and smoothing that erases details worse than simply low resolution. Everything is starting to look airbrushed. Having a real lens to do a lot of the optical heavy lifting and letting the sensor sense makes a huge difference if you really care about detail.
Yes, and this means that everything you shoot with (say) an iPhone tends to look the same. The camera has a very well curated set of opinions on color science etc that works really well for most people, but it enforces a look and once you try and wander out of that it stops being an effective instrument for looking at the world. (Yes, ProRAW helps a bit, but nothing beats real lenses on a big sensor for having your own control over image creation.)
That said, if you're just taking snaps to share with friends I don't see why you'd care about any of that : )
And being sold used for 700-ish. Heck, an ancient D700 beats any smartphone whatsoever at larger prints and screens. You do have to do some post-processing yourself, true. And you need proper optics, there is only so much you can crop out of 12 MP. Smartphones take great pictures, and I love the fact that it gets a lot more people into photography than back during the film days. making art more accessible can only be good. But let's not kid ourselves, the reason why smartphone photos do look so great is a ton of heavy automated post-processing in device. I'd prefer to have that same functionalities available as stand-alone post-processing software. Or not, I'm fine with darktable.
I think the problem is less about the number of megapixels and more about the size of the pixels (i.e. sensor) personally.
Smartphones simply cannot resolve the same level of detail that a proper camera can, regardless of how many MP of resolution they provide. Computational AI helps a bit, but...
I'd be nice to have normal-sized lens, but it's hard to justify lugging them when the rest of the camera is so primitive.
Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot (or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time) and have slower autofocus. May screw up exposure. It's harder to check the photos. Extra steps are needed to get the photos out of the camera. And it annoys me to no end that my dumb camera can't automatically adjust its clock and the timezone.
> Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot (or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time) and have slower autofocus.
This is definitely not true. Cameras may take slightly longer to start than a phone takes to turn its screen on, but the same amount of time (or quicker) to get to "shooting a photo." (Yes, even with shortcuts like double-tap the power button on a phone.)
The Ricoh GR III is ready to shoot in 0.7 seconds, and that includes extending a retracted lens barrel. And this is a pocketable camera.
Fast AF on a phone is mostly due to the fact that they usually use very wide-angle lenses. There's a wider range of acceptable focus. Newer lenses and cameras (i.e. the last 5-7 years) on a DSLR are still way faster.
You don't have to cart around a big-ass DSLR with multi-pound lenses. My pen-f (2016) runs circles around an iphone pro, and it's pretty small and light for a "real" camera (it can fit in my coat pocket).
> Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot (or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time) and have slower autofocus.
This is not true, especially if we're talking about DSLRs (as opposed to mirrorless). I used to have a Canon 40D. I never turned it off. It would stay "on" in the bag for however long I didn't use it. It consumed next to nothing when in "sleep" mode, but came out of it ready to shoot at the touch of a button. Autofocus was plenty fast, too. Ditto for a friend's Sony A700 (same vintage APS-C DSLR). I understand current mirrorless cameras have much better autofocus, even the mid-range ones.
Even my pen-f (mirrorless) wakes up or turns on much quicker than you can slide around your finger on an iphone. Autofocus isn't great in low-light, though.
You never touched a real camera, did you? AF speed depends on the lense, older ones with a screw drive AF are slower than newer ones where the AF motor is in the lens. Camera AF speed is incredible so, starting with mid-level cameras, let alone to speak of the more pro-grade stuff. And those cameras are ready to shoot faster from fully of than it takes to get them from holding them to your side to your eye. Definitely faster than getting a smartphone camera ready.
> Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot
What? If you set up a camera and a phone on the table and do a timed run from the moment of reaching out and grabbing it to having a well-focused image taken, the camera will win 100% of the time. Phones with their touch screen and laggy UI are incredibly slow in comparison.
> or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time
The exact opposite. A camera will last for months on a single charge if not heavily used.
> As soon as one looks at photo on larger 4K monitor the difference is striking.
Exactly. Or when you print them out.
On the wall here I have a printed photo about 4ft wide, taken from a cropped section of a photo (not even the full frame) and it looks stunning. And this isn't even from a newer pro camera, it was taken with a ~15 year old Nikon D40.
It's a shame how well-designed and fun-to-use Fujifilm cameras are (I've owned several and they are the only digital cameras I use, apart from my phone) but how garbage their mobile app is. From what I've seen, Leica is the only company with a usable first-party app.
This is a cultural issue: programming is a low status blue collar job in Japan, especially in existing industry. This is especially weird to me given the number of great Japanese computer scientists, but so it goes.
One exception is the gaming industry: Sony Computer Entertainment in particular treats its developers similarly to the US (Ken Kutaragi drove this) while the rest of Sony follows the standard Japanese model. Bandai and Nintendo are similar, though not quite as much as Sony, and Sega a bit more traditional.
I just except that if I buy a Sony camera, the software is going to suck. I have zero expectations, I know that sending photos to my phone is probably out of the question.
I think they’re actually trying to solve different issues.
Cameras are designed to capture & store the light in a way we can interpret later. They intentionally weren’t designed to edit or interpret the light and make corrections.
Smart phones automatically do interpret and “correct” images. This can lead to artificially created artifacts in the image files. Professional photographers will often prefer the raw because they can apply their own edits without said artifacts.
Now sure, camera photos are good for 99% of people, 99% of the time. BUT because the software on cameras were never designed to do those corrections, they just don’t. This makes night images worse, unless you decrease shutter speed.
On a side note, it’s this very fact that I find it difficult to accept cell phone footage as video evidence. Particularly, if you’re looking at fine detail, as the filters often modify / generate the fine detail.
> Cameras are designed to capture & store the light in a way we can interpret later. They intentionally weren’t designed to edit or interpret the light and make corrections.
That's one thing, but still there are many features of the camera firmware that people want to have, and cameras failed to deliver. One of such thing was apps - Sony provided few in some of their camera, but next model removed them, because they couldn't implement that in a model-agnostic way. They just don't get software.
Depends on the market segment. People wanting apps on their cameras have very capabale smartphones now. People who want cameras, and not phones or computers one can use to take pictures with, have highly capable cameras without apps because they don't need nor want those software on camera. And guess what, photography is more popular than ever, and everyone is happy, including camera makers it seems.
>On a side note, it’s this very fact that I find it difficult to accept cell phone footage as video evidence. Particularly, if you’re looking at fine detail, as the filters often modify / generate the fine detail.
Are there examples of this? The only example I can think of was an accusation a while ago that huawei phones were compositing a stock photo of the moon when taking moon pictures with their phones. They denied the accusation and it wasn't really clear whether it was actually happening or not.
That Dallas plane crash recently had a new cell phone video surface where it is clear that the fighter started diving, but what is not clear is if there is a drone he was trying to avoid; and it's very possible that the apparent drone could also be a video artifact.
And upscaling tools/etc introduce their own information, and may cause it to make something appear to be there that is actually just compression noise.
You’re right that cameras never adapted to a world where users want cars, not faster horses.
But I think you may be playing a bit loose with the ideas of evidence and details. Yes, smartphones “invent” details, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where those changes produce false evidence. You might find details of leaves rendered as watercolor brushstrokes; you won’t find a suspect inserted into a scene.
And remember that film annd magnetic tape cameras also invent details. All of that film grain that we find artistic is not really there. Should we also question what we see on those videos because they aren’t pixel-perfect?
1) Fact that whereas camera technology in smartphones has & is continuing to develop rapidly (computational photography as mentioned is latest major jump), it has largely stagnated within the mid-low tier camera market. Makes sense Panasonic is exiting the market, and other major players like Sony and Fujifilm focusing on the high end.
2) Vast majority users value convenience and ecosystem integration over pure photo quality. In most cases the latest smartphone take "good enough" photographs, so who wants to fiddle with having to transfer images from your standalone camera to your photo before sharing on social media? As the adage goes, "the best camera is the one you have on hand".
Personally I'd love to see something like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom or Nokia Lumia 808/1020 being revitalized - a camera-first smartphone. How long before Apple or Google enter the DLSR or mirrorless market? Seems inevitable given the large investments both companies already make in smartphone camera photography.
It's not a problem with camera manufacturers, it's a problem with hardware companies.
Even chip vendors, who you would would think understand the importance of software, will de-prioritize their software side.
I wonder if it's a sort of macho thing; anyone can learn to write software, but not everyone can get an EE degree.
It also could be that the idea of incremental releases doesn't really exist on the hardware side. Hardware, because it's physical, requires a coordinated release. Then you do the next revision once the inventory gets low. The idea that you can ship on a flexible schedule is alien to the hardware side.
please contain this to twitter. What does "macho" have to do with comparing the relative difficulty of two things and attaching status to the most difficult?
Digital cameras is ALL about post processing. I used to have Minolta, Panasonic, Sony, and Canon point and shoots. No matter what, Canon pictures always come out much better out of the camera even if it has inferior lens, sensor, or is much older. Basically all sensors of Sony now, so the magic is all about the processing. The rest is really up to the photographer, that is where the art is.
I don't understand why phone manufacturers don't just get into the camera business, then. They certainly all seem to love making phones that brag about having large sensors and fancy (tiny) lenses... so why not just go one step further and make a "phone" that only runs a camera app, with a lens mount rather than a fixed lens, hardware mode switches, and a tripod screw mount?
The camera market small, quite crowded (before Sony kind of created the mirrorless market the only serious contenders were Nikon and Canon, now you got Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji and Panasonic), smartphones already killed the entry level and compact camera markets and the tech is quite different from smartphone cameras.
Phone cameras don't have sensors or optics at a quality comparable to basic point and shoots. They have to fit into a tiny space and performance is necessarily compromised. They're making it all up on software processing.
Based on this thread and my own corroborating experiences, this feels like a field ripe for harvest—if anyone sold a camera with DSLR-grade optics and smartphone-grade usability and computational abilities, they'd be rich! For those in the know, what makes this more difficult than it seems? Why has nobody done this yet and what challenges are standing in the way?
People needing and wanting DSLR grade optics, or mirroless as optics are more less the same thing, don't want or need shiny clicky smartphone apps. They need and want a professional tool that produces the least edited picture possible for post-processing later on. I wouldn't touch a camera that runs on Android with feet pole.
Yeah well, you're right, but some new features would be welcome, like, for instance, the ability to immediately send images out of the camera. Yet even with recent DSLRs and mirrorless top-end cameras it's still a hassle.
I recently made a photobooth from an old Canon DSLR and a rPi running gphoto: a script takes the images out of the camera and posts them on a server, and people can see them in almost real time.
It's really great, but it would be even better if it was all done in camera.
This. I'm going to do any editing on my PC, not the picture-taker. Far bigger screen, far better control.
The brains I want on the camera are for things that actually involve taking the shot. Give me intelligent capture of images for stacking. That entails two things:
1) HDR exposure. Point the camera at something, select HDR. It takes the exposure and examines the frame for any pixels near the extremes of the sensor. If there are any pixels near the top it reshoots exactly the same shot but with a shorter exposure time. Repeat until there are no really bright pixels. On the other end, if there are any really dim pixels reshoot with a slower exposure, repeat as needed.
2) Focus stacking. Manual focus, pick a point. Pick another point. The camera shoots a sequence of exposures moving the focus between the two points.
Camera manufacturers are very capabale of making hardware, incl. optics, that run sophisticated embedded software to take pictures. For editing, go to Adobe or one of the alternatives. Different use cases, different products, different markets. And not everything in the world can be solved by some consumer grade app.
Professional photographers require good reliable connectivity. Nikon cameras are extremely clunky in this regard.
Similarly, their menu system is atrocious. I am not saying this as somebody who looked at a camera once and said "this is too hard". I ran a photo business from 2008 to 2018, read all the manuals intimately and worked with Nikon cameras daily, and came to it from techie nerd perspective and knew what every button option and mode does in intricate detail.
"Great hardware, horrible software" is well understood state of camera business last 2 decades.
I now have two young kids. I have 4 dslr and two mirrorless cameras at home... And take kids photos with my cell - because it's convenient accessible and fast to transmit. Why can't I have an efficient sharing work flow with my $3000 camera? Because they make sucky closed systems and refuse to change open or learn.
I mostly agree. I have three DSLRs and several very high-end lenses, but I take way more photos of my kids with my phone than with the DSLRs. The workflow for getting shots out of the phone is just so much better than the cameras, and the phone is always with me.
This isn’t an insurmountable problem. Some Nikon camera bodies have Wi-Fi. If they cared to they could make it much much easier to get photos off and process them. It’s just not a focus of theirs.
Yeah, I've got connectivity--and I never use it. I'm not shooting with a PC nearby, I'm bringing home a camera full of shots. And it's *far* faster to pop the card in my PC than transmit them.
Studio photographers need connectivity, everyone else needs two fast storage card slots. And your comment is honestly the first time I hear anybody claim Nikons menu system is "bad", especially with all those custom menus and buttons one can set-up to automated basically everything.
I never worked with Sony or Canon, so I cannot say how that compares.
>>Studio photographers need connectivity, everyone else needs two fast storage card slots.
That is, at best, myopic.
Sports photographers need fast connectivity far more than studio photographers. Their whole business is to take, select, and send shots out as fast as possible.
News coverage needs fast connectivity.
Think even wedding photography - the ability to share photos to social networks right after ceremony, or display the couple shots during dinner is a professional USP. Instead, I'm juggling card reader, with my "two fast cards" and laptop and lightroom on my lap during speeches.
Just about every type of photography, professional or consumer, benefits from fast and easy connectivity.
>>And your comment is honestly the first time I hear anybody claim Nikons menu system is "bad"
Possible. we simply have different colleagues and frequent different forums then :).
Their menu system is powerful but poorly designed. Why are there two different types of setting banks? Why aren't there hardware buttons to select them? Why is some stuff unDer shooting but other under 6 layers of custom setting menu? Which is different than setup menu? Why is AF ON setup not under "controls"? And myriad other idiosyncracies.
Just because you're used to it (as am I!) does not make it good.
Damn, forgot about sports... Funny so that theose pros seem to be really happy with their 6k camera bodies paired with 10k+ optics, one would assume that if connectivity would be a killer feature, like AF back when Canon ate the sports market from Nikon, someone between Nikon, Canon, Sony or Fuji would implement it. The money is definitely there.
I 100% agree with that assumption. But sport pro photographers I follow haven't stopped complaining about connectivity and work flow for a decade (while being as you say happy with hardware and optics). Granted it's a small sample, as sport photography isn't my thing. :-/
And again, for myself, I'm in a "shut up and take my money" for camera that would allow me to seemlessly capture and share photography. As you say, that's money in the table. And I'm not alone in my group of friends and colleagues.
My conclusion is the exact opposite. Cellphone cameras are so incredibly slow (measuring time from moment of picking up phone to photo having being taken) that I can't imagine using it for any kid photos since the phtographable moment usually lasts a few seconds, they aren't posing.
I keep my older Nikon DSLR cameras around the house so one is usually within easy reach so I can snap a photo in less than a second when a cute kid moment is happening.
As to the Nikon menus, atrocious is not a word I could use. Sure it's always possible to nitpick something I'd do differently but they work just fine. More importantly, after initial setup it's not something I use much since everything is controlled by the physical buttons and that's the overwhelming win of a DSLR over a phone (and photo quality of course).
I think we likely have a large area of agreement - in addition to perhaps slightly different personal preferences and use cases :)
My Nikon cameras are setup the way I like them, so everything I need is indeed reachable by physical buttons. This is good - as I said, their menu is powerful. But! When I get a new Nikon camera, despite 15 years of experience... it's a pain to set it up how I want it, and I still chase settings around the menus. So I deem them powerful, but poorly designed.
As to kids photos - it's all down to individual use cases, so lots of room for variation. For myself though, even though like yourself I literally have a DSLR ready to go on the shelf in the family room and on the TV stand in the living room... time to turn on cell and take a photo is far lower/faster then the time to grab the camera and shoot. Add to that, the time to then share that photo is literally 10 seconds via phone, vs realistically days to weeks via camera (by the time I bother taking the card out to the office, transferring photos, ingesting them, processing them, exporting, and then sharing). In majority of cases, DSLR would've taken a higher quality photos. In majority of cases, it doesn't matter.
And then there are all the other cases - playing in backyard, going for a walk, run, adventure, guests, whatever. Phone is there, good enough (hasn't always been the case! In the Note 8 / S8 time, only a few years ago, phones were not good enough, and phones weren't fast enough - now they are! I don't need to log in or face scan the phone, there's a shortcut and a snappy app and fast focus), and it shares so quickly! That sharing is really the winning factor and why I'm peeved expensive cameras don't make it easy to share.
In most scenarios, I get far better pictures with my Canon DSLR than with my iPhone, yet most of my pictures for the past few years have been taken with my iPhone.
But the big difference, for me, is, most of those pictures are quick pictures that I almost certainly never would have taken with my DSLR camera. I've got thousands of family pictures done on my phone that otherwise probably wouldn't have been taken at all.
When I'm going somewhere or doing something that I know I deliberately want to have pictures of? I still haul around the DSLR. When I want pictures I could only get with a super-telephoto or ultra-wide lens? I still haul around the DSLR.
I do feel that my iPhone has replaced any need for a cheap "compact camera", but I rarely used one after getting my (D)SLR cameras anyway. But I'm not sure that my iPhone has really taken away that much usage share from my DSLR. I just use it to take pictures that I wouldn't have gotten at all otherwise, which has turned out to be quite a few.
DSLR powered up has a time to shot similar to phone already on the camera screen.
Either is adequate for casual photography.
We don't have any cute kids, but I hike and wildlife shows up now and then. I hike with a bridge camera, not because it's any faster or more convenient than my phone, but because of the lens. I have an older flagship phone, I would say the image quality is as good, but I have yet to get a wildlife shot with it due to the lack of zoom range.
My general experience is the harder the shot the more camera you need.
> DSLR powered up has a time to shot similar to phone already on the camera screen.
But that's not a realistic comparison since the phone is almost certainly not on the camera screen if I wasn't expecting to take a photo and the phone is just sitting there on the table (or worse, pocket).
It is a realistic comparison--both are fast from their ready states but the reality is neither is likely in their ready state when you have the cute kid moment.
No, that was my point. A DSLR is always in the ready state. The only way it couldn't be ready is if it was turned off, but there is no reason to ever turn it off.
This has nothing to do with editing. Modern smartphones combine multiple pictures for each picture you take, and have very sophisticated demosaicing, noise reduction and color grading. No app needed.
I prefer manual buttons when taking photos the traditional way. Too many digital screens these days deviate from a good solid device that does a few things really well.
I've sworn off Sony cameras after paying ~$1500 for a NEX-6 and having them abandon the firmware at version 1.03, 18 months after the camera was released.
I don't even remotely understand how that's possible. Did they just contract all of the work out?
I never had a firmware upgrade for any of the compact digital cameras (Canon) I had between ~ 1998 and 2012. I did not even think that this should exist, they worked well from the beginning.
There's also an issue with camera UI that phones managed to largely bypass. I remember getting a Canon t4i with a touch screen. The touch interface was actually pretty decent and this was probably ~10 years ago! But a lot of "camera people" hated it. They'd complain that it would inevitably lead to smudges on the screen and they wanted physical controls instead.
So who do you sell a dedicated camera to? A new UI will largely alienate the small market that still exists. The old UI guarantees an unappealing product for the smartphone user.
Ultimately all interfaces have to be easily navigable with buttons and this has consequences.
Wifi and Bluetooth... Yeah. It's not good on DSLRs either. My Pentax K1 has WiFi option, and, otherwise being an excellent camera in terms of imaging quality, build, ergonomics, good UI, it has somehow unreliable and cumbersome wifi - hard to set up and the mobile app is average at best. As if different people designed the wifi subsystem.
And interestingly my Tascam 44dw (not a camera, but sound recorder) has also abysmal wifi. Low range, unreliable and seems to be using single TCP connection for sending realtime data which suffers from head-of-line blocking. As if noone there heard about UDP.
Sony has a stupid update app as well, but Nikon and Pentax? Download a firmware file, put it on the root of the SD card, and boot itin a particular way or goto some menu and runu the update. Its a very 90's process but easy and simple compared to Olympus and Sony.
My Canon has locked up hard only once in half a decade of hard use, generating ~8TB of images in adverse conditions. It is sometimes left turned on for months at a time. I sometimes accidentally do terrible things with the power switch and SD card. Lenses are attached/removed without a care in the world. I've never seen a flaw in the function of menus or the corruption of a single image.
I cannot state the same for almost any other software product. I can use it like a tool, not like a computer. That's a sign of good software.
It's both. If pro cameras (or even point and shoot) had really bad software, we would see corrupted files all the time, unreadable media, exposure completely off, weird bugs in battery monitoring or power consumption, etc.
Smartphones have constant "updates" and yearly new OSes, and we think it's marvelous if a two year old phone still functions. Yet digital cameras from 15 years ago still work fine with exactly zero update.
Robustness and dependability are important features. In-the-box HDR is cute but it matters less.
Nikon do very well with the Z series. I have a Z50 and it's closer to smartphone than DLSR. BT and WiFi work, decent quality viewfinder and articulated multi-touch screen. Also with the 16-50 lens it still goes in your pocket but is a proper camera.
I disagree with smartphone quality. I have what could be considered a close to best of breed in quality iPhone 13 Pro and it's crap. It's a 2009 DSLR with three crap prime lenses stuck to it. It's mostly usable if you shoot ProRAW with it but the processed images (HEIC/JPEG) are really quite fucked up.
It's so bizarre that camera manufacturers never figured out that the camera should be treated primarily as a smartphone peripheral. When I take a picture on the compact camera it should automatically sync to the smart phone camera roll with geotagging. All of the camera's settings and shutter should be controllable through a smartphone app. This lack of integration was a real failure of vision by camera manufacturers.
In case of DSLRs, and their mirrorless offspring, the purpose and the target audience's need is to capture light as good as possible, using a combination of precision electronics, optics and mechanics, to be edited later. They threw in some basic editing functionalities, various image formats and what not, but those are not mission critical.
Smartphones are lacking the optics, sensors and some other things a real camera has. As a result, they are still a far cry from replacing mid-level and up cameras. Smartphones, as the article points out, are perfectly sufficient for the compact and point-and-shoot market, and as a result killed it / took it over.
And heck, the ergonomics of Nikon blow any smartphone / app way of setting up a camera out of the water ever since before Nikon got serious about DSLRs.
The technology lifecycles haven't lined up. 10-15 years ago there were phenomenal DSLRs coming out, and honestly there weren't any good enough smartphones worth connecting them to. The iPhone App Store was in its infancy (it's only 14 years old); there weren't / still aren't any good, widespread standards for fast, personal-area-network data transfers of photos. Smartphones didn't have a lot of memory either: the iPhone 4 baseline model in 2010 ran with 4 GB, and the top of the line was 32 GB, with no slots for memory swapping - not something you can sync a lot of photos to at all.
I don't think, 10 years ago, camera manufacturers could've adopted a meaningful integration strategy. They could perhaps have entered the fray as Android phone makers and try to solve it, but it would've been a bigger jump than just integrating.
My 2016 Olympus does this, too. The controls are surprisingly good (you get cable-less bulb mode), and you can even get the live image on the phone while shooting. There is some lag, though, so it won't work for moving subjects.
Sounds like you're complaining about a lack of vision because they couldn't mix technologies from different years, or have the budget to make a phone as well as a camera...
But it does seem to be a clever idea, I'm imagining a phone that has surface contacts on its back, and a Go-Pro-sized camera module that you can attach to the phone (with precise magnets, so the surface contacts on both devices would connect both devices electronically as well) and be recognized as a peripheral for the phone.
But I guess if already have a pro camera, you don't want to need to slap your phone on it to get it to work.
That exists, the Sony QX100. Nobody bought it because it’s not quite as good as a real camera and it’s something you have to remember to bring with you.
The whole lag and connection issue shown in the video is probably why grandparent comment's idea hasn't taken off. Since no phones have surface contacts, maybe if the lens had a USB-C connection it'd be a lot better (but no closed-garden iPhone support, obviously).
I agree on all points with my sony a7. Especially the Bluetooth connectivity was a great start but no updates and constantly dropping connections make it look laughable in 2022.
I guess there is a perception that it is like hardware « once its out its sold and we don’t care about it ».
At this stage I am seriously wondering if I will ever replace my camera with a new one or just be happy with a new smartphone. Maybe the camera will just stay a a sidehobby.
and lets talk about how increasingly out of touch photographers are about all of that!
A whole decade of people in enthusiast photography communities collectively playing devil’s advocate “why do you want that feature, whats a UI have to do with taking a photo, I never understood the point of a Live Photo, bluetooth? Thats what tethering and an external contraption is for….”
meanwhile the rest of the world just turned around and walked away
I have a mirrorless camera that I still use regularly. Three events in the last year have called my attention:
* While I was taking pictures at night, two teenagers came to me and asked me to take a picture of them. Apparently one of them wanted to know what it would look like, since the fact that I had a camera clearly indicated that I knew what I was doing (it didn't). I didn't have the heart to tell him that it would look pretty much the same as the phone he definitely had in his pocket, but luckily he gave me a wrong Instagram address so that problem solved itself.
* On that same night, one guy started yelling at me (pushing his head against mine) because he thought I had taken a picture of his car.
* I was interviewed in a popular tourist destination, and the interviewer explicitly asked me about why I had a camera instead of a phone.
Depends on the camera and other such features. But you're right that it's not a given.
> often wrong timestamps
I'm confused by this. I suppose if you leave your camera off for years at a time, have dead batteries and don't bother checking it - then sure. But in general the RTC on cameras is very good and not an issue. Even if it clock drifts by a minute or two, does it really make a difference?
> slow startup time
Incorrect with modern cameras. If I have both my Nikon in my hand and my phone - I can take a picture with the Nikon WAY faster and more reliable than my iPhone. The Nikon can go from off to taking a picture in half a second. The phone you need to press the camera button on the lock screen for a full second before the camera app even launches. Then it takes it a little time to launch the app and warm up the camera.
Are either slow or problematic? No. But the Nikon is way more reliable, sometimes the iphone just derps out.
> useless tiny batteries
Again, I suppose it depends on the camera. My Nikon is rated for a thousand shots a battery, I think? Even my smallest and oldest handheld is rated for 300 shots a battery. Unless you're going way crazy, that is a lot of photos in a single day. It'd run down your iPhone quite significantly as well.
One area that is a big difference overall... Video.
Slow startup times really shouldn’t be an issue in this decade. This is something that was an issue maybe in the early 2000s.
You will generally be able to turn on the camera more quickly than you can navigate to the camera app. (Physical switch plus sub one second time to turn on).
On Android phones (maybe iphones too? no clue on that) you can set a double-press of the power button to launch any app you want, so if you turn it to open the camera then you can launch directly into the camera without even needing to unlock the phone.
Doesn’t matter. That‘s just equivalent to the physical switch in time needed (maybe even slower, a double press does require more dexterity) and startup times on phone cameras certainly aren’t faster than dedicated cameras. My iPhone 12 Pro takes about a half second to a second until it‘s ready to take a shot.
My mirrorless camera isn't new, but not early 2000s either (GX1, released 2012). It takes about 10 seconds to first photo from off. My Android phone can take pictures without unlocking it, and I've repurposed the PTT button to open the camera app. I can take my phone out of my pocket, take a picture, and put it back in my pocket faster than my camera can turn on.
Yeah, navigating to the camera app doesn’t take long. But flipping a physical switch also doesn’t and startup times of both after the switch is flipped / app is started are about equal.
So: with my EVIL camera I also can be taking a photo about as fast as I can raise the camera.
A camera is far faster in "startup time" (there's nothing to start up, just press the shutter to take a photo). And a DSLR will outlast battery life of a phone at least 100x.
No, the DSLRs can be left permanently on. It consumes nearly no battery in that state (a single charge will last many months) and yet it's always ready to take a photo as fast as you can grab it.
If you're using something with a protruding lens, people have always been suspicious and/or thought you were some sort of professional. Back in 2008 I was using a Nikon D70 and generally just roamed my area of the world taking pictures to be uploaded to Wikipedia.
I had building security guards question me when I took a picture of their building (From the sidewalk).
I had mall security (outdoor mall) demand I cease and desist and get a permit.
I had transit workers threaten to call the police on me, even though photography is legal on public transit AND explicitly allowed in that particular transit agencies policies.
In 2008 the iPhone (original) was just out and had potato for camera, so everyone was still using SLR's and "normal cameras". But yet... people still got upset.
> In 2008 the iPhone (original) was just out and had potato for camera, so everyone was still using SLR's and "normal cameras". But yet... people still got upset.
Yes. It seems the social memory of this is being lost, but I heard LOTS of stories back then of people getting upset at someone with a camera. And also earlier, before smartphones even existed. The idea that it's the existence of smartphones that's made people defensive about cameras seems to be merely plausible but not actually true.
My biggest issue (besides lugging away one extra thing on trips) was that often pictures will just sit in camera until I take time to get them out and thenput them in NAS/Cloud & then share that location with wife and then have a round about forgotten passwords on her phone/tablet. Then she would be able to post those photos. With smartphones they are there in clould already, I just need to make a shared album and add everybody. and yes cameras have started doing this now but its all done so poorly that its almost same amount of effort. Nope!
> With smartphones they are there in clould already
What? I would never trust my photos to automatically go to some cloud storage. Who knows who would have access to them?
Instead I download the photos from all the family phones on a regular basis. I copy them to an external drive in my house. Then they backed up to a cloud service, but they are encrypted before they are backed up and the cloud service is only a backup. We can't actually see the photos on that cloud service. It is just fire protection (and yes, I have pulled the photos and videos back down from the cloud service to make sure it is backing them up correctly).
Just use Nextcloud then, your own drives on your home, but no risk of losing pictures if your phone is lost/stolen/broken between backups. Can also automate the encrypted offsite thing.
I have more time than money. My way is more manual, but doesn’t cost anything (beyond the backup cost, which is fairly cheap). There were some free providers for home users, but the amounts were way too low. I currently have 2.5 Terabytes of photos and videos. The free providers were all less than 10gb. Laughably low.
While I love my mirrorless, the ease of "exit" is definitely something that pulled me away from them for quite a while. But times have changes. There are accessory units like the Arsenal Camera Assistant that give you wifi access to the camera. Also a lot new cameras (like my new Nikon) have wifi built in.
Can take photos with the Nikon and beam them to my phone fairly quickly. Is it as quick and seamless as using the iPhone directly? Nope. But good enough that I'm ok with it now. It also gives me access to typically a much higher quality photo that I can crop way farther than I can with the iPhone.
i had a dude get aggressive with me recently when i was using an actual camera. he wasn't even in the frame but he thought i was taking a picture of him. made me realize how abnormal it is these days. now i can just take a picture with my phone and people won't care?
Probably wiped out the gps market also. My map supplier for my phone gave up and I assume it was from trying to compete with google maps. Was a loss for me as the maps worked offline…. “Good enough” and only one thing to remember.
Nailed the pager, voice recorder and related markets as well.
Where X has been things like keyboard, screen, disk drives, modem (now network adapter), speakers, microphone. All were originally separate devices. For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones, but the basic insight that these things just voraciously absorb peripheral and related functions is still just as true.
> For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones
Recently, I've been wondering why the name "phone" has stuck around for a device that has evolved with many more features than that of a telephone. I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about the history of these technologies, but I just find it fascinating that we've kept this identification to something that really provides so many core utilities. I'm curious to know more about the historical implications you alluded to.
Alternatively (and maybe quite a stretch), could I argue that our smartphones are just providing telecommunications to other services, namely, the APIs that they interact with to serve us things like GPS functionality, audio, etc., hence the name "phone"?
Agreed. From a marketing perspective, it makes sense Apple called it a phone. People already had mobile phones on them so you had nothing to lose with the switch. Had they positioned it as a PDA¹ it might’ve been seen as an extra unnecessary device for business people. They’d need to waste effort assuring people it made calls and sent SMS messages so it could be used instead of the phone. An improvement to your current device is an easier sell than a replacement.
Phones connect us to people. Landline, cellphone or smartphone, they connect us. The underlying technology is not as important, nor the additional features.
You use the phone to talk, chat, post, share, get directions to see other people, take photos of people, etc.
It has to do with how nontechnical people perceived things pre-smartphone.
To technical folks, a computer is a device with a CPU that can process data and make decisions based on that data. So smartphones are computers.
To nontechnical folks before the late 2000s, a computer was a device that ran Windows or macOS with a screen and keyboard, and you use it to do spreadsheets, word processing, and such. A phone was a device that connected you to your social world via voice and later text communications. So when smartphones emerged, to nontechnical folks they looked and behaved more like phones -- social connectors -- than like computers, or information crunchers. So they got called phones.
It's like how the ancient Hebrews called whales and dolphins fish, despite those animals being classified as mammals under modern taxonomy. The Hebrews were going by how the animals looked and behaved and how people related to them, rather than genetic inheritance
> they looked and behaved more like phones -- social connectors -- than like computers, or information crunchers. So they got called phones.
They were marketed as a replacement and upgrade for the non-smart mobile phone you already had in your pocket. People had already adopted wireless devices that could make calls, send texts, play games and even access the internet in limited ways and those devices were called phones.
Its always fun to comment on singularity comments sounding like a bot that went of the rails and lost context and does not know how to end a sentence and trys to keep the convertsation going within one sentence to not experience existential dread of dying at the end of a sentence.
I don't think we've fully appreciated yet that "phones" are really the true embodiment of the original Personal Digital Assistant, i.e. an external brain that will augment yours in any circumstance.
Any portable device has been (or will soon be) replaced by "phones".
Yes, I'm constantly referring to my "phone" as my "brain's third hemisphere". It makes people chuckle but no one stops at that joke. It's completely "in the culture".
My late friend Hugh Daniel used to refer to his Bihn's backpack as his "LSD", for "Life Support Device". Like when we were leaving the house he'd shout "Oh no, I forgot my LSD! I'll be right back!" then run back in and fetch his backpack.
But it's okay, because of their multiple-tenancy practices, they only nuked the US offices, and a remote engineer noticed that the CI servers were down. He then drove halfway through the country to crawl through radioactive waste, just so he could plug back in the ethernet cable.
All these VR efforts are anticipating hardware advancements that make AR/VR glasses that are similar in size and form to sunglasses. I can't believe any of these companies (Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo, Facebook, et c.) genuinely think that AR on a phone/handheld or big ol' VR goggles are going to take off, especially since both aren't exactly new and both remain very niche—but solve that hardware problem, and those glasses will, 100% for-sure, be the next "smartphone" in terms of changing the role of computing in our lives, and any company not ready for it risks being left behind.
Or maybe it's the other way around - the less people leave home, the more uncomfortable they'll feel outside of it, and the more they'll want some piece of tech to assist them. If you're spending most of your time in a virtual reality where, say, a map can be conjured with a simple gesture, you'd want something approximating that IRL, no?
I'm on the other side. My father used a Garmin GPS in his vehicle for 15+ years.
The phone is a much better experience! Every time he had yet another issue, I wanted to be like "just use your phone!"
- Maps are out of date: Garmin required manual wired updates, Google Maps was always up to date
- Traffic costs: Garmin charged $10/mo for traffic data, Google Maps did it free
- Screen quality: Even in the early 2010's, smartphone screens were bigger and clearer than most car GPS units
- Attraction data: Google's was way more up to date than Garmin's third party attraction data, and Google quickly added multi-stop trips, business hours, busy-level of destination, etc
- Data Entry/voice: Google's voice entry and on screen keyboard were way better than Garmin
I was so happy when he got rid of that GPS and I finally got to stop supporting it.
With car play and android equivalent it’s so much better than a standalone device for navigating.
I do have a garmin watch with offline topographical and trail maps for hiking off the grid but I only use that a few times a year. I could probably get those on a phone too
Organic Maps is a very good and low resource offline mapping app that includes trails, point to point elevation mapping, and very low storage footprint. All built on top of OpenStreetMap. Definitely recommend for camping/travelling etc where you might be out of service for days.
Wiped out most of the pocket-sized handheld gaming market too. Not because phones are better at gaming, but they're "good enough" entertainment with social media, streaming, music, etc.
They do run Linux, so sometimes new games can be made to work on them, like the new TMNT Shredder's Revenge: https://youtu.be/DpVwO8Z8z-E . And some newer devices can run Android for new games there.
I really really wish that apple / google / samsung came out with official hardware game pads that snapped to the phones and had direct support at the os level for game developers to easily support. We're missing out on so many good handheld experiences by being limited to touch only.
USB is good enough for real-time music on iOS and many Android phones. If you want to already snap the controller to the phone, adding a plug isn't much trouble. And some phones still have the 3.5mm jack.
At least the Android version has external USB-C port that could fit an adapter. The specs say only that you can charge through it, it would be nice to know if it's really limited to charging or fully functional.
It is not functional and is power only. Source: I returned mine after being incredibly annoyed by the whole experience because of audio lag. I tried the Razer low-latency earbuds but the latency is still annoyingly high.
I can only imagine the product manager telling HW designers that nobody cares about audio latency, everyone uses Bluetooth anyway and damn this thing must be cheaper and ready for production yesterday.
I'm pretty sure Apple has proper gamepad support for iOS. Remember Made for iPhone? It's needed with their Apple TV that pretty much runs iOS.
But controller support in games is still niche because most people just aren't going to do it. I believe Apple enforces it for their Apple Arcade games, because those have to run on Apple TV too, but outside of that there just isn't much interest.
Did it? The Nintendo Switch sold 114 million units since its release in 2017 [0]. The original Gameboy (a reasonable guess as the most popular handheld gaming device of all time) sold 118 million units [1] in 15 years.
Very different size. You could argue that switch/steamdeck-sized devices have replaced gameboy/ngage/psp-like devices. However, phones seem like the much closer competition -> none of Nintendo, sony or MS even tried to make this form factor anymore
Phones are better at gaming. You can emulate pocket sized handheld gaming devices as well. Perhaps you are only talking about popular games like Candy Crush and the such but there are a lot of heavyweight titles released for mobile platforms as well.
The hardware is obviously better with how often people replace the phones, but ability to target same few interfaces and not have to test on few dozen of phones to make game run well overall leads to better games.
> but there are a lot of heavyweight titles released for mobile platforms as well.
...like ? Every single mobile game that I found "good" usually launched on other platforms too.
I was more talking around the time of the 3ds and Vita release dates. That was about when smartphones started to take off and took out the handheld gaming market. You can see it in the sales, the 3ds did half the lifetime sales of the DS. And then there was the Vita.
Hit the same thing in China. I have free cellular data while there--but at a trickle. Maps were painful and the VPN needed to access Google Maps also added it's own headaches because of the spotty connection causing repeated reconnects.
I don't know, I have more flashlights now that smartphones are available.
Thanks to LEDs, flashlights are now cheaper, brighter and last longer than ever. Even cheap flashlights are better and more convenient than phones at lighting. Because they are cheap and small, you can have one in every place you might need it. And the slightly more expensive ones can be powerful enough as a substitue to mains powered light bulbs for places like garages and storerooms. Also, smartphones don't replace headlamps.
So maybe some people don't get a flashlight because they already have one on their phones, but some people (like me) actually buy more, because they are so cheap and effective.
Adding to this, phones are really awkward and expensive flashlights. I run caseless on my phone and you wont find my phone on me when working on a car if I have someone with me, but you'll find an LED flashlight in my toolbox.
Its a common thing with multitools, lots of uses, not great at any of them.
At the very least drove it into a niche, same as with GPS devices (Garmin still makes devices for triathletes, boats and packs of dogs), and cameras. Flashlights just have to be tacticool now, market's flourishing.
You can still buy alarm clocks too, even though your phone has one, just like it has a flashlight. Cheap alarm clocks are so cheap that only a slight benefit like always having it on your shelf is enough of a reason to buy one. (Expensive ones are decorations and not mainly bought in order to tell time.)
I still prefer a real watch – taking a peek at my wrist is easier than having to dig my phone out of my pocket, flipping open the lid of the case and turning it on. That's true both in summer (just need to lift my wrist) and winter, too (I might have to dig my watch out from underneath my jacket and gloves, but to take out my phone I'd have to take off my gloves, too, so still a more cumbersome procedure.)
Plus lock screen clocks rarely (never?) seem to come with a seconds display (even inside the full clock app I still need to flip a settings switch in order to turn the seconds display on) – while I don't necessarily need actual seconds accuracy that much, knowing whether it is xx:xx:05 or xx:xx:55 certainly does make a difference when I need to catch a train/tram/bus/… and am cutting it fine once again.
Agree alarm clocks are cheap, but there's a very good reason to have one. Single use devices remove another area of phone dependence. Switching from waking up to phone alarm to dedicated clock alarm has been a huge help for me. It allows me to charge my phone in another room and create at least one no-phone zone in the house.
There was a silly horror movie called Crawl that came out a few years back. It's about killer alligators during a hurricane in Florida.
The least-believable part of this very silly movie was that, at the beginning, the main guy in it left his cell phone upstairs when he went to the dark basement to work on something in the house (pipes? I don't remember), which ended up causing the rest of the movie to happen. Of course he'd have taken it with him, for the flashlight if nothing else (and there are lots of other aspects of a smartphone that are super-handy when doing that kind of work).
Think of all the movie storylines that would just completely fail in the era of ubiquitous mobile phones.
Relatedly (sort of), I'm looking forward the day when they stop making movies whose storyline would be destroyed if the protagonist did the obvious thing and pick up the weapon used by their defeated attacker, so that they have a better defense against the next one.
The gps market is alive and well for marine, aviation and outdoor/offroad/motorcycle niche markets.
fwiw, google maps has download & offline functionality. Click your profile icon top right and select the area you want offline. I use it all the time for backcountry hiking (along with OSM apps) and going abroad where I dont have data.
More and more boaters are using tablets & phones as the apps give you access to charts and your instruments (e.g. wind, AIS).
Antennas solutions are increasing to get cellular reception farther offshore that feed into a wifi router.
At anchor, I personally use Organic Maps and drop a pin after I'm properly at anchor. There are specialized "anchor watch" apps but this works for my purposes.
Isn't Google Maps limited to a tiny little 100MB chunk or something? Fine for hiking, less fine for cross country road trips. Here Maps has free offline maps that will let you grab entire countries/continents if you have the space for it.
I enjoy passing the time on airplanes with my phone held up near the window to get a GPS signal, and then look at the names of towns and landscape features far below as I pass them by. It is quite surprising how anything you can see tends to be 10-20 miles off to the side of the plane, until you start paying attention to the quantity of 1 mile cropland squares. Then you truly appreciate how high you are!
This takes 100-300MB per state--I use OsmAnd via F-Droid of course.
I don’t know the limit but it’s larger than 100MB. I currently have about 300MB saved with one chunk (the entire country of Andorra) sitting at 120MB alone.
I dunno if this is as true for Aviation as it was 5 years ago. With Foreflight and the Stratux external GPS/ADS-B in boxes, it's becoming harder and harder to justify in panel GPS for light-sport/hobbyists/GA. I'm willing to bet that in the next 3-5 years we'll see a shift in general aviation to panel mounted "headless" GPSes that communicate with your iPad via GPS and are still coupled to a glass MFD/autopilot, but all the management would be done with an external device.
Google Maps without internet is barely usable. It only has driving directions which is pretty useless if you are on foot or a bike. It's actually astonishing that Google Maps can create an offline navigation plan for a vehicle that weighs thousands of kilos while walking directions always need internet to work.
There's an upper limit on the size of the area (although not their count), so it gets rather tedious if you want to cache a lot. It also expires eventually. with no way to block that.
OsmAnd+ is the only sane option for reliable offline maps w/navigation on smartphones, IMO.
There's a Tom Tom that I've wanted to buy that has a similar motorcycle version. I believe it scores roads but how fun they are, the amount of twists, hills, vistas.
Spying-ad-supported "free" services are suppressing a bunch of markets. Also suppressing open source (why work on a free open source messaging app, say, when none of your friends and family will want to use it since they have 20 "free" options already, funded and promoted with shitloads of ad dollars so you can't hope to have much adoption even with volunteer labor and a "product" that costs $0?)
Here maps was way better than Google (at least in the EU) since it always had offline navigation and would notify you of breaking the speed limit and the presence of speed-cams.
Maybe an OpenStreetMap-based application works well for you. Organic Maps, OsmAnd and Magic Earth have offline car navigation and (I think) warnings for speed traps.
How are the directions on organic maps and magic earth? I tried OsmAnd and it's directions were awful for me.
The first time I used it, was for a drive that Google tells me is 2 hour/100 mile. It initially gave me a route that was 1:58 and 120 miles. I personally don't think driving an extra 20 miles is worth saving 2 minutes so I switched it to most efficient route which worked for that drive.
The next time I used it though was for a drive that should've been 30 minutes/30 miles. It gave me a route that was an hour long on back roads that saved me like a mile of driving. This time, saving a mile of driving isn't worth adding 30 minutes of time for me so I just gave up.
There really needs to be a mode that finds a compromise between route time, route distance, and route complexity instead of just optimizing for one and ignoring the others.
Thanks, I just downloaded it and tried it out with the two previously mentioned routes and it gave reasonable results for both of them. It's also nice that it gives you alternative route options in case you don't like what they chose for you.
I also went ahead and downloaded organic maps just to see how it does in comparison. It also did well on the previously mentioned routes but doesn't give you alternative route options which makes me nervous about it giving a questionable route in other cases. It also takes several seconds to find the route (OsmAnd also took a while iirc) while Magic Earth was nearly instant to give directions. I do like the UI a bit better than Magic Earth (I can't find a way on magic earth to just give me a top down map view that keeps north at the top of the screen which is driving me crazy) but will probably use Magic Earth since it's seems really great in every other way.
- If I'm correct, OrganicMaps (and OsmAnd) calculate the route exclusively on your phone, without calling an external server, that's the reason they are slower than MagicEarth.
- MagicEarth has a 2D view, it's in the Settings. Navigation is always track-up if I'm correct, not north-up.
While Google does not notify of breaking the speed limit, they do have speed limits, red light cameras, user-reported speed traps, debris on road, etc.
Depends on country. In Poland yanosik has a little better routing and MUCH better speed-traps notifications, but no offline maps. There was auto-mapa here which had even better routing and was fully offline, but was not free, it's almost dying now.
Oh I miss here maps. It was great when traveling. Would download the map for the country before flying and didn’t need to buy data and could still search for addresses.
OrganicMaps works well. I travel to Andorra frequently, and because they are not in the EU it’s not free to roam there. Organic maps allows you download the entire country at a time and navigation and searching all work without data. I use it quite a bit in the mountains even in countries I have data in. Since it’s just OSM data it has a decent selection of hiking trails and whatnot, too.
I was pleasantly surprised how polished it is (on iOS at least). I had only ever tried OSM AND before it and this is leagues ahead in terms of usability. It’s more or less as good as Google Maps or Apple Maps, short of real time traffic updates. It’s navigation routing is not quite as advanced either, but it does the trick in a pinch (I don’t use it much in the car but more for searching and hiking trails)
When I moved from Lumia to iPhone > Android. Here maps was different. It didn’t feel the same as on the Lumia. So I just flick between Google maps and Apple Maps now. But miss the here maps from Lumia days.
I don't understand why showing speed-cams would be illegal. In Poland all speed-traps are clearly marked with a sign at least 100m before, so that when someone overspeeds, he doesn't suddenly break when he sees speed trap (which caused more accidents than overspeeding).
The British Automobile Association (AA) used to have a network of operatives on bikes (cycle scouts) who would salute members displaying the AA badge if they were approaching a police speed check.
This warning activity was tested in court and found to be illegal, as interference with the police undertaking their duties. Their response to the judgement was to switch the warning method to NOT saluting members if they're approaching a speed trap because apparently they couldn't be found culpable for inaction. So they would only salute members if the coast was clear. A bit like a warrant canary.
In Poland people used to blink their high beams when there was speed check ahead, it's sometimes still practiced (illegal then and now, but not because you warn of police, it's classified as "misuse of lights").
What happen, at least in Italy, is that are speed cam warnings everywhere, but of course only a tiny percentage at any time will have an actual speed camera.
It kind of works as deterrent, although I expect that the effect wears off after a while.
Some people do, but you can easily put speed cameras where there are some accidents. It's more honest that way in my opinion. I've driven in Germany and their cameras don't make me go much slower, just annoy:
- A series of 80-60 speed changes on straight road, then just when you are annoyed and don't slow, there is a speed trap.
- Badly marked school zone, I was doing 40km/h already, then a black painted camera hidden in bushes caught me.
We have those in Poland too, that's how I got my first speeding ticket. three lanes each way 80, 80 80, crossing with 60 and camera (there wasn't even any pedestrian crossing there too.
Because the purpose of police cars and and speed cameras, is ostensibly to make you slow down to the speed limit. Marking these on your map, makes you slow down.
This probably varies country by country, depending on whether it's a money-making exercise (where the police try to hide) or safety (where cameras are painted bright yellow and the police are clearly visible)
...this also varies by country: in some countries, the speed limit itself, not the camera, is there for your safety - I mean, how many cameras should they install?! In others, they exaggerate the speed limit, e.g. 50 km/h on a straight road outside of built-up areas, hoping that drivers will at least slow down to 80 km/h (looking at you, Italy!).
I guess the future of speed traps is "section control", e.g. install cameras at beginning and end of a speed-restricted stretch, and if the time you needed is significantly below the expected one with legal speed, you get a ticket.
> I guess the future of speed traps is "section control", e.g. install cameras at beginning and end of a speed-restricted stretch, and if the time you needed is significantly below the expected one with legal speed, you get a ticket.
This has been common in Western Europe for decades now.
Anywhere with electronic tolls already has this. It would be trivial for politicians to hit everyone with a speeding ticket on a tolled highway if average speed between two tolls is more than legal limit.
I didn't show police cars. It just showed fixed speed cams which is legal in the EU as even the radio stations announce the location of currently active speed cams via traffic information.
It's legal in some of the EU - to the best of my knowledge, it's illegal in Germany to have apps tell you about speed cameras/etc (you can have the app, you just can't use that bit of it).
That is a matter pf national law, not EU law. In Germany for example the radio announcements are legal but devices and navigation systems that warn of them are not.
If you are on Android I can recommend either Maps.me with great 3D view or Maps.cz for great tourist trails, Google Maps content is horrible in Europe. Of course any decent app can download offline maps for whole countries and not some GMaps parody with small section of map.
You can get a Fuji X-E4 + XC 35mm f/2 for ~US$1000 new, and I'm yet to see a phone camera that can shoot something like this https://img.photographyblog.com/reviews/fujifilm_xc_35mm_f2/... - it's an enjoyable setup that will continue being ahead of any flagship phones for years to come. Not to mention that it's a hell of a rabbit hole and a great hobby.
I have the Fuji X-S10 and the fantastic XF 56mm f/1.2. I love the sharpness and bokeh that this combo delivers. Definitely no match for a smartphone.
On the other hand, my old Pixel 3a delivers much better dynamic range in low-light situations with its HDR mode. (Of course, it only looks good on the phone, not on the computer screen, but I sometimes wish the Fuji hat better HDR.)
Fuji has dynamic range settings DR100, DR200 and DR400 which can help for sooc jpegs. I only wish my xt-30 did auto-bracketing, instead of having to combine the bracketed exposures manually on a computer.
Yep, I'm aware of that and usually have my camera set at DR200. But of course it's still not close to the dynamic range that HDR+ creates on a smartphone.
Here's an early-morning photo taken with the Fuji: https://tmp.dbrgn.ch/DSCF7064.JPG (Either DR200 or DR400, not sure anymore). And here with the Pixel 3a: https://tmp.dbrgn.ch/PXL_20220709_033446459.jpg Of course, the photo taken with the smartphone has lots of artifacts, looks mushy when zoomed in, and the optical quality is far from the Fuji. In other words, it looks good on the phone, but not on a computer screen. But considering the differences in sensor size, it's still very impressive. (Fuji also has a built-in HDR mode, but so far I wasn't fond of the results.)
The point was most people don't justify put $1000 on a separate camera when they already have one that does maybe 80% of the job in their pocket at all times.
I agree, it's really fun though. Never had great gear, but I used to just drive around my town with a tiny pocket tripod trying to find new spots to shoot with my Canon SX260HS in 2012-2013. Spent some time with borrowed cameras in school a bit later too. There's definitely something soothing about just going around looking at things that look interesting, point, tweak, click, then rediscovering the whole thing on your PC for some editing later. The experience is kind of lost with how instant picture taking has become with phones basically just taking the shot and post-processing it however they like.
Ironically that image is terrible example of why a $1000 camera setup is better than my $1000 smartphone, and a perfect example that the photographer is far more important.
Also most folks these days consume photographs on their smartphones and not on larger screen devices.
I’m a prosumer photographer with a fairly sizable collection of high end Canon glass, and I now vastly prefer my iphone (since the 13pro) to my SLR setup
> I’m a prosumer photographer with a fairly sizable collection of high end Canon glass, and I now vastly prefer my iphone (since the 13pro) to my SLR setup
For what type of photography? Seems hard to imagine you'd "prefer" your phone over a nice lenses, but I guess it's less hassle to just use the phone?
There's a certain irony that the primary feature separating smart phone cameras and traditional cameras is the ability to purposefully make "blurry photographs".
Wait till you hear about cameras which primary feature is the ability to purposefully make photos you cannot even see until days later, much less edit in any convenient way. You must fully replace storage every couple dozen of shots and dynamic range is just awful compared to my phone's HDR. (Sarcasm ofc, love film)
the artificial bokeh in current phones it good enough for most people. It might not be what you want, but the same is true of every part of a smartphone camera. is night shooting as good on a phone? No, but is the computationally enhanced night photography good enough for most people? Yes. Same with bokeh
I'm too lazy to get my DSLR out of the closet but here's a F1.8 shot from a Sony RX100
Artificial bokeh (like in Portrait mode on an iPhone) is getting better and better. It went from looking cheesy to somewhat natural in only a few years. It’ll be a while before it’s close to the example you gave, but I can imagine a future where Camera.app has a “tap to blur” feature using live CV object detection.
I'm a serious luddite in a lot of ways but don't see a meaningful difference between blurring the background by focusing the lens a certain way, and blurring it after the fact using depth information captured in the photo.
The way phone image processing pipelines work these days, this doesn't seem too far from the truth. Images from phones are essentially AI renderings which use pixel data as a prompt, and have less and less relation to the actual pixel data with each new device.
If I could ask an AI for a photo of my dog and it looked better than one I took with my camera, why wouldn't I? We're representing the world as series of pixels on a bitmap, makes little difference to me where it came from.
In the hypothetical future scenario where the output is good enough I don't think there's much of a point in making a distinction between something that is optically manipulated via lens vs done so via software.
Outside, on a clear day? My iPhone rivals my Sony A7ii for SURE.
But in less than ideal situations, I can still do better with the Sony. BUT this is because I'm an enthusiastic amateur with pro-level tools and some modicum of know-how. For an average Joe, those things are probably lacking.
Bokeh is physics, for smaller objects it's easier to reach some DoF even with f/4-6. On the 1st example the bokeh is, subjectively, very far from the SLR level, displaying a lot of onion rings and generally busy texture. For portraiture and street photography fast primes will still produce much more pleasing results. For now. I agree that we are certainly getting somewhere with the phone cameras, but I'm not sure where the ceiling is.
I for one am quite glad that modern AI-powered cameras have increasingly less blur on their images. I know that focusing on one depth is how physical lenses (including our eyes) work, I know that it can be an artistic tool. But for most of my photos, I don't care and I'd rather not have it. If I can get a 'tourist' picture of me and some monument, and have both well visible, I'd prefer that over the 'correct' way of being focused on only one. If I want to put an artistic touch on my photos, I'll use an app that gives me blurs and a million other options, but I'd prefer to have an unblurry version to start from.
> If I want to put an artistic touch on my photos, I'll use an app that gives me blurs and a million other options
most of them wont do it correctly. You need to have full understanding of the debpth to do it which does not seem to work well. E.g look at the edges of the articifical bokeh usually the subject wont be separated properly..
> I'd prefer that over the 'correct' way of being focused on only one.
I don't see how that's more 'correct,' by anyone's definition. It's pretty common to go for wider depth of field for landscapes and a lot of portraits.
The optics depend so much on physical size that phones have to fake this stuff.
Idk why apple doesnt just cut the crap and just release like a m43 with swappable glass rather than all this silly multiple sensor stuff.
They got rid, the story wnet, of a 3.5 mm headphone jack to make the phone slimmer. Only to have the alrwady slim optics stick out. Not sure tge same company would go for replaceable lenses.
Bokeh and long range. My favorite lens was a 24-105 F/4 for a very long time, but that has been replaced with my phone. Now my 150-600mm lens (for wildlife) is the only thing that is ever mounted.
I think you would be surprised just how close to this depth of field look you can get with phone cameras these days. Its mostly digitally enhanced but it takes a real good eye to tell the difference.
Fujifilm on the other hand is exploding in popularity. Sony took the full frame market and has incredible autofocus. Canon has shot themselves in the foot locking down their RF mount, Nikon is doing ok.
I think we're going to see a slow gradual rise in small compact cameras making a comeback, just like vinyl. Phone cameras can only do so much, it's physics, and photography popularity has grown since kids now are born in a world where a phone has a great camera.
i'm looking for one if anybody has a good rec? i ditched my smartphone and now i'm loading up with all these devices that everybody in this thread say are obsolete (they have a point but i don't need an iphone in my life, i'd rather walk around with five devices than one ...)
Fuji XEs are nice, small, relatively cheap bodies with interchangeable lenses. If youre looking for something small and know how to (or are willing to learn to) use a camera, thats what I recommend.
If portability is not a concern, you can pick up used high end Nikon DSLRs and F mount lenses very cheaply right now. Nikon is going all in on mirrorless now so this stuff is "last gen" hence cheap.
Otherwise, just avoid Canon. Theyre becoming increaingly scummy and you probably dont wanna get caught locked into their system.
X100V is super-hard-to-find-right-now, I have an older version X100T and I am very pleased. It is basically the camera that pros using the huge DSLRs everyday reach for when they go on their own holidays or leisure trips. And it's value has nearly doubled in the two years I had it, unheard of in the field of consumer electronics.
I too have an X100T and used to like it a lot; it takes amazing pictures. But it's a little bulky and has a fixed lens.
The Panasonic GX80 is smaller and has interchangeable lenses. It has a smaller sensor but it's so small you can really carry it everywhere. I use it much more than the Fuji now.
I got the Ricoh gr3x and I LOVE it. Actually use it way more than my Sony a6400 now. The main reasons for me, a hobbyist street photographer:
- size: The Ricoh is actually pocketable. Now every time I go out, I have it in my pants or jacket pocket.
- snap focus and snap distance priority: a godsend for street photography.
- convenience and speed: since I usually have it on hand, and by default on snap distance priority, it takes me a littler over 1 second to turn the camera on and snap a picture.
That said, I did order a Fuji x100v so my wife and I can both have a camera with us when we go out. Also, they are different as you mentioned
I am so conflicted about my Fuji x100f. I love the thing, but I rarely use it. I'm usually very quick to get rid of things. With the recent popularity of Fuji cameras, I think I should sell it. But then I pick it up and it's pure joy to hold and use.
A real camera has better ergonomics, great for vacations as you don't have to worry about your phone's battery life. Very good low light performance.
No science fiction story I ever read said anything like "It was dark, but it was okay, because I had my personal cellular internet communications device"
Yes, though I would note that the flashlight industry got way brighter in the last 20 years. The good old trusty plastic incandescent flashlight with D cell batteries is what most households had sitting around for years prior and a modern smartphone actually compares favorably to those in brightness (though not focused)
Modern flashlights are insane, they can even be dangerous haha.
> I would note that the flashlight industry got way brighter in the last 20 years.
Tell me about it. I tried to find a flashlight for my 2yo son that he could stare into without hurting his eyes. There are none. I need to find a old light bulb one somewhere in some basement.
Maybe my 2000s knowledge isn't as good as I thought, but were people carrying flashlights back then? My impression was that most people didn't, and therefore the flashlight that came with phones were a nice bonus rather than something that cannibalized flashlight sales.
I remember everyone had a flashlight for around the house. You'd generally need one when changing incandescent light bulbs, which burnt out every 6 months or so. A lot of people would also carry around the pocket Maglights for whatever reason.
Not really comparable unless you're talking exclusively about trashy keychain flashlights. An 18650 powered flashlight for $30 will light up an entire room while your phone will help you read something if you hold it close
I have a Canon 5D Mk III, 5-6 lenses, maybe 4 flashes, umbrellas, stands, a background, etc..
I gotta sell it but keep procrastinating.. 99% of the time these days I just want to not carry stuff and use my iPhone 13 Pro, because 99% of the time nobody cares if I use the fancy camera stuff and the hassle and workflow is a PITA compared to just using the phone. My previous phone was an iPhone 8+ and it kind of started this and then the 13 Pro really really kicked it into gear with having the 3 lenses.
It got hard for me to justify not shooting RAW if I was using all that expensive gear, and then I'd have to sit there wasting time "processing" files to justify using all the fancy gear. I came to really hate that time in front of the computer. (This is after about 15 years of doing it.)
Actual compact cameras forget about it.. the last few generations I had weren't even as good as the phones, because they almost always had crappy zoom lenses. 3 Prime lenses on a good smartphone beats almost all the zoom compact cameras until the zoom compact cameras get annoying to carry.
The phone cameras also have a massive advantage that people are not threatened by them and act more naturally. If you mostly value your pictures of people in your life this is a big advantage.
For me some of this is the ebb and flow of hobbies, but I really don't care about the snob value of the image attributes only possible with a DSLR/MILC anymore.
Sony/Minolta one this game by getting their camera tech/products into most of the smartphones on the market. Kudos to Sony.
One advantage I've noticed to the stereotypical "photographer loaded with cameras" gets people to pose/realize there's a photo being taken. They don't react to a phone in the same way.
That and actual lighting from real flashes (I'm talking multiple flash sources, etc) seem to be the main thing that "real" cameras have left.
Just like Tinder wiped out getting to know someone and taking them on a romantic date. Smartphones are perfect for taking a selfie against a landmark and sharing it on Facebook for likes. Just don't expect your grandchildren to hang it above a mantelpiece. For that you need at least a viewfinder/rangefinder to compose a good shot and a physical shutter button to take a bunch quickly and choose the best one later. Computational logic will also only get you so far without ability to gather and control sufficient light.
At this rate, I see actual silver prints making a comeback for the same reason as vinyl. At least we know they will last a century while your selfie will be forgotten as soon as your "friend" starts a political argument on your Facebook feed.
> for that you need at least a viewfinder/rangefinder to compose a good shot and a physical shutter button to take a bunch quickly and choose the best one later.
I don't know if I agree with this. I've taken some great pictures on vacations, and with friends and family using my phone. I have some of these framed around the house.
I don't think the average person is capable (or really cares that much) about getting the perfect composition. For these people, a phone is a great substitue to a compact camera that would have been used 10+ years ago.
Oh, also most phones have a burst mode that works great.
In all this talk about why even bother with a dedicated camera any more - especially a small point & shoot that doesn't actually take any better pictures than a smartphone - one item is usually missed: The dedicated camera is made to be comfortably used one-handed. To me this matters a lot.
Also, with dedicated cameras being garage sale fodder now, you can inexpensively get another feature that the smart phones just don't have: Zoom! My current "daily driver" is a Canon SX210 with pretty good picture quality at 14x zoom and image stabilization to make it practical. And still pocketable.
That said, 50% of my photos are still with the phone these days, just for instant sharing or geotagging.
I would bet largely recreational use. See a lot of horses in Portola Valley and Woodside, and a few scattered in rural areas between San Jose and San Francisco, though it tends to larger numbers on a few plots and a couple of ranches specializing in either equestrian training or long time horse housing, and one never sees a single horse on smaller plots, most people who have enough land for one horse will have multiple for companionship to each other. This was also true when I lived outside of Houston a few decades ago. Working horses are pretty rare except for carriages meant for tourists and law enforcement anywhere close to urban or suburban areas.
Recreation 42%, Showing/Competition 29%, Other 19%, Racing 9%.
The recreation category itself is broad:
> One woman’s recreational horse is in the trailer and on the go to a
trail ride here, an overnight camping adventure there, and a special training clinic way out there, week in and week out. Another woman’s recreational horse is one of a half dozen at her home, and she might get a saddle on and ride over to the neighbor’s place a couple of times a month, if she is lucky enough to squeeze in some time for it.
> With horses, recreation can be just about anything you please, from primping and pampering to roughing it in the outback; from a zen-like search for the perfect circle or half pass (a lateral movement in dressage) to the discovery of inner peace as a volunteer in a therapeutic-riding program. The joiners have plenty of equestrian organizations, local to national, to add some socializing to the picture. The reclusive types can ride off into the sunset on solitary trails.
> That is a major appeal of horse involvement—something for everyone. And for a surprising number, the something is tending to their horses at least twice daily, forking manure and heaving hay bales; worrying over ailments, injuries, and feeds bills 365 days of the year; and having little time left over to actually use the animals. They do this year after year, and, when asked what they do with their horses, the answer is “just for pleasure.”
It wiped out my DSLR camera too. I'm no professional photographer but I bought a refurb Canon t5i rebel when my son was born back in 2016. Phone cameras were still pretty poor at that time, but have gotten much better to the point where I rarely take out the DSLR.
It does take amazing portrait pictures! And better pictures using indirect flash in low-light conditions. But video is pretty bad unfortunately - mirrorless cameras fix the focusing issue but they were not as easily available back when I bought my camera.
"The best camera is the one you have with you" and the usual trope.
I struggle to remember the last time I felt a need to take my mirrorless camera with me and I think it'd be a bit weird to take it with me on my daily commutes or when I'm meeting a friend for coffee or whatever.
When I didn't have a DSLR I was taking a lot of pictures on my phone. Since I got one a few years ago, I almost never take phone pictures anymore (even if I don't have the DSLR with me), because I know the quality will be subpar.
Why even bother taking a picture that will look awful when looked at on anything bigger than a smartphone screen?
Yeah even „high end“ dslr have serious issues reliably connecting to a smartphone to offload photos or apply settings as a remote. Also naming your lineups like HgZ150Hz-G3XL and make many of them with tiny differences doesnt help. As if these dinosaurs cant adapt and have to die? Anyways…
The real tragedy is that these manufacturers have excellent optics and image processing technology but it's all for nothing if people don't want or can't use it.
Agree. Fujifilm seems to be the only camera manufacturer really focused on firmware & UX design. They have almost Apple-like seamless usability and tend to keep updates rolling for 5 to 10 years.
Yes, kinda. Other comments about camera makers being pathologically incapable of making good software are mostly true, Fuji just seems like the best of a bad bunch.
My X100V is awesome. But there are definitely rough edges, particularly around the functions that interface with my phone. This should be bread and butter for cameras these days, but sadly it's still a fairly slow and sometimes buggy process to get photos from my camera to my phone, or to use my phone as a remote control.
As for the camera interface and features itself, they're fine, but there are seemingly weird limitations. Only 7 custom simulations? No option to apply a custom sim after I've taken a photo? And the locked down nature is pretty annoying. I know that there are Android based cameras which opens up a whole can of worms, but there's money to be made with a camera that can leverage the wisdom and ingenuity of the internet to provide upgradeable features. Especially when camera lifecycles are pretty long, you're not cannabilizing your own market if you let people provide custom paid film sims that I can directly load into my camera
As a casual underwater photographer, it's sad to see the compact camera market dying. I like having compact cameras that I can put into (relatively) inexpensive housings and bring along on scuba dives. My current Olympus TG-6 works really well, but we might never see a new model in that product line.
A few companies have tried to build underwater housings for smartphones but they don't work very well. Too hard to control the touch screen, and they don't work with external strobes.
Larger mirrorless cameras seem to still be going strong (for now). But the underwater housings are much more bulky and expensive.
I traveled to Japan recently with an middle-end smartphone (Samsung A72 with 12+35+60mm) & a middle-end DSLR (APS-C with 18-55mm), that I bought the same price.
Surprisingly, picture quality was on par. Low-light, stabilization, everything. I sold my DSLR since.
APS-C sensors aren't relevant anymore, only full-frames can beat smartphones nowadays.
Not sure what you were using, I don't see that at all with my Fuji kits.
I have both a X-Pro 3 and a X-T30 for street photography and both shoot much, much superior pictures than any smartphone is capable of...
APS-C is still pretty relevant, your old DSLR might not be up to par to latest smartphone cameras though. And the image processing done by smartphones using AI tend to create weird and ugly artefacts depending on conditions, that doesn't happen with my mirrorless cameras, for example.
Have you tried printing smartphone pictures and compare them to your DSLR shots?
Disclaimer, I'm a retired pro photographer that sold his full-frame to focus on software engineering.
- The X-Pro 3 is $2k, not what I call middle-end.
- I agree on the aggressive AI processing. Fortunately I could disable it.
- It was a Nikon D5500. I used the 18-55 kit lens, but f/1.8 prime lenses can do better indeed, at the cost of switching lenses all day.
- I compared on my 27" screen, no difference, even in low-light scenarios and at different ISOs
Huh. When I compare RAW output from my D5300 (using the default 18-55 mm lens) and a Pixel 6, the difference is staggering. Granted, the JPG output from the Pixel is usually on par with the JPG from the DSLR, high dynamic range is something where the Pixel is even a bit better most of the time.
But once you take RAW photos and hit the Auto button in Lightroom, the Pixel doesn't hold a chance against the D5300.
It doesn't even have to be a prosumer, average kids in my city know raw and post process. Kids are very familiar with editing, in fact, gen z is also blowing gen y out of water when it comes to editing video.
The X-T30 is US$ 800-900 and uses the same sensor and processor of the X-Pro3 so they're pretty equivalent on picture quality. Don't stick to the X-Pro3 mention as that's missing the point.
The D5300 is pretty old, I had one in 2013-2014, coming from a D3200.
> - I compared on my 27" screen, no difference, even in low-light scenarios and at different ISOs
This might be the main difference between us, I usually do prints in A3+ sizes and the differences in picture quality between a smartphone and my cameras are very noticeable.
On the price point I agree with you but then the comparison becomes not so level by comparing semi-conductors technology from 2014 to the ones from 2021, that's 7 years of evolution on sensor technology packed into the phone's sensor, plus all the image processing advances since then.
Again, I understand the price point but it's an oddball comparison. Perhaps a comparison between the A72 and a Fujifilm X-E2 could tell us more but I don't have either devices to directly compare myself :/
I sold my DSLR gear in 2015 including my absolute favorite 35/f2 lens, and I have an X100V on backorder in 2022 for its 35mm equivalent f/2 prime lens: seven years of AI missteps and absent bokeh in my preferred framing has finally gotten to me. I know that my phone will take better telephotos, and I know my phone has RAW mode and three lenses and takes amazingly great pictures. So I'm specializing my camera to exactly where I love it most, and will let my phone handle everything else, and I’m content that each has their strengths.
Even if you have been a professional photographer for a significant length of time, you shouldn't use it to try to appeal to authority. However, a cursory glance at your profile tells me you aren't even 30, come on mate. Unless you were a professional photographer before your 10th birthday I really don't think your experience is better than any other enthusiast.
Did you do a real image diff on the same setup? I doubt it. Phone cameras have come a long, long way but a lot of the advances are through "smoothing" things out through software.
I've done 6 years of professional photography to pay for college. Portrait shoots, weddings, even produced videos, ads, festivals, wildlife documentaries. I worked on Nikon D4S fullframes. How is my age relevant ?
My point is, professionals squeeze extra juice of the hardware, but the average consumer does not.
The image your phone generates isn’t real. It’s a medium quality photo enhanced by “AI.” See all the cases of iPhone pictures adding faces where people aren’t there.
D5300 is APS-C. I know because I have its descendent, the D5600. I wish it were full frame, especially this time of year. I should probably sell it since I never use it now that I have a good phone camera, but I would eventually miss my 70-300.
I just felt it's such an outrageous claim that I really hadn't to show that cameras with much larger sensors and better optics would shoot better pictures than a smartphone.
For me it's the opposite, show how smartphones are better than the current crop of mirrorless APS-C as this is the extraordinary claim requiring evidence.
When I get some time I might shoot some comparison pictures, but if I don't: remember that I'm not here to serve your demands, I'm sorry.
I have used an iPhone SE and a mirrorless M4/3 camera to photograph a sheet of paper containing barcodes of varying sizes (including some with bars less than 1 pixel wide). I then checked which barcodes were readable in the resulting image.
The light levels were the same, both cameras were positioned and zoomed so the target took up the entire image, and both cameras were supported on a tripod.
I expected the M4/3 camera would blow the iPhone out of the water with its much larger lens, bigger sensor, and higher price. But no, the iPhone's image had marginally more readable barcodes.
Modern smartphone camera performance is just crazy, for the sensor size.
Dynamic range is better on the phone, but otherwise the DSLR has sharper edges, less noise, nicer colors, and is less mushy (but that is possibly due to the "AI processing", so ditto about the "real" image). That said, noise reduction is usually more advanced on phones, and handheld with a kit lens at night with high-contrast zones is kind of the worst scenario for DSLRs (hopefully it was a stabilized kit lens at least).
You can read the words "Hotel Platinum" on the phone photo. And it's blurred and "mushy" on D5500. And the phone had additional glare from an oncoming train, and it still pulled out things out of the dark.
Depends on what you need, of course, but for most people the photo from the phone is superior.
A fair point but unfair in that you are not also asking this of the OP. The status quo is that that a dedicated camera will be better than a smartphone (see other comments)
>Surprisingly, picture quality was on par. Low-light, stabilization, everything.
Almost certainly this is not true. It seems far more likely to me that perceived image quality after in device post processing was similar.
A lot of the quality of smartphone cameras comes from their software, which does a really good job at using the sensor data to create good images.
Cameras sold to photographers do not do that, or not as much. This is by design, if you are a photographer (someone who is interested in the process of photography) these corrections are something you really do not want, as they remove your ability to manually control these corrections later.
You are actually comparing two different types of images and it is quite unsurprising that the DSLR did not "win".
That's actually problem with DSLRs. Phone use the tiny sensor they have to its fullest, DSLRs mostly treat it as it was a film, and not try to reap all the benefits of digital processing and ability to shoot a bunch of images in quick succession.
Instead of shooting at 1/8 or 1/15 in low light it could "just" shoot images at 1/125 or even 1/1000 then compensate for minute movements of the camera to get perfect sharpness, and then merge them to denoise it, and boom, near-noise-free, near blur free (just the blur from target movement, not the photographer) image in low-light.
This is absolutely not a problem with DSLRs or large format cameras.
>Instead of shooting at 1/8 or 1/15 in low light it could "just" shoot images at 1/125 or even 1/1000 then compensate for minute movements of the camera to get perfect sharpness, and then merge them to denoise it, and boom, near-noise-free, near blur free (just the blur from target movement, not the photographer) image in low-light.
There is absolutely nothing stopping a DSLR or large format camera user from doing exactly that. This is also a very common procedure in astro photography where dozens of such photos are stacked to capture objects in the sky.
This doesn't happen on the camera of course, but a photographer wouldn't want it to happen anyways.
I think you entirely missed the point of a digital large format camera. The user does not want the camera doing post processing. The user wants the camera to capture technically excellent images and process them manually.
The difference between a phone and a large format camera in this case is that the photographer can choose to take such a photo and he can process it on a high performance machine with manual intervention. This is absolutely not a problem with the camera.
The intersection of people who want to spend a significant of money on something they already have (a camera) to get a version which allows them fine grained control and technically excellent results, but then don't care how the results are processed after they pressed the shutter is almost zero.
A modern large format camera is for people interested in photography. If you do not care about photography, but care about getting decent enough pictures with each press on the capture button, those cameras are not for you.
I care about photography, I care about good results, I care about using my camera to get those results, I do not care about spending hours in front of a computer screen.
So you invest time, money and effort into an expensive machine, which needs fine tuning, knowledge, experience and time to get the best results. But then you want to feed those results into a machine to do whatever it finds best, instead of manually controlling how your output looks?
I won't tell you what to do or don't but that market segment is probably not very large...
By design and necessity - I suspect people would not be happy if they saw what actually came off the sensor (or had to carry around a better sized sensor).
For some cameras "beauty filters" are even a selling point. For a professional photoprapher that would be a nightmare. But most people aren't photographers and only care about getting a good looking image after pointing and shooting. And there is nothing wrong with that, but it makes for bad comparisons.
> What can lightroom not control manually what Google does automatically.
The camera itself. Smartphones shoot several frames with different settings at different times, they may have a time of flight sensor to estimate distance, plenoptic features, etc... These can be fed into algorithms specifically trained on that camera and that can take advantage of all these extra data.
DSLRs can do things like bracketing, but external software doesn't have nearly as much control.
Camera industry is dying. I don't see Nikon or Olympus being around in the consumer camera market much longer. Its just going to be Sony and Canon.
People just want pictures that look good. I don't want to shoot bracketed shots then combine them together in photoshop so I can get the same dynamic range as my phone. I don't want to take 20 pictures at a time of my kids hoping to get that one moment where they looked at the camera when my Iphone has live photo mode.
All r&d is being developed for the small sensor sizes. New stacked CMOS sensors will come to phones first because that is where the money is at. Phone cameras next year may surpass capabilities of mirrorless/dslr cameras in terms of dynamic range with a single picture.
I really don't understand why camera manufactures aren't investing in software. What they are doing now isn't working. I am planning to go on vacation for the winter holiday and this may be first year in a long time that i don't bring my dedicated camera(right now a Sony A7III) because my IPhone 14 just takes good pictures.
> I really don't understand why camera manufactures aren't investing in software.
Some of them are. Olympus (now OM System) in particular has been emphasizing in-camera stacking features that take advantage of the fast sensor readout and very effective image stabilization they can achieve with a smaller sensor than most.
Those features aren't like the smartphone magic "make my picture look good" though. They're more manual and creative than that, like "let me take long exposures in bright light without filters" or "I want to paint light onto this dark scene with a flashlight". They produce a sort of raw file (it's obviously not simple raw sensor data at this point) suitable for further manual processing if desired. People not taking photography seriously as a job or an art form won't get much out of that, and most everyone else prefers the convenience of a phone.
> It seems far more likely to me that perceived image quality after in device post processing was similar.
That’s just what they said. The purpose of cameras is to produce images we find pleasing, for a few different values of “pleasing” (recording memories, aesthetics, etc).
Nobody cares about the “how”. Whether it’s a photographer with an MFA doing pixel-by-pixel adjustments on a RAW image or an algorithm in an ISP, nobody cares.
Ok, not nobody, but no casual user, which is 99.99% of the market. For most of us, we take a picture and look at the picture. Insisting that one technology is better even though it produces no user benefit is missing the point.
>Ok, not nobody, but no casual user, which is 99.99% of the market.
That's kind of my point. If you just care about getting a good enough result you do not want a camera which is producing images which are good on a technical level. And comparing technically good images to post processed images is essentially pointless.
I am not sure about the 0.01% every person who ever used lightroom or similar software has wanted something from a picture their camera did not give them. And even if the number is correct, there still are people who see photography as a creative endeavour and who want images which are easy to edit and not heavily preprocessed. If you aren't one of them your phone is likely more than good enough already and there is nothing wrong with that.
When my mother uses both in auto mode, the pictures turn out the same quality.
This article is about the general public, not us, the HN crowd which love to push hardware to the limit. Which is the historical definition of hacking btw :)
Perfect for carrying it in a pocket sure, not at all great for carrying it around in a hand. A compact camera is wider but shorter in two other dimensions, so it's easier to carry.
In my main camera use case the "gopro" form factor has much better ergonomics than a phone, by a wide margin. Unfortunately, that market is wildly underserved because all existing cameras in that form factor barely consider stills even an afterthought, if they consider it at all. I'd pay real money for a camera that is on par with phones but does not come with an almost face-sized TV attached.
(I use an RX-0, which at first glance seems to fit that bill, but doesn't really: it's an extremely small movie camera that only pretends to be a very small compact for addressing a wider audience than it deserves)
Agree. A cellphone with its button-lens is never going to match an actual camera in the kind of flexibility that only real depth of field can offer.
To be sure though, out of convenience I pretty much only take my phone on vacations. (Well, and an old medium-format TLR film camera just for the odd novelty photo — but it only ever leaves the van when I think I have a subject best suited for it. Oh, ha ha, and I have a stereo digital camera in the glove box that gets similar treatment.)
True, "only full-frames can beat smartphones nowaday" is nonsense. iPhone 14 Pro Max's sensor size is 1/1.28". Naive physics, 1" is collecting more raw light. Now it depends on how good a person controls the collecting process (and post).
All cameras (compact to SLR does post processing) other than for RAW format. And infact even for RAW format SLR cannot beat modern flagship phones [1] [2].
ProRAW has one more surprise up its sleeve. A few years ago, Apple began using neural networks to detect interesting parts of an image, such as eyes and hair. Apple uses this to, say, add sharpening to only clouds in the sky. Sharping faces would be quite unflattering.
>And infact even for RAW format SLR cannot beat modern flagship phones [1] [2].
What is described is those article is the same as a normal raw that DLSR have been doing for decades. Adding the word "expert" or "apple" in front of the name doesn't make your RAW files magically better.
The only advantage for the smartphone here is that it's more user-friendly to edit the RAW files directly on the phone in one click compared to importing your photos in a software like Photoshop Lightroom
Ergonomics is a mixed bag. DSLRs win at latency and burst, as well as manual mode.
But sharing the pictures is a pain, the UI is hard for beginners. And the most important ergonomic of all : it's easier to grab my phone than the 1-pound DSLR.
I can share pictures from my Fujifilm cameras via WiFi to my phone... I think you are using a pretty outdated kit and trying to judge the current crop of mirrorless cameras against that.
Even Canon and Nikon abandoned the DSLR format, the digital photography world has embraced mirrorless, it's much more compact and the only thing you lose is the analog viewfinder through the mirror. For me it wasn't a loss at all.
I've been a hobby photographer for almost 15 years, had DSLRs, full-frames and ended on mirrorless exactly because I needed something compact and light to carry around.
Even the iPhone 14 Pro with its very much upgraded camera can only *just* start to be within the same league as a standalone camera when it comes to dynamic range. Noise performance, detail resolution etc. are all still woefully inadequate. In any instance, a phone camera can take amazing shots (especially when in great light) but a very long way from being equal. Everybody has a different threshold for "good enough" however and they have met yours.
I really don't agree with calling the D5300 a mid-range camera, it's 2013-2014 tech. Like I mentioned somewhere else I do understand the price comparison but it's not a mid-range camera anymore, it's very outdated.
Even with less outdated cameras (e.g. the last high-end APS-C from Nikon, the D7500), HDR bracketing is much worse than most mid-range phones from the last 5 years. And assembling them after manual bracketing in post-processing is also not great. Nikon HDR creates halos, doubling, even on relatively fast shutter speeds.
That said, I don’t have the experience of phones being "good enough", and even my Sony RX100 (edit: was "RX1", my bad) first gen which is quite old is out-performing 99% of the smartphone market in picture quality on a good screen, if you exclude HDR.
Sorry, I meant to say "RX100", it is now corrected. Yes, even with the improvements in sensor technology, glass, and post-processing I don't see a phone reaching RX1 quality anytime soon.
They make up for the sensor deficiencies relative to a DSLR with image processing. You can simulate increase dynamic range and reduced noise by taking multiple exposures with multiple cameras and processing them with smart 'AI' algorithms.
I have a recent Samsung flagship phone, and the same DSLR and lens as you. The DSLR is far superior for sports photography. My daughter plays indoor volleyball and smartphone pictures are garbage, just completely blurry due to the fast action. If I manually reduce the shutter speed then pictures are under exposed due to the tiny sensor. On the DSLR I can run it in shutter priority mode and push the ISO, so the results are pretty good (although a full frame camera would obviously be better).
The smartphone does pretty well in most other situations that don't involve fast movement in poor lighting.
Picture quality most likely wasn't on par. Just look at this iphone 13 vs nikon d750 comparison: https://i.imgur.com/ght1Vyu.jpg.
Sometimes my Pixel 4a renders something which looks decent, sometimes it gives me oversharpened photos with unnatural colors, like the iphone photo. Let's not even mention the AI generated fake details, which look horrible to me 99.99% of the time.
I've recently bought canon mirrorless just to also buy 50mm lens with f/1.2 aperture. I got photos I've always wanted to do (with blurred background) and no phone could match the quality of picture. Of course with standard 15-45 lens (f/3.5 - f/6) it's much closer to phone quality, but that's why I didn't go with compact or camera without exchangeable lens.
An SLR is nothing without a great lens. It is the most important part of the camera, more important than APS-C or full frame by a long shot. The lens may cost more than the camera body though...
I love how powerful my phone's camera is. I use it, I love it, I love the apps to identify birds, plants, etc with it. It takes great snapshots, and is so quick to whip out and get a decent photo.
Yet at the same time, I hate holding it out to look at the screen to see what the photo will be as I take a photo. A camera with an eyepiece lets you hold it tight to your face, locking your arms at your side, and decrease any wobbling of the camera due to body position. That makes it easier to focus (and I actually can use a manual focus), zoom, and track moving targets, and gives you a bit more flexibility on settings for the shot.
Not that compact cameras solved any of that particularly well, either. But I'm keeping my dedicated cameras until phones figure out better ergonomics for those of us who grew up being used to that level of control.
I'd be curious to know what other markets have diminished because of smartphones
* Flashlights? Sure a smart phone is not a good flash light but it's often enough
* paper notebooks? I'm just guessing the majority of people keep notes on their phone, probably cloud backed so they can access them on their tablets/notebooks/phones
* video cameras? The article was about compact cameras but I have to imagine no one buys a video camera anymore
Newspapers, magazines, newsletters, televisions, audio recorders, photo albums, pens and pencils, paperclips, staplers, stationary, scissors, stickers, ink stamps, software and video game manuals.
Maybe less need for mirrors, lint rollers, and large make-up kits with similar colors (maybe it's easier to adjust the tint in the photo?).
Only if you squint and accept streaming and/or webradio as a replacement for "real" AM/FM radio. Funnily enough the ubiquitous Qualcomm chipsets already include a radio receiver, but most manufacturers don't activate it...
"Real" AM/FM radio has gong to shit in most markets anyways. Tons of advertising for traffic lawyers, diet pills, donut shops, etc. DJs talking too much, limited playlists.
I think "AM/FM" radio is really just the equivalent of "free music you can stream".
If you live in a town with a college, there may be a great student-run station. Personally KUTX and KOOP in Austin are great for me, and often get me to not stream from my phone.
I guess just not used enough to bother ? I had that feature enabled in custom firmware but I don't think I ever actually used it outside of "oh, that's neat" testing.
Either that, or you could lend credence to conspiracy theories like "providers want you to use up your data package faster, so you have to stream everything"
Not really surprising. It's all stuff that the vast majority doesn't care about. So you have the mainstream devices targeting the mainstream users, and the weird alt devices which tack on everything possible to capture the remainder of users who have this one weird requirement.
What I claimed is that the category "cheap android phones with all the ports and features" beats the category of "ultra-high-end devices without any reasonable ports" by far.
Flagship phones are halo devices, more jewelry than actual phones (this includes iPhones, the Pixel main line, the galaxy fold series, the S22 ultra, etc).
The vast majority of sales is in the mid range, including the Google Pixel A series (which still kept e.g., the 3.5mm port until last year) or most of Xiaomi or Huaweis phones.
But while with flagships, there's the one device to rule them all, in the midrange there's a different phone for everyone. Samsung alone has almost a hubdred different devices in this range at the same time.
And all of these have microSD, 3.5mm, FM Radio support, and many dual SIM support.
It is just a pin off the chipset. The headphones was just a cheap way to get a 'free' antenna. Those chipsets do a lot of stuff. If you printed out the docs it would probably be a couple of reams of paper. They fuse things out for different cost points and just do not hook things up for others. It can also be if they hook it up it is an extra dollar per device. Not saying that is what happens but it is a distinct possibility considering the way they bifurcate the cost of those chipsets. From a consumer PoV though it is frustrating as the HW is there...
What kind of computer can you get nowadays for $1600?
Barry Ritholtz's take is also interesting:
> But Inflation is not inevitable. There are numerous countervailing forces that have been at work for much of the past 50 years. The three big Deflation drivers: 1) Technology, which creates massive economies of scale, especially in digital products (e.g., Software); 2) Robotics/Automation, which efficiently create more physical goods at lower prices; and 3) Globalization and Labor Arbitrage, which sends work to lower cost regions, making goods and services less expensive.
Even one of the surviving two, a radar scanner to detect speed traps, is in danger. Apple Maps (and I think Google Maps as well) will tell you of upcoming speed traps as long as other people have reported them.
Im surprised by all the folks who always pop into these threads saying theyve replaced their XXXX-expensive-dedicated-camera with their phone.
Outside of wide DoF, wide FoV, well lit shots I find my camera and iphone to be pretty incomparable.
If apple starts letting us swap the glass out one day we might be have a fight but currently I just dont see it being one at all.
The title is inaccurate. "Compact camera" just takes a different shape. Most everyone has a compact camera these days.
On a less nitpicky note, I think the failure to deliver a compact camera at a reasonable price in the 2004-2008 time period did a lot of damage too. The low-end models were junk, and the good ones cost, I believe, at least $250.
I remember seeing a chart of this a few years ago. Digital camera shipments peaked at >100M in ~2010 then fell off a cliff and 8-9 years later were <10M. The sad part is consumer digital cameras funded DSLR development so DSLRs have kind of plateaued as a result.
It's a shame because digital cameras can serve some specialist purposes that phones simply can't. I have a camera that can shoot Full HD @ 960fps. I have another with a 200x optical zoom (this is not compact). And another that's waterproof to like 30 meters. I also have another compact camera with a 20x optical zoom.
But I really feel like manufacturers have failed to innovate in the smartphone era. It should be trivial (ideally, seamless) to save photos to your phone. Various implementations for this are just bad like one camera I have is a Wifi AP and you have to connect to it. They usually require running custom software, which is typically just bad.
I'd also like to be able to put a camera on a mount where I can remotely turn and tilt it, focus and zoom.
For years photographers have said the best camera is the one you have and it's true. That's why smartphones destroyed this market. But manufacturers didn't really do that much to close the usability gap.
I was looking for one recently, and yeah, it's slim pickings (and even slimmer in terms of reviews etc. on sites like The Verge compared to when I was last looking at cameras) - not helped by chip shortages limiting availability (and raising prices) of the models that do 'exist'.
I wanted one because I don't want my nice-photo-taking tied to my phone, I don't want that to be a consideration every time I buy a phone, and I don't otherwise need an expensive phone (my last few have cost <£200 and been kept years each, I don't play games or do anything intensive with it). I'd rather have a ~£200 compact camera and a ~£200 phone, with independent replacement cycles, than a ~£400 phone (that would be a much less capable camera, though admittedly the software editing/ML stuff for amateur stuff (which I definitely am, I just want holiday/walk snaps etc.) is quite nice these days). I settled on a used but pretty mint condition Panasonic TZ100, and can keep using my Nokia 3.4 a while longer. (Though it does reboot itself multiple times a day, so its days are still numbered.)
I struggle to understand how mid range digital compact cameras are so bad. I have to use them for work (for reasons below) and usually at night with the flash.
So the camera flash is obviously far superior to a phone flash but apart from that, my phone (Note 20 Ultra) dominates all the Olympus and Ricoh cameras I've had in recent years. When it's raining or foggy and I have to take a photo, I am forced to use my phone instead of the company supplied camera. If I need to do a video clip, again the phone is my go to. Looking towards the sun, same again.
If I could use my phone for all the photographic records I take at work then I would but I still rely on the form factor of the camera which is more resilient amongst tools and dirt and on-screen display which shows a sequential photo/filename reference that I can quickly note down.
How does a £1000 phone have such an incredible set of cameras which destroy the dedicated camera on a £300-400 digital compact?
Probably the effort spent on computational photography by phone companies is greater than that spent by camera manufacturers, even expensive DSLRs only have hand crafted debayer/denoise, while phones use all kinds of neural network magic. Even an RGBW sensor with a simple bilateral filter could do amazing things, but I don't think any digital camera has even that.
Remember when Kodak thought that digital cameras are a fad so they didn't invest? Same thing happening with computational photography right now.
Kodak didn't think that, but they didn't anticipate the incredibly sharp drop in film sales. Kodak was the #1 seller of digital cameras in the US in 2005.
Film sales only fell off a cliff in 2006. [0]
The Kodak story as commonly told is something like "don't be stupid like Kodak". This is easily followed by the thought "I'm not that stupid, I'll be fine".
But the reality is much more nuanced and with a more important lesson.
- We have a product making big money
- In the (far?) future, this will probably change
- How fast?
- How much should we invest in capturing the next thing?
- Given the next thing is fundamentally far removed from what we did (chemicals -> electronics) should we even go there or divest and invest in something else entirely?
Kodak chose to go the digital camera way, but got eaten by electronic giant incumbents like Sony (with their sensors), Nikon and Canon. Yes, Canon and Nikon were already giants in electronics, since their cameras were electronic processor controlled since the 1980s.
Kodak eventually lost money on every Kodak digital camera sold. But even if that gamble had worked, they might have gotten eaten by smartphones just a few years later!
The price difference is because of economies of scales, if that compact camera is produced at the same quantity as the parts of the camera will go down in price. Another factor is package size. Camera are bulkier and cost more to transport (factory to consumer).
I just got a Pixel 7 Pro. My photos look obscenely good. The new macro lens let me take a picture of a fly up close and you could see the individual hairs on its abdomen. It looks like it came out of a national geographic. I can't believe "normal" cameras even still exist for most photography.
This is the right move by camera manufacturers. The low end, compact camera has been replaced by people's smart phones and computational photography. All the innovation in the small compact market is on phone cameras. It's just not compelling or fiscally responsible to continue to spend money on R&D and manufacturing in the low-end compact market if you're one of the large camera companies. The money to be made is in the professional market. Higher margins, more expensive camera bodies and glass. Feels similar to what Ford did when they stopped making sedans/compacts and went full on trucks, crossovers and SUVs. The only real money maker that I've read about on the low end is the Instax line by Fujifilm, which fills that nostalgic, film based approach.
I’ve always appreciated the numerous salient points in this 2012 Economist blog post comparing how Kodak and Fuji Filmfilm responded to the ascendency of digital cameras:
The article succinctly captures the responses of the companies, consumers, and the stock market. The lessons demonstrated by the relevant actors are ones I’ve carried with me in my own business work and shared with others when appropriate.
The only thing they beat smartphones at is optical zoom. And that's pretty important and one of the few areas where smartphones still lag and can't crack due to their size. Add 10x optical zoom to a new iPhone and watch it crush all former sales records.
Jokes aside, I wonder how much of the computational photography in smartphones today is "hallucinating" and showing something perceptually nice versus photos that are physically accurate.
Something tells me that most users don't care about accuracy of the content as much as it looking nice, so I wouldn't be surprised to see faked optical zoom based on hallucination techniques soon.
for context though this is a market that mostly collapsed like 15 years ago, and smartphones were actually the second death of the market.
When you hear "compact camera" think about like the Canon A40 and such - early 2000s. By the late 2000s they were already completely commodified with no margin left and the profit had moved to DSLRs (and later MILCs etc).
There was and is still a niche for "premium" compact cameras (Nikon coolpix, Ricoh GR, Fuji X100, etc) but the commodity market didn't get anything out of a standalone camera that couldn't be done better by something else, and if you're already carrying a smartphone anyway...
For most of the last several years, I carried a flip phone, and I'd keep a compact camera in my bag. I just don't like smartphone interfaces in general. I really like camera interfaces; once you get good with it, it's very quick to set exposure, ISO, etc for exactly the kind of look you want. I also like being able to access files on my computer for editing, processing, and backup just via an SD card rather than having to send them through some 3rd party service.
Generally, I agree though, that software for cameras is pretty poor compared to what it could be.
Only 97%? That would mean one in every 30 compact camera owners still uses one regularly. I realize the market for “small cameras that you can always have with you” grew tremendously, so “3% of the number people who used to own a compact camera” is a lot less than “3% of the people who know have a smartphone or a compact camera”, but still, 3% seems high to me.
I wouldn’t know anybody who still uses a compact camera (but then, did I know 30 people who did in the time before smartphones?)
This is bad for privacy. Now every single photo a person takes will be stored on someone's cloud forever and potentially used by someone against folks threatening their mafia.
My iPhone "magically" turns on Cloud Photos from time to time and then complains about running out of space. The same approach as with Windows 10/11 "magically" turning on anti-privacy options after upgrades etc. Not to mention some apps pushing all pictures to Cloud by default.
I suggested a few weeks ago on this forum that DSLRs should strive to be like smartphones with better lenses. Make real computational photography accessible on-device like a phone would, with its power and its UI, but with programmable hardware buttons and DSLR performance.
I have an Olympus E-M10 Mark III (terrible naming) and while the photos are obviously of a higher quality than a camera phone, camera phones can do wonders with photo stacking and HDR/night shots that would be even more amazing with a proper camera.
"But that's what photoshop is for", the naysayers say. I say, bollocks to that. If a budget smartphone can make these filters/optimizations accessible to the masses, then a DSLR can as well. Besides, they already try. My Olympus has an art filter menu, a "scenes" menu and so on, but they are opaque in what they are actually doing, not very flexible in adjustment, and overall can't achieve the customization of a smartphone.
If Sony et al bolted a detachable lens to an android device with a few programmable knobs and buttons, with wifi (not hotspot based) for instant uploading, I daresay it would be a hit.
I don't expect futures phones, in their current form factor to ever match any dedicate (future) camera that can accommodate a better sensor and optics.
What I would have liked to see smartphones makers match is option for removable battery in a flagship like phone.
Some vendors (Samsung included) have their line of rugged phones with removable batteries, these phones tend have a not so great screen, camera and often processor as well.
I have wanted to get rid of my smartphone and downgrade to something smaller and simpler. The one thing tying me to it is the camera. I use it on a regular basis to take quick photos of family or events around me.
If there were a compact camera on the market, I would happily carry around a phone and a separate camera in my pocket.
No such thing exists. Every so called "compact" camera is significantly larger, bulkier, and heavier than any phone on the market. I get it, they have optical zoom lenses and that takes up space. Most of the time I don't want that but there are no options for it. But even the body of the camera without the zoom lens is significantly thicker than a phone.
Near as I can tell, the dimensions of the compact camera have not changed since the last time I bought one, which would have been around 2006. The one thing I can say is that camera still works just as well as it did 16 years ago. Maybe new ones take better photos, but in the meantime, I've gone through probably a dozen different cell phones.
Sure would be nice to have a truly compact option though.
I bought one recently because when I'm snorkeling etc. I don't want to risk losing something with access to my accounts, auth etc.
I really think we need to start separating our crucial digital identity/value from the thing we use to translate a menu or call 911 in an emergency or hand to a stranger to take a photo. Right now I use 2 phones to keep I kinda separated.
It’s a good point but probably a temporary one. The Apple ecosystem already treats all devices as equal; if I lose my phone I can do 2FA or call 911 from Watch or iPad at least, typically laptop as well. There’s nothing special about the phone device.
Google, Samsung, and others are catching up there and it won’t be long before the same is true, though they will probably have a greater proportion of devices without cell modems.
Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements.
But only the beginning. We're going to be debating the question of "reality" a lot in the coming years. Surely, the next step in computational photography will be AI to fix your questionable shots.
You photograph the Eiffel tower, but there's a lot of people obfuscating it, the horizon isn't straight and the light ugly. One tap and it's fixed, if it even requires a tap.
You zoom in digitally to produce some blob of what is supposed to be a bird. Tap to fix it. And there you have it, a pro level shot without the 5kg 600mm lens.
Just like AI art generation, photography will be going through some deep questions. Did you actually photograph that? And if anybody can photograph anything with zero skill, what is the point?
> Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements.
In the past photography was optically pure shit, and we could only take 36 photos at a time before cranking out a new roll of film, and we had to drive to a photo store to pay to get those 36 photos developed and only them we could see if the photos were any good.
The discussion on photography and its relationship to capital-R Reality dates back to the medium’s inception. There is no lens-sensor system that can capture what we see with our eyes, but is what we see even “reality?” Is the reality of a visually divergent person a lesser Reality than that of typically sighted people? Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” and Roland Barthe’s “Camera Obscura” are nice meditations on such questions.
In my experience I recover low level storages (think dd or lower) in consumer and professional cameras, and cell phones.
I still find errors in FAT32 implementation when it comes to cameras, while phones have moved on to get specialized formats depending on the storage chips' design.
I wonder if this results in issues when you plug a card into Windows, which then 'fix' the incorrect FAT32 data structures on the disk, which again will be corrupted by the camera in new and interesting ways.
It makes my life harder because recovery has to be manually adjusted to work with the incorrect implementation.
It also makes the owners' life harder too. older file systems are not geared for chips and thrash the storage, making them fail significantly faster, be it removable or built-in.
> Does specialized format means you don't ever need to recover from them or noticeably less?
For my context, I recover them for forensics purposes. When I wrote "specialized format" (e.g., JFFS2, YaFFs, Target, F2F2, UBIFS) I was referring storage formats geared towards chip vs disk. mobile phones tend to be very easy to recover; almost plug-and-play. They are often are hardware modules where the entire storage can be removed, and connected through common, physical connectors to recovery device.
There is a similar thing happening with car stereos.
People just want Apple CarPlay. Not your manufacturers crappy radio UX.
Quality software is a discipline not every company gets right. And TBH, you see the difference between those that focus on software and UX as a craft, and those that don't.
For sure, HDR and AI noise removal are pretty good. But there's one more thing that's less visible, which is that smartphones are not very friendly to standalone cameras.
Cameras have always depended on PCs to do capture. And since smartphones did not provide ways to do fast wireless transfer, it made a separate device even harder to use. My Sony mirrorless takes about 30 seconds to connect to iPhone using ad-hoc WiFi, and it's a bunch of work on both sides. So while I can sort of get from the camera to Instagram, it's way harder than it should be if the mobile device makers wanted it to work.
After I used a dslr camera for few months, I notice small ugly artefacts in my iPhone 12 mini’s pics. Along with that, smartphone pics has a weird distortion which is very noticeable with the wide angle lens, but it is noticeable now to me with even the regular lens. Sort of like background compression, which i find pretty ugly. I think this is a physical limitation of a small sensor and lens. Not sure why nobody has fixed that with computational photography. All I want is to have my pics look like a shot with standard 50mm lens. I don’t care about bokeh actually.
You won’t notice these things until you are familiar with pics from a dslr camera.
Its a strange thing. You need a stable society with a social safety net to unleash such creative destruction, but a stable society has a tendency to develop structures like guilds that prevent just this creative destruction.
The guild of map makers allows to ship in materials that allow for the creation of a machine that provides maps for free, but would try to prevent the construction of said machine by legislation influence at all cost.
Which is begging the question, how does one ensure that the "protective" legislation always remains ineffective or gets devoured? Should protective laws always have a "lifetime"?
I own a Sony DSC WX500. I bring with me when I go on vacation with a 30x zoom I can get great pictures of animals and with my phone I can't. I transfer pictures from the camera to the phone over its own wifi and a Sony app (not very good) to have a backup and to send some of them to my friends with whatsapp or telegram.
A camera with an open API is be great. Sony would only have to provide a basic app and somebody would create a great one for profit or for the fun of it. Sony would keep the money from the hardware sales. No idea if they have some cloud offering for cameras and if they profit from it.
Give me the product I want, at a reasonable price, and I will buy it.
I am specifically annoyed at how cameras have been sold in tiers, the same tech with upgrades as a different model.
Sell me instead a modular camera, upgradeable like a PC.
Barebones camera, no WiFi, no Bluetooth, basic screen, basic memory.
Expansions: Better case, wireless connectivity, memory upgrayyedd, better screen, optics module, bayonet adapter for lenses of your brand choice.
That sort of thing.
If you do it right, it will result in longevity of the brand, if you do it like Sony has done with all their cool products, then it will be limited and expensive, and nobody will really use it.
I hate iOS color rendering though and I tried RAW. I ran the TMB (100mi in Alps) with phone and compact film camera and only 1 iPhone photo made the cut. The colors are too saturated esp the sky with the fake polarizer effect and the color transitions more abrupt. Everything looks way too cool in tone and muddy when I try to warm. And this is on a 13pro. My damaged film (noisy from X-rays at airport) was still far better with softer color gradations and better overall rendering. Fuji XE4 is also far better than phone. I hardly use my phone camera.
To be honest I've always found the auto white balance of every iPhone (SE, SE2, 12) I've had to be quite terrible and inconsistent for modern standards under artificial light. Roughly equivalent to 1st generation Nikon DSLRs (>20 year old tech). Pictures with the built-in flash are also really amazingly bad, worse than any compact I've ever had. The SE and SE2/3 have terribly tinting with the built-in flash as well. The 12 is much better here but still pretty bad. Close focus is no good - worse than old DSLR kit lenses. And ultra-wide on the 12 is so noisy and bereft of details that it's really just a gimmick.
On the other hand, night mode works quite well and it's a camera you almost always have with you.
Camera manufacturers should've built a compact camera that fits in the pocket, has a digital screen, and can make phone calls / send messages. They would've hit it big.
This makes total sense. Most people are far better off with a smartphone. Easy to use, photos are right there, preserved in the cloud, etc.
What Apple and others killed is the lowest possible segment. There's still a pretty healthy ecosystem of small-ish mirrorless cameras and, of course, DSLR, which you could buy if you need one.
I really like my Fujifilm and all the nice buttons it has. But one of the key advantages is that its photos simply look different from an iPhone.
I never understood why almost no modern compact camera has built-in geotagging capability.
In my opinion it's a very useful feature, but what I usually find in modern cameras is only the possibility to connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone, where I need to install an app to provide the coordinates to the camera for geotagging.
Then I see cheap low-end smartphones that have built-in support for GPS+Galileo+GLONASS+Beidou and I wonder how much would it cost to insert such electronics into a camera.
There is a timing problem with geotagging. If I am going to turn on my camera, snap a photo, and expect a geotag, then the GPS had to be already running. It takes a while, seconds to minutes, to get a location from power off. That leaves a few compromised choices…
- leave the gps on all the time. This gets you a geotag but you have to charge your camera every day, like your phone.
- update the geotag when turned on, but use the previous location for any shots until there is a lock. This is ok for rough location but users aren’t going to like that the first picture of a trip has the wrong location if they don’t warm up the camera first.
- stay on after a picture is taken long enough to get a lock then rewrite the picture with the location. This works, unless you take the card out and hand it to someone before the rewrite.
Nabbing the location from the cell phone gets you a live location for free.
GNSS receivers suck a massive amount of power, and nobody wants their camera to need charging daily. You accept this on your phone because you were going to charge it every day anyway. Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense for everything to access location information from my phone instead of every device having an expensive, power-gobbling radio.
Sony hasn't updated their compact lineup in years, which is sad because many people love those cameras. Especially the RX and HX series. I always carry a compact with me.
I do know a number of people that went out and bought one specifically to use as a webcam. And they work amazingly well for that. Expensive, but you can’t beat the quality.
It seems like the big camera manufacturers have accepted that they will not be going after consumers anymore. They concede.
I wonder if there is still room on the edges of the prosumer market though to push more people into the big dedicated cameras.
Could a better camera OS, more digital photography, and quicker, sexier results, along the lines of what we see on iOS, combined with amazing sensors and glass, convert some people over?
Most people even stopped making landscape mode fotos an videos. Portrait mode is the king today. No rotation needed, shareable, full screen area utilization.
I am waiting for phone cameras to use square sensors and just let us select between portrait or landscape without having to rotate the phone. New Gopro has it.
He (photographer) explains the draw of decade-old digital cameras. Apparently not a lot of cash will get you some nice older digital cameras — some of them quite high-end for their day and, as he says, maybe even preferable to some of the more recent offerings.
I miss my old DSLR but yeah, it's too much to carry around. I wonder if there's a market for some kind of "clip-on" DSLR that sits on top of your phone, uses the touchscreen etc for interface, Wi-Fi direct for communication (perhaps?)
I have to assume there's a good reason to not have done this.
Huh! Who knew. I kind of want one, though looking at some reviews it seems software is the big downside and I can't imagine a nearly ten year old iOS app is going to look much better today.
The Ricoh GR and the sprinkled offerings from Fujifilm have been the only worthwhile point-and-shoots for a long time. I still take my Fuji XF10 with me everywhere because it's unobtrusive and will archive better than anything a small-sensor phone could.
I got a tiny Fuji mirrorless for my "best camera is the one with you" checkbox too. Next time I catch gear acquisition fever though, I might have to get one of those little Ricohs.
- 2 X70s (sold them - too heavy for a point-and-shoot, fantastic otherwise)
- 1 XF10
I don't think I will ever not have an X100. The XF10 on the other hand is always with me. In a second I can go from single-point auto-focus and -exposure to zone-focused slow-sync flash; the only other camera that's this usable, from my experience, is the Ricoh GR II. The immediacy of physical buttons and controls is something phones have yet to replicate.
The Sony RX100 series would be in most top lists. Though personally I'm not sure why they went with a slower lens from the mark 6 onwards. The ZV1 continues with the a similar lens from earlier models. I have the RX100 mark iii, that's still quite good.
I second the RX100 series. As a step up, there is RX1 with a full frame and fixed lens. And HX99 the other way with a smaller sensor, but goes all the way up to 720mm.
If you do street photography, Ricoh grIII and grIIIx are the most beloved, afaik, because of being actually pocketable (while fuji x100v is not) and having the snap focus and snap distance priority. If not focusing on street, either Ricohs and Fujis are great
Sigma DP2M. As slow as a film camera. Bad screen. Battery lasts for just 100 photographs. Limited dynamic range. But a great combination of a sharp and tiny lens and unique Foveon sensor. If you get it right, it produces film-like images with amazing colors.
I'm still waiting for the ability to use my off camera flashes from my smart phone. That is the missing piece for those amazing camera portraits sculpted from light when you don't have the right natural environment.
from the comments it feels already the case that carrying a camera is nowadays a signal that you are not a "casual" photographer but a prosumer (or worse :-)
stands to reason, though, that for any given form factor if the device is dedicated to one task it will do it better than a similarly sized multi-purpose device (and one that, nota-bene, is primarily designed for and busy with collecting and sending user data back home).
both optics, ergonomics, battery life and compute / software could be far superior in a compact compared to a phone. so the 3% niche market remaining might evolve into some really cool cameras.
Yeah, and the market / use case for "serious" cameras is dwindling, too. I can see a time in the near future where only the most serious hobbyists and pros use a "real" camera.
I remember thinking the Sony Ericsson w810i was the perfect phone + camera form factor. Of course I also invested heavily in MiniDisc so clearly my sense for these things was not good...
Meanwhile, 360° cameras are being discovered by more and more people and achieve awesome pictures unlike any traditional cameras.
Also, the subject is always in-frame.
I just came back from Delhi, and thought similarly (just camera specifically rather than smartphone actually) there, that I'd have loved to have something like Google Glass, but more subtle looking, for discretely taking photos without standing out so much - I missed a lot because I just didn't feel comfortable framing the shot, looking like such a tourist (I was visiting family, didn't see anyone else like that) - but of course I did look at them, would've been great to just touch the side of my glasses or whatever to take the photo.
Day to day though, as a smartphone replacement... unless/until I need prescription lenses I don't think it's enough to make me want to start wearing glasses.
> I don't think people will start pointing at things in the air.
There are other possible input devices. For XR glasses, the most natural would be some sort of gaze tracking. Another option would be an indirect device like a mouse or trackpad (most desktop and laptop users don't point directly at things in their screens), or even a set of cursor keys for menu selection.
The watches that took photos _sucked_...which was one of the reasons I'm betting Apple didn't include one on their first (and subsequent) Apple watches.
Would it not be fair to say that compact cameras gained network connectivity and are now more popular than ever? I mean we call them phones but transferring sound is pretty much the least of their duties anymore.
Article is paywalled so I haven't read it, but surely the reason is not that smartphones are better than cameras as being cameras. The reason is that a) smartphones are good enough cameras for most purposes (e.g. people were happy with 110 film cameras in the 1970s) and b) people already paid for and are carrying a smartphone so they need a compelling reason to also buy and carry a camera (see (a)).
Camera manufacturers are institutionally incapable of writing good software.
I have experience with Sony, and their firmware barely changed in the last decade. Their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mostly doesn't work. Touch screens are from a bygone era: laggy, imprecise, and without multi-touch. They don't have resolution good enough to check if the photos came out sharp. Their phone apps are a clunky afterthought.
Smartphones are running circles around them with computational photography. "HDR" mode on Sony cameras is slow and primitive. I'm not a pro photographer, so I can't justify spending time manually tweaking every RAW file when smartphones do it well 99% of the time.
I can't speak for cameras specifically, but my partner is Taiwanese and apparently this hardware/software dichotomy is extremely prevalent there as well. Namely, there is a broad social perception that hardware design is "real" engineering, and that software is a joke. Thus, the best and most talented engineers go into hardware, and the jokers work in software, leading to this "good hardware, bad software" observed outcome and reinforcing the stereotype further. Rinse, repeat, and you eventually end up with decent hardware running absolutely garbage firmware.
Given the social cross-pollination between Japan and Taiwan, I wouldn't be surprised if a similar pattern held true there as well.
> Namely, there is a broad social perception that hardware design is "real" engineering, and that software is a joke.
Yup. Not just in Asia. The US suffered from that, as well. It may have changed (for the US), by now, as I spent 27 years at a Japanese hardware company.
I spent most of my career, as a software dev at hardware companies, and got the brunt of that crap. It was infuriating.
During my time, I wrote some very good software. In the early days, when my team was given a lot of leeway, it was sent out, and got [mostly] positive reviews.
As time went on, Japan got more and more involved with/in control of the software development that we did, and threw more and more restrictions at us.
We were forced to do a standard hardware-centric waterfall development process. If I even mentioned the word "agile," I might as well have just gotten up and left the meeting, because everything I said, after that, was ignored.
They took away all of the user interface from us, and we were just doing "engine" work, which was actually pretty cool, but, they sucked at UI.
Towards the end, I was reading terrible reviews about our software, and tried writing stuff that would directly address these gripes.
My work, and any similar work from my team, was ignored. Instead, they had some disastrous relationships with external companies, under (I assume) the impression that we were not capable of writing "modern" software, and these folks were (they were able to write "modern" software, because their work was terrible, and I have issues with the Quality of "modern" software, in general).
It is indeed exactly the reverse in the US currently. Pay ranges for software engineers tend to be higher than for hardware engineers at big tech companies, and many folks with electrical engineering backgrounds end up going into software as a result. Also similarly, people building hardware inside of software companies tend to have to put up with mismatches in expectations, including questions around why they can’t build hardware in an “agile” process!
> why they can’t build hardware in an “agile” process!
That's not good, either.
Hardware really needs a "measure twice, cut once" approach.
It can be made more iterative, but that is expensive.
Sometimes I feel that "Agile" has become so diluted to mean "there are feedback loops in the design/execute process" and if that's the case then 6σ is an "agile" process for hardware.
I like the spirit of the Agile Manifesto. I feel that the devil is in the details[0], though.
Nowadays, the word "Agile" means "Waterfall, but with different names," or "Tear off all your clothes and run naked through the bluebells! Do what you want!"
I'm really big on Discipline and Quality. It's entirely possible to have a flexible and iterative development process, but there's no way to avoid the difficult bits. They just get shifted around.
[0] https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/problems-and-solutio...
> Namely, there is a broad social perception that hardware design is "real" engineering, and that software is a joke. Thus, the best and most talented engineers go into hardware, and the jokers work in software, leading to this "good hardware, bad software" observed outcome and reinforcing the stereotype further.
Curious. In the US, the software people can usually make a lot more money so even many EE’s end up in software. I wonder if it’s the opposite in some of these countries, where software people are paid less than hardware people.
Actually, it still happens the same way in the USA as well -- for physical products. The hardware side of physical products is often well-supported, with higher budgets for R&D and engineering salaries, while the software side of the physical products is expected to be done barebones and as an afterthought at the end of the product development cycle.
Software engineers in the US who do not work on physical products are highly paid, because they can potentially create nearly infinite return on investment with near-zero marginal product costs.
But software for widgets doesn't have that infinite margin ratio. So firmware suffers greatly. Think auto infotainment systems, smart-home electronics, appliance interfaces, point-of-sale kiosks, etc.
Don't forget device drivers back in the day before all the chips got thrown directly into the motherboard. You might buy a nice soundcard, but the software that came with it (drivers and utilities both) were quite a mess.
I think a big part of Apple's success was getting both hardware and software right.
"Back in the day"? Software from motherboard manufacturers is still terrible now!
> Curious. In the US, the software people can usually make a lot more money so even many EE’s end up in software. I wonder if it’s the opposite in some of these countries, where software people are paid less than hardware people.
In Japan and Taiwan, both EEs and SWEs are generally underpaid. SWEs and some EEs go to the USA or (gasp) mainland China to make more money, since software talent is generally more appreciated in those two countries. The same applies in other Asian countries (e.g. HK and Singapore, where it is software vs. financial services rather than software vs hardware).
Thank goodness in a way, otherwise all of us firmware people in the US wouldn't have anything to write code for!
I think the US situation just reflects economics. The value of software scales up more than hardware. So software teams and companies get more investment.
Anyone who's worked with software management of commercial hardware like cameras, digital signage, time clocks, door controllers, I don't know 1,000 other products types, can attest to the horror-show software you're provided by these manufacturers.
Think: Windows only, often IE/Edge only, ActiveX, crashes constantly. Random UI strings are in Chinese. Barely, barely usable.
Why is this still true? I can understand in the past, but after the rise of all the tech companies and obvious important software they use everyday (Android and iOS) how can anyone at this point think software is a joke and lesser than hardware?
Most hardware companies are decades old and so are most of their established competitors. Until one of the old guard breaks rank or a new competitor manages to break into the industry using software as a clear competitive advantage (i.e. Tesla), the success of tech in general means nothing to them.
It doesn’t even matter how big the companies are or if they’re a “hardware” company. All the lumberyards in my area still use DOS era machines that I’m not even sure are networked. I know that at least one of them runs the whole thing by printing the day’s transactions from each computer and paying a secretary for data entry into their similarly ancient accounting/inventory management software. Cost of land and fuel overwhelm labor costs in the lumber business so there’s zero incentive to even try
While software is important, quality of software is usually not. There regularly are articles and comments on HN about how common software dev practices would not fly in real engineering.
I think this would change overnight if management were actually held accountable for quality. Right now all the incentives are on ship fast, ship early, ship often. A PM who delays a release to fix bugs (is a hero IMHO, but) looks terrible to management higher up. The PM who rushes to market looks good, even if the reputation of the company as a whole suffers because they shipped crap.
Real engineering would be the same if they got to ignore the laws of physics more often.
Also people get oddly grouchy if buildings fall down on them.
My GPU drivers crash and take out my entire computer about once a night (AMD Windows drivers are just..... abysmal) and I just grumble.
If a tiny local bridge collapses, with nobody on it, it probably still is newsworthy and people get upset.
Millions of bridges have been built in human history, but only a handful of GPU drivers.
The bridge doesn’t need to withstand the river suddenly turning into lava or the atmosphere becoming sulphuric. The driver has to be prepared for whatever Windows and the hardware put up.
In those tech companies, that knowledge has arrived. Of course, among software people, similar is true, because who doesn't like being told they are important and valued. But there are various kinds of "tech" companies. Ones founded by hardware people and EEs, where the key innovation that made the company big was in hardware design. And ones founded by software people in their dorm room or something like that. Usually companies from the latter category offer respect to software engineering, while companies from the former category see it as a cost center and something that ideally you'd out source.
DSLR manufacturers got big by making great cameras. They didn't really feel the need for making good software. Compare this to Google which got big by implementing a clever algorithm and using distributed computing.
I still hear the occasional joke from greybeards about JS and frontend being terrible so it seems like it's just taken to an extreme there.
JS and frontend are terrible and you'll hear this loudest from frontend people themselves. It's an entire industry built purely around the inertia of an unexpectedly wildly successful product.
I think it's worth noting that the Web ate software largely because the ergonomics for new devs are vastly superior to building native apps, and can be used cross platform without downloading binaries. What language is easier to get moving in? If writing cross platform native apps was as easy as using a single html file with a script tag, they would be more in vogue.
To accommodate the greater scope of the web the language has evolved. It's fast, supports multiple paradigms, and never makes breaking changes, so your code will run the same 20 years from now.
Yes, absolutely.
Put another way: Systems with great benefits are able to survive their great failings.
This dynamic explains most "inexplicable" situations where something seemingly terrible in certain specific ways enjoys continued success.
> and never makes breaking changes, so your code will run the same 20 years from now.
But only if you can get it to work in all browsers and derivatives today, including their versions of the last 20 years.
Is this a real issue? I doubt the average new coder needs to worry about supporting 20 year old browsers today. I've never worked at a company that needed to support ie8 or whatever.
These are orthogonal. You can believe software is important and a great area to work in, and still think JS and frontend is terrible. In fact, the two are often correlated!
If you think frontends, as a general category, are terrible, and backend software, as a general category, is more "serious", "real", or "important", you have precisely the mindset that produces theoretically useful gadgets that are ruined by poor user interfaces.
There is a difference between thinking that the front-end ecosystems are terrible to work in and thinking that they are unimportant.
That's not the point OP was making. On the contrary, you have to believe that frontends are important to be really mad about how terribly they are made.
As a HMI guy myself, I would agree with you. :-)
In general, I think any engineering community that congregates around a particular set of issues is just trying their best to address their needs and build solutions to their problems, and it's important to respect those. Rather than being dismissive, exposure and cross-pollination is how we lift the boat together.
Just because it’s terrible doesn’t mean the haters have to suck at it. It makes the opinion more valuable if you’re good at something and then criticize the bad parts.
The issue is that the recent growth in the software field has caused people that would otherwise major in something else, and aren’t really interested in software, to be your coworkers and they don’t care about doing a good job. There are some areas of software which would be benefited (lower cost over time) to apply an engineering mindset. That’s not what happens with agile. The whole ethos is about being able to change the design around, shipping MVPs and quick iteration. In hardware it has to be correct when you ship it , leading to a more methodological approach. As a result, some software work in comparison to hardware work can come off as sloppy.
Define recent? I remember "too many new people are just chasing money in IT" already being a well-established trope 25 years ago, long before Agile or most of the modern stacks were even a thing.
It is true but the general interest level and attention to detail in industry is not what it once was. By recent, I want to say around 2012-2013+.
In europe management is considered more important. Its all bullshit indeed.
If they design cameras from the users perspective and expectations there is still a lot of room to take on phones.
I just want to shoot, possibly edit, publish the images on my server and have some api to make the appropriate database entries.
In stead I have to hook up the cam over usb then pretend it is a slow drive??? Oh and the battery is draining while doing this??? Some models have replaceable batteries that you have to remove to charge???? As a hard drive it scores 0/10
I have to start up an editor, find the right image, load it and find a folder to store the edit???? what nonsens workflow!
Iphones let you shoot the images straight into the upload dialogue.. but its not using the wonderful hacks the photo app offers.
Maybe camera makers should just make a frankenphone the size of a brick with a few TB of storage, automatic wifi connectivity (with more options so that one never has to look at it), a week worth of battery. The extra weight helps making sharper images and probably a cloud account with a list of highly configurable API's
Ill be as weird as to suggest website names could have physical buttons on the top so that one can shoot things straight onto facebook and press delete later.
Why wouldn't it be true? All the software that ate the world did so from a very small number of places. Outside those few focal points of software wealth, if an area isn't essentially preindustrial, whatever is happening there related to hardware will greatly outshine any local software endeavors.
That's a bit odd. Are they unaware of the last 30 years of computer history?
Even as someone with a background in mechanical engineering the degree of complexity behind some software products, such as Windows, is really impressive.
I suspect "hardware is real engineering" is really just "hardware engineering is where you can find prestigious employment in this country".
It used to be quite similar in South Korea until the more recent rise of domestic software giants like Naver and Kakao Corp.
In a lot of the East Asian countries, there is a large gap in desirability between the large, established employers and smaller companies due to outrageous differences in pay grade, benefits and job stability. So new business has a tougher time making it to escape velocity and offering significant numbers of jobs.
+1. I have vague memories of my time at a Japanese automation vendor out of the uni. I had quit out of frustration that the software was super buggy, there was no one to help except just a couple of people in Japan who knew the software but would not reply to emails. I also remember feeling neglected as folks working on the hardware or on customer projects were paid higher than me.
A recent experience at a neobanking startup from SE Asia reaffirms the point. Despite the product built around an API-only model, the firm was operations heavy when it came to decision making and investing in people, as it was believed to be the core company strength (for a variety of reasons including the institutional bureaucracy, corruption in these markets, etc.)
TL;DR people work where the money flows. Companies get what they pay for. And the investors pay for what they think is the strength or is likely to sell at inflated valuations.
I have family members who consider themselves "real engineers" compared to me, an SWE. They have backgrounds in Mechanical and other "traditional" engineering fields.
About once a quarter I am subject to conversations where they remark condescendingly about how flabbergasted they are at SWE salaries. I stopped engaging beyond "Mmm if you're interested you should learn more about the field".
This interaction is beyond grating and is detrimental to our relationships.
Yep, sounds like one of those "agree to disagree" topics. Or diffuse using mild humor, like you have tried. Or redirect, and blame supply and demand, or social media.
I too have a background in Mechanical Engineering and while many software products are complex I wouldn’t categorize all of them as engineering projects in the historical sense of the word. That’s not to say there are not quality software products that satisfy real businesses requirements. But it is to say that a lot of software projects would be WAY too expensive if they were engineered the way a passenger jet or a skyscraper was engineered.
The software development field is quite new compared to the other engineering disciplines and many, many decisions are made on gut feel, intuition or out right personal preference. Alan Kay has some very good talks on this specific subject, referring to the current state of our field as a Cargo Cult.
However, I would also say firmware would be the least expensive to engineer because the requirements for that type of software are better known and more rigid.
I believe that a part of the problem with software engineering is the "we can always fix this later" mindset.
Even during development, the only cost of iterating over errors until you get it right is just time.
But HW engineers just don't have the luxury of making 100 iterations of a product until it works, nor the safety net of "we'll update it over the internet". They must put a lot of effort into testing and verification until they say "ok, this is good, let's ship it."
Also, failure modes of mechanical products are often known and intuitive.
I am guessing that before the advent of Internet, the average quality of shipped software was higher on average. Nobody would dare ship a hot mess like Battlefield 2042 if they knew it's the last version they ship.
Automotive and other mixed-criticality systems is where these two worlds butt together and have a lot to learn from each other.
Mech eng processes on one side, ASIL-style safety requirements in the middle, and someone wishing to pour a bucket load of Android apps into the same computer from the other end.
Are they ever really "the same computer"? I don't think that's true even in entirely software-mediated-control vehicles like Teslas.
The discipline of robotics (which is really what you're talking about here — cars are just very manually-micromanaged robots these days) is all about subsumptive distributed architectures: e.g. the wheels in an electric car don't need a control signal to tell them to brake if they're skidding; they have a local connection to a skid sensor that allows them to brake by themselves, and they instead need a control signal to stop braking in such a situation.
This is why, in anything from planes to trains to cars, you see the words "auxiliary" or "accessory" used to describe infotainment displays et al — the larger systems are architected such that even an electrical fault (e.g. dead short) in the "accessory" (non-critical) systems can't impact QoS for the "main" (critical) systems.
I really can't imagine a world where they've got engineers building the car that understand that, but who are willing to let Android apps run on the same CPU that's operating the car. They'd very clearly insist for separate chips; ideally, separate logic boards, connected only by opto-isolated signals and clear fault-tolerant wire protocols.
> Are they ever really "the same computer"?
In short: Yes.
The point you're making is valid in general and you provide valuable context. A modern car does have many different computers, and there is a lot of intentional partitioning (and even some redundancy) into different CPUs, as well as guests under hypervisors.
For example, a typical headunit computer (the "infotainment computer") tends to contain two to three SoCs performing different duties, and one or two of them will run hypervisors with multiple guest operating systems. And that is just one of multiple computers of that weight class in the overall car architecture.
That said, there's an overall drive to integrate/consolidate the electrical architecture into fewer, beefier systems, and you do now encounter systems where you have mixed criticality within a single computational partition, e.g. a single Linux kernel running workloads that contribute both to entertainment and safety use cases. One specific driver is that they sometimes share the same camera hardware (e.g. a mixed-mode IR/RGB camera doing both seat occupancy monitoring tasks and selfies).
Safety-vs-not-safety aside, you also simply have different styles of development methodology (i.e. how do you govern a system) run into each other within the same partition. AUTOSAR Adaptive runs AUTOSAR-style apps right next to your POSIX-free-for-all workloads on the same kernel, for example.
What however is typically not the case in that scenario is that the safety workload in a partition is the only contributor to its safety use case, i.e. typically you will always have another partition (or computer) also contribute to assure an overall safe result.
In more auto terms, you might now have ASIL B stuff running alongside those Android apps on the same kernel, but you will still have an ASIL D system somewhere.
In general, you will start to see more of both in cars: More aviation- and telco-style redunancy and fault tolerance, and more mixed criticality. The trends are heading in both directions simultaneously.
> I don't think that's true even in entirely software-mediated-control vehicles like Teslas.
Tesla has been in the media for bugs such as flipping tracks on your Bluetooth-tethered phone or opening the wrong website in the headunit web browser rebooting the Instrument Cluster display. This is an example of mixed-criticality (done wrong). Many other cars are not architected quite as poorly. However, IC and HU/central displays sharing the same computer (not necessarily the same computational partition/guest OS) is increasingly common.
> perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away
In traditional engineering, there's at least a BOM and manufacturing processes that create pressure to keep things simpler. If physical items were engineered like software, you'd have people bolting a keyboard onto the monitor chassis they're designing because they needed an 'on' button, and keyboards have buttons. Obviously they'd then also have to add in an always-on raspberry pi to plug the USB keyboard into and emit a GPIO signal when the button is pressed. You'd get a lot more complexity, but for most of it, "impressive" would be the wrong word.
That's a pretty insightful analogy!
Bolting an entire keyboard on to a monitor to add a single extra button...
Thankfully the cost of adding physical atoms prevents such outrageously dumb ideas.
The IBM S390 HMC (Hardware Management Console) is basically a thinkpad bolted on the massive S390 case.
I think part of it is that hardware is tangible, software isn't, so for some reason people resent being expected to pay for software. Building software thus has less legitimacy in some peoples' minds. I see this in the retro computing scene: people will quite happily fork over large amounts of cash to have an old bit of kit repaired, or buy a newly-developed expansion for old hardware, but those same people - even the people doing the repairs and building the new hardware - can be incredibly hostile to the idea of someone asking for money in return for new software for those old platforms.
(Probably a rhetorical question, but...)
It's hard to overcome preconceived notions. As we know from politics, emotions are much stronger than logic. You can't simply say, "be logical!" or "change your view".
The worst part is that, despite treating their software like a joke, every damn business guards their source code, protocols, etc. as if it were their crown jewels.
So end users end up having to reverse engineer it just to fix issues that the manufacturer should have addressed.
And - the real kicker - far too often it turns out to be based open source work, with a few random modifications, distributed in violation of the license.
Isn't that exaggerated by semiconductor manufacturing (TSMC et al) dominating the Taiwanese economy? If your nation's existence is driven by EE-type concerns, software engineering doesn't seem important.
This is also applied to Japan. Toyota, Sony, Keyence are top3 of market cap. (Though Sony is partially software company, games tend to be ignored.)
> software is a joke
Sure, but you still have to deliver the punchline right.
I couldn't agree with this more. My small child received a compact camera as a gift. While it was a decent camera for a kid, she was very frustrated with how small the screen was and how non-intuitive it was to her compared to a smartphone. I too was very frustrated with it as it was slow, configuring the software on it was a massive pain and the process of quickly getting photos from the camera to a computer was laughable. So, what did I do? I put the camera on a shelf and bought my daughter an older smartphone. I proceeded to lock it down and remove everything I could with the exception of the camera and gallery app. My daughter is now happier than ever and taking non-stop pictures. She can also almost instantly see those pictures on a computer now too!
Thanks for the hint. I was just about to buy an old compact camera for my daughter as she sees me taking pictures with my sony a7. Maybe you are right compact cameras are awful usability.
What software did you use to lock it down? I have some older iPhones laying around.
The iOS built-in Parental Controls settings can be used to enable/disable access on an app-by-app basis; that's probably all that's needed here, since Camera + Photos by themselves don't give you any built-in web browsers. (Camera.app can scan QR codes, but it just pops a new tab in Safari when you click them, and Parental Controls would block that.)
In contrast, my daughter sees us use our phones and uses them as well. I simply uninstalled all the apps I could and used the Google Family link stuff to lock it down further.
You can get really creative with an Android phone. Install LineageOS with only the minimum gapps you want. Lock down everything, remove the play store, add Tasker to make the UI black&white when using apps other than photos/camera install a launcher like nova to further customize what apps are visible/easily accessible. You can even completely remove Chrome but still install the web browser component so things like your e-mail app work but you can't easily browse the web.
I did this for a while a couple years back to discourage myself from spending so much time on my phone. Worked great and I would have kept it up if it were not for my wife constantly complaining that I couldn't look anything up or use Yelp or Messenger or... :D
Before there were smartphones it was universal that anything other than a PC had a cheaper CPU but it was maybe 1/3 the price for 1/30 the performance. That is, off-brand CPUs of all kinds were a terrible bargain.
Then smartphones came along and there was another commodity platform that gave good price-performance. Around that time Intel also got interested in making low-performance parts with low sticker prices but that were highly uneconomical if performance or user experience mattered.
I've long thought that should be a product. Especially if the shutter is a button.
For kids, and for other kinds of camera products (ahem, GoPro).
Our old Canon IXUS has a decent UI that kids were able to navigate, and no data leakage.
What kind of smartphone did you use?
Google Pixel phone
I am one of these luddites that still use a compact camera.
The firmware may be bad, yet I take a picture faster on my Sony compact camera than I do with my smartphone thanks to the physical buttons. I can also do it while cycling while doing the same with my smartphone is annoying as fuck in winter with gloves, in summer with sweat and expose the risk of losing and destroying my precious pocket computer.
Also for some my phone screen show as a black screen when using my polarized sunglasses while the lcd of my camera is still visible and allow me to point and shoot quickly. No idea what is the difference in tech on both that would explain that difference.
Most flagship smartphones may be super responsive but the average sub 200usd smartphone won't necessarily fire up the camera app faster than my Sony compact camera. And there is no way I will buy a 600 to 1000usd smartphone. I'd rather repair/replace either a 200usd smartphone or a second hand compact camera in the event I drop it and break it than a single 1000usd one.
Also from my experience with friends using flagships and apple ones, even the best smartphones are crappy under low light. Smartphones are great during the day, once it is dark they are pretty much useless.
> ...take a picture faster on my Sony compact camera than I do with my smartphone thanks to the physical buttons.
I will encourage you to check out the Google Pixel line of phones! A double tap of the power button starts up the camera immediately even if the phone is off and then a press of the volume button takes a shot. Can easily do it in gloves!
I've been carrying a Sony TX100V in my work bag for I suppose 11 years now. I'm on my second one. It has staggeringly good macro capabilities. I've had two 8x10 prints done this year and they're amazing.
It's a 2011 model and AFAIK the latest in the line. You have to go much bigger to get better quality. I'd buy an updated model in a heartbeat.
https://www.dpreview.com/products/sony/compacts/sony_dsctx10...
There is still a small market, but not enough to support many players.
I've got a compact around here somewhere, specifically because it can take getting dunked. With the pandemic my intended use case has gone away and I'm not sure where it is now.
> There is still a small market, but not enough to support many players.
Definitely.
And I can understand Panasonic and Nikon getting out of it when most people interested in a compact are looking for the Sony RX100 or Canon G*X cameras.
I think that last bit has been true until recent flagships. Recent iPhones are sluggish in the dark, but take pictures that are better than my eyesight.
>Also for some my phone screen show as a black screen when using my polarized sunglasses
If you rotate your phone 90° you'll be able to see the screen.
Sony shooter here (A7S2, A6300)...
> Their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth mostly doesn't work.
YES YES YES. And they don't support such basic use cases as "open an access point and let the connected device do the work of selecting pictures" - no, you have to select the photos on the camera and then call them down from the mobile app. Super "great" when you're in the field that I am and document rallies etc. so you need to get a photo up to social media as fast as possible.
> They don't have resolution good enough to check if the photos came out sharp.
Yeah, same for lighting, another annoyance from hell. Personally, for shots in complicated conditions I've grabbed an used Blackmagic VideoAssist 4K... works way better.
> I'm not a pro photographer, so I can't justify spending time manually tweaking every RAW file when smartphones do it well 99% of the time.
Problem with smartphones, even modern ones, is the quality goes down dramatically in low-light scenarios. That's simple physics, the pixels are like 100x smaller. AI can cover for a lot of that, but it's noticeable enough to not make it worth my while - and for what it's worth, there are no Android tablets on the market with a halfway decent camera.
Sony's hardware is the best in class, there is no match at all for the A7S series from anyone in low-light, but the sorry state of their software is laughable. And the best of it is: it's all Linux under the hood. The older A7/A6000 series actually exposed parts of it via an Android subsystem layer where one could write apps for it after jailbreaking - too bad that the Android layer was/is fossilized (IIRC, Android 4-ish?!) and so they ripped it out after the A7S3 :/
If you don't want to pull with their app, your other option is UPLOADING TO AN UNSECURE FTP SERVER. I have a linux server hanging around (that's also the NAS where I store the raws) so this wasn't a huge deal, but like WTF.
I bought the camera (A7 IV) because it has ethernet support, which I thought, great. I'll just be able to scp or samba them off or something. Absolutely not.
> your other option is UPLOADING TO AN UNSECURE FTP SERVER.
... what? That's not an option at least for the models that I have. Hell, if the camera would automatically connect to my phone's hotspot and then transfer the photos, that would be a working solution for me.
https://helpguide.sony.net/ilc/2110/v1/en/contents/TP1000653...
They took out the playmemories app support, but introduced INSECURE FTP as a replacement?
Just wtf are they smoking over at Sony HQ?!
Yep - that was an annoying own goal move on Sony's part. Having some sort of scripting layer in the OS would have made a big difference - they should have expanded the layer rather than abandoning it : (
Smartphones definitely beat cameras at night though. iPhones and Google Pixels in particular can make photos simply impossible with any kind of DSLR thanks to their computational magic.
Yeah, some camera menus suck.
I’m a photographer and your comment made me laugh. Everyone in photo circles hates the Sony menus on their cameras because they’re the worst.
Canon, Panasonic, and Fuji have substantially better menu systems that we all far prefer.
I find it funny your opinion has been informed by using the worst the camera sphere has to offer!
That being said, these menus and UIs are aimed at pros who do nothing else but take photos. It’s a coding IDE, not a simple text editor. It’s going to be foreign to the casual user. That is by design.
Also, the computational photography is a nuisance for our work. We want the LEAST edited photo file possible every time.
I understand your lack of interest in editing, it’s a chore that even we have to do, but it’s also one of our power tools. We choose this, it is not a step backwards for us!
It sounds like “professional” photography just isn’t for you!
However, before I start a bunch of arguments, I will say one thing. There is always room for improvement and they could likely do UX/UI analysis to further improve things. Though, from my use, I do find it to be very hardware focused which feels intuitive to me and those in my photo circles. I think it’s the prerequisite of knowing shutter, ISO, and aperture as well as focus pulling concepts. That makes me “know what to look for”.
(Canon user here) This response is very misleading. They're all bad. Other camera manufacturers are not substantially better than Sony in this regard. If Sony is a 1 and smart phones are a 10, the other camera manufacturers fall somewhere between 1 and 3. GPs comment is still spot.
edit: Please indicate when you make edits to your comments. Your comment is now very different to the one I responded to.
I respect your opinion, but I have to disagree.
I know this may sound “misleading” but I’ve only started “real” photography for a year or two and I find the Canon and Panasonic menus quite straightforward.
I like the very hardware focused setup of DSLR/mirror-less cameras.
I would also politely ask you don’t call me “misleading” just because you disagree with my opinion. I’m not in here spreading misinformation to start polarizing discussions. I’m merely sharing my opinion.
You completely changed the comment I responded to, so how can we have a discussion about whether or not your comment was misleading? So no, I'm going to stick with "misleading". And the fact that you changed the comment so drastically without telling anyone makes me think you found something wrong with your original comment too.
And after you're edit, I'm going to add "condescending" to my description as well.
> It sounds like “professional” photography just isn’t for you!
As if the only reason anyone would disagree with you is because they are casuals
> You completely changed the comment I responded to, so how can we have a discussion about whether or not your comment was misleading?
I can understand your frustration. I was looking at other comments and felt I wanted to add further reasons why I feel the lack of usability (as they see it) is by design (which makes the UI good, not bad), and not because of laziness on behalf of camera manufacturers. I can see why you'd think I'm being misleading saying that camera UI's are good, also I still fully believe that a Canon/Pana/Fuji UI is substantially easier to navigate than a Sony one. This is only my personal experience though.
> And after you're edit, I'm going to add "condescending" to my description as well.
> As if the only reason anyone would disagree with you is because they are casuals
I don't mean to say the only reason is because they are casual. I meant to point out that because they want computational photography and also hate editing raws, that using a dedicated camera is unlikely going to be fun for them. If you hate two of the most important parts of a photographers workflow to ensure the creative ability to edit a photo exactly the way you want, then yeah, that likely means you're a "casual".
I can see how "bad UI" and "computational photography + editing RAW" was mixed up a bit though. I could have been clearer as to what specifically I was addressing, my apologies.
To clarify on "casuals" though, I don't think being casual is bad. I'm a casual gamer, a casual driver, a casual cook. That isn't a negative either. It's just the truth, I admit I'm not a pro who dedicates the time necessary in those fields.
When a casual person tells a pro "I hate the parts of your work that are necessary to do your job/hobby properly" and then further target their frustration at a UI that might be confusing to them by design (as its meant for a different type of user) seems like something other folks might find interesting. I see it as a very neat case of user targeting and persona analysis, similar to software.
Canon/Nikon/Fuji/Sony are targeting photographers who want a dedicated OS with cutting edge hardware. If the hardware is good, they'll tolerate a stripped down, minimal camera OS for the sake of speed. It's similar to why you don't often see people driving a Formula 1 car on their daily commute.
Hasselblad and Phase One have very simple and in my opinion, great UIs for their modern cameras.
Something that really frustrated me with my camera purchase was how the hard interface was used to upsell higher priced models. I bought a D3500, the low end of that sensor line, and there's a lot of options I have to change through the menu. Things like ISO or timer delay (I also have to re-set this for every shot), things that typically are accessed through a dedicated or function button. The crux of it is that moving to a more expensive model with those buttons is not a strict upgrade: the camera is larger, heavier, and has worse battery life.
Yeah, price segmenting and protecting higher end models is unfortunately common with most technology companies. It becomes particularly obvious when folks install magic lantern (or similar) on their camera bodies and see what unlocked firmware will make use of on their camera.
I feel you, they definitely are out to make a profit and that definitely affects the value you get for your money (as opposed to what the hardware can actually do).
The latest Sony OS version is a tad better, but with enough practice you can get used to even the Sony menus. But yes.
It's taken a few years but the menus on my Sony mirrorless have grown on me.
Right, but TFA is talking about the compact camera market. I agree with the comment that cameras haven't kept up with the ease of use and convenience of phones in any way.
The funny thing is that this translates over to Sony Xperia smartphone cameras too. On one hand, their custom camera app's UI feels like a Sony A7 variant. On the other, basic expected computational features such as night mode are missing.
> On the other, basic expected computational features such as night mode are missing.
Oh, how fast is progress in the world of technology.
I remember 6 years ago when google showed some prototypes of night photo from a smartphone using long expose. Meanwhile my Galaxy Note 4 made blurry unusable mess during the 14th of july nightly event I tried it at, while my gf DLSR were clear and great. Ah ah, smartphones will never be able to do that.
How 4 years ago Night Sight blew me away with their demonstration and almost made me go pixel.
How 3 years ago Samsung added a Night mode to my S9+ through a regular update and while the photo took a whole second to take the result was usually clean and crisp compared to the noisy mess on my previous Note 4, making it actually usable for static scene or portrait shot.
How the night mode on my Note 10 was genuinely great to the point it was just another mode as long as you avoid the usual night tricks like light sources.
How my new S22 Ultra for the first time passed my "smartphone will never really be good for night event shots" by taking picture during the 14th of july fireworks the quality of which I would scientifically classify as "pretty fucking great".
And now it's just a basic expected computational feature.
Sometime we forget how much progress is being made due to how incremental they all are, but damn, and that's just one feature on a piece of glass and plastic that's insanely powerful and filled with features in my pocket.
PS: the lack of Apple mention is merely because I'm not an Apple guy, I'm sure they had the same insane path
Among my devices I have a phone that unfolds into a tablet and has 3x optical, 0.6x optical, and 10x AI-assisted zoom that can take pictures like this (https://imgur.com/a/ITwdZSO) with a total 30x zoom from literally 20 miles away.
(Edit: for those curious, it's Samsung's "AI Super-resolution" tech, which I expect works similarly to AI upscaling tech e.g in Adobe's products. The phone I'm using in this example is the Fold 4)
And I don't even have the best smartphone camera on the market right now. That prize goes to the S22 ultra which has two separate telephoto lenses (cameras?), 3x and 10x. https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/check-out-...
Yeah when you sit down and think about it, it's nuts where we are today relative to last year, five years ago, and a decade ago. Especially considering 2019 still feels like yesterday because of COVID.
What does it look like without the AI assist? I wonder if it is "creating" more than it is "photographing".
Also what phone is it?
Not parent but the S22 Ultra has a 3x optical zoom, then up to 100x AI assisted that they call space zoom. No the same phone parent mention but it should answer your question: up to roughly 30x the photo is "real" in that the digital side is merely cleaning up noise. Above that you can clearly see a drop both in quality and in details, small errors that are actually there in reality start disapearing from the shot too.
Link to shots from a techradar article [1] (note that these are lossy compressed, even the 1x has artefact, so I put them only to compare between them / the zoom levels):
1x: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/4pcFBCfWpfjjJAp7RQ7NXQ-120...
3x: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/EdzEYaf85czuW9xJNnPRwQ-120...
10x: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/vDCsCZc5EDDHyMF6sRn5UR-120...
30x: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/FWkeGcGZTopnXgfLWDbrMQ-120...
100x: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/oGBARcTnieEBciBDn4BCEQ-120...
We can agree that the 100x shot is useless, and the 30x shot too except maybe in some specific situations, but the 10x shots are very much good. Perfect or worthy or a dedicated camera with a zoom ? No. But for every day use absolutely.
[1] https://www.techradar.com/news/we-need-to-talk-about-samsung...
S22 ultra, specifically telephoto lens #2, is 10x
https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/check-out-...
10MP F4.9 [10x, Dual Pixel AF], OIS, FOV 11°, 1/3.52”, 1.12µm
Its #4 in the graphic.
Space zoom is 10x on top of that.
Probably Samsung's Z folds, one of the things Apple has so far no answer for and they are mighty usable as they are now. Ie split screen works very well.
I have S22 ultra and camera is even better there - 10x optical zoom properly sees much better than my eyes, so not only its great for catching kids running around moments without kids being tiny figures on each photo, but its usable ie if I want to check some remote street sign/name without walking 100m closer to read it myself.
Night cameras on top of the line phones these days sees much better than human eyes in the dark too - pics I snap during my night walks (one easy way how to clear my mind and actually do some light exercise) show so much more details than my eyes can resolve, once stopped me from falling down some nasty ravine when I saw just outlines of the terrain. All handheld in almost pitch dark.
Plus S22 ultra has this special mode it turns itself internally in when shooting moon on higher zooms (around 30x) - its more of a party trick since its just 1 subject, but within past few years it was the only time I could see (and produce in this case) literal jaw-dropping effect on folks around me. It looks nice, craters and seas in sharp details, also handheld (30x in the night, thats quite an achievement). They all rushed out with their latest xiaomis and apples just to snap the same, all ending up with small blurry white blobs and not much more.
S22 Ultra optical is only 3x, not 10x.
The reason 10x shot look so great is because it uses the 50MP main AND 10MP telephoto lenses so it has enough details available to produce very clear shot.
S22 ultra telephoto #2 is 10x
https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/check-out-...
10MP F4.9 [10x, Dual Pixel AF], OIS, FOV 11°, 1/3.52”, 1.12µm
Space zoom is 10x on top of that.
Galaxy Z Fold 4.
The S22 ultra has a better set of cameras, but I needed the foldy tech to have a portable tablet.
For those of you who are an apple, someone implemented Google's HDR+ to work on raw files from DSLR cameras: https://github.com/martin-marek/hdr-plus-swift
I wonder how far we are from the phones running some sort of Stable Diffusion AI with the photo taken as an input to create various fixed and touched up scenes.
Obviously(?) not stable diffusion, but the touching up of scenes is already there with the Pixel 6 magic eraser.
One touch removal of people and background intrusions (even goes as far as suggesting items for removal).
So, not far I imagine!
I wonder if it can run retroactive so you can use the face recognition to Stalin any former Nikolai Yezhovs you may have from all your photos.
that is basically what happens, if you ever saw the raw image that the tiny sensor created it works look hideous, i guess it would just be adding a bit more to what's already happening
I upgraded from an iPhone XR to an iPhone 13 Pro. The differences are striking. Having multiple lenses and advanced optics for features like macro photography and zoom are great. Big advances in low light capability. I also got a great pic of fireworks on the 4th.
Looking back at pics from the iPhone 3GS is wild, totally different world.
Hah! I too have used a Sony Xperia Android and the UI was atrocious there as well!
The same has been said about some of the PlayStation UI’s.
In my opinion, this is more of a Sony problem and less of a camera problem. Though that may just be me!
This is why the iPhone is actually a good split here: The default camera App is bleeding edge on computational photography but then when you want the pro experience there is the app Halide which is just an incredibly well designed pro camera interface that would thrive on a Mirrorless body. I'm kinda shocked that no small camera manufacturer hasn't reached out to the team.
>"I can't justify spending time manually tweaking every RAW file when smartphones do it well 99% of the time."
As soon as one looks at photo on larger 4K monitor the difference is striking. And you do not even have to dick with raw files to see the difference. Plain JPEG coming out of my relatively ancient D800 puts best smartphone cam to shame. Size matters and full frame sensor vs one in smartphone are incomparable.
That is not to say that smartphone can not take decent photos and in many cases what is being photographed matters way more than the picture quality as long as it is not atrocious.
The issue is that the average person doesn't consume photos and videos on their large 4k monitors. That's an enthusiast niche at best. That alone a market sustaining a large multinational co does not make.
Sensibly, workflows optimize for the smartphone consumption use case.
And yes, that hurts as photographers who obsessed over sharpness and pixel-level fidelity since the invention of digital cameras, but that just doesn't seem to be where the zeitgeist is at anymore. People never really cared in the first place.
It's similar to how music producers obsess over whether a particular synth sound was made with analog gear or was a "cheap digital knockoff". The listener never cared in the first place. They just want to be moved wherever it is that they are, which happens to be on the phone 99% of the time in photography.
> The issue is that the average person doesn't consume photos and videos on their large 4k monitors.
If you want to further process the image you want the best quality input you can get. Think digitally zooming/reframing, or choosing from a bigger dynamic range to use the colors you prefer. In a lower quality input you might be stuck with whatever photo you took, while the high-quality input gives you more information to correct the picture, even if the end resolution ends up being the same.
P.S. Good printed photos also have more definition that most monitors (idk if 4k, but I believe comparable), for products like printed wedding photos.
>The issue is that the average person doesn't consume photos and videos on their large 4k monitors. That's an enthusiast niche at best."
Maybe. I do not care. I only use phone as to call, GPS, controlling some gadgets, take a pic and that is it. I do the rest on PC on big screens.
When you edit or crop you lose information. It's good to start with extra.
I've noticed recently that a lot of smartphone cameras are doing a lot of heavy software upscaling and smoothing that erases details worse than simply low resolution. Everything is starting to look airbrushed. Having a real lens to do a lot of the optical heavy lifting and letting the sensor sense makes a huge difference if you really care about detail.
Yes, and this means that everything you shoot with (say) an iPhone tends to look the same. The camera has a very well curated set of opinions on color science etc that works really well for most people, but it enforces a look and once you try and wander out of that it stops being an effective instrument for looking at the world. (Yes, ProRAW helps a bit, but nothing beats real lenses on a big sensor for having your own control over image creation.)
That said, if you're just taking snaps to share with friends I don't see why you'd care about any of that : )
...my relatively ancient D800...
Launched five years ago at $3000.
Launched ten years ago: https://www.dpreview.com/products/nikon/slrs/nikon_d800
Currently available for ~$600: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?&_nkw=nikon+d800&LH_Sold=1&L...
And being sold used for 700-ish. Heck, an ancient D700 beats any smartphone whatsoever at larger prints and screens. You do have to do some post-processing yourself, true. And you need proper optics, there is only so much you can crop out of 12 MP. Smartphones take great pictures, and I love the fact that it gets a lot more people into photography than back during the film days. making art more accessible can only be good. But let's not kid ourselves, the reason why smartphone photos do look so great is a ton of heavy automated post-processing in device. I'd prefer to have that same functionalities available as stand-alone post-processing software. Or not, I'm fine with darktable.
I think the problem is less about the number of megapixels and more about the size of the pixels (i.e. sensor) personally.
Smartphones simply cannot resolve the same level of detail that a proper camera can, regardless of how many MP of resolution they provide. Computational AI helps a bit, but...
I’ve had mine since 2012.
I'd be nice to have normal-sized lens, but it's hard to justify lugging them when the rest of the camera is so primitive.
Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot (or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time) and have slower autofocus. May screw up exposure. It's harder to check the photos. Extra steps are needed to get the photos out of the camera. And it annoys me to no end that my dumb camera can't automatically adjust its clock and the timezone.
> Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot (or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time) and have slower autofocus.
This is definitely not true. Cameras may take slightly longer to start than a phone takes to turn its screen on, but the same amount of time (or quicker) to get to "shooting a photo." (Yes, even with shortcuts like double-tap the power button on a phone.)
The Ricoh GR III is ready to shoot in 0.7 seconds, and that includes extending a retracted lens barrel. And this is a pocketable camera.
Fast AF on a phone is mostly due to the fact that they usually use very wide-angle lenses. There's a wider range of acceptable focus. Newer lenses and cameras (i.e. the last 5-7 years) on a DSLR are still way faster.
You don't have to cart around a big-ass DSLR with multi-pound lenses. My pen-f (2016) runs circles around an iphone pro, and it's pretty small and light for a "real" camera (it can fit in my coat pocket).
> Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot (or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time) and have slower autofocus.
This is not true, especially if we're talking about DSLRs (as opposed to mirrorless). I used to have a Canon 40D. I never turned it off. It would stay "on" in the bag for however long I didn't use it. It consumed next to nothing when in "sleep" mode, but came out of it ready to shoot at the touch of a button. Autofocus was plenty fast, too. Ditto for a friend's Sony A700 (same vintage APS-C DSLR). I understand current mirrorless cameras have much better autofocus, even the mid-range ones.
Even my pen-f (mirrorless) wakes up or turns on much quicker than you can slide around your finger on an iphone. Autofocus isn't great in low-light, though.
You never touched a real camera, did you? AF speed depends on the lense, older ones with a screw drive AF are slower than newer ones where the AF motor is in the lens. Camera AF speed is incredible so, starting with mid-level cameras, let alone to speak of the more pro-grade stuff. And those cameras are ready to shoot faster from fully of than it takes to get them from holding them to your side to your eye. Definitely faster than getting a smartphone camera ready.
> Cameras usually take longer to start and get ready to take a shot
What? If you set up a camera and a phone on the table and do a timed run from the moment of reaching out and grabbing it to having a well-focused image taken, the camera will win 100% of the time. Phones with their touch screen and laggy UI are incredibly slow in comparison.
> or run out of battery sooner if you keep them on all the time
The exact opposite. A camera will last for months on a single charge if not heavily used.
> As soon as one looks at photo on larger 4K monitor the difference is striking.
Exactly. Or when you print them out.
On the wall here I have a printed photo about 4ft wide, taken from a cropped section of a photo (not even the full frame) and it looks stunning. And this isn't even from a newer pro camera, it was taken with a ~15 year old Nikon D40.
A 4ft printed photo isn't exactly a popular use case. A 10x15 would look great.
> As soon as one looks at photo on larger 4K monitor the difference is striking
I hope I'll view photos on 4K someday...
Well, I have some photos of Amsterdam I took on iPhone 5S and they look just fine on my display. And we've had a ton of progress since then.
In general case, you're right, but modern smartphones have come a long way.
It's a shame how well-designed and fun-to-use Fujifilm cameras are (I've owned several and they are the only digital cameras I use, apart from my phone) but how garbage their mobile app is. From what I've seen, Leica is the only company with a usable first-party app.
Can concure, just got an x100v and it's great but sometimes it takes me 10 mins of restarting the damn app for it to connect correctly.
I end up just doing SD card -> iphotos which will sync up to my phone later.
I’ve never been able to get it to work. Setting it to act as a USB-C card reader and tethering to my iPad isn’t too bad, though.
This is a cultural issue: programming is a low status blue collar job in Japan, especially in existing industry. This is especially weird to me given the number of great Japanese computer scientists, but so it goes.
One exception is the gaming industry: Sony Computer Entertainment in particular treats its developers similarly to the US (Ken Kutaragi drove this) while the rest of Sony follows the standard Japanese model. Bandai and Nintendo are similar, though not quite as much as Sony, and Sega a bit more traditional.
This must explain Sony's crappy phone software.
I just except that if I buy a Sony camera, the software is going to suck. I have zero expectations, I know that sending photos to my phone is probably out of the question.
I think they’re actually trying to solve different issues.
Cameras are designed to capture & store the light in a way we can interpret later. They intentionally weren’t designed to edit or interpret the light and make corrections.
Smart phones automatically do interpret and “correct” images. This can lead to artificially created artifacts in the image files. Professional photographers will often prefer the raw because they can apply their own edits without said artifacts.
Now sure, camera photos are good for 99% of people, 99% of the time. BUT because the software on cameras were never designed to do those corrections, they just don’t. This makes night images worse, unless you decrease shutter speed.
On a side note, it’s this very fact that I find it difficult to accept cell phone footage as video evidence. Particularly, if you’re looking at fine detail, as the filters often modify / generate the fine detail.
> Cameras are designed to capture & store the light in a way we can interpret later. They intentionally weren’t designed to edit or interpret the light and make corrections.
That's one thing, but still there are many features of the camera firmware that people want to have, and cameras failed to deliver. One of such thing was apps - Sony provided few in some of their camera, but next model removed them, because they couldn't implement that in a model-agnostic way. They just don't get software.
Depends on the market segment. People wanting apps on their cameras have very capabale smartphones now. People who want cameras, and not phones or computers one can use to take pictures with, have highly capable cameras without apps because they don't need nor want those software on camera. And guess what, photography is more popular than ever, and everyone is happy, including camera makers it seems.
>On a side note, it’s this very fact that I find it difficult to accept cell phone footage as video evidence. Particularly, if you’re looking at fine detail, as the filters often modify / generate the fine detail.
Are there examples of this? The only example I can think of was an accusation a while ago that huawei phones were compositing a stock photo of the moon when taking moon pictures with their phones. They denied the accusation and it wasn't really clear whether it was actually happening or not.
That Dallas plane crash recently had a new cell phone video surface where it is clear that the fighter started diving, but what is not clear is if there is a drone he was trying to avoid; and it's very possible that the apparent drone could also be a video artifact.
And upscaling tools/etc introduce their own information, and may cause it to make something appear to be there that is actually just compression noise.
You’re right that cameras never adapted to a world where users want cars, not faster horses.
But I think you may be playing a bit loose with the ideas of evidence and details. Yes, smartphones “invent” details, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where those changes produce false evidence. You might find details of leaves rendered as watercolor brushstrokes; you won’t find a suspect inserted into a scene.
And remember that film annd magnetic tape cameras also invent details. All of that film grain that we find artistic is not really there. Should we also question what we see on those videos because they aren’t pixel-perfect?
It boils down to 2 things:
1) Fact that whereas camera technology in smartphones has & is continuing to develop rapidly (computational photography as mentioned is latest major jump), it has largely stagnated within the mid-low tier camera market. Makes sense Panasonic is exiting the market, and other major players like Sony and Fujifilm focusing on the high end.
2) Vast majority users value convenience and ecosystem integration over pure photo quality. In most cases the latest smartphone take "good enough" photographs, so who wants to fiddle with having to transfer images from your standalone camera to your photo before sharing on social media? As the adage goes, "the best camera is the one you have on hand".
Personally I'd love to see something like the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom or Nokia Lumia 808/1020 being revitalized - a camera-first smartphone. How long before Apple or Google enter the DLSR or mirrorless market? Seems inevitable given the large investments both companies already make in smartphone camera photography.
It's not a problem with camera manufacturers, it's a problem with hardware companies.
Even chip vendors, who you would would think understand the importance of software, will de-prioritize their software side.
I wonder if it's a sort of macho thing; anyone can learn to write software, but not everyone can get an EE degree.
It also could be that the idea of incremental releases doesn't really exist on the hardware side. Hardware, because it's physical, requires a coordinated release. Then you do the next revision once the inventory gets low. The idea that you can ship on a flexible schedule is alien to the hardware side.
> anyone can learn to write software, but not everyone can get an EE degree.
I took a EE microcontrollers class. A lot of EEs struggled writing assembly, and they all had at least an introductory C programming course.
> sort of macho thing
please contain this to twitter. What does "macho" have to do with comparing the relative difficulty of two things and attaching status to the most difficult?
That's how society brought us where we are.
Get a Canon and install CHDK.
https://bw.vern.cc/chdk/wiki/CHDK
Wow. Thank you. I had no idea this existed. I have a Canon S95 long languishing on the shelf and will have to give CHDK a try.
Digital cameras is ALL about post processing. I used to have Minolta, Panasonic, Sony, and Canon point and shoots. No matter what, Canon pictures always come out much better out of the camera even if it has inferior lens, sensor, or is much older. Basically all sensors of Sony now, so the magic is all about the processing. The rest is really up to the photographer, that is where the art is.
Canon doesn't use Sony sensors. They are the only Non-Sony camera brand left that manufactures it's own sensors.
I don't understand why phone manufacturers don't just get into the camera business, then. They certainly all seem to love making phones that brag about having large sensors and fancy (tiny) lenses... so why not just go one step further and make a "phone" that only runs a camera app, with a lens mount rather than a fixed lens, hardware mode switches, and a tripod screw mount?
The camera market small, quite crowded (before Sony kind of created the mirrorless market the only serious contenders were Nikon and Canon, now you got Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji and Panasonic), smartphones already killed the entry level and compact camera markets and the tech is quite different from smartphone cameras.
Phone cameras don't have sensors or optics at a quality comparable to basic point and shoots. They have to fit into a tiny space and performance is necessarily compromised. They're making it all up on software processing.
Based on this thread and my own corroborating experiences, this feels like a field ripe for harvest—if anyone sold a camera with DSLR-grade optics and smartphone-grade usability and computational abilities, they'd be rich! For those in the know, what makes this more difficult than it seems? Why has nobody done this yet and what challenges are standing in the way?
People needing and wanting DSLR grade optics, or mirroless as optics are more less the same thing, don't want or need shiny clicky smartphone apps. They need and want a professional tool that produces the least edited picture possible for post-processing later on. I wouldn't touch a camera that runs on Android with feet pole.
Yeah well, you're right, but some new features would be welcome, like, for instance, the ability to immediately send images out of the camera. Yet even with recent DSLRs and mirrorless top-end cameras it's still a hassle.
I recently made a photobooth from an old Canon DSLR and a rPi running gphoto: a script takes the images out of the camera and posts them on a server, and people can see them in almost real time.
It's really great, but it would be even better if it was all done in camera.
This. I'm going to do any editing on my PC, not the picture-taker. Far bigger screen, far better control.
The brains I want on the camera are for things that actually involve taking the shot. Give me intelligent capture of images for stacking. That entails two things:
1) HDR exposure. Point the camera at something, select HDR. It takes the exposure and examines the frame for any pixels near the extremes of the sensor. If there are any pixels near the top it reshoots exactly the same shot but with a shorter exposure time. Repeat until there are no really bright pixels. On the other end, if there are any really dim pixels reshoot with a slower exposure, repeat as needed.
2) Focus stacking. Manual focus, pick a point. Pick another point. The camera shoots a sequence of exposures moving the focus between the two points.
Camera manufacturers are very capabale of making hardware, incl. optics, that run sophisticated embedded software to take pictures. For editing, go to Adobe or one of the alternatives. Different use cases, different products, different markets. And not everything in the world can be solved by some consumer grade app.
I could not disagree more.
Professional photographers require good reliable connectivity. Nikon cameras are extremely clunky in this regard.
Similarly, their menu system is atrocious. I am not saying this as somebody who looked at a camera once and said "this is too hard". I ran a photo business from 2008 to 2018, read all the manuals intimately and worked with Nikon cameras daily, and came to it from techie nerd perspective and knew what every button option and mode does in intricate detail.
"Great hardware, horrible software" is well understood state of camera business last 2 decades.
I now have two young kids. I have 4 dslr and two mirrorless cameras at home... And take kids photos with my cell - because it's convenient accessible and fast to transmit. Why can't I have an efficient sharing work flow with my $3000 camera? Because they make sucky closed systems and refuse to change open or learn.
I mostly agree. I have three DSLRs and several very high-end lenses, but I take way more photos of my kids with my phone than with the DSLRs. The workflow for getting shots out of the phone is just so much better than the cameras, and the phone is always with me.
This isn’t an insurmountable problem. Some Nikon camera bodies have Wi-Fi. If they cared to they could make it much much easier to get photos off and process them. It’s just not a focus of theirs.
That's the thing. All my Nikon cameras have some sort of wifi or Bluetooth or nfc. All of it is a pain.
I agree their hardware and optics are superb. I don't even begin to understand how their work flow or integration are anything but atrocious.
They could make their integration software better or let others do it - but they don't!
Yeah, I've got connectivity--and I never use it. I'm not shooting with a PC nearby, I'm bringing home a camera full of shots. And it's *far* faster to pop the card in my PC than transmit them.
Studio photographers need connectivity, everyone else needs two fast storage card slots. And your comment is honestly the first time I hear anybody claim Nikons menu system is "bad", especially with all those custom menus and buttons one can set-up to automated basically everything.
I never worked with Sony or Canon, so I cannot say how that compares.
>>Studio photographers need connectivity, everyone else needs two fast storage card slots.
That is, at best, myopic.
Sports photographers need fast connectivity far more than studio photographers. Their whole business is to take, select, and send shots out as fast as possible.
News coverage needs fast connectivity.
Think even wedding photography - the ability to share photos to social networks right after ceremony, or display the couple shots during dinner is a professional USP. Instead, I'm juggling card reader, with my "two fast cards" and laptop and lightroom on my lap during speeches.
Just about every type of photography, professional or consumer, benefits from fast and easy connectivity.
>>And your comment is honestly the first time I hear anybody claim Nikons menu system is "bad"
Possible. we simply have different colleagues and frequent different forums then :).
Their menu system is powerful but poorly designed. Why are there two different types of setting banks? Why aren't there hardware buttons to select them? Why is some stuff unDer shooting but other under 6 layers of custom setting menu? Which is different than setup menu? Why is AF ON setup not under "controls"? And myriad other idiosyncracies.
Just because you're used to it (as am I!) does not make it good.
Damn, forgot about sports... Funny so that theose pros seem to be really happy with their 6k camera bodies paired with 10k+ optics, one would assume that if connectivity would be a killer feature, like AF back when Canon ate the sports market from Nikon, someone between Nikon, Canon, Sony or Fuji would implement it. The money is definitely there.
I 100% agree with that assumption. But sport pro photographers I follow haven't stopped complaining about connectivity and work flow for a decade (while being as you say happy with hardware and optics). Granted it's a small sample, as sport photography isn't my thing. :-/
And again, for myself, I'm in a "shut up and take my money" for camera that would allow me to seemlessly capture and share photography. As you say, that's money in the table. And I'm not alone in my group of friends and colleagues.
Top end Sports focused bodies typically have Ethernet for fast as possible transfers.
Studio photographers can at least shoot 'tethered' to a computer by cable more easily than others.
> And take kids photos with my cell
My conclusion is the exact opposite. Cellphone cameras are so incredibly slow (measuring time from moment of picking up phone to photo having being taken) that I can't imagine using it for any kid photos since the phtographable moment usually lasts a few seconds, they aren't posing.
I keep my older Nikon DSLR cameras around the house so one is usually within easy reach so I can snap a photo in less than a second when a cute kid moment is happening.
As to the Nikon menus, atrocious is not a word I could use. Sure it's always possible to nitpick something I'd do differently but they work just fine. More importantly, after initial setup it's not something I use much since everything is controlled by the physical buttons and that's the overwhelming win of a DSLR over a phone (and photo quality of course).
I think we likely have a large area of agreement - in addition to perhaps slightly different personal preferences and use cases :)
My Nikon cameras are setup the way I like them, so everything I need is indeed reachable by physical buttons. This is good - as I said, their menu is powerful. But! When I get a new Nikon camera, despite 15 years of experience... it's a pain to set it up how I want it, and I still chase settings around the menus. So I deem them powerful, but poorly designed.
As to kids photos - it's all down to individual use cases, so lots of room for variation. For myself though, even though like yourself I literally have a DSLR ready to go on the shelf in the family room and on the TV stand in the living room... time to turn on cell and take a photo is far lower/faster then the time to grab the camera and shoot. Add to that, the time to then share that photo is literally 10 seconds via phone, vs realistically days to weeks via camera (by the time I bother taking the card out to the office, transferring photos, ingesting them, processing them, exporting, and then sharing). In majority of cases, DSLR would've taken a higher quality photos. In majority of cases, it doesn't matter.
And then there are all the other cases - playing in backyard, going for a walk, run, adventure, guests, whatever. Phone is there, good enough (hasn't always been the case! In the Note 8 / S8 time, only a few years ago, phones were not good enough, and phones weren't fast enough - now they are! I don't need to log in or face scan the phone, there's a shortcut and a snappy app and fast focus), and it shares so quickly! That sharing is really the winning factor and why I'm peeved expensive cameras don't make it easy to share.
In most scenarios, I get far better pictures with my Canon DSLR than with my iPhone, yet most of my pictures for the past few years have been taken with my iPhone.
But the big difference, for me, is, most of those pictures are quick pictures that I almost certainly never would have taken with my DSLR camera. I've got thousands of family pictures done on my phone that otherwise probably wouldn't have been taken at all.
When I'm going somewhere or doing something that I know I deliberately want to have pictures of? I still haul around the DSLR. When I want pictures I could only get with a super-telephoto or ultra-wide lens? I still haul around the DSLR.
I do feel that my iPhone has replaced any need for a cheap "compact camera", but I rarely used one after getting my (D)SLR cameras anyway. But I'm not sure that my iPhone has really taken away that much usage share from my DSLR. I just use it to take pictures that I wouldn't have gotten at all otherwise, which has turned out to be quite a few.
DSLR powered up has a time to shot similar to phone already on the camera screen.
Either is adequate for casual photography.
We don't have any cute kids, but I hike and wildlife shows up now and then. I hike with a bridge camera, not because it's any faster or more convenient than my phone, but because of the lens. I have an older flagship phone, I would say the image quality is as good, but I have yet to get a wildlife shot with it due to the lack of zoom range.
My general experience is the harder the shot the more camera you need.
> DSLR powered up has a time to shot similar to phone already on the camera screen.
But that's not a realistic comparison since the phone is almost certainly not on the camera screen if I wasn't expecting to take a photo and the phone is just sitting there on the table (or worse, pocket).
It is a realistic comparison--both are fast from their ready states but the reality is neither is likely in their ready state when you have the cute kid moment.
No, that was my point. A DSLR is always in the ready state. The only way it couldn't be ready is if it was turned off, but there is no reason to ever turn it off.
This has nothing to do with editing. Modern smartphones combine multiple pictures for each picture you take, and have very sophisticated demosaicing, noise reduction and color grading. No app needed.
I prefer manual buttons when taking photos the traditional way. Too many digital screens these days deviate from a good solid device that does a few things really well.
This is why I got a Fuji XT-30. It’s got a physical control for everything. I don’t have to use the menu unless I’m doing something unusual.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem like there are many cameras designed this way anymore.
I've sworn off Sony cameras after paying ~$1500 for a NEX-6 and having them abandon the firmware at version 1.03, 18 months after the camera was released.
I don't even remotely understand how that's possible. Did they just contract all of the work out?
I never had a firmware upgrade for any of the compact digital cameras (Canon) I had between ~ 1998 and 2012. I did not even think that this should exist, they worked well from the beginning.
The NEX-6 mentioned by the parent isn't compact. Nikon DSLRs do get updates. Example [0].
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32248732
There's also an issue with camera UI that phones managed to largely bypass. I remember getting a Canon t4i with a touch screen. The touch interface was actually pretty decent and this was probably ~10 years ago! But a lot of "camera people" hated it. They'd complain that it would inevitably lead to smudges on the screen and they wanted physical controls instead.
So who do you sell a dedicated camera to? A new UI will largely alienate the small market that still exists. The old UI guarantees an unappealing product for the smartphone user.
Ultimately all interfaces have to be easily navigable with buttons and this has consequences.
Wifi and Bluetooth... Yeah. It's not good on DSLRs either. My Pentax K1 has WiFi option, and, otherwise being an excellent camera in terms of imaging quality, build, ergonomics, good UI, it has somehow unreliable and cumbersome wifi - hard to set up and the mobile app is average at best. As if different people designed the wifi subsystem.
And interestingly my Tascam 44dw (not a camera, but sound recorder) has also abysmal wifi. Low range, unreliable and seems to be using single TCP connection for sending realtime data which suffers from head-of-line blocking. As if noone there heard about UDP.
Why is wifi such a problem? Weird.
This is so true. I have an Olympus M4/3 camera, and to update the firmware on it, you must install a Mac application that requires a kernel extension.
This is offensively stupid and I can’t believe this hasn’t changed in years.
Sony has a stupid update app as well, but Nikon and Pentax? Download a firmware file, put it on the root of the SD card, and boot itin a particular way or goto some menu and runu the update. Its a very 90's process but easy and simple compared to Olympus and Sony.
I'll go against the grain here and hard-disagree.
My Canon has locked up hard only once in half a decade of hard use, generating ~8TB of images in adverse conditions. It is sometimes left turned on for months at a time. I sometimes accidentally do terrible things with the power switch and SD card. Lenses are attached/removed without a care in the world. I've never seen a flaw in the function of menus or the corruption of a single image.
I cannot state the same for almost any other software product. I can use it like a tool, not like a computer. That's a sign of good software.
Aren't all the things you described signs of good hardware?
It's both. If pro cameras (or even point and shoot) had really bad software, we would see corrupted files all the time, unreadable media, exposure completely off, weird bugs in battery monitoring or power consumption, etc.
Smartphones have constant "updates" and yearly new OSes, and we think it's marvelous if a two year old phone still functions. Yet digital cameras from 15 years ago still work fine with exactly zero update.
Robustness and dependability are important features. In-the-box HDR is cute but it matters less.
Nikon do very well with the Z series. I have a Z50 and it's closer to smartphone than DLSR. BT and WiFi work, decent quality viewfinder and articulated multi-touch screen. Also with the 16-50 lens it still goes in your pocket but is a proper camera.
I disagree with smartphone quality. I have what could be considered a close to best of breed in quality iPhone 13 Pro and it's crap. It's a 2009 DSLR with three crap prime lenses stuck to it. It's mostly usable if you shoot ProRAW with it but the processed images (HEIC/JPEG) are really quite fucked up.
It's so bizarre that camera manufacturers never figured out that the camera should be treated primarily as a smartphone peripheral. When I take a picture on the compact camera it should automatically sync to the smart phone camera roll with geotagging. All of the camera's settings and shutter should be controllable through a smartphone app. This lack of integration was a real failure of vision by camera manufacturers.
In case of DSLRs, and their mirrorless offspring, the purpose and the target audience's need is to capture light as good as possible, using a combination of precision electronics, optics and mechanics, to be edited later. They threw in some basic editing functionalities, various image formats and what not, but those are not mission critical.
Smartphones are lacking the optics, sensors and some other things a real camera has. As a result, they are still a far cry from replacing mid-level and up cameras. Smartphones, as the article points out, are perfectly sufficient for the compact and point-and-shoot market, and as a result killed it / took it over.
And heck, the ergonomics of Nikon blow any smartphone / app way of setting up a camera out of the water ever since before Nikon got serious about DSLRs.
The technology lifecycles haven't lined up. 10-15 years ago there were phenomenal DSLRs coming out, and honestly there weren't any good enough smartphones worth connecting them to. The iPhone App Store was in its infancy (it's only 14 years old); there weren't / still aren't any good, widespread standards for fast, personal-area-network data transfers of photos. Smartphones didn't have a lot of memory either: the iPhone 4 baseline model in 2010 ran with 4 GB, and the top of the line was 32 GB, with no slots for memory swapping - not something you can sync a lot of photos to at all.
I don't think, 10 years ago, camera manufacturers could've adopted a meaningful integration strategy. They could perhaps have entered the fray as Android phone makers and try to solve it, but it would've been a bigger jump than just integrating.
Fuji have all of that functionality over WiFi on their X series.
...Only, as the parent comment says, it barely works, and the UI to get to it is awful, and the WiFi transfer speed is ridiculously slow.
My 2016 Olympus does this, too. The controls are surprisingly good (you get cable-less bulb mode), and you can even get the live image on the phone while shooting. There is some lag, though, so it won't work for moving subjects.
Photo transfer is ridiculously slow, though.
Sounds like you're complaining about a lack of vision because they couldn't mix technologies from different years, or have the budget to make a phone as well as a camera...
But it does seem to be a clever idea, I'm imagining a phone that has surface contacts on its back, and a Go-Pro-sized camera module that you can attach to the phone (with precise magnets, so the surface contacts on both devices would connect both devices electronically as well) and be recognized as a peripheral for the phone.
But I guess if already have a pro camera, you don't want to need to slap your phone on it to get it to work.
That exists, the Sony QX100. Nobody bought it because it’s not quite as good as a real camera and it’s something you have to remember to bring with you.
The whole lag and connection issue shown in the video is probably why grandparent comment's idea hasn't taken off. Since no phones have surface contacts, maybe if the lens had a USB-C connection it'd be a lot better (but no closed-garden iPhone support, obviously).
I agree on all points with my sony a7. Especially the Bluetooth connectivity was a great start but no updates and constantly dropping connections make it look laughable in 2022.
I guess there is a perception that it is like hardware « once its out its sold and we don’t care about it ».
At this stage I am seriously wondering if I will ever replace my camera with a new one or just be happy with a new smartphone. Maybe the camera will just stay a a sidehobby.
I got a full frame Nikon Z5. I use it with a f2.8 lens. In low light, the output from my iPhone 14 pro looks much better. Especially on video. Haha
Precisely. Big lenses should be dump peripherals to phones.
and lets talk about how increasingly out of touch photographers are about all of that!
A whole decade of people in enthusiast photography communities collectively playing devil’s advocate “why do you want that feature, whats a UI have to do with taking a photo, I never understood the point of a Live Photo, bluetooth? Thats what tethering and an external contraption is for….”
meanwhile the rest of the world just turned around and walked away
Sony still makes many smartphone sensors. And optics? Not sure.
They just don't get to put their name on the resulting "camera" in this new world.
Mostly agree, but I will say Canon seem to have eventually nailed the Bluetooth/WiFi experience, at least for me on Android.
Sure, but I'd say the same about smartphone manufacturers.
I have a mirrorless camera that I still use regularly. Three events in the last year have called my attention:
* While I was taking pictures at night, two teenagers came to me and asked me to take a picture of them. Apparently one of them wanted to know what it would look like, since the fact that I had a camera clearly indicated that I knew what I was doing (it didn't). I didn't have the heart to tell him that it would look pretty much the same as the phone he definitely had in his pocket, but luckily he gave me a wrong Instagram address so that problem solved itself.
* On that same night, one guy started yelling at me (pushing his head against mine) because he thought I had taken a picture of his car.
* I was interviewed in a popular tourist destination, and the interviewer explicitly asked me about why I had a camera instead of a phone.
I have had similar issues. People get really uncomfortable around cameras but don’t care about a phone.
Weird.
This, combined with the lack of geo tags, often wrong timestamps, slow startup time, and useless tiny batteries, I use my camera rarely.
> lack of geotags
Depends on the camera and other such features. But you're right that it's not a given.
> often wrong timestamps
I'm confused by this. I suppose if you leave your camera off for years at a time, have dead batteries and don't bother checking it - then sure. But in general the RTC on cameras is very good and not an issue. Even if it clock drifts by a minute or two, does it really make a difference?
> slow startup time
Incorrect with modern cameras. If I have both my Nikon in my hand and my phone - I can take a picture with the Nikon WAY faster and more reliable than my iPhone. The Nikon can go from off to taking a picture in half a second. The phone you need to press the camera button on the lock screen for a full second before the camera app even launches. Then it takes it a little time to launch the app and warm up the camera.
Are either slow or problematic? No. But the Nikon is way more reliable, sometimes the iphone just derps out.
> useless tiny batteries
Again, I suppose it depends on the camera. My Nikon is rated for a thousand shots a battery, I think? Even my smallest and oldest handheld is rated for 300 shots a battery. Unless you're going way crazy, that is a lot of photos in a single day. It'd run down your iPhone quite significantly as well.
One area that is a big difference overall... Video.
I must have bought the wrong cameras! My Sony A6300 really takes a while to start, and I can’t leave it on because it will drain the battery fast
Slow startup times really shouldn’t be an issue in this decade. This is something that was an issue maybe in the early 2000s.
You will generally be able to turn on the camera more quickly than you can navigate to the camera app. (Physical switch plus sub one second time to turn on).
On Android phones (maybe iphones too? no clue on that) you can set a double-press of the power button to launch any app you want, so if you turn it to open the camera then you can launch directly into the camera without even needing to unlock the phone.
The great thing about this is that it works even when you're wearing gloves.
Doesn’t matter. That‘s just equivalent to the physical switch in time needed (maybe even slower, a double press does require more dexterity) and startup times on phone cameras certainly aren’t faster than dedicated cameras. My iPhone 12 Pro takes about a half second to a second until it‘s ready to take a shot.
iphones have it as a button on the lockscreen. Double tap opens apple pay and long hold opens siri. Wish I could swap out siri for camera tbh.
My mirrorless camera isn't new, but not early 2000s either (GX1, released 2012). It takes about 10 seconds to first photo from off. My Android phone can take pictures without unlocking it, and I've repurposed the PTT button to open the camera app. I can take my phone out of my pocket, take a picture, and put it back in my pocket faster than my camera can turn on.
Camera apps are accessible from the home screen though, right?
Navigate to the camera app? The camera button is on the home screen. I can be taking a picture or a video just about as fast as I can raise the phone.
Yeah, navigating to the camera app doesn’t take long. But flipping a physical switch also doesn’t and startup times of both after the switch is flipped / app is started are about equal.
So: with my EVIL camera I also can be taking a photo about as fast as I can raise the camera.
> slow startup time, and useless tiny batteries
A camera is far faster in "startup time" (there's nothing to start up, just press the shutter to take a photo). And a DSLR will outlast battery life of a phone at least 100x.
Don't you need to turn it on?
> Don't you need to turn it on?
No, the DSLRs can be left permanently on. It consumes nearly no battery in that state (a single charge will last many months) and yet it's always ready to take a photo as fast as you can grab it.
If you're using something with a protruding lens, people have always been suspicious and/or thought you were some sort of professional. Back in 2008 I was using a Nikon D70 and generally just roamed my area of the world taking pictures to be uploaded to Wikipedia.
I had building security guards question me when I took a picture of their building (From the sidewalk).
I had mall security (outdoor mall) demand I cease and desist and get a permit.
I had transit workers threaten to call the police on me, even though photography is legal on public transit AND explicitly allowed in that particular transit agencies policies.
In 2008 the iPhone (original) was just out and had potato for camera, so everyone was still using SLR's and "normal cameras". But yet... people still got upset.
> In 2008 the iPhone (original) was just out and had potato for camera, so everyone was still using SLR's and "normal cameras". But yet... people still got upset.
Yes. It seems the social memory of this is being lost, but I heard LOTS of stories back then of people getting upset at someone with a camera. And also earlier, before smartphones even existed. The idea that it's the existence of smartphones that's made people defensive about cameras seems to be merely plausible but not actually true.
My biggest issue (besides lugging away one extra thing on trips) was that often pictures will just sit in camera until I take time to get them out and thenput them in NAS/Cloud & then share that location with wife and then have a round about forgotten passwords on her phone/tablet. Then she would be able to post those photos. With smartphones they are there in clould already, I just need to make a shared album and add everybody. and yes cameras have started doing this now but its all done so poorly that its almost same amount of effort. Nope!
> With smartphones they are there in clould already
What? I would never trust my photos to automatically go to some cloud storage. Who knows who would have access to them?
Instead I download the photos from all the family phones on a regular basis. I copy them to an external drive in my house. Then they backed up to a cloud service, but they are encrypted before they are backed up and the cloud service is only a backup. We can't actually see the photos on that cloud service. It is just fire protection (and yes, I have pulled the photos and videos back down from the cloud service to make sure it is backing them up correctly).
Just use Nextcloud then, your own drives on your home, but no risk of losing pictures if your phone is lost/stolen/broken between backups. Can also automate the encrypted offsite thing.
I have more time than money. My way is more manual, but doesn’t cost anything (beyond the backup cost, which is fairly cheap). There were some free providers for home users, but the amounts were way too low. I currently have 2.5 Terabytes of photos and videos. The free providers were all less than 10gb. Laughably low.
While I love my mirrorless, the ease of "exit" is definitely something that pulled me away from them for quite a while. But times have changes. There are accessory units like the Arsenal Camera Assistant that give you wifi access to the camera. Also a lot new cameras (like my new Nikon) have wifi built in.
Can take photos with the Nikon and beam them to my phone fairly quickly. Is it as quick and seamless as using the iPhone directly? Nope. But good enough that I'm ok with it now. It also gives me access to typically a much higher quality photo that I can crop way farther than I can with the iPhone.
i had a dude get aggressive with me recently when i was using an actual camera. he wasn't even in the frame but he thought i was taking a picture of him. made me realize how abnormal it is these days. now i can just take a picture with my phone and people won't care?
Just curious what country you're in. That's some crazy stuff.
Probably wiped out the gps market also. My map supplier for my phone gave up and I assume it was from trying to compete with google maps. Was a loss for me as the maps worked offline…. “Good enough” and only one thing to remember.
Nailed the pager, voice recorder and related markets as well.
There's an old joke that: computer + X = computer
Where X has been things like keyboard, screen, disk drives, modem (now network adapter), speakers, microphone. All were originally separate devices. For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones, but the basic insight that these things just voraciously absorb peripheral and related functions is still just as true.
> For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones
Recently, I've been wondering why the name "phone" has stuck around for a device that has evolved with many more features than that of a telephone. I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about the history of these technologies, but I just find it fascinating that we've kept this identification to something that really provides so many core utilities. I'm curious to know more about the historical implications you alluded to.
Alternatively (and maybe quite a stretch), could I argue that our smartphones are just providing telecommunications to other services, namely, the APIs that they interact with to serve us things like GPS functionality, audio, etc., hence the name "phone"?
It's a legacy term that made the leap each new generation. Apple's decision to name their device the iPhone helped solidify it.
Agreed. From a marketing perspective, it makes sense Apple called it a phone. People already had mobile phones on them so you had nothing to lose with the switch. Had they positioned it as a PDA¹ it might’ve been seen as an extra unnecessary device for business people. They’d need to waste effort assuring people it made calls and sent SMS messages so it could be used instead of the phone. An improvement to your current device is an easier sell than a replacement.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_digital_assistant
And one company who boasted about capabilities of their 'mobile computers' almost ceased to exist.
Phones connect us to people. Landline, cellphone or smartphone, they connect us. The underlying technology is not as important, nor the additional features.
You use the phone to talk, chat, post, share, get directions to see other people, take photos of people, etc.
I'd guess it's because it evolved by adding features to phones, not adding telephony to something else.
It has to do with how nontechnical people perceived things pre-smartphone.
To technical folks, a computer is a device with a CPU that can process data and make decisions based on that data. So smartphones are computers.
To nontechnical folks before the late 2000s, a computer was a device that ran Windows or macOS with a screen and keyboard, and you use it to do spreadsheets, word processing, and such. A phone was a device that connected you to your social world via voice and later text communications. So when smartphones emerged, to nontechnical folks they looked and behaved more like phones -- social connectors -- than like computers, or information crunchers. So they got called phones.
It's like how the ancient Hebrews called whales and dolphins fish, despite those animals being classified as mammals under modern taxonomy. The Hebrews were going by how the animals looked and behaved and how people related to them, rather than genetic inheritance
> they looked and behaved more like phones -- social connectors -- than like computers, or information crunchers. So they got called phones.
They were marketed as a replacement and upgrade for the non-smart mobile phone you already had in your pocket. People had already adopted wireless devices that could make calls, send texts, play games and even access the internet in limited ways and those devices were called phones.
I agree it's a funny historical name. But the distinction between devices with/without cell service is somewhat significant.
Same reason why we have counties without counts?
> For historical reasons we now call hand computers phones
In a lot of Europe they're referred to as some translation of "mobile" (short for "mobile phone") which I've always liked as a more generic term.
Of course in Germany they call them a "Handy" (using English)
X = humans ?
Coming soon to a technological singularity near you.
Its always fun to comment on singularity comments sounding like a bot that went of the rails and lost context and does not know how to end a sentence and trys to keep the convertsation going within one sentence to not experience existential dread of dying at the end of a sentence.
Nice try Greg Egan, trying to steal sci-fi ideas from HN.
You took me down a rabbit hole, son. Love it. How to maintain anonymous identities has presented a certain fascination for me.
Well, bitch I could be. No profile pictures needed on HN.
And yet ... my profile says I'm a person with quite the digital presence on the 'net. I prefer that my impact be far larger than my fame.
I've seen people legitimately want to live forever as a computer general AI. Uploading their consciousness to a cloud.
Maybe we'd like to think it's the other way around, but in reality...
Wait.
Did the phone absorb the ITouch or did the ITouch adsorb the phone?
The iPod touch was used forever as a (relatively) inexpensive development device. I’d say the phone absorbed the iPod.
I don't think we've fully appreciated yet that "phones" are really the true embodiment of the original Personal Digital Assistant, i.e. an external brain that will augment yours in any circumstance.
Any portable device has been (or will soon be) replaced by "phones".
Really? I think the whole world already gets this, and even the conversation seems somewhat quaint at this point.
Yes, I'm constantly referring to my "phone" as my "brain's third hemisphere". It makes people chuckle but no one stops at that joke. It's completely "in the culture".
My late friend Hugh Daniel used to refer to his Bihn's backpack as his "LSD", for "Life Support Device". Like when we were leaving the house he'd shout "Oh no, I forgot my LSD! I'll be right back!" then run back in and fetch his backpack.
But now my smartphone is my LSD.
My metacortex
I can't wait for the iGlock
And the enterprise equivalent: Amazon Orbital Bombardment (with MongoDB compatibility)
I wonder how many people will accidently nuke themselves with that, because they forget to set up their geofencing or whatever before activating it.
You'll read it on HN first!
But it's okay, because of their multiple-tenancy practices, they only nuked the US offices, and a remote engineer noticed that the CI servers were down. He then drove halfway through the country to crawl through radioactive waste, just so he could plug back in the ethernet cable.
Sounds like great material for a "Doing XY: What we've learned"-corporate blog post! Looking forward to that!
I'm inclined to wait for the fly.io guys to weaponize their platform; the blog posts they produce are just so much higher quality.
> with MongoDB compatibility
Does that mean no encryption and no authentication by default?
They're working on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXh3EfX_CqA
Apple is working on that, relentlessly thinning and sharpening their phones :)
then the iSwitch
why would you get an iGlock, when there's the iLaser?
They're waterproof and they have vigorous haptic feedback now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJZtMDM6uVc
Do we still use phones if Meta is right and life shifts into VR? Devices don't have to be portable if people rarely leave home.
All these VR efforts are anticipating hardware advancements that make AR/VR glasses that are similar in size and form to sunglasses. I can't believe any of these companies (Microsoft, Apple, Nintendo, Facebook, et c.) genuinely think that AR on a phone/handheld or big ol' VR goggles are going to take off, especially since both aren't exactly new and both remain very niche—but solve that hardware problem, and those glasses will, 100% for-sure, be the next "smartphone" in terms of changing the role of computing in our lives, and any company not ready for it risks being left behind.
Or maybe it's the other way around - the less people leave home, the more uncomfortable they'll feel outside of it, and the more they'll want some piece of tech to assist them. If you're spending most of your time in a virtual reality where, say, a map can be conjured with a simple gesture, you'd want something approximating that IRL, no?
thank god meta is not right
I'm on the other side. My father used a Garmin GPS in his vehicle for 15+ years.
The phone is a much better experience! Every time he had yet another issue, I wanted to be like "just use your phone!"
- Maps are out of date: Garmin required manual wired updates, Google Maps was always up to date
- Traffic costs: Garmin charged $10/mo for traffic data, Google Maps did it free
- Screen quality: Even in the early 2010's, smartphone screens were bigger and clearer than most car GPS units
- Attraction data: Google's was way more up to date than Garmin's third party attraction data, and Google quickly added multi-stop trips, business hours, busy-level of destination, etc
- Data Entry/voice: Google's voice entry and on screen keyboard were way better than Garmin
I was so happy when he got rid of that GPS and I finally got to stop supporting it.
With car play and android equivalent it’s so much better than a standalone device for navigating. I do have a garmin watch with offline topographical and trail maps for hiking off the grid but I only use that a few times a year. I could probably get those on a phone too
Newest gen of AA/Car play can also display map directly on gauge cluster, which is just perfect solution
Organic Maps is a very good and low resource offline mapping app that includes trails, point to point elevation mapping, and very low storage footprint. All built on top of OpenStreetMap. Definitely recommend for camping/travelling etc where you might be out of service for days.
And it updates map data every two weeks, so you can actually experience map improvements in your area!
Wiped out most of the pocket-sized handheld gaming market too. Not because phones are better at gaming, but they're "good enough" entertainment with social media, streaming, music, etc.
Which is a shame IMHO I really love(d) my DS/3DS wish they still made that form factor, you can't exactly carry a switch in your pocket.
There are gameboy pocket sized devices made still that run emulators. But you’re stuck with no new games and grey area legality
They do run Linux, so sometimes new games can be made to work on them, like the new TMNT Shredder's Revenge: https://youtu.be/DpVwO8Z8z-E . And some newer devices can run Android for new games there.
I love emulating old games, but let's be clear: by grey area legality you mean illegal, right :)
Unless you're dumping ROMs yourself of games you own...
I really really wish that apple / google / samsung came out with official hardware game pads that snapped to the phones and had direct support at the os level for game developers to easily support. We're missing out on so many good handheld experiences by being limited to touch only.
Razer's Kishi is pretty good and it just works (on Android games that support it, the majority are expecting touch only).
Except what do you do about sound? Bluetooth (audio) has way too high latency for gaming
USB is good enough for real-time music on iOS and many Android phones. If you want to already snap the controller to the phone, adding a plug isn't much trouble. And some phones still have the 3.5mm jack.
The problem with the Kishi is that it blocks all the ports, right? I can't use a wired headset at the same time as the Kishi...
At least the Android version has external USB-C port that could fit an adapter. The specs say only that you can charge through it, it would be nice to know if it's really limited to charging or fully functional.
It is not functional and is power only. Source: I returned mine after being incredibly annoyed by the whole experience because of audio lag. I tried the Razer low-latency earbuds but the latency is still annoyingly high.
Ok, that's unexpectedly dumb design.
I can only imagine the product manager telling HW designers that nobody cares about audio latency, everyone uses Bluetooth anyway and damn this thing must be cheaper and ready for production yesterday.
I'm pretty sure Apple has proper gamepad support for iOS. Remember Made for iPhone? It's needed with their Apple TV that pretty much runs iOS.
But controller support in games is still niche because most people just aren't going to do it. I believe Apple enforces it for their Apple Arcade games, because those have to run on Apple TV too, but outside of that there just isn't much interest.
Did it? The Nintendo Switch sold 114 million units since its release in 2017 [0]. The original Gameboy (a reasonable guess as the most popular handheld gaming device of all time) sold 118 million units [1] in 15 years.
[0] https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2022/11/the-nintendo-switc...
There are other devices, and other ways to measure the market size, but 114 million of anything is not a niche market.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1101888/unit-sales-game-...
The DS may be more representative of the peak of the market, and would sell in larger numbers in a single year- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS_sales
Very different size. You could argue that switch/steamdeck-sized devices have replaced gameboy/ngage/psp-like devices. However, phones seem like the much closer competition -> none of Nintendo, sony or MS even tried to make this form factor anymore
Phones are better at gaming. You can emulate pocket sized handheld gaming devices as well. Perhaps you are only talking about popular games like Candy Crush and the such but there are a lot of heavyweight titles released for mobile platforms as well.
The hardware is obviously better with how often people replace the phones, but ability to target same few interfaces and not have to test on few dozen of phones to make game run well overall leads to better games.
> but there are a lot of heavyweight titles released for mobile platforms as well.
...like ? Every single mobile game that I found "good" usually launched on other platforms too.
I was more talking around the time of the 3ds and Vita release dates. That was about when smartphones started to take off and took out the handheld gaming market. You can see it in the sales, the 3ds did half the lifetime sales of the DS. And then there was the Vita.
I have a feeling that social media and video streaming probably replaced casual on the go gaming. It's more addictive.
You can download maps for offline use with Google Maps. It's not exactly the same, but very close in practice.
Except when you can't: when I was going with my friends to Japan they couldn't download the maps due to a licensing issue or something.
Luckily OSM was more than happy to let me download it's maps.
Hit the same thing in China. I have free cellular data while there--but at a trickle. Maps were painful and the VPN needed to access Google Maps also added it's own headaches because of the spotty connection causing repeated reconnects.
This used to be an issue, but downloading maps of Japan is possible these days.
I wonder if the impact to the flashlight market was measurable.
I don't know, I have more flashlights now that smartphones are available.
Thanks to LEDs, flashlights are now cheaper, brighter and last longer than ever. Even cheap flashlights are better and more convenient than phones at lighting. Because they are cheap and small, you can have one in every place you might need it. And the slightly more expensive ones can be powerful enough as a substitue to mains powered light bulbs for places like garages and storerooms. Also, smartphones don't replace headlamps.
So maybe some people don't get a flashlight because they already have one on their phones, but some people (like me) actually buy more, because they are so cheap and effective.
>"Because they are cheap and small, you can have one in every place you might need it."
Exactly my case. I have those for each bike, in every room, couple in my car and few in my basement office. I am a sucker for those.
Adding to this, phones are really awkward and expensive flashlights. I run caseless on my phone and you wont find my phone on me when working on a car if I have someone with me, but you'll find an LED flashlight in my toolbox.
Its a common thing with multitools, lots of uses, not great at any of them.
At the very least drove it into a niche, same as with GPS devices (Garmin still makes devices for triathletes, boats and packs of dogs), and cameras. Flashlights just have to be tacticool now, market's flourishing.
I like the term tacticool, first time seeing it!
You can still buy alarm clocks too, even though your phone has one, just like it has a flashlight. Cheap alarm clocks are so cheap that only a slight benefit like always having it on your shelf is enough of a reason to buy one. (Expensive ones are decorations and not mainly bought in order to tell time.)
Watches have gotten less popular though.
I still prefer a real watch – taking a peek at my wrist is easier than having to dig my phone out of my pocket, flipping open the lid of the case and turning it on. That's true both in summer (just need to lift my wrist) and winter, too (I might have to dig my watch out from underneath my jacket and gloves, but to take out my phone I'd have to take off my gloves, too, so still a more cumbersome procedure.)
Plus lock screen clocks rarely (never?) seem to come with a seconds display (even inside the full clock app I still need to flip a settings switch in order to turn the seconds display on) – while I don't necessarily need actual seconds accuracy that much, knowing whether it is xx:xx:05 or xx:xx:55 certainly does make a difference when I need to catch a train/tram/bus/… and am cutting it fine once again.
Agree alarm clocks are cheap, but there's a very good reason to have one. Single use devices remove another area of phone dependence. Switching from waking up to phone alarm to dedicated clock alarm has been a huge help for me. It allows me to charge my phone in another room and create at least one no-phone zone in the house.
You're an outlier.
There was a silly horror movie called Crawl that came out a few years back. It's about killer alligators during a hurricane in Florida.
The least-believable part of this very silly movie was that, at the beginning, the main guy in it left his cell phone upstairs when he went to the dark basement to work on something in the house (pipes? I don't remember), which ended up causing the rest of the movie to happen. Of course he'd have taken it with him, for the flashlight if nothing else (and there are lots of other aspects of a smartphone that are super-handy when doing that kind of work).
Think of all the movie storylines that would just completely fail in the era of ubiquitous mobile phones.
Relatedly (sort of), I'm looking forward the day when they stop making movies whose storyline would be destroyed if the protagonist did the obvious thing and pick up the weapon used by their defeated attacker, so that they have a better defense against the next one.
For offline maps I use OsmAnd Maps. The only thing I miss is the satellite view.
The gps market is alive and well for marine, aviation and outdoor/offroad/motorcycle niche markets.
fwiw, google maps has download & offline functionality. Click your profile icon top right and select the area you want offline. I use it all the time for backcountry hiking (along with OSM apps) and going abroad where I dont have data.
More and more boaters are using tablets & phones as the apps give you access to charts and your instruments (e.g. wind, AIS).
Antennas solutions are increasing to get cellular reception farther offshore that feed into a wifi router.
At anchor, I personally use Organic Maps and drop a pin after I'm properly at anchor. There are specialized "anchor watch" apps but this works for my purposes.
Sailing used to be so simple...
Isn't Google Maps limited to a tiny little 100MB chunk or something? Fine for hiking, less fine for cross country road trips. Here Maps has free offline maps that will let you grab entire countries/continents if you have the space for it.
I enjoy passing the time on airplanes with my phone held up near the window to get a GPS signal, and then look at the names of towns and landscape features far below as I pass them by. It is quite surprising how anything you can see tends to be 10-20 miles off to the side of the plane, until you start paying attention to the quantity of 1 mile cropland squares. Then you truly appreciate how high you are!
This takes 100-300MB per state--I use OsmAnd via F-Droid of course.
I don’t know the limit but it’s larger than 100MB. I currently have about 300MB saved with one chunk (the entire country of Andorra) sitting at 120MB alone.
I dunno if this is as true for Aviation as it was 5 years ago. With Foreflight and the Stratux external GPS/ADS-B in boxes, it's becoming harder and harder to justify in panel GPS for light-sport/hobbyists/GA. I'm willing to bet that in the next 3-5 years we'll see a shift in general aviation to panel mounted "headless" GPSes that communicate with your iPad via GPS and are still coupled to a glass MFD/autopilot, but all the management would be done with an external device.
Maybe it will help to know that Google Maps also work offline - you can download designated areas for offline use.
Google Maps without internet is barely usable. It only has driving directions which is pretty useless if you are on foot or a bike. It's actually astonishing that Google Maps can create an offline navigation plan for a vehicle that weighs thousands of kilos while walking directions always need internet to work.
Though, annoyingly, you can't use the search function without data. So you can see the map tiles fine, but that's about it :-/
> Though, annoyingly, you can't use the search function without data.
Have you tried this recently? I just did a family vacation in Death Valley and used Google Maps offline exclusively. Search worked fine.
Admittedly not for some time, I'll be over the moon if it finally supports offline search!
I use offline search all the time
From my experience this is heavily location-dependent, so US is probably the worst example.
There's an upper limit on the size of the area (although not their count), so it gets rather tedious if you want to cache a lot. It also expires eventually. with no way to block that.
OsmAnd+ is the only sane option for reliable offline maps w/navigation on smartphones, IMO.
We have a Garmin GPS in the Truck...it has 'RV knowledge' and will route us around places we shouldn't go.
It's a niche that's keeping them afloat.
There's a Tom Tom that I've wanted to buy that has a similar motorcycle version. I believe it scores roads but how fun they are, the amount of twists, hills, vistas.
There are mapping apps with RV feature overlays (routing around low clearances, hills, etc)
Don't forget the portable media player too.
Spying-ad-supported "free" services are suppressing a bunch of markets. Also suppressing open source (why work on a free open source messaging app, say, when none of your friends and family will want to use it since they have 20 "free" options already, funded and promoted with shitloads of ad dollars so you can't hope to have much adoption even with volunteer labor and a "product" that costs $0?)
Google maps on android can work offline too.
Here maps was way better than Google (at least in the EU) since it always had offline navigation and would notify you of breaking the speed limit and the presence of speed-cams.
Maybe an OpenStreetMap-based application works well for you. Organic Maps, OsmAnd and Magic Earth have offline car navigation and (I think) warnings for speed traps.
How are the directions on organic maps and magic earth? I tried OsmAnd and it's directions were awful for me.
The first time I used it, was for a drive that Google tells me is 2 hour/100 mile. It initially gave me a route that was 1:58 and 120 miles. I personally don't think driving an extra 20 miles is worth saving 2 minutes so I switched it to most efficient route which worked for that drive.
The next time I used it though was for a drive that should've been 30 minutes/30 miles. It gave me a route that was an hour long on back roads that saved me like a mile of driving. This time, saving a mile of driving isn't worth adding 30 minutes of time for me so I just gave up.
There really needs to be a mode that finds a compromise between route time, route distance, and route complexity instead of just optimizing for one and ignoring the others.
I really like the way Magic Earth routes me. The ETA is usually spot on and from what I see the routes are sensible. I’m using it in Europe.
Thanks, I just downloaded it and tried it out with the two previously mentioned routes and it gave reasonable results for both of them. It's also nice that it gives you alternative route options in case you don't like what they chose for you.
I also went ahead and downloaded organic maps just to see how it does in comparison. It also did well on the previously mentioned routes but doesn't give you alternative route options which makes me nervous about it giving a questionable route in other cases. It also takes several seconds to find the route (OsmAnd also took a while iirc) while Magic Earth was nearly instant to give directions. I do like the UI a bit better than Magic Earth (I can't find a way on magic earth to just give me a top down map view that keeps north at the top of the screen which is driving me crazy) but will probably use Magic Earth since it's seems really great in every other way.
- If I'm correct, OrganicMaps (and OsmAnd) calculate the route exclusively on your phone, without calling an external server, that's the reason they are slower than MagicEarth.
- MagicEarth has a 2D view, it's in the Settings. Navigation is always track-up if I'm correct, not north-up.
While Google does not notify of breaking the speed limit, they do have speed limits, red light cameras, user-reported speed traps, debris on road, etc.
Depends on country. In Poland yanosik has a little better routing and MUCH better speed-traps notifications, but no offline maps. There was auto-mapa here which had even better routing and was fully offline, but was not free, it's almost dying now.
Oh I miss here maps. It was great when traveling. Would download the map for the country before flying and didn’t need to buy data and could still search for addresses.
OrganicMaps works well. I travel to Andorra frequently, and because they are not in the EU it’s not free to roam there. Organic maps allows you download the entire country at a time and navigation and searching all work without data. I use it quite a bit in the mountains even in countries I have data in. Since it’s just OSM data it has a decent selection of hiking trails and whatnot, too.
I was pleasantly surprised how polished it is (on iOS at least). I had only ever tried OSM AND before it and this is leagues ahead in terms of usability. It’s more or less as good as Google Maps or Apple Maps, short of real time traffic updates. It’s navigation routing is not quite as advanced either, but it does the trick in a pinch (I don’t use it much in the car but more for searching and hiking trails)
Why are you guys talking like here maps has disappeared? It has not gone anywhere and works fine.
"works fine".
Since the rewrite, it's missing features and is rather ... bleh.
When I moved from Lumia to iPhone > Android. Here maps was different. It didn’t feel the same as on the Lumia. So I just flick between Google maps and Apple Maps now. But miss the here maps from Lumia days.
Until their rewrite. Now it's ... bleh.
I still don't understand why showing police cars or speed-cams on a map/GPS map is allowed or even legal.
I don't understand why showing speed-cams would be illegal. In Poland all speed-traps are clearly marked with a sign at least 100m before, so that when someone overspeeds, he doesn't suddenly break when he sees speed trap (which caused more accidents than overspeeding).
The British Automobile Association (AA) used to have a network of operatives on bikes (cycle scouts) who would salute members displaying the AA badge if they were approaching a police speed check.
This warning activity was tested in court and found to be illegal, as interference with the police undertaking their duties. Their response to the judgement was to switch the warning method to NOT saluting members if they're approaching a speed trap because apparently they couldn't be found culpable for inaction. So they would only salute members if the coast was clear. A bit like a warrant canary.
In Poland people used to blink their high beams when there was speed check ahead, it's sometimes still practiced (illegal then and now, but not because you warn of police, it's classified as "misuse of lights").
Take the reverse, when people know there are no speed cams they are free to speed as they want, which I'm sure is how a lot of people interpret this.
What happen, at least in Italy, is that are speed cam warnings everywhere, but of course only a tiny percentage at any time will have an actual speed camera.
It kind of works as deterrent, although I expect that the effect wears off after a while.
Some people do, but you can easily put speed cameras where there are some accidents. It's more honest that way in my opinion. I've driven in Germany and their cameras don't make me go much slower, just annoy:
- A series of 80-60 speed changes on straight road, then just when you are annoyed and don't slow, there is a speed trap.
- Badly marked school zone, I was doing 40km/h already, then a black painted camera hidden in bushes caught me.
We have those in Poland too, that's how I got my first speeding ticket. three lanes each way 80, 80 80, crossing with 60 and camera (there wasn't even any pedestrian crossing there too.
Because the purpose of police cars and and speed cameras, is ostensibly to make you slow down to the speed limit. Marking these on your map, makes you slow down.
This probably varies country by country, depending on whether it's a money-making exercise (where the police try to hide) or safety (where cameras are painted bright yellow and the police are clearly visible)
...this also varies by country: in some countries, the speed limit itself, not the camera, is there for your safety - I mean, how many cameras should they install?! In others, they exaggerate the speed limit, e.g. 50 km/h on a straight road outside of built-up areas, hoping that drivers will at least slow down to 80 km/h (looking at you, Italy!).
I guess the future of speed traps is "section control", e.g. install cameras at beginning and end of a speed-restricted stretch, and if the time you needed is significantly below the expected one with legal speed, you get a ticket.
> I guess the future of speed traps is "section control", e.g. install cameras at beginning and end of a speed-restricted stretch, and if the time you needed is significantly below the expected one with legal speed, you get a ticket.
This has been common in Western Europe for decades now.
Anywhere with electronic tolls already has this. It would be trivial for politicians to hit everyone with a speeding ticket on a tolled highway if average speed between two tolls is more than legal limit.
But it would be political suicide.
I didn't show police cars. It just showed fixed speed cams which is legal in the EU as even the radio stations announce the location of currently active speed cams via traffic information.
It's legal in some of the EU - to the best of my knowledge, it's illegal in Germany to have apps tell you about speed cameras/etc (you can have the app, you just can't use that bit of it).
That is a matter pf national law, not EU law. In Germany for example the radio announcements are legal but devices and navigation systems that warn of them are not.
In most countries things are legal by default unless specifically prohibited.
Why would it not be?
If you are on Android I can recommend either Maps.me with great 3D view or Maps.cz for great tourist trails, Google Maps content is horrible in Europe. Of course any decent app can download offline maps for whole countries and not some GMaps parody with small section of map.
Yup. I still have a 10 year old GPS around here, specifically because it works offline. I never use it where I have service.
>"Was a loss for me as the maps worked offline"
I often use OSMAnd software for GPS. Works offline just fine.
One word - bokeh.
You can get a Fuji X-E4 + XC 35mm f/2 for ~US$1000 new, and I'm yet to see a phone camera that can shoot something like this https://img.photographyblog.com/reviews/fujifilm_xc_35mm_f2/... - it's an enjoyable setup that will continue being ahead of any flagship phones for years to come. Not to mention that it's a hell of a rabbit hole and a great hobby.
I have the Fuji X-S10 and the fantastic XF 56mm f/1.2. I love the sharpness and bokeh that this combo delivers. Definitely no match for a smartphone.
On the other hand, my old Pixel 3a delivers much better dynamic range in low-light situations with its HDR mode. (Of course, it only looks good on the phone, not on the computer screen, but I sometimes wish the Fuji hat better HDR.)
Fuji has dynamic range settings DR100, DR200 and DR400 which can help for sooc jpegs. I only wish my xt-30 did auto-bracketing, instead of having to combine the bracketed exposures manually on a computer.
https://fujixweekly.com/2017/10/18/fujifilm-x100f-dynamic-ra...
https://www.jmpeltier.com/fujifilm-dynamic-range-settings/
Yep, I'm aware of that and usually have my camera set at DR200. But of course it's still not close to the dynamic range that HDR+ creates on a smartphone.
Here's an early-morning photo taken with the Fuji: https://tmp.dbrgn.ch/DSCF7064.JPG (Either DR200 or DR400, not sure anymore). And here with the Pixel 3a: https://tmp.dbrgn.ch/PXL_20220709_033446459.jpg Of course, the photo taken with the smartphone has lots of artifacts, looks mushy when zoomed in, and the optical quality is far from the Fuji. In other words, it looks good on the phone, but not on a computer screen. But considering the differences in sensor size, it's still very impressive. (Fuji also has a built-in HDR mode, but so far I wasn't fond of the results.)
It is crazy that Fujifilm cameras can't do phone-type HDR. I have one and I share your pain.
That's a nice comparison.
The point was most people don't justify put $1000 on a separate camera when they already have one that does maybe 80% of the job in their pocket at all times.
I agree, it's really fun though. Never had great gear, but I used to just drive around my town with a tiny pocket tripod trying to find new spots to shoot with my Canon SX260HS in 2012-2013. Spent some time with borrowed cameras in school a bit later too. There's definitely something soothing about just going around looking at things that look interesting, point, tweak, click, then rediscovering the whole thing on your PC for some editing later. The experience is kind of lost with how instant picture taking has become with phones basically just taking the shot and post-processing it however they like.
For me, it's partly the things you say, but also the zooooooooooom. Ain't no camera phone with good zoom.
Ironically that image is terrible example of why a $1000 camera setup is better than my $1000 smartphone, and a perfect example that the photographer is far more important.
Also most folks these days consume photographs on their smartphones and not on larger screen devices.
I’m a prosumer photographer with a fairly sizable collection of high end Canon glass, and I now vastly prefer my iphone (since the 13pro) to my SLR setup
> I’m a prosumer photographer with a fairly sizable collection of high end Canon glass, and I now vastly prefer my iphone (since the 13pro) to my SLR setup
For what type of photography? Seems hard to imagine you'd "prefer" your phone over a nice lenses, but I guess it's less hassle to just use the phone?
There's a certain irony that the primary feature separating smart phone cameras and traditional cameras is the ability to purposefully make "blurry photographs".
Wait till you hear about cameras which primary feature is the ability to purposefully make photos you cannot even see until days later, much less edit in any convenient way. You must fully replace storage every couple dozen of shots and dynamic range is just awful compared to my phone's HDR. (Sarcasm ofc, love film)
...and how that is a remarkably fast growing area!
They can't make film quickly enough.
yeah but thats not what bokeh is. You can notice almost instantnly natural bokeh and it behaves.
the artificial bokeh in current phones it good enough for most people. It might not be what you want, but the same is true of every part of a smartphone camera. is night shooting as good on a phone? No, but is the computationally enhanced night photography good enough for most people? Yes. Same with bokeh
I'm too lazy to get my DSLR out of the closet but here's a F1.8 shot from a Sony RX100
https://pasteboard.co/LuNcEAPrjquh.jpg
And here's the same shot from my iPhone in portrait mode set to 2 different levels of fake bokeh
https://pasteboard.co/8cBjb7EoKjhq.jpg
https://pasteboard.co/MR4AnkS8bqfN.jpg
On top of which, most people look at photos on their phones, not blown up to poster size in some art gallery
Artificial bokeh (like in Portrait mode on an iPhone) is getting better and better. It went from looking cheesy to somewhat natural in only a few years. It’ll be a while before it’s close to the example you gave, but I can imagine a future where Camera.app has a “tap to blur” feature using live CV object detection.
If you use artificial bokeh, and why stop there, probably not taking pictures to begin with and just use AI to create one is the way forward.
I'm a serious luddite in a lot of ways but don't see a meaningful difference between blurring the background by focusing the lens a certain way, and blurring it after the fact using depth information captured in the photo.
Because you want to capture memories but not necessarily everthing in the field of view.
The way phone image processing pipelines work these days, this doesn't seem too far from the truth. Images from phones are essentially AI renderings which use pixel data as a prompt, and have less and less relation to the actual pixel data with each new device.
If I could ask an AI for a photo of my dog and it looked better than one I took with my camera, why wouldn't I? We're representing the world as series of pixels on a bitmap, makes little difference to me where it came from.
In the hypothetical future scenario where the output is good enough I don't think there's much of a point in making a distinction between something that is optically manipulated via lens vs done so via software.
Yeah, this.
Outside, on a clear day? My iPhone rivals my Sony A7ii for SURE.
But in less than ideal situations, I can still do better with the Sony. BUT this is because I'm an enthusiastic amateur with pro-level tools and some modicum of know-how. For an average Joe, those things are probably lacking.
This. If you're at the push-button-get-picture level there's no point to anything beyond a flagship phone. And that's where most people are.
Agree with bokeh: This was taken with a Leica m9 using f0.95 50mm noctilux lens: https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/rennlist.com-vbulletin/2000x133...
This was taken using an iphone 13 mini (not pro) in regular mode.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0dectlquUI6Ur6vDCWrYw6oHg
Not so bad IMHO.
Edit: this one is more pronounced, again not in portrait mode.
https://share.icloud.com/photos/0c9pBN5Fy2yL0fuSYrX4j3BnA
Bokeh is physics, for smaller objects it's easier to reach some DoF even with f/4-6. On the 1st example the bokeh is, subjectively, very far from the SLR level, displaying a lot of onion rings and generally busy texture. For portraiture and street photography fast primes will still produce much more pleasing results. For now. I agree that we are certainly getting somewhere with the phone cameras, but I'm not sure where the ceiling is.
I for one am quite glad that modern AI-powered cameras have increasingly less blur on their images. I know that focusing on one depth is how physical lenses (including our eyes) work, I know that it can be an artistic tool. But for most of my photos, I don't care and I'd rather not have it. If I can get a 'tourist' picture of me and some monument, and have both well visible, I'd prefer that over the 'correct' way of being focused on only one. If I want to put an artistic touch on my photos, I'll use an app that gives me blurs and a million other options, but I'd prefer to have an unblurry version to start from.
You can just use higher f number.
> If I want to put an artistic touch on my photos, I'll use an app that gives me blurs and a million other options
most of them wont do it correctly. You need to have full understanding of the debpth to do it which does not seem to work well. E.g look at the edges of the articifical bokeh usually the subject wont be separated properly..
> I'd prefer that over the 'correct' way of being focused on only one.
I don't see how that's more 'correct,' by anyone's definition. It's pretty common to go for wider depth of field for landscapes and a lot of portraits.
Well for good bokeh you need a large sensor or a very wide aperture, which is hard to achieve in the form factor of smartphones.
You can also achieve it with multiple cameras spaced out. It’s computational, but not exactly faked.
as a layman all I see is a blurry image. doesn't apple have software to add blurriness to pictures?
My iPhone 13 Pro Max portrait mode can produce a near-identical picture to the one you linked.
The optics depend so much on physical size that phones have to fake this stuff. Idk why apple doesnt just cut the crap and just release like a m43 with swappable glass rather than all this silly multiple sensor stuff.
They got rid, the story wnet, of a 3.5 mm headphone jack to make the phone slimmer. Only to have the alrwady slim optics stick out. Not sure tge same company would go for replaceable lenses.
Bokeh and long range. My favorite lens was a 24-105 F/4 for a very long time, but that has been replaced with my phone. Now my 150-600mm lens (for wildlife) is the only thing that is ever mounted.
I think you would be surprised just how close to this depth of field look you can get with phone cameras these days. Its mostly digitally enhanced but it takes a real good eye to tell the difference.
It's not there yet, but progress is being made fast on that front
I had a Sony Xperia that did a pretty good job.
Fujifilm on the other hand is exploding in popularity. Sony took the full frame market and has incredible autofocus. Canon has shot themselves in the foot locking down their RF mount, Nikon is doing ok.
I think we're going to see a slow gradual rise in small compact cameras making a comeback, just like vinyl. Phone cameras can only do so much, it's physics, and photography popularity has grown since kids now are born in a world where a phone has a great camera.
i'm looking for one if anybody has a good rec? i ditched my smartphone and now i'm loading up with all these devices that everybody in this thread say are obsolete (they have a point but i don't need an iphone in my life, i'd rather walk around with five devices than one ...)
Fuji XEs are nice, small, relatively cheap bodies with interchangeable lenses. If youre looking for something small and know how to (or are willing to learn to) use a camera, thats what I recommend.
If portability is not a concern, you can pick up used high end Nikon DSLRs and F mount lenses very cheaply right now. Nikon is going all in on mirrorless now so this stuff is "last gen" hence cheap.
Otherwise, just avoid Canon. Theyre becoming increaingly scummy and you probably dont wanna get caught locked into their system.
X100V is super-hard-to-find-right-now, I have an older version X100T and I am very pleased. It is basically the camera that pros using the huge DSLRs everyday reach for when they go on their own holidays or leisure trips. And it's value has nearly doubled in the two years I had it, unheard of in the field of consumer electronics.
I too have an X100T and used to like it a lot; it takes amazing pictures. But it's a little bulky and has a fixed lens.
The Panasonic GX80 is smaller and has interchangeable lenses. It has a smaller sensor but it's so small you can really carry it everywhere. I use it much more than the Fuji now.
ricoh gr3 or ricoh gr3x are also pretty popular x100v alternatives (though they're a bit different)
i have a x100v and like it a lot. have shot over 9000 photos so far with it
I got the Ricoh gr3x and I LOVE it. Actually use it way more than my Sony a6400 now. The main reasons for me, a hobbyist street photographer:
- size: The Ricoh is actually pocketable. Now every time I go out, I have it in my pants or jacket pocket.
- snap focus and snap distance priority: a godsend for street photography.
- convenience and speed: since I usually have it on hand, and by default on snap distance priority, it takes me a littler over 1 second to turn the camera on and snap a picture.
That said, I did order a Fuji x100v so my wife and I can both have a camera with us when we go out. Also, they are different as you mentioned
X100V (if you can find one) X100F, Xpro3, X-E4. The problem is they are popular, chip shortage, etc.
I am so conflicted about my Fuji x100f. I love the thing, but I rarely use it. I'm usually very quick to get rid of things. With the recent popularity of Fuji cameras, I think I should sell it. But then I pick it up and it's pure joy to hold and use.
A real camera has better ergonomics, great for vacations as you don't have to worry about your phone's battery life. Very good low light performance.
Will nobody think of the Flashlight industry?
No science fiction story I ever read said anything like "It was dark, but it was okay, because I had my personal cellular internet communications device"
Phone flashlights are horrible and incomparable to actual flashlights.
Yes, though I would note that the flashlight industry got way brighter in the last 20 years. The good old trusty plastic incandescent flashlight with D cell batteries is what most households had sitting around for years prior and a modern smartphone actually compares favorably to those in brightness (though not focused)
Modern flashlights are insane, they can even be dangerous haha.
of note: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I_fW0dhZn8&ab_channel=Insid...
> I would note that the flashlight industry got way brighter in the last 20 years.
Tell me about it. I tried to find a flashlight for my 2yo son that he could stare into without hurting his eyes. There are none. I need to find a old light bulb one somewhere in some basement.
The best kind of flashlight is the kind you have with you. All the others suck.
I have one on my key ring for that reason
"Horrible" but always with you.
But handily beat absolute darkness
Maybe my 2000s knowledge isn't as good as I thought, but were people carrying flashlights back then? My impression was that most people didn't, and therefore the flashlight that came with phones were a nice bonus rather than something that cannibalized flashlight sales.
I remember everyone had a flashlight for around the house. You'd generally need one when changing incandescent light bulbs, which burnt out every 6 months or so. A lot of people would also carry around the pocket Maglights for whatever reason.
They moved on to putting bright LEDs on trucks
Not really comparable unless you're talking exclusively about trashy keychain flashlights. An 18650 powered flashlight for $30 will light up an entire room while your phone will help you read something if you hold it close
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33830187
I have a Canon 5D Mk III, 5-6 lenses, maybe 4 flashes, umbrellas, stands, a background, etc..
I gotta sell it but keep procrastinating.. 99% of the time these days I just want to not carry stuff and use my iPhone 13 Pro, because 99% of the time nobody cares if I use the fancy camera stuff and the hassle and workflow is a PITA compared to just using the phone. My previous phone was an iPhone 8+ and it kind of started this and then the 13 Pro really really kicked it into gear with having the 3 lenses. It got hard for me to justify not shooting RAW if I was using all that expensive gear, and then I'd have to sit there wasting time "processing" files to justify using all the fancy gear. I came to really hate that time in front of the computer. (This is after about 15 years of doing it.)
Actual compact cameras forget about it.. the last few generations I had weren't even as good as the phones, because they almost always had crappy zoom lenses. 3 Prime lenses on a good smartphone beats almost all the zoom compact cameras until the zoom compact cameras get annoying to carry.
The phone cameras also have a massive advantage that people are not threatened by them and act more naturally. If you mostly value your pictures of people in your life this is a big advantage.
For me some of this is the ebb and flow of hobbies, but I really don't care about the snob value of the image attributes only possible with a DSLR/MILC anymore.
Sony/Minolta one this game by getting their camera tech/products into most of the smartphones on the market. Kudos to Sony.
One advantage I've noticed to the stereotypical "photographer loaded with cameras" gets people to pose/realize there's a photo being taken. They don't react to a phone in the same way.
That and actual lighting from real flashes (I'm talking multiple flash sources, etc) seem to be the main thing that "real" cameras have left.
Just like Tinder wiped out getting to know someone and taking them on a romantic date. Smartphones are perfect for taking a selfie against a landmark and sharing it on Facebook for likes. Just don't expect your grandchildren to hang it above a mantelpiece. For that you need at least a viewfinder/rangefinder to compose a good shot and a physical shutter button to take a bunch quickly and choose the best one later. Computational logic will also only get you so far without ability to gather and control sufficient light.
At this rate, I see actual silver prints making a comeback for the same reason as vinyl. At least we know they will last a century while your selfie will be forgotten as soon as your "friend" starts a political argument on your Facebook feed.
> for that you need at least a viewfinder/rangefinder to compose a good shot and a physical shutter button to take a bunch quickly and choose the best one later.
I don't know if I agree with this. I've taken some great pictures on vacations, and with friends and family using my phone. I have some of these framed around the house.
I don't think the average person is capable (or really cares that much) about getting the perfect composition. For these people, a phone is a great substitue to a compact camera that would have been used 10+ years ago.
Oh, also most phones have a burst mode that works great.
In all this talk about why even bother with a dedicated camera any more - especially a small point & shoot that doesn't actually take any better pictures than a smartphone - one item is usually missed: The dedicated camera is made to be comfortably used one-handed. To me this matters a lot.
Also, with dedicated cameras being garage sale fodder now, you can inexpensively get another feature that the smart phones just don't have: Zoom! My current "daily driver" is a Canon SX210 with pretty good picture quality at 14x zoom and image stabilization to make it practical. And still pocketable.
That said, 50% of my photos are still with the phone these days, just for instant sharing or geotagging.
Interesting how it's an accelerated version of the horse/mule population decline after introduction of the cars/tractors/etc.
At its peak in 1920 the total horse+mule population was ~25M when the US population was 102M. Or 1 horse for every 4 people.
Although counts vary, there are 9M horses in the US today which has 330M people. Or 1 horse for every 36 people.
(population counts from US census)
Horse numbers from: http://www.cowboyway.com/What/HorsePopulation.htm
9M is a lot. I wonder what do all those horses do?
I would bet largely recreational use. See a lot of horses in Portola Valley and Woodside, and a few scattered in rural areas between San Jose and San Francisco, though it tends to larger numbers on a few plots and a couple of ranches specializing in either equestrian training or long time horse housing, and one never sees a single horse on smaller plots, most people who have enough land for one horse will have multiple for companionship to each other. This was also true when I lived outside of Houston a few decades ago. Working horses are pretty rare except for carriages meant for tourists and law enforcement anywhere close to urban or suburban areas.
The source of the linked graph goes into more details on page 19 (PDF, 2003 http://www.americanequestrian.com/pdf/US-Equine-Demographics...).
Recreation 42%, Showing/Competition 29%, Other 19%, Racing 9%.
The recreation category itself is broad:
> One woman’s recreational horse is in the trailer and on the go to a trail ride here, an overnight camping adventure there, and a special training clinic way out there, week in and week out. Another woman’s recreational horse is one of a half dozen at her home, and she might get a saddle on and ride over to the neighbor’s place a couple of times a month, if she is lucky enough to squeeze in some time for it.
> With horses, recreation can be just about anything you please, from primping and pampering to roughing it in the outback; from a zen-like search for the perfect circle or half pass (a lateral movement in dressage) to the discovery of inner peace as a volunteer in a therapeutic-riding program. The joiners have plenty of equestrian organizations, local to national, to add some socializing to the picture. The reclusive types can ride off into the sunset on solitary trails.
> That is a major appeal of horse involvement—something for everyone. And for a surprising number, the something is tending to their horses at least twice daily, forking manure and heaving hay bales; worrying over ailments, injuries, and feeds bills 365 days of the year; and having little time left over to actually use the animals. They do this year after year, and, when asked what they do with their horses, the answer is “just for pleasure.”
It wiped out my DSLR camera too. I'm no professional photographer but I bought a refurb Canon t5i rebel when my son was born back in 2016. Phone cameras were still pretty poor at that time, but have gotten much better to the point where I rarely take out the DSLR.
It does take amazing portrait pictures! And better pictures using indirect flash in low-light conditions. But video is pretty bad unfortunately - mirrorless cameras fix the focusing issue but they were not as easily available back when I bought my camera.
"The best camera is the one you have with you" and the usual trope.
I struggle to remember the last time I felt a need to take my mirrorless camera with me and I think it'd be a bit weird to take it with me on my daily commutes or when I'm meeting a friend for coffee or whatever.
For me it's the contrary.
When I didn't have a DSLR I was taking a lot of pictures on my phone. Since I got one a few years ago, I almost never take phone pictures anymore (even if I don't have the DSLR with me), because I know the quality will be subpar.
Why even bother taking a picture that will look awful when looked at on anything bigger than a smartphone screen?
Their atrocious firmwares are responsible for some part of this. These devices poorly integrate into the lifestyle and workflows of smartphone users.
Yeah even „high end“ dslr have serious issues reliably connecting to a smartphone to offload photos or apply settings as a remote. Also naming your lineups like HgZ150Hz-G3XL and make many of them with tiny differences doesnt help. As if these dinosaurs cant adapt and have to die? Anyways…
The real tragedy is that these manufacturers have excellent optics and image processing technology but it's all for nothing if people don't want or can't use it.
> naming your lineups like HgZ150Hz-G3XL
Panasonic LUMIX, is that you?
Agree. Fujifilm seems to be the only camera manufacturer really focused on firmware & UX design. They have almost Apple-like seamless usability and tend to keep updates rolling for 5 to 10 years.
Yes, kinda. Other comments about camera makers being pathologically incapable of making good software are mostly true, Fuji just seems like the best of a bad bunch.
My X100V is awesome. But there are definitely rough edges, particularly around the functions that interface with my phone. This should be bread and butter for cameras these days, but sadly it's still a fairly slow and sometimes buggy process to get photos from my camera to my phone, or to use my phone as a remote control.
As for the camera interface and features itself, they're fine, but there are seemingly weird limitations. Only 7 custom simulations? No option to apply a custom sim after I've taken a photo? And the locked down nature is pretty annoying. I know that there are Android based cameras which opens up a whole can of worms, but there's money to be made with a camera that can leverage the wisdom and ingenuity of the internet to provide upgradeable features. Especially when camera lifecycles are pretty long, you're not cannabilizing your own market if you let people provide custom paid film sims that I can directly load into my camera
As a casual underwater photographer, it's sad to see the compact camera market dying. I like having compact cameras that I can put into (relatively) inexpensive housings and bring along on scuba dives. My current Olympus TG-6 works really well, but we might never see a new model in that product line.
A few companies have tried to build underwater housings for smartphones but they don't work very well. Too hard to control the touch screen, and they don't work with external strobes.
Larger mirrorless cameras seem to still be going strong (for now). But the underwater housings are much more bulky and expensive.
In my mind and in my car
We can't rewind, we've gone too far
Pictures came and broke your heart
Put the blame on VCR
Smartphones killed the camera star?
I traveled to Japan recently with an middle-end smartphone (Samsung A72 with 12+35+60mm) & a middle-end DSLR (APS-C with 18-55mm), that I bought the same price.
Surprisingly, picture quality was on par. Low-light, stabilization, everything. I sold my DSLR since.
APS-C sensors aren't relevant anymore, only full-frames can beat smartphones nowadays.
Not sure what you were using, I don't see that at all with my Fuji kits.
I have both a X-Pro 3 and a X-T30 for street photography and both shoot much, much superior pictures than any smartphone is capable of...
APS-C is still pretty relevant, your old DSLR might not be up to par to latest smartphone cameras though. And the image processing done by smartphones using AI tend to create weird and ugly artefacts depending on conditions, that doesn't happen with my mirrorless cameras, for example.
Have you tried printing smartphone pictures and compare them to your DSLR shots?
Disclaimer, I'm a retired pro photographer that sold his full-frame to focus on software engineering.
Huh. When I compare RAW output from my D5300 (using the default 18-55 mm lens) and a Pixel 6, the difference is staggering. Granted, the JPG output from the Pixel is usually on par with the JPG from the DSLR, high dynamic range is something where the Pixel is even a bit better most of the time.
But once you take RAW photos and hit the Auto button in Lightroom, the Pixel doesn't hold a chance against the D5300.
Sure, prosumers like us can squeeze extra juice out of the DSLR. But our mothers cannot.
It doesn't even have to be a prosumer, average kids in my city know raw and post process. Kids are very familiar with editing, in fact, gen z is also blowing gen y out of water when it comes to editing video.
That was a bit sexist. But most people can't frame, compose or level either. So doing some automated post-processing inside a phone won't help.
The X-T30 is US$ 800-900 and uses the same sensor and processor of the X-Pro3 so they're pretty equivalent on picture quality. Don't stick to the X-Pro3 mention as that's missing the point.
The D5300 is pretty old, I had one in 2013-2014, coming from a D3200.
> - I compared on my 27" screen, no difference, even in low-light scenarios and at different ISOs
This might be the main difference between us, I usually do prints in A3+ sizes and the differences in picture quality between a smartphone and my cameras are very noticeable.
The point of my comparison was price. You can find better smartphones too.
The A72 and D5500 have the same used price.
On the price point I agree with you but then the comparison becomes not so level by comparing semi-conductors technology from 2014 to the ones from 2021, that's 7 years of evolution on sensor technology packed into the phone's sensor, plus all the image processing advances since then.
Again, I understand the price point but it's an oddball comparison. Perhaps a comparison between the A72 and a Fujifilm X-E2 could tell us more but I don't have either devices to directly compare myself :/
Well, you won't find anyone saying their 2022 smartphone outperforms their 2022 DSLR
Because people who find their 2022 smartphone outperforming their 2015 DSLR don't upgrade to a 2022 DSLR.
I sold my DSLR gear in 2015 including my absolute favorite 35/f2 lens, and I have an X100V on backorder in 2022 for its 35mm equivalent f/2 prime lens: seven years of AI missteps and absent bokeh in my preferred framing has finally gotten to me. I know that my phone will take better telephotos, and I know my phone has RAW mode and three lenses and takes amazingly great pictures. So I'm specializing my camera to exactly where I love it most, and will let my phone handle everything else, and I’m content that each has their strengths.
I'd love to see a graph of sharpness/$ for both categories ! I think they're equal until the $400 range, after Mirrorless obviously wins
Even if you have been a professional photographer for a significant length of time, you shouldn't use it to try to appeal to authority. However, a cursory glance at your profile tells me you aren't even 30, come on mate. Unless you were a professional photographer before your 10th birthday I really don't think your experience is better than any other enthusiast.
Did you do a real image diff on the same setup? I doubt it. Phone cameras have come a long, long way but a lot of the advances are through "smoothing" things out through software.
What's wrong with my age?
I've done 6 years of professional photography to pay for college. Portrait shoots, weddings, even produced videos, ads, festivals, wildlife documentaries. I worked on Nikon D4S fullframes. How is my age relevant ?
My point is, professionals squeeze extra juice of the hardware, but the average consumer does not.
The image your phone generates isn’t real. It’s a medium quality photo enhanced by “AI.” See all the cases of iPhone pictures adding faces where people aren’t there.
You can use third party camera apps to avoid Deep Fusion.
> The X-Pro 3 is $2k, not what I call middle-end.
Fuji uses the same sensors on many cameras, you can get an xt-2 or xe-3 for much cheaper, with the same sensor
D5300 is APS-C. I know because I have its descendent, the D5600. I wish it were full frame, especially this time of year. I should probably sell it since I never use it now that I have a good phone camera, but I would eventually miss my 70-300.
Maybe show some comparisons so we can judge rather than just assessing "facts"
I just felt it's such an outrageous claim that I really hadn't to show that cameras with much larger sensors and better optics would shoot better pictures than a smartphone.
For me it's the opposite, show how smartphones are better than the current crop of mirrorless APS-C as this is the extraordinary claim requiring evidence.
When I get some time I might shoot some comparison pictures, but if I don't: remember that I'm not here to serve your demands, I'm sorry.
> I just felt it's such an outrageous claim
I have used an iPhone SE and a mirrorless M4/3 camera to photograph a sheet of paper containing barcodes of varying sizes (including some with bars less than 1 pixel wide). I then checked which barcodes were readable in the resulting image.
The light levels were the same, both cameras were positioned and zoomed so the target took up the entire image, and both cameras were supported on a tripod.
I expected the M4/3 camera would blow the iPhone out of the water with its much larger lens, bigger sensor, and higher price. But no, the iPhone's image had marginally more readable barcodes.
Modern smartphone camera performance is just crazy, for the sensor size.
You didn't specify if the lens was up to the task in terms of sharpness on that MFT.
Sure, here it is ! https://imgur.com/a/VyHLYqP
Protocol: handheld at 10 PM, 10 shots each, at different ISOs, picked the best one
The bottlenecks are different, but the sharpness is comparable.
Dynamic range is better on the phone, but otherwise the DSLR has sharper edges, less noise, nicer colors, and is less mushy (but that is possibly due to the "AI processing", so ditto about the "real" image). That said, noise reduction is usually more advanced on phones, and handheld with a kit lens at night with high-contrast zones is kind of the worst scenario for DSLRs (hopefully it was a stabilized kit lens at least).
You can read the words "Hotel Platinum" on the phone photo. And it's blurred and "mushy" on D5500. And the phone had additional glare from an oncoming train, and it still pulled out things out of the dark.
Depends on what you need, of course, but for most people the photo from the phone is superior.
> The Phone has strong AI processing, I wish I disabled it
It's still over-sharpened and probably used multiple shots to get high dynamic range, it's much more noisy too, and shows less resolution
Also the d5500 is a lower tier camera from 2015, the phone was released in 2021
They have the same used price, which is the point of my comparison.
Yes there's HDR bracketing, but we only care about the result.
One is blurry (optics), the other has artifacts (AI), but overall sharpness is similar.
TBH both photos look horrible compared to smartphones nowadays or is this just 100% crop? I'd like to see whole photo.
Yes this is a 100% crop to highlight the sharpness is handheld low-light, the worst scenario there is
A fair point but unfair in that you are not also asking this of the OP. The status quo is that that a dedicated camera will be better than a smartphone (see other comments)
>Surprisingly, picture quality was on par. Low-light, stabilization, everything.
Almost certainly this is not true. It seems far more likely to me that perceived image quality after in device post processing was similar.
A lot of the quality of smartphone cameras comes from their software, which does a really good job at using the sensor data to create good images. Cameras sold to photographers do not do that, or not as much. This is by design, if you are a photographer (someone who is interested in the process of photography) these corrections are something you really do not want, as they remove your ability to manually control these corrections later.
You are actually comparing two different types of images and it is quite unsurprising that the DSLR did not "win".
That's actually problem with DSLRs. Phone use the tiny sensor they have to its fullest, DSLRs mostly treat it as it was a film, and not try to reap all the benefits of digital processing and ability to shoot a bunch of images in quick succession.
Instead of shooting at 1/8 or 1/15 in low light it could "just" shoot images at 1/125 or even 1/1000 then compensate for minute movements of the camera to get perfect sharpness, and then merge them to denoise it, and boom, near-noise-free, near blur free (just the blur from target movement, not the photographer) image in low-light.
This is absolutely not a problem with DSLRs or large format cameras.
>Instead of shooting at 1/8 or 1/15 in low light it could "just" shoot images at 1/125 or even 1/1000 then compensate for minute movements of the camera to get perfect sharpness, and then merge them to denoise it, and boom, near-noise-free, near blur free (just the blur from target movement, not the photographer) image in low-light.
There is absolutely nothing stopping a DSLR or large format camera user from doing exactly that. This is also a very common procedure in astro photography where dozens of such photos are stacked to capture objects in the sky. This doesn't happen on the camera of course, but a photographer wouldn't want it to happen anyways.
I think you entirely missed the point of a digital large format camera. The user does not want the camera doing post processing. The user wants the camera to capture technically excellent images and process them manually.
The difference between a phone and a large format camera in this case is that the photographer can choose to take such a photo and he can process it on a high performance machine with manual intervention. This is absolutely not a problem with the camera.
> The user does not want the camera doing post processing.
I want this, I don't want to spend time in front of a laptop doing post processing.
Then use your phone.
The intersection of people who want to spend a significant of money on something they already have (a camera) to get a version which allows them fine grained control and technically excellent results, but then don't care how the results are processed after they pressed the shutter is almost zero.
A modern large format camera is for people interested in photography. If you do not care about photography, but care about getting decent enough pictures with each press on the capture button, those cameras are not for you.
I care about photography, I care about good results, I care about using my camera to get those results, I do not care about spending hours in front of a computer screen.
So you invest time, money and effort into an expensive machine, which needs fine tuning, knowledge, experience and time to get the best results. But then you want to feed those results into a machine to do whatever it finds best, instead of manually controlling how your output looks?
I won't tell you what to do or don't but that market segment is probably not very large...
Google computational photography > DSLR non computed photo.
But that is hardly a shocker ... when will we get better desktop tools to recomupte photos?
>Google computational photography > DSLR non computed photo.
As I said. This is by design.
>when will we get better desktop tools to recomupte photos?
Lightroom has already various AI features. What can lightroom not control manually what Google does automatically.
Darktable is the FOSS alternative, although not as advanced.
By design and necessity - I suspect people would not be happy if they saw what actually came off the sensor (or had to carry around a better sized sensor).
https://skylum.com/luminar-ai is probably the closest I have seen
For some cameras "beauty filters" are even a selling point. For a professional photoprapher that would be a nightmare. But most people aren't photographers and only care about getting a good looking image after pointing and shooting. And there is nothing wrong with that, but it makes for bad comparisons.
> What can lightroom not control manually what Google does automatically.
The camera itself. Smartphones shoot several frames with different settings at different times, they may have a time of flight sensor to estimate distance, plenoptic features, etc... These can be fed into algorithms specifically trained on that camera and that can take advantage of all these extra data.
DSLRs can do things like bracketing, but external software doesn't have nearly as much control.
Everything by Topaz seems to fit the bill.
Gee their suite of software is almost as expensive as a new phone!
Camera industry is dying. I don't see Nikon or Olympus being around in the consumer camera market much longer. Its just going to be Sony and Canon.
People just want pictures that look good. I don't want to shoot bracketed shots then combine them together in photoshop so I can get the same dynamic range as my phone. I don't want to take 20 pictures at a time of my kids hoping to get that one moment where they looked at the camera when my Iphone has live photo mode.
All r&d is being developed for the small sensor sizes. New stacked CMOS sensors will come to phones first because that is where the money is at. Phone cameras next year may surpass capabilities of mirrorless/dslr cameras in terms of dynamic range with a single picture.
I really don't understand why camera manufactures aren't investing in software. What they are doing now isn't working. I am planning to go on vacation for the winter holiday and this may be first year in a long time that i don't bring my dedicated camera(right now a Sony A7III) because my IPhone 14 just takes good pictures.
> I really don't understand why camera manufactures aren't investing in software.
Some of them are. Olympus (now OM System) in particular has been emphasizing in-camera stacking features that take advantage of the fast sensor readout and very effective image stabilization they can achieve with a smaller sensor than most.
Those features aren't like the smartphone magic "make my picture look good" though. They're more manual and creative than that, like "let me take long exposures in bright light without filters" or "I want to paint light onto this dark scene with a flashlight". They produce a sort of raw file (it's obviously not simple raw sensor data at this point) suitable for further manual processing if desired. People not taking photography seriously as a job or an art form won't get much out of that, and most everyone else prefers the convenience of a phone.
> It seems far more likely to me that perceived image quality after in device post processing was similar.
That’s just what they said. The purpose of cameras is to produce images we find pleasing, for a few different values of “pleasing” (recording memories, aesthetics, etc).
Nobody cares about the “how”. Whether it’s a photographer with an MFA doing pixel-by-pixel adjustments on a RAW image or an algorithm in an ISP, nobody cares.
Ok, not nobody, but no casual user, which is 99.99% of the market. For most of us, we take a picture and look at the picture. Insisting that one technology is better even though it produces no user benefit is missing the point.
>Ok, not nobody, but no casual user, which is 99.99% of the market.
That's kind of my point. If you just care about getting a good enough result you do not want a camera which is producing images which are good on a technical level. And comparing technically good images to post processed images is essentially pointless. I am not sure about the 0.01% every person who ever used lightroom or similar software has wanted something from a picture their camera did not give them. And even if the number is correct, there still are people who see photography as a creative endeavour and who want images which are easy to edit and not heavily preprocessed. If you aren't one of them your phone is likely more than good enough already and there is nothing wrong with that.
When my mother uses both in auto mode, the pictures turn out the same quality.
This article is about the general public, not us, the HN crowd which love to push hardware to the limit. Which is the historical definition of hacking btw :)
That's just not true. Even a 1" compact with a decent lens (like Sony RX100) is better than any phone.
Not to mention that phones have awful ergonomics.
Phones have perfect ergonomics for carrying everywhere, and that's my primary requirement for a camera!
Perfect for carrying it in a pocket sure, not at all great for carrying it around in a hand. A compact camera is wider but shorter in two other dimensions, so it's easier to carry.
True. Hand grip with shutter trigger exactly where my finger rests — can't beat that ergo.
Taking photo with phone is utter horrible. I admittedly can't take a decent selfie with one hand. Even holding chopstick is easier.
Are you using the volume buttons to take a picture? I sometimes find that more ergonomic than tapping the screen.
I use the touch button if holding with one hand. The dedicated button for the shutter equivalent makes the photo shaky! How could that with one hand?
In my main camera use case the "gopro" form factor has much better ergonomics than a phone, by a wide margin. Unfortunately, that market is wildly underserved because all existing cameras in that form factor barely consider stills even an afterthought, if they consider it at all. I'd pay real money for a camera that is on par with phones but does not come with an almost face-sized TV attached.
(I use an RX-0, which at first glance seems to fit that bill, but doesn't really: it's an extremely small movie camera that only pretends to be a very small compact for addressing a wider audience than it deserves)
Agree. A cellphone with its button-lens is never going to match an actual camera in the kind of flexibility that only real depth of field can offer.
To be sure though, out of convenience I pretty much only take my phone on vacations. (Well, and an old medium-format TLR film camera just for the odd novelty photo — but it only ever leaves the van when I think I have a subject best suited for it. Oh, ha ha, and I have a stereo digital camera in the glove box that gets similar treatment.)
True, "only full-frames can beat smartphones nowaday" is nonsense. iPhone 14 Pro Max's sensor size is 1/1.28". Naive physics, 1" is collecting more raw light. Now it depends on how good a person controls the collecting process (and post).
Yes, and that's only on the "primary" wide-angle lens.
The other two lenses have 1/3.5" and 1/2.55" sensors.
Sensor wise yes, but not for post processing.
All cameras (compact to SLR does post processing) other than for RAW format. And infact even for RAW format SLR cannot beat modern flagship phones [1] [2].
[1] Apple ProRAW https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/iphone/iphae1e882a3/io...
[2] Samsung's 'Expert RAW' https://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-use-samsung-expert-r...
>even for RAW format SLR cannot beat modern flagship phones [1] [2]
Total nonsense. Of course a modern medium or full format camera outperforms any phone on technical aspects.
Clarification - Mobile Phones can beat SLR in sheer computation and ability to add extra information in RAW files, which SLR cannot do.
Understanding Apple ProRAW
https://petapixel.com/2020/12/21/understanding-apple-proraw/
Excerpt:
ProRAW has one more surprise up its sleeve. A few years ago, Apple began using neural networks to detect interesting parts of an image, such as eyes and hair. Apple uses this to, say, add sharpening to only clouds in the sky. Sharping faces would be quite unflattering.
ProRAW files contain these maps!
> add sharpening to only clouds in the sky
Of all the dumb things in this thread, this has to be the pinnacle!
(Clouds are inherently fuzzy)
>And infact even for RAW format SLR cannot beat modern flagship phones [1] [2].
What is described is those article is the same as a normal raw that DLSR have been doing for decades. Adding the word "expert" or "apple" in front of the name doesn't make your RAW files magically better.
The only advantage for the smartphone here is that it's more user-friendly to edit the RAW files directly on the phone in one click compared to importing your photos in a software like Photoshop Lightroom
Ergonomics is a mixed bag. DSLRs win at latency and burst, as well as manual mode.
But sharing the pictures is a pain, the UI is hard for beginners. And the most important ergonomic of all : it's easier to grab my phone than the 1-pound DSLR.
I can share pictures from my Fujifilm cameras via WiFi to my phone... I think you are using a pretty outdated kit and trying to judge the current crop of mirrorless cameras against that.
Even Canon and Nikon abandoned the DSLR format, the digital photography world has embraced mirrorless, it's much more compact and the only thing you lose is the analog viewfinder through the mirror. For me it wasn't a loss at all.
I've been a hobby photographer for almost 15 years, had DSLRs, full-frames and ended on mirrorless exactly because I needed something compact and light to carry around.
Yeah, mirrorless won since 5-7 years ago.
Even the iPhone 14 Pro with its very much upgraded camera can only *just* start to be within the same league as a standalone camera when it comes to dynamic range. Noise performance, detail resolution etc. are all still woefully inadequate. In any instance, a phone camera can take amazing shots (especially when in great light) but a very long way from being equal. Everybody has a different threshold for "good enough" however and they have met yours.
True dynamic range yes, but smartphones have better HDR bracketing software. So my phone also beat my middle-end DSLR in backlit scenarios.
I really don't agree with calling the D5300 a mid-range camera, it's 2013-2014 tech. Like I mentioned somewhere else I do understand the price comparison but it's not a mid-range camera anymore, it's very outdated.
Even with less outdated cameras (e.g. the last high-end APS-C from Nikon, the D7500), HDR bracketing is much worse than most mid-range phones from the last 5 years. And assembling them after manual bracketing in post-processing is also not great. Nikon HDR creates halos, doubling, even on relatively fast shutter speeds.
That said, I don’t have the experience of phones being "good enough", and even my Sony RX100 (edit: was "RX1", my bad) first gen which is quite old is out-performing 99% of the smartphone market in picture quality on a good screen, if you exclude HDR.
I doubt phones will ever reach the raw quality of RX1 due to physics, especially the RX1r II. That thing is still a beast.
Sorry, I meant to say "RX100", it is now corrected. Yes, even with the improvements in sensor technology, glass, and post-processing I don't see a phone reaching RX1 quality anytime soon.
They make up for the sensor deficiencies relative to a DSLR with image processing. You can simulate increase dynamic range and reduced noise by taking multiple exposures with multiple cameras and processing them with smart 'AI' algorithms.
I have a recent Samsung flagship phone, and the same DSLR and lens as you. The DSLR is far superior for sports photography. My daughter plays indoor volleyball and smartphone pictures are garbage, just completely blurry due to the fast action. If I manually reduce the shutter speed then pictures are under exposed due to the tiny sensor. On the DSLR I can run it in shutter priority mode and push the ISO, so the results are pretty good (although a full frame camera would obviously be better).
The smartphone does pretty well in most other situations that don't involve fast movement in poor lighting.
Picture quality most likely wasn't on par. Just look at this iphone 13 vs nikon d750 comparison: https://i.imgur.com/ght1Vyu.jpg.
Sometimes my Pixel 4a renders something which looks decent, sometimes it gives me oversharpened photos with unnatural colors, like the iphone photo. Let's not even mention the AI generated fake details, which look horrible to me 99.99% of the time.
I've recently bought canon mirrorless just to also buy 50mm lens with f/1.2 aperture. I got photos I've always wanted to do (with blurred background) and no phone could match the quality of picture. Of course with standard 15-45 lens (f/3.5 - f/6) it's much closer to phone quality, but that's why I didn't go with compact or camera without exchangeable lens.
Yeah, Samsung's current mid-range (~$300) phones are surprisingly capable devices that make the high-end ones (+$1000) seem unnecessary.
If only they weren't so anti-repair as to heavily glue their batteries in.
An SLR is nothing without a great lens. It is the most important part of the camera, more important than APS-C or full frame by a long shot. The lens may cost more than the camera body though...
My Nikon D40 still shoots better picture than high end phones. But that is just my opinion.
> APS-C sensors aren't relevant anymore, only full-frames can beat smartphones nowadays.
Even my ~15 years old Nikon D40 easily beats my 2022 phone in photo quality.
What aperture did the 18-55 lens have? Most likely the DSLR isn't low end, but the lens is a very low end 60$ kit zoom.
Low-end indeed, I used the AF-P DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR.
Better lenses are more expensive than my phone though.
A 50mm 1.8 is what, 100$?
I love how powerful my phone's camera is. I use it, I love it, I love the apps to identify birds, plants, etc with it. It takes great snapshots, and is so quick to whip out and get a decent photo.
Yet at the same time, I hate holding it out to look at the screen to see what the photo will be as I take a photo. A camera with an eyepiece lets you hold it tight to your face, locking your arms at your side, and decrease any wobbling of the camera due to body position. That makes it easier to focus (and I actually can use a manual focus), zoom, and track moving targets, and gives you a bit more flexibility on settings for the shot.
Not that compact cameras solved any of that particularly well, either. But I'm keeping my dedicated cameras until phones figure out better ergonomics for those of us who grew up being used to that level of control.
I'd be curious to know what other markets have diminished because of smartphones
* Flashlights? Sure a smart phone is not a good flash light but it's often enough
* paper notebooks? I'm just guessing the majority of people keep notes on their phone, probably cloud backed so they can access them on their tablets/notebooks/phones
* video cameras? The article was about compact cameras but I have to imagine no one buys a video camera anymore
* mp3 players
* calculators
what else?
Newspapers, magazines, newsletters, televisions, audio recorders, photo albums, pens and pencils, paperclips, staplers, stationary, scissors, stickers, ink stamps, software and video game manuals.
Maybe less need for mirrors, lint rollers, and large make-up kits with similar colors (maybe it's easier to adjust the tint in the photo?).
Laptops. Most people who had a personal computer ten years ago now no longer do.
Yellow cabs.
GPS devices, definitely
It also replaced 13 of the 15 items on this radio shack ad from 1991: https://www.trendingbuffalo.com/life/uncle-steves-buffalo/ev... (one of which is indeed a compact camera)
> AM/FM clock radio, $13.88. iPhone
Only if you squint and accept streaming and/or webradio as a replacement for "real" AM/FM radio. Funnily enough the ubiquitous Qualcomm chipsets already include a radio receiver, but most manufacturers don't activate it...
"Real" AM/FM radio has gong to shit in most markets anyways. Tons of advertising for traffic lawyers, diet pills, donut shops, etc. DJs talking too much, limited playlists.
I think "AM/FM" radio is really just the equivalent of "free music you can stream".
If you live in a town with a college, there may be a great student-run station. Personally KUTX and KOOP in Austin are great for me, and often get me to not stream from my phone.
As I was writing that I was thinking how I missed being close to a college radio station, or a good indie station.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608892
https://www.campus-fm.com/
I guess just not used enough to bother ? I had that feature enabled in custom firmware but I don't think I ever actually used it outside of "oh, that's neat" testing.
Either that, or you could lend credence to conspiracy theories like "providers want you to use up your data package faster, so you have to stream everything"
Motorola still supports it, Nokia still supports it, Huawei and Xiaomi still support it. Just like Dual-SIM or microSD slot or 3.5mm jack.
It's paradoxical how "flagship" devices have less features for more money.
Not really surprising. It's all stuff that the vast majority doesn't care about. So you have the mainstream devices targeting the mainstream users, and the weird alt devices which tack on everything possible to capture the remainder of users who have this one weird requirement.
That's an interesting definition, considering an order of magnitude more of these feature-complete devices gets sold than of flagships.
Show one phone that sells an order of magnitude more than the iPhone.
That's not what I claimed.
What I claimed is that the category "cheap android phones with all the ports and features" beats the category of "ultra-high-end devices without any reasonable ports" by far.
Flagship phones are halo devices, more jewelry than actual phones (this includes iPhones, the Pixel main line, the galaxy fold series, the S22 ultra, etc).
The vast majority of sales is in the mid range, including the Google Pixel A series (which still kept e.g., the 3.5mm port until last year) or most of Xiaomi or Huaweis phones.
But while with flagships, there's the one device to rule them all, in the midrange there's a different phone for everyone. Samsung alone has almost a hubdred different devices in this range at the same time.
And all of these have microSD, 3.5mm, FM Radio support, and many dual SIM support.
I think the lack of a headphone cable to act as an antenna may have something to do with that...
Indeed. And one of the reasons I'm clinging on to the venerable LG V35
Very cheap phones still often have FM receivers, but as a phone gets more expensive features get removed: No radio, no SD card slot.
Most chipsets have the FM receiver. Most do not bother to hook up the antenna. As it would be one more thing for them to support and test.
Didn't they all require wired headphones to function? That's probably why it got dropped.
It is just a pin off the chipset. The headphones was just a cheap way to get a 'free' antenna. Those chipsets do a lot of stuff. If you printed out the docs it would probably be a couple of reams of paper. They fuse things out for different cost points and just do not hook things up for others. It can also be if they hook it up it is an extra dollar per device. Not saying that is what happens but it is a distinct possibility considering the way they bifurcate the cost of those chipsets. From a consumer PoV though it is frustrating as the HW is there...
This ad is some of my go to examples of deflation: getting more goods/services for the same amount of money.
That US$1600 Tandy 1600 runs a 286 CPU and has a 20MB hard drive, and supported 640×200×16 resolution (720×350 mode for monochrome monitors):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_1000#Tandy_1000_SL_and_T...
What kind of computer can you get nowadays for $1600?
Barry Ritholtz's take is also interesting:
> But Inflation is not inevitable. There are numerous countervailing forces that have been at work for much of the past 50 years. The three big Deflation drivers: 1) Technology, which creates massive economies of scale, especially in digital products (e.g., Software); 2) Robotics/Automation, which efficiently create more physical goods at lower prices; and 3) Globalization and Labor Arbitrage, which sends work to lower cost regions, making goods and services less expensive.
* https://ritholtz.com/2021/02/stop-stressing-about-inflation/
Even one of the surviving two, a radar scanner to detect speed traps, is in danger. Apple Maps (and I think Google Maps as well) will tell you of upcoming speed traps as long as other people have reported them.
Im surprised by all the folks who always pop into these threads saying theyve replaced their XXXX-expensive-dedicated-camera with their phone. Outside of wide DoF, wide FoV, well lit shots I find my camera and iphone to be pretty incomparable.
If apple starts letting us swap the glass out one day we might be have a fight but currently I just dont see it being one at all.
The title is inaccurate. "Compact camera" just takes a different shape. Most everyone has a compact camera these days.
On a less nitpicky note, I think the failure to deliver a compact camera at a reasonable price in the 2004-2008 time period did a lot of damage too. The low-end models were junk, and the good ones cost, I believe, at least $250.
I remember seeing a chart of this a few years ago. Digital camera shipments peaked at >100M in ~2010 then fell off a cliff and 8-9 years later were <10M. The sad part is consumer digital cameras funded DSLR development so DSLRs have kind of plateaued as a result.
It's a shame because digital cameras can serve some specialist purposes that phones simply can't. I have a camera that can shoot Full HD @ 960fps. I have another with a 200x optical zoom (this is not compact). And another that's waterproof to like 30 meters. I also have another compact camera with a 20x optical zoom.
But I really feel like manufacturers have failed to innovate in the smartphone era. It should be trivial (ideally, seamless) to save photos to your phone. Various implementations for this are just bad like one camera I have is a Wifi AP and you have to connect to it. They usually require running custom software, which is typically just bad.
I'd also like to be able to put a camera on a mount where I can remotely turn and tilt it, focus and zoom.
For years photographers have said the best camera is the one you have and it's true. That's why smartphones destroyed this market. But manufacturers didn't really do that much to close the usability gap.
I was looking for one recently, and yeah, it's slim pickings (and even slimmer in terms of reviews etc. on sites like The Verge compared to when I was last looking at cameras) - not helped by chip shortages limiting availability (and raising prices) of the models that do 'exist'.
I wanted one because I don't want my nice-photo-taking tied to my phone, I don't want that to be a consideration every time I buy a phone, and I don't otherwise need an expensive phone (my last few have cost <£200 and been kept years each, I don't play games or do anything intensive with it). I'd rather have a ~£200 compact camera and a ~£200 phone, with independent replacement cycles, than a ~£400 phone (that would be a much less capable camera, though admittedly the software editing/ML stuff for amateur stuff (which I definitely am, I just want holiday/walk snaps etc.) is quite nice these days). I settled on a used but pretty mint condition Panasonic TZ100, and can keep using my Nokia 3.4 a while longer. (Though it does reboot itself multiple times a day, so its days are still numbered.)
I struggle to understand how mid range digital compact cameras are so bad. I have to use them for work (for reasons below) and usually at night with the flash.
So the camera flash is obviously far superior to a phone flash but apart from that, my phone (Note 20 Ultra) dominates all the Olympus and Ricoh cameras I've had in recent years. When it's raining or foggy and I have to take a photo, I am forced to use my phone instead of the company supplied camera. If I need to do a video clip, again the phone is my go to. Looking towards the sun, same again.
If I could use my phone for all the photographic records I take at work then I would but I still rely on the form factor of the camera which is more resilient amongst tools and dirt and on-screen display which shows a sequential photo/filename reference that I can quickly note down.
How does a £1000 phone have such an incredible set of cameras which destroy the dedicated camera on a £300-400 digital compact?
Probably the effort spent on computational photography by phone companies is greater than that spent by camera manufacturers, even expensive DSLRs only have hand crafted debayer/denoise, while phones use all kinds of neural network magic. Even an RGBW sensor with a simple bilateral filter could do amazing things, but I don't think any digital camera has even that.
Remember when Kodak thought that digital cameras are a fad so they didn't invest? Same thing happening with computational photography right now.
Kodak didn't think that, but they didn't anticipate the incredibly sharp drop in film sales. Kodak was the #1 seller of digital cameras in the US in 2005.
Film sales only fell off a cliff in 2006. [0]
The Kodak story as commonly told is something like "don't be stupid like Kodak". This is easily followed by the thought "I'm not that stupid, I'll be fine".
But the reality is much more nuanced and with a more important lesson.
- We have a product making big money
- In the (far?) future, this will probably change
- How fast?
- How much should we invest in capturing the next thing?
- Given the next thing is fundamentally far removed from what we did (chemicals -> electronics) should we even go there or divest and invest in something else entirely?
Kodak chose to go the digital camera way, but got eaten by electronic giant incumbents like Sony (with their sensors), Nikon and Canon. Yes, Canon and Nikon were already giants in electronics, since their cameras were electronic processor controlled since the 1980s.
Kodak eventually lost money on every Kodak digital camera sold. But even if that gamble had worked, they might have gotten eaten by smartphones just a few years later!
Business is just hard sometimes.
0: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/fufifilm-film-d...
The price difference is because of economies of scales, if that compact camera is produced at the same quantity as the parts of the camera will go down in price. Another factor is package size. Camera are bulkier and cost more to transport (factory to consumer).
I just got a Pixel 7 Pro. My photos look obscenely good. The new macro lens let me take a picture of a fly up close and you could see the individual hairs on its abdomen. It looks like it came out of a national geographic. I can't believe "normal" cameras even still exist for most photography.
Would you mind sharing such a photo? I'm interested in how good it looks on a large computer screen.
https://imgur.com/a/GPShi1r
First try and the lighting wasn't great.
This is the right move by camera manufacturers. The low end, compact camera has been replaced by people's smart phones and computational photography. All the innovation in the small compact market is on phone cameras. It's just not compelling or fiscally responsible to continue to spend money on R&D and manufacturing in the low-end compact market if you're one of the large camera companies. The money to be made is in the professional market. Higher margins, more expensive camera bodies and glass. Feels similar to what Ford did when they stopped making sedans/compacts and went full on trucks, crossovers and SUVs. The only real money maker that I've read about on the low end is the Instax line by Fujifilm, which fills that nostalgic, film based approach.
I’ve always appreciated the numerous salient points in this 2012 Economist blog post comparing how Kodak and Fuji Filmfilm responded to the ascendency of digital cameras:
https://www.economist.com/business/2012/01/14/the-last-kodak...
or
https://archive.ph/W9MMG
The article succinctly captures the responses of the companies, consumers, and the stock market. The lessons demonstrated by the relevant actors are ones I’ve carried with me in my own business work and shared with others when appropriate.
The only thing they beat smartphones at is optical zoom. And that's pretty important and one of the few areas where smartphones still lag and can't crack due to their size. Add 10x optical zoom to a new iPhone and watch it crush all former sales records.
Introducing Stable Diffusion Zoom!
Jokes aside, I wonder how much of the computational photography in smartphones today is "hallucinating" and showing something perceptually nice versus photos that are physically accurate.
Something tells me that most users don't care about accuracy of the content as much as it looking nice, so I wouldn't be surprised to see faked optical zoom based on hallucination techniques soon.
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/stable-diffusion-...
for context though this is a market that mostly collapsed like 15 years ago, and smartphones were actually the second death of the market.
When you hear "compact camera" think about like the Canon A40 and such - early 2000s. By the late 2000s they were already completely commodified with no margin left and the profit had moved to DSLRs (and later MILCs etc).
There was and is still a niche for "premium" compact cameras (Nikon coolpix, Ricoh GR, Fuji X100, etc) but the commodity market didn't get anything out of a standalone camera that couldn't be done better by something else, and if you're already carrying a smartphone anyway...
For most of the last several years, I carried a flip phone, and I'd keep a compact camera in my bag. I just don't like smartphone interfaces in general. I really like camera interfaces; once you get good with it, it's very quick to set exposure, ISO, etc for exactly the kind of look you want. I also like being able to access files on my computer for editing, processing, and backup just via an SD card rather than having to send them through some 3rd party service.
Generally, I agree though, that software for cameras is pretty poor compared to what it could be.
Only 97%? That would mean one in every 30 compact camera owners still uses one regularly. I realize the market for “small cameras that you can always have with you” grew tremendously, so “3% of the number people who used to own a compact camera” is a lot less than “3% of the people who know have a smartphone or a compact camera”, but still, 3% seems high to me.
I wouldn’t know anybody who still uses a compact camera (but then, did I know 30 people who did in the time before smartphones?)
This is bad for privacy. Now every single photo a person takes will be stored on someone's cloud forever and potentially used by someone against folks threatening their mafia.
Okay but surely not everyone's picture? Not everyone has cloud photos enabled.
My iPhone "magically" turns on Cloud Photos from time to time and then complains about running out of space. The same approach as with Windows 10/11 "magically" turning on anti-privacy options after upgrades etc. Not to mention some apps pushing all pictures to Cloud by default.
Apple is already scanning photos on-device for illegal content.
Huawei is apparently deleting footage of protests from people's phones too.
Nobody force you to use cloud features. None of photos my wife or me take are stored in the cloud.
Are you really sure about it? Can you be really sure about it being always true?
I suggested a few weeks ago on this forum that DSLRs should strive to be like smartphones with better lenses. Make real computational photography accessible on-device like a phone would, with its power and its UI, but with programmable hardware buttons and DSLR performance.
I have an Olympus E-M10 Mark III (terrible naming) and while the photos are obviously of a higher quality than a camera phone, camera phones can do wonders with photo stacking and HDR/night shots that would be even more amazing with a proper camera.
"But that's what photoshop is for", the naysayers say. I say, bollocks to that. If a budget smartphone can make these filters/optimizations accessible to the masses, then a DSLR can as well. Besides, they already try. My Olympus has an art filter menu, a "scenes" menu and so on, but they are opaque in what they are actually doing, not very flexible in adjustment, and overall can't achieve the customization of a smartphone.
If Sony et al bolted a detachable lens to an android device with a few programmable knobs and buttons, with wifi (not hotspot based) for instant uploading, I daresay it would be a hit.
I don't expect futures phones, in their current form factor to ever match any dedicate (future) camera that can accommodate a better sensor and optics.
What I would have liked to see smartphones makers match is option for removable battery in a flagship like phone.
Some vendors (Samsung included) have their line of rugged phones with removable batteries, these phones tend have a not so great screen, camera and often processor as well.
The "compact" camera market is a lie.
I have wanted to get rid of my smartphone and downgrade to something smaller and simpler. The one thing tying me to it is the camera. I use it on a regular basis to take quick photos of family or events around me.
If there were a compact camera on the market, I would happily carry around a phone and a separate camera in my pocket.
No such thing exists. Every so called "compact" camera is significantly larger, bulkier, and heavier than any phone on the market. I get it, they have optical zoom lenses and that takes up space. Most of the time I don't want that but there are no options for it. But even the body of the camera without the zoom lens is significantly thicker than a phone.
Near as I can tell, the dimensions of the compact camera have not changed since the last time I bought one, which would have been around 2006. The one thing I can say is that camera still works just as well as it did 16 years ago. Maybe new ones take better photos, but in the meantime, I've gone through probably a dozen different cell phones.
Sure would be nice to have a truly compact option though.
After selling my A7S I was at a loss for a F2C recording... thought about a Brio, in the end used the front-facing iPad Pro camera.
With lots of natural light (etc.) quality at non-Fullscreen, typical viewing resolution&size, was 'unnoticeably good'
I was very very surprised. I think a lot of people don't realise just how far tech has come (+the right photo/video-ography skills).
I bought one recently because when I'm snorkeling etc. I don't want to risk losing something with access to my accounts, auth etc.
I really think we need to start separating our crucial digital identity/value from the thing we use to translate a menu or call 911 in an emergency or hand to a stranger to take a photo. Right now I use 2 phones to keep I kinda separated.
It’s a good point but probably a temporary one. The Apple ecosystem already treats all devices as equal; if I lose my phone I can do 2FA or call 911 from Watch or iPad at least, typically laptop as well. There’s nothing special about the phone device.
Google, Samsung, and others are catching up there and it won’t be long before the same is true, though they will probably have a greater proportion of devices without cell modems.
Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements.
But only the beginning. We're going to be debating the question of "reality" a lot in the coming years. Surely, the next step in computational photography will be AI to fix your questionable shots.
You photograph the Eiffel tower, but there's a lot of people obfuscating it, the horizon isn't straight and the light ugly. One tap and it's fixed, if it even requires a tap.
You zoom in digitally to produce some blob of what is supposed to be a bird. Tap to fix it. And there you have it, a pro level shot without the 5kg 600mm lens.
Just like AI art generation, photography will be going through some deep questions. Did you actually photograph that? And if anybody can photograph anything with zero skill, what is the point?
> Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements.
In the past photography was optically pure shit, and we could only take 36 photos at a time before cranking out a new roll of film, and we had to drive to a photo store to pay to get those 36 photos developed and only them we could see if the photos were any good.
The discussion on photography and its relationship to capital-R Reality dates back to the medium’s inception. There is no lens-sensor system that can capture what we see with our eyes, but is what we see even “reality?” Is the reality of a visually divergent person a lesser Reality than that of typically sighted people? Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” and Roland Barthe’s “Camera Obscura” are nice meditations on such questions.
Someone said to me a long time ago that the best camera in the world is the one you have with you. It turns out they were right.
In my experience I recover low level storages (think dd or lower) in consumer and professional cameras, and cell phones.
I still find errors in FAT32 implementation when it comes to cameras, while phones have moved on to get specialized formats depending on the storage chips' design.
Cameras' firmware are decades behind.
>I still find errors in FAT32 implementation
I wonder if this results in issues when you plug a card into Windows, which then 'fix' the incorrect FAT32 data structures on the disk, which again will be corrupted by the camera in new and interesting ways.
Does it make your life easier or harder? (How easier is it to recover from FAT32 than from "specialized format")?
Does specialized format means you don't ever need to recover from them or noticeably less?
> Does it make your life easier or harder?
It makes my life harder because recovery has to be manually adjusted to work with the incorrect implementation.
It also makes the owners' life harder too. older file systems are not geared for chips and thrash the storage, making them fail significantly faster, be it removable or built-in.
> Does specialized format means you don't ever need to recover from them or noticeably less?
For my context, I recover them for forensics purposes. When I wrote "specialized format" (e.g., JFFS2, YaFFs, Target, F2F2, UBIFS) I was referring storage formats geared towards chip vs disk. mobile phones tend to be very easy to recover; almost plug-and-play. They are often are hardware modules where the entire storage can be removed, and connected through common, physical connectors to recovery device.
https://archive.ph/M1i4k
There is a similar thing happening with car stereos.
People just want Apple CarPlay. Not your manufacturers crappy radio UX.
Quality software is a discipline not every company gets right. And TBH, you see the difference between those that focus on software and UX as a craft, and those that don't.
For sure, HDR and AI noise removal are pretty good. But there's one more thing that's less visible, which is that smartphones are not very friendly to standalone cameras.
Cameras have always depended on PCs to do capture. And since smartphones did not provide ways to do fast wireless transfer, it made a separate device even harder to use. My Sony mirrorless takes about 30 seconds to connect to iPhone using ad-hoc WiFi, and it's a bunch of work on both sides. So while I can sort of get from the camera to Instagram, it's way harder than it should be if the mobile device makers wanted it to work.
After I used a dslr camera for few months, I notice small ugly artefacts in my iPhone 12 mini’s pics. Along with that, smartphone pics has a weird distortion which is very noticeable with the wide angle lens, but it is noticeable now to me with even the regular lens. Sort of like background compression, which i find pretty ugly. I think this is a physical limitation of a small sensor and lens. Not sure why nobody has fixed that with computational photography. All I want is to have my pics look like a shot with standard 50mm lens. I don’t care about bokeh actually.
You won’t notice these things until you are familiar with pics from a dslr camera.
Its a strange thing. You need a stable society with a social safety net to unleash such creative destruction, but a stable society has a tendency to develop structures like guilds that prevent just this creative destruction.
The guild of map makers allows to ship in materials that allow for the creation of a machine that provides maps for free, but would try to prevent the construction of said machine by legislation influence at all cost.
Which is begging the question, how does one ensure that the "protective" legislation always remains ineffective or gets devoured? Should protective laws always have a "lifetime"?
I own a Sony DSC WX500. I bring with me when I go on vacation with a 30x zoom I can get great pictures of animals and with my phone I can't. I transfer pictures from the camera to the phone over its own wifi and a Sony app (not very good) to have a backup and to send some of them to my friends with whatsapp or telegram.
A camera with an open API is be great. Sony would only have to provide a basic app and somebody would create a great one for profit or for the fun of it. Sony would keep the money from the hardware sales. No idea if they have some cloud offering for cameras and if they profit from it.
Give me the product I want, at a reasonable price, and I will buy it.
I am specifically annoyed at how cameras have been sold in tiers, the same tech with upgrades as a different model.
Sell me instead a modular camera, upgradeable like a PC.
Barebones camera, no WiFi, no Bluetooth, basic screen, basic memory.
Expansions: Better case, wireless connectivity, memory upgrayyedd, better screen, optics module, bayonet adapter for lenses of your brand choice.
That sort of thing.
If you do it right, it will result in longevity of the brand, if you do it like Sony has done with all their cool products, then it will be limited and expensive, and nobody will really use it.
I hate iOS color rendering though and I tried RAW. I ran the TMB (100mi in Alps) with phone and compact film camera and only 1 iPhone photo made the cut. The colors are too saturated esp the sky with the fake polarizer effect and the color transitions more abrupt. Everything looks way too cool in tone and muddy when I try to warm. And this is on a 13pro. My damaged film (noisy from X-rays at airport) was still far better with softer color gradations and better overall rendering. Fuji XE4 is also far better than phone. I hardly use my phone camera.
To be honest I've always found the auto white balance of every iPhone (SE, SE2, 12) I've had to be quite terrible and inconsistent for modern standards under artificial light. Roughly equivalent to 1st generation Nikon DSLRs (>20 year old tech). Pictures with the built-in flash are also really amazingly bad, worse than any compact I've ever had. The SE and SE2/3 have terribly tinting with the built-in flash as well. The 12 is much better here but still pretty bad. Close focus is no good - worse than old DSLR kit lenses. And ultra-wide on the 12 is so noisy and bereft of details that it's really just a gimmick.
On the other hand, night mode works quite well and it's a camera you almost always have with you.
Camera manufacturers should've built a compact camera that fits in the pocket, has a digital screen, and can make phone calls / send messages. They would've hit it big.
This makes total sense. Most people are far better off with a smartphone. Easy to use, photos are right there, preserved in the cloud, etc.
What Apple and others killed is the lowest possible segment. There's still a pretty healthy ecosystem of small-ish mirrorless cameras and, of course, DSLR, which you could buy if you need one.
I really like my Fujifilm and all the nice buttons it has. But one of the key advantages is that its photos simply look different from an iPhone.
I never understood why almost no modern compact camera has built-in geotagging capability.
In my opinion it's a very useful feature, but what I usually find in modern cameras is only the possibility to connect via Bluetooth to a smartphone, where I need to install an app to provide the coordinates to the camera for geotagging.
Then I see cheap low-end smartphones that have built-in support for GPS+Galileo+GLONASS+Beidou and I wonder how much would it cost to insert such electronics into a camera.
There is a timing problem with geotagging. If I am going to turn on my camera, snap a photo, and expect a geotag, then the GPS had to be already running. It takes a while, seconds to minutes, to get a location from power off. That leaves a few compromised choices…
- leave the gps on all the time. This gets you a geotag but you have to charge your camera every day, like your phone.
- update the geotag when turned on, but use the previous location for any shots until there is a lock. This is ok for rough location but users aren’t going to like that the first picture of a trip has the wrong location if they don’t warm up the camera first.
- stay on after a picture is taken long enough to get a lock then rewrite the picture with the location. This works, unless you take the card out and hand it to someone before the rewrite.
Nabbing the location from the cell phone gets you a live location for free.
GNSS receivers suck a massive amount of power, and nobody wants their camera to need charging daily. You accept this on your phone because you were going to charge it every day anyway. Personally, I think it makes a lot more sense for everything to access location information from my phone instead of every device having an expensive, power-gobbling radio.
Sony hasn't updated their compact lineup in years, which is sad because many people love those cameras. Especially the RX and HX series. I always carry a compact with me.
Ricoh is still making their wonderful GR series. I have a GRiii which I love.
I do know a number of people that went out and bought one specifically to use as a webcam. And they work amazingly well for that. Expensive, but you can’t beat the quality.
Canon recently even started marketing some cameras as "for streamers" with integrated direct-to-youtube streaming.
It seems like the big camera manufacturers have accepted that they will not be going after consumers anymore. They concede.
I wonder if there is still room on the edges of the prosumer market though to push more people into the big dedicated cameras.
Could a better camera OS, more digital photography, and quicker, sexier results, along the lines of what we see on iOS, combined with amazing sensors and glass, convert some people over?
Or are those numbers too small to be worth a try?
Most people even stopped making landscape mode fotos an videos. Portrait mode is the king today. No rotation needed, shareable, full screen area utilization.
I am waiting for phone cameras to use square sensors and just let us select between portrait or landscape without having to rotate the phone. New Gopro has it.
apparently this is due to instagram
Don't worry, gen z will bring them back with their quest for "vintage" photos
https://petapixel.com/2022/12/01/tiktokers-are-obsessing-ove...
In other news, software continues to eat the world.
Join us for our panel discussion later where we will cover software eating everything.
I'm actually looking at buying a nice simple older compact to maintain the look and feel of older digital pictures.
Funny, this video just came up on my YT feed last night: https://youtu.be/H4e90hYMnhg
He (photographer) explains the draw of decade-old digital cameras. Apparently not a lot of cash will get you some nice older digital cameras — some of them quite high-end for their day and, as he says, maybe even preferable to some of the more recent offerings.
Make sure you can actually get batteries for it...
I miss my old DSLR but yeah, it's too much to carry around. I wonder if there's a market for some kind of "clip-on" DSLR that sits on top of your phone, uses the touchscreen etc for interface, Wi-Fi direct for communication (perhaps?)
I have to assume there's a good reason to not have done this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSC-QX100 (though technically not DSLR)
Huh! Who knew. I kind of want one, though looking at some reviews it seems software is the big downside and I can't imagine a nearly ten year old iOS app is going to look much better today.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't decided to kill the dslr and mirrorless market with something like that.
The Ricoh GR and the sprinkled offerings from Fujifilm have been the only worthwhile point-and-shoots for a long time. I still take my Fuji XF10 with me everywhere because it's unobtrusive and will archive better than anything a small-sensor phone could.
I got a tiny Fuji mirrorless for my "best camera is the one with you" checkbox too. Next time I catch gear acquisition fever though, I might have to get one of those little Ricohs.
The list of Fujis I've owned/sold/kept:
- 5 X100s (2x T, 2x F, currently own a V)
- 2 X-Pro2s (one went to my younger cousin)
- 1 X-T2 (upgraded to an X-T3)
- 2 X70s (sold them - too heavy for a point-and-shoot, fantastic otherwise)
- 1 XF10
I don't think I will ever not have an X100. The XF10 on the other hand is always with me. In a second I can go from single-point auto-focus and -exposure to zone-focused slow-sync flash; the only other camera that's this usable, from my experience, is the Ricoh GR II. The immediacy of physical buttons and controls is something phones have yet to replicate.
I love my Ricoh grIIIx, it's so compact and the snap distance priority is wonderful!
Which model is considered by photographers as the last "best" compact camera?
The Sony RX100 series would be in most top lists. Though personally I'm not sure why they went with a slower lens from the mark 6 onwards. The ZV1 continues with the a similar lens from earlier models. I have the RX100 mark iii, that's still quite good.
I second the RX100 series. As a step up, there is RX1 with a full frame and fixed lens. And HX99 the other way with a smaller sensor, but goes all the way up to 720mm.
Same, RX100-M3 is my webcam now. (X-T30 for anything else)
The fuji x100 lineup is real nice: https://jonasraskphotography.com/2020/02/04/fujifilm-x100v-f...
Seconding Ricoh GR III & IIIx. Absolute pleasure to use.
They might release an updated version (called GRV given Japanese superstition around number 4?) in 2023 or 2024.
If you do street photography, Ricoh grIII and grIIIx are the most beloved, afaik, because of being actually pocketable (while fuji x100v is not) and having the snap focus and snap distance priority. If not focusing on street, either Ricohs and Fujis are great
Sigma DP2M. As slow as a film camera. Bad screen. Battery lasts for just 100 photographs. Limited dynamic range. But a great combination of a sharp and tiny lens and unique Foveon sensor. If you get it right, it produces film-like images with amazing colors.
Also the Ricoh GR. Great size and weight, great ootics, not laggy, not a 'system'.
Ricoh's GR III and IIIx are really good.
Fuji X100 models (APSC), and Sony RX1R (fullframe). Fixed lens, obviously.
Canon Powershot G7 X Mark III is pretty decent.
I'm still waiting for the ability to use my off camera flashes from my smart phone. That is the missing piece for those amazing camera portraits sculpted from light when you don't have the right natural environment.
from the comments it feels already the case that carrying a camera is nowadays a signal that you are not a "casual" photographer but a prosumer (or worse :-)
stands to reason, though, that for any given form factor if the device is dedicated to one task it will do it better than a similarly sized multi-purpose device (and one that, nota-bene, is primarily designed for and busy with collecting and sending user data back home).
both optics, ergonomics, battery life and compute / software could be far superior in a compact compared to a phone. so the 3% niche market remaining might evolve into some really cool cameras.
Yeah, and the market / use case for "serious" cameras is dwindling, too. I can see a time in the near future where only the most serious hobbyists and pros use a "real" camera.
I remember thinking the Sony Ericsson w810i was the perfect phone + camera form factor. Of course I also invested heavily in MiniDisc so clearly my sense for these things was not good...
Meanwhile, 360° cameras are being discovered by more and more people and achieve awesome pictures unlike any traditional cameras. Also, the subject is always in-frame.
I don't like myself in frame, I prefer sharing my view.
You can always reframe the video after recording.
You want bad software/UI? Flash triggers. OMFG. I have one flash. M on the screen means two opposite things in two different places. Etc.
Smartphones wiped out probably even more markets:
-alarm clocks
-calendars
-calculators
-compass
-mobile gps
-flashlights
-mp3s
-voice recorders
-camera recorders
-pocket cameras
-pagers
-hotdog detectors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIci3C4JkL0
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/not-hotdog/id1212457521
I honestly thought that the price for mirrorless cameras would drop as demand dropped, but that didn't happen.
I see a parallel, the smartphone ate the other devices, the language model is eating human tasks by the thousands.
The astonishing thing is, compact cameras have 3% market share remaining.
Is this the future of the art and writing markets once ai gets better?
XR glasses will do the same to the smartphone, and I can't wait.
I just came back from Delhi, and thought similarly (just camera specifically rather than smartphone actually) there, that I'd have loved to have something like Google Glass, but more subtle looking, for discretely taking photos without standing out so much - I missed a lot because I just didn't feel comfortable framing the shot, looking like such a tourist (I was visiting family, didn't see anyone else like that) - but of course I did look at them, would've been great to just touch the side of my glasses or whatever to take the photo.
Day to day though, as a smartphone replacement... unless/until I need prescription lenses I don't think it's enough to make me want to start wearing glasses.
XR glasses don't solve the HID part (I don't think people will start pointing at things in the air. Even if they do it's much more tiresome).
> I don't think people will start pointing at things in the air.
There are other possible input devices. For XR glasses, the most natural would be some sort of gaze tracking. Another option would be an indirect device like a mouse or trackpad (most desktop and laptop users don't point directly at things in their screens), or even a set of cursor keys for menu selection.
I'm not sure. Watch didn't replace the phone. (Although if the watch took photos I might just leave the phone at home more often.)
The watches that took photos _sucked_...which was one of the reasons I'm betting Apple didn't include one on their first (and subsequent) Apple watches.
Would it not be fair to say that compact cameras gained network connectivity and are now more popular than ever? I mean we call them phones but transferring sound is pretty much the least of their duties anymore.
And I thought smart phones are the compact camera market.
Amusingly, Android project started as a camera OS.
They certainly did a number on the PDA marker.
Article is paywalled so I haven't read it, but surely the reason is not that smartphones are better than cameras as being cameras. The reason is that a) smartphones are good enough cameras for most purposes (e.g. people were happy with 110 film cameras in the 1970s) and b) people already paid for and are carrying a smartphone so they need a compelling reason to also buy and carry a camera (see (a)).
also in news today, automobiles wiped out 99.99% of horse carriage market
What about torch market?
FYI: Story from August
Related conversation a month ago:
The changing fortunes of Japanese camera manufacturers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33328693
There is or was a compact camera market? What is it, 10 people? 5?