SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
2018 was the biggest shakeup in years for the camera world
2018 was the tipping point for mirrorless cameras.
If you're a photographer who fears change, 2018 might've shook you up. First Sony launched the A7 III, arguably the world's best full-frame camera, then Fujifilm released the X-T3, the top APS-C model you can buy right now. Right after that, Canon and Nikon launched all-new full-frame mirrorless systems with three new cameras, the EOS R, Z6 and Z7. To top it off, mirrorless video champ Panasonic announced it was diving into full-frame mirrorless as well with two new models, the S1 and S1R.
This is the biggest upheaval in the camera industry for years and could have a big impact on your buying decisions. On top of that, companies that don't adapt quickly may not survive, especially in a market gutted by ever more incredible smartphone cameras -- and moving fast will be a challenge for conservative companies like Canon and Nikon. Based on everything that happened in 2018, you can expect more drama and turmoil in 2019, but also even more innovative and interesting cameras.
[...] While Full-frame is great, most of us don't have $1,500 or more to throw down on a camera, let alone the lenses. What I hope to see is the same level of innovation on more affordable mirrorless products that cost under $1,000. With multi-camera AI-powered smartphones starting to close the gap there, too, camera companies have got to bring some of the same capabilities. Here's hoping that 2019 is just as eventful as 2018, if not more so.
(Score: 5, Funny) by SpockLogic on Friday December 28 2018, @12:38PM (1 child)
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday December 29 2018, @08:42AM
HEY! be respectful towards my race!
Do I post around saying all niggers steal and all whiteys rape and let's not get started on the other colors?
(Actually I do, but it's only to mask the misogynist posts)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by lentilla on Friday December 28 2018, @01:06PM (4 children)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 28 2018, @01:08PM (2 children)
Sony is Japanese
anime is Japanese
anime is good
Sony is good
Q.E.D., bitch.
(Score: 5, Informative) by lentilla on Friday December 28 2018, @01:17PM
shards of a fallen empire
scurrilous company
we must not buy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @08:25AM
sony
by the bitches, for the bitches
FTFY
rootkit
otheros
the world has to run out of panasonic and fuji cameras before i consider a sony.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday December 28 2018, @09:43PM
I really wish that my sony boycott had long outlasted my use of windows.
Unfortunately my Nikon uses a sony sensor, and I'm not willing to give up my DSLRs.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Friday December 28 2018, @04:20PM (2 children)
I needed one to make a few product shots and maybe a few decent quality video clips. Because that will mostly involve a synthesizer and other audio equipment, my absolute must-have checklist item was an audio input jack (when even output jacks get out of fashion). That made the selection easy, effectively narrowing the choice down to four Fujifilm models, divided by fixed/changeable lenses and cheapo/pricey sensor. I went for the changeable/cheapo one, called X-A5.
It makes nice photos. That's all my nonexistent qualification as photographer allows me to say, and I have hardly ventured past point-and-shoot yet. The only deeper investigation was to check how the external audio gain works (it is settable, so hopefully there is no auto-gain involved, which would be troublesome for recording of a production console involved). For the pictures, I assume these days about every camera above the "disposable" class from any brand manufacturer is picturewise as good or bad as the person operating it (and the lighting environment), for 99.9% of persons.
The Japanese manufacturers have made an art of letting features only slowly trickle in, so their business model is sustainable. In that regard, I'd don't think there was a particularly big shakeup in 2018. At the moment, main "progress" is made with 4K video (e.g. rough current price in EUR = 40 * fps@4k). And viewfinder mirrors increasingly disappear. When the 4K fad is done and over, they'll move on to dynamic range.
The big shakeup was from 2011/12 on, when phone cameras started to become good enough that no dedicated camera was needed anymore for the majority of use cases.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday December 28 2018, @08:44PM
4K will die when 8K kicks in. HDR is already here. A Galaxy S9 can record audio at 32bit/384k, impedance matching with your gear shouldn't be too difficult.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by driverless on Sunday December 30 2018, @04:24AM
I've been wondering for years why DSLRs stuck with this piece of more-than-a-century-old technology. A digital viewfinder, i.e. taking the image off the sensor and displaying it to the user, has massive advantages over the optical one, why would you continue using something that's an artefact of 1880s film and camera technology when there's no need for it, and in fact many disadvantages?
(Score: 5, Informative) by fyngyrz on Friday December 28 2018, @05:28PM (12 children)
Except they aren't.
The sensors on smartphones are tiny; the physics of the matter prevent them from capturing as many photons — they simply have far less area with which to do so.
The lenses are also too small to gather much light for the sensor.
In photography, the ultimate attainable quality boils down to:
So we hear a lot about image stacking. Shooting a scene more than once, then aligning the scene data across the multiple image frames as best possible, then taking the average or median (or other) of the now vertically aligned image information and getting a better result — lower noise, even extended dynamic range when exposures are different from frame to frame. This absolutely works very well on scenes that contain static elements, like starfields and distant scenic vistas. However, as soon as there is motion within the scene, it pretty much falls on its face, which inherently limits the application with a single sensor. And in the end, it confers no advantage to smartphones, because you can stack with a large-sensor equipped camera just as well as you can with a smartphone, and there, you have lower noise and better light gathering. You can do it with multiple sensors too, however you lose some fine detail because two adjacent lenses won't take quite the same image. But they essentially do up the photon-gathering area and can take the shot simultaneously, which means that motion isn't a problem (or at least, no more of a problem than usual.) But even two or three smartphone sensors still add up to a tiny fraction of the available light capturing capability of a single-sensor full-frame DSLR.
Another thing sometimes bandied about in these discussions is potential sensor improvements (way) out on the horizon that incorporate digital photon counting sensor regions, where instead of an avalanche-based electron well, individual photons are actually counted by a long counter; this could increase the dynamic range of a long exposure to pretty much as far as anyone is willing to wait because there's no well to get full of electrons and so fail to register further light interception. But again, if and when that tech matures, the DSLR has the larger sensor area available, and a tiny, flat package will have no way to reach the same levels of performance.
For smartphones, the race against DSLRs to the highest possible image acquisition is simply one that cannot be won. Smartphones will always be way, way behind.
Mirrorless... probably those will take over is my guess. There are many advantages to be had there, and only a few serious disadvantages. One is less battery life; when you have to use a display to frame the shot as opposed to a lens, you're going to be using more power than a camera that uses a mirror and a couple more small lenses. The other is just a matter of circumstance: in systems where new lenses are required because the distance to the sensor is different, existing collections of (potentially very) expensive lenses tend to dictate the choice of camera body type. I think the market will strongly favor systems that allow use of current lens collections.
The potential advantages of a mirrorless system are myriad. Lighter. Less expensive to build for several reasons (mirrors and lens systems are heavy, complex and precise... mirrorless cameras just use the sensor.) Smaller because all of that extra optical stuff is just gone. Those mirrors incorporate mechanical systems as well to swing them out of the way when a photo is taken; gone. Exposure estimation can be closely finessed, right down to noise levels - a mirror/lens system just can't give you all the information you could use. They can offer the same large sensors (or even larger... they're lighter now, so they could use that to shoehorn in even larger sensors) and digital zooms on just the viewing monitor screen can allow for very precise focus and subject verification. Or, you could pack a bigger battery in there, or more storage slots, etc. Less weight for the camera, more to (potentially) spend elsewhere. Lots of great things, really.
--
Physics: There are some laws you can't break.
(Score: 3, Informative) by crafoo on Friday December 28 2018, @05:58PM (1 child)
All quite true on the smartphone v. big cameras - big lenses and sensors produce better images, every single time.
However, much like the changes that happened in music: 128bit MP3, earbud headphones, and trash streaming services, "just barely not good enough" turns out to be good enough for a vast majority of people. They will print family photos taken from a cellphone, frame them, and proudly hang them on the wall. When they want something shot with lots of motion they will buy a GoPro Hero, max that bitch out to wide angle fisheye, and proudly post to youtube in "HD".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Friday December 28 2018, @06:49PM
No argument from me. And there is the effect of budget at the consumer end, which in turn affects the viability and ultimate pricing of any undertaking to make higher end devices.
Still, I think mirrorless will likely survive and prosper, just as DSLRs did, and for the same reasons. While the majority may be satisfied with mediocrity, I think it likely that there's a large enough market out there to support further development and marketing of higher performance cameras.
My personal hope is that a high quality mirrorless body will arrive from Canon that will mate up with my collection of EF prime lenses. The last round of DSLRs from Canon was... underwhelming. The EOS 6D mkI was the last camera they made that I thought was exciting in terms of price/performance. The 6D mkII... just offered nothing at all I was interested in. I wasn't exactly alone in that, either.
--
Exercise? I thought you said extra fries
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday December 28 2018, @09:10PM (2 children)
Fuck everything, we're doing 5 lenses [theverge.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday December 28 2018, @10:10PM (1 child)
If they did that with 6 lenses in a hexagon* they could stack/overlap the images with the focal point aligned and get that shallow depth of field and nice bokeh that photographers like.
* or more. The important thing is no gaps in the ring unlike that one in your link.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 29 2018, @12:45AM
I'm waiting for the smartphone manufacturers to go this route [petapixel.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday December 28 2018, @10:07PM (1 child)
One of the big ones being (potentially) smaller size - so why do so many "mirrorless" cameras have a DSLR form factor and size coupled with a crap viewfinder?
When someone comes up with an affordable Leica workalike they'll have my interest, not before.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday December 29 2018, @12:41AM
a big part of it is the lenses are can still get large, and if you have a fast telephoto lens hanging off the front, it's nice to have something to grip onto.
With that said, there are cameras like the Panasonic GX-85 which sounds kind of like you want. And there's some interesting things like the Z-CAM E1 which seems to be little more than a box just large enough for a lens mount and a sensor. I'm not sure about the ergonomics of that last one though.
Leica has their own mirrorless systems too, so you could always go there.
(Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Saturday December 29 2018, @06:29AM (4 children)
Here's the problem with your reasoning. You talk about a tiny sensor not capturing enough light. How about at ISO200? Oh, it'll get blurry? Well how about tiny sensor, iso 10k, 100 shots. This lets me know what moved, and apply light collection for the same object across different sensors/pixels. Bam, ISO200 that's sharp and noise-free. This is what they meant by AI.
I used to travel with a camera. Been to about 80 countries, just about every state, hundreds and hundreds of cities and nature places. I set up the shots, put a rock where I needed to stand so it's between the 2 trees and I blocked the sun w/ my face. Perfect. You know what's better? A selfie with my head blocking the sun and my arm stretched out on the side of the photo. Because now, 30min of my day is spent on photographing instead of 3 hours, and that's time I get to spend seeing more shit.
You know why I still want to use a camera? When there's a 3000 year old mosque behind me, and I want to put the whole thing in the shot, me in the shot, and I want to be able to zoom in on the comparatively tiny street sign nearby so I know where it is 20 years from now. All with a phone selfie-camera. And it's totally possible, even with my hand shaking a bit.
This is why they mean phone cameras w/ "AI" are closing the gap. Because literally, I don't even have a camera anymore besides the phone camera. But I did. Had to drag that now useless piece of "awesome tech" around mountains and airports. Fuck that. Rest in the gap, camera.
Anywise - you're stupid and wrong. bbye.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday December 29 2018, @03:42PM (3 children)
There's no problem with my reasoning. But there's a problem with yours; it come down to physics.
Whatever a tiny sensor can do in 100 shots, a large sensor can do better in fewer shots.
The larger sensor, together with its larger lens, gathers (a lot) more light, faster, at more advantageous signal to noise levels.
You're thinking that stacking (which is all the AI process you're talking about does, it just does it smarter) provides a gain (and it does) but you didn't think about the general consequences of that. Here's the bottom line:
Any technique that can be applied to the data gathered by a tiny sensor can be applied to the data gathered by a large one.
The large sensor has inevitably done the data gathering better. When designed, the large sensor also has two ways it can be optimized to use that additional surface area. It can be set up with larger wells, which improves the signal to noise ratio, or it can be set up to pack in more wells overall, which increases the spatial resolution at the expense of noise. For the former, you get faster, higher quality data. For the latter, you get more detail, which can be driven even to the point of pushing current lens technology right to the edge. Typically, a compromise is made so that you get some of both: higher spatial resolution and improvement in signal to noise ratio. The result, no matter what the choices are here, is better image data per image acquisition.
The issue is that doing whatever with data inevitably works better, when the data is better.
For instance, 100 shots at 1/60th of a second takes six seconds. If you're trying to shoot something that's moving, that may very likely require that you physically track it with the camera or it will go out of frame. While you track it, the amount of data gathered at the edges of the image will vary because your tracking can't be perfect; that will have negative consequences for the ultimate result.
Compare this to a sensor that can acquire the same shot in a single sample: it takes 1/60th of a second, and all the resulting data is of pretty much similar quality, so the edges aren't compromised — there are no poorly tracked regions, because there was no tracking going on.
Another thing: with region-variable stacking, as a tracked object moves, the newly exposed detail revealed by the motion of the objects moving within the frame is gathered fewer times (because it was previously covered.) This again means we have regions with lower-quality data, only this time, they are not at the edges, but instead are adjacent to the objects moving within the frame.
Yes, algorithms can definitely help. You don't have to convince me of that; I write those algorithms for a living. But no, there isn't any magic that will help smaller sensors more than larger sensors.
--
Physics: There are some laws you can't break.
(Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Monday December 31 2018, @07:40AM (2 children)
So, I stopped reading here: "Whatever a tiny sensor can do in 100 shots, a large sensor can do better in fewer shots."
You're a retard. You took the claim of the article, which said phone cameras are starting to overlap with the domain of nice cameras, and called that invalid. I stated my case - a case for 90% of the people who had good cameras, and explained why I, and most others, now use a phone camera. I don't care about a larger sensor doing it with fewer shots or one shot. The domain my use case for a pro camera was in is now covered by the phone. Article claim true. The rest of your logic is simply changing the subject, and I'm not here to chat with you. I'm just here to tell you you're a retard because your warped brain chooses to ignore very basic facts in front of you.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday December 31 2018, @04:45PM (1 child)
And I stopped reading right there. Cheers.
--
Reality is that thing which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
(Score: -1) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday January 01 2019, @03:18AM
you're not my audience. you're my personal clown - with that combination of retard and purposefully pretending to be dense. i don't give a fuck if you read what I wrote - I'm surprised you can read at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 28 2018, @06:12PM
The old 24x36 is just a dying legacy ILC systems like aps-c fuji, m43 and the sadly defunct nikon 1 actually make sense for pretty much anyone but marketing keeps people flocking to the old big monsters with flapping mirrors and probably would move them also to canikon's newest entries and to spyphones with lots of gimmicks for instagrammers.
moreover, sony is a crap company and I wouldn't want any of their shit close to my pc, wifi or ethernet. They seem to want to push crAPPs into the freaking cameras now just like it's a smartphone! nice of them to try to keep you dumb and unable to develop a raw file, happy consumers and only consumers yay!. Canon's effort is barely decent, more like a footnote. Only nikon's enter is somewhat shiny but still cameras and lenses for that sensor format are bound to be bigger, heavier and quite expensive than smaller formats that already provide a higher quality than film was able to deliver until recently
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 29 2018, @12:08PM
Try free software AND open hardware!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elphel [wikipedia.org]