Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

http://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/dumb-things-the-camera.html

by ValentineC • 9 years ago

583 385 9 years ago

dheera• 9 years ago

Another thing I hate about a lot of recent camera hardware is the move toward cheap plastic, everywhere.

I shoot pretty much only with old manual-focus lenses from days of yore. Most of my lenses are older than I am. They're all made of metal, built like a tank, and way easier to use. No fidgety UIs or menus to manipulate, perfectly calibrated infinity focus (slap the focus ring to the end until it stops and landscapes are perfectly sharp 100% of the time), rock-solid, don't break under pressure inside my bag, and they just work, no questions asked.

Totally agree about the lack of Arca-Swiss adoption by camera manufacturers. Camera bodies and heavy lenses could easily have a built-in Arca-Swiss shape at the bottom and still have a 1/4-20" screw hole for people who need it.

gt_3• 9 years ago

Concerning arca mount, I would prefer the camera without it. I wouldn't want the extra bulk when using no mount. I'm not seeing the problem with screwing a mount plate on and leaving it there. If you really want it to be permanent, get some Super Glue. Modular design in camera equipment makes for compatibility, adaptability, reusability, etc.

On this note, I am a professional photographer and have worked professionally with any form of digital, video, emulsion movie or still camera on the market and never have seen rubber on the bottom of a camera that i can remember. Maybe some have it but it's always on the plate if anything in my experience.

Screw mount is lame design I agree but arca mount is not at all a replacement for it. It's a different mount option, which itself requires a modular attachment solution which the screw mount is.

stan_rogers• 9 years ago

The Arca Swiss mount isn't even among the best quick-release plate systems, when it comes down to it. You could argue for a long plate back in the days when lenses were mostly unit-focus and the CG would shift; these days with just about everything being internal focus, a fully-captured plate is an immensely better solution than a dovetail plate (hopefully) captured with clamping pressure in one dimension.

As for the GP' complaint about plastics, it just shows that there's no experience there with minor dents requiring major repairs that would have been harmless bounces with a filled polycarbonate. Probably never dealt much with focus shifts or lens element alignment problems in severe heat or cold either. They use appropriate plastics on the pro-grade stuff where they use it because it's better, not because it's cheaper.

thinkMOAR4• 9 years ago

At the time that was my deciding factor picking between canon rebel something vs nikon d80 (2006, when it was brand new). Photo quality-wise they were so well matched, until i read a review where the author said, the canon is plastic and the nikon metal and the metal makes you feel you have a real tool in your hands instead of toy. (also i'm not the most careful person metal stronger then plastic, typically)

bryanlarsen• 9 years ago

Given that you're often hand holding a camera, being lighter is a significant advantage, it can often be the difference between a stable or a blurred shot.

And good plastics are plastic in the traditional sense of the word: if you drop them, they'll absorb the force by deforming and then spring back into place. Metals deform permanently. In a car that's an advantage, you can just hammer it back into place. With a precision instrument a bent tool is just as bad as a broken one.

I don't know how a Rebel compares against a Nikon in a drop test -- I've dropped my Rebel without issues, but no major drops, luckily. But I can compare the pre-unibody MacBook Pros with Thinkpads from the same era. In the store, the original MacBook Pros felt and looked a lot more solid, but they were really crappy cases. OTOH, the ThinkPad's were tanks. Their plastic cases had a magnesium frame, giving them the best of both worlds. Of course, once Apple switched to unibody and ThinkPad's have started to compromise to compete on thickness the story hasn't been so clear.

throwanem3• 9 years ago

I carry my camera all the time, so I'm not super upset about it being made of plastic rather than metal. The plastic of which it's made has a higher tensile strength than any casting-grade aluminum; machined aerospace aluminum would be stronger, but would also cost a lot more to make and thus to buy, and I don't mind having paid an entry-level price for my entry-level DSLR.

saryant• 9 years ago

I beat the crap out of a Canon Rebel XT for about 12 years before finally replacing it. Still worked fine, no issues, I just wanted better high ISO performance.

rangibaby• 9 years ago

I shoot pretty much only with old manual-focus lenses from days of yore. Most of my lenses are older than I am. They're all made of metal, built like a tank, and way easier to use. No fidgety UIs or menus to manipulate, perfectly calibrated infinity focus (slap the focus ring to the end until it stops and landscapes are perfectly sharp 100% of the time), rock-solid, don't break under pressure inside my bag, and they just work, no questions asked.

This is what I love about the Asahi Pentax Spotmatic-era cameras.

The only dial on the camera sets shutter speed and the sensitivity of the light meter.

If you go out on a nice day and practice shooting with "sunny 16" technique you don't even need a light meter, just set your aperture and shutter speed and get creative.

jfindley2• 9 years ago

On pro cameras, at least, although they have plastic outsides it's pretty strong plastic, and the actual chassis of the camera is cast alloy (usually magnesium-aluminium).

A nikon D3/D4/D5 will withstand a huge amount of abuse - at least as much as my more obviously metal pre-digital SLRs did. Another issue to be aware of is when using large, heavy lenses, a lot of stress gets put on the mount point and that most modern pro-orientated DSLRs are actually stronger than their old film equivalents in this regard, as the engineering has improved over time.

Re: arca-swiss plates - the reason camera companies don't do this is because of the licensing fee (source: I've talked to a bunch of them, and this is always their reply). I'm sure Thom is aware of this, but the licensing fee is not insignificant, and with extreme pressure to control costs it's not surprising that companies very rarely do this. Of course I personally would be very happy to see them included, but I know there are a bunch of people that don't use them, and would resent the extra cost to include them.

matwood6• 9 years ago

My D7100 is pretty tough and fairly new. My issue now is the weight. If I carry the D7100, 70-300, and wide angle it's a lot of weight to lug around. I do it because it takes amazing pictures, but I'm not going to pretend I like the weight.

PaulRobinson• 9 years ago

Somebody, somewhere, is planning a Kickstarter campaign off the back of this.

microcolonel2• 9 years ago

Perhaps Apertus° could be convinced this way to build a digital still[-focused] camera. Mirrorless is getting quite good these days too, so it might not be much different from a digital cinema camera.

https://www.apertus.org/

jaggederest4• 9 years ago

You aren't kidding, man. This is how Red got started if you substitute the gripes for (functionally similar) ones from motion picture cameras.

$100k for a camera with a base sensor just barely better than a flip-phone camera, and the size and shape of an old over-shoulder ENG rig. In 2006. What happens if we put a 21 megapixel DSLR sensor in a box?

I would be really interested to see a similar thing happening in reverse. Gopro hits a niche, but not quite.

agravier2• 9 years ago

Tangentially related: I find that being able to run android apps on my camera (not my phone with its tiny lens) is extremely useful. I bought the Samsung galaxy camera 2, but I don't know of any other such product.

microcolonel2• 9 years ago

Not saying this solves anything, but Samsung also did the Samsung Galaxy NX a year before the Galaxy Camera 2. It's sorta a DSLR-shaped detachable lens camera that runs Android.

amiga-workbench• 9 years ago

My Sony A6000 has a limited Android Runtime on it, for some reason that thing has a bunch of "apps" available.

pawelk• 9 years ago

From a cursory Google search: Nikon COOLPIX S800c, Panasonic Lumix DMC-CM10. So the big players are investing in Android.

This just shows how different users have different needs. I do not want my camera to be "smart", I want it to measure the amount of light that comes trough the lens, tell me if it's too much or too little, then capture and save the data on some storage. I can take it from there.

My ideal solution would be something like the failed Siliconfilm project which was a digital sensor you'd put into an analog camera 35mm film compartment.

agravier2• 9 years ago

Thanks for the search Pawel, for some reason these didn't appear in my searches.

Yes, different needs. Actually the reason why I want android is mostly that I automate the upload of new photos to Amazon.

clra4• 9 years ago

Great article.

I was hoping that the author would add something about the UIs of these cameras. The bodies of modern DSLRs are jampacked with every kind of knob, control, button, dial, and dongle that you can possibly think of.

To a large extent, that's kind of the whole point — these cameras are for professionals and professionals ostensibly need to be able to adjust every aspect of their picture. But in practice, 95% of users aren't using 95% of these adjusters 95% of the time. Most people are changing their aperture, exposure compensation, and a small handful of other things, and yet, dozens of other readily-available and features are still bolted onto the camera that get used roughly never.

There are other downsides besides complexity too. Fuji's mirrorless X100 series is a popular camera with consumers and for years it's shipped with an exposure compensation dial right at the top edge of its body. For just as many years the thing's been loose enough and with little enough inset from the outside that whenever you throw it in a bag or something, there's a pretty reasonable chance that it'll come out cranked all the one way or the other. Sometimes you don't notice, and there goes your shot.

The possible fixes are pretty easy — either move it in so it's less prone to accidental adjustment, or take the units off the thing so that it could optionally be reset every time you turn the camera on, but Fuji will probably never fix the problem – the way things are is the way things are, and they should stay that way.

It would be insanely great if instead of just cargo culting what they themselves have done in the past and what everyone else is doing, camera manufacturers started to think about optimizing these designs for the benefit of the user a little bit. Unfortunately, they never seem to.

leejo2• 9 years ago

Sometimes you don't notice, and there goes your shot.

That's because you're not using the EVF, which you should be. The single most useful feature combination I find on the x100 series cameras is the EVF combined with the exposure compensation dial. This relates to the following annoyance from the article:

No focus information in viewfinder

Any need for this is negated by a well implemented electronic viewfinder. Fuji are killing it on this aspect. An EVF will give you: exact framing, exposure, white balance, focus, and depth of field. You get none of this in a traditional optical viewfinder. It completely removes the need to "chimp" and you can concentrate on shooting photographs rather than reviewing what you just shot.

clra4• 9 years ago

That's because you're not using the EVF, which you should be. The single most useful feature combination I find on the x100 series cameras is the EVF combined with the exposure compensation dial.

That's a fairly strange assumption to make. A performant EVF is one of Fuji's greatest innovations, and also one of its most conspicuous. Of course I'm using it.

Unfortunately, sometimes you're shooting from the hip (literally or figuratively), and not verifying every setting before you do. Sometimes, the EVF is almost unusable because you're out in bright sunlight. The existence of an EVF doesn't compensate for poor body design.

ioulian• 9 years ago

The bodies of modern DSLRs are jampacked with every kind of knob, control, button, dial, and dongle that you can possibly think of.

That's what I actually like on the more "expensive" camera's, the ability to control everything just with single click/rotation.

I'm mostly shooting manual, on my Canon 5D I have a dial for apperture, smaller dial for shutter speed and a knob for the focus point(s). When I used Canon 500D from my friend, I couldn't use it in manual as this requires you to push one button, to then change the shutter speed with a dial (the same one that controls the apperture (or vice versa I can't remember anymore)).

But I think canon is doing it alright as the "entry" level DSLR's like 500D are meant for normal users who just want a point and click camera for most of the time, and don't need that many knobs and dials. While the professional versions have a lot of controls.

But then again, this all goes to personal preference, and most users will buy a camera that they like to use, with or without many controls. I haven't seen anyone with a 5D saying "I'm not happy with total control of my camera", but I heard more people say "Damn, I wish you could change this value much faster and not go to the touchscreen"

clra4• 9 years ago

Yeah, I'd definitely concede that some people are making pretty frequent use of this stuff, but I meant to suggest that if you really started looking around, you might be in the minority. Optimizing for the majority of buyers would probably involve removing a few things that most people are probably never going to use.

But then again, this all goes to personal preference, and most users will buy a camera that they like to use, with or without many controls. I haven't seen anyone with a 5D saying "I'm not happy with total control of my camera", but I heard more people say "Damn, I wish you could change this value much faster and not go to the touchscreen"

There might be a few other options for design around this type of thing. I really like Leica's approach here for example: keep the settings that are really often needed on the body, relegate the less-frequently used features to menus, but then provide accessible custom profiles that are totally user-configurable and which can be switched between easily. After doing a few test shoots with a Leica Q, it feels like a nearly perfect compromise to me.

Steve444• 9 years ago

That's what I actually like on the more "expensive" camera's, the ability to control everything just with single click/rotation

I use Nikon and have gone from D200, D300, and now a D700 because I love the quick and direct access to a lot of the controls. The consumer bodies are great cameras but once you become accustomed to the layout it is really useful and logical. I presume the Canon pro range is similar.

jpatokal• 9 years ago

The bodies of modern DSLRs are jampacked with every kind of knob, control, button, dial, and dongle that you can possibly think of. ... But in practice, 95% of users aren't using 95% of these adjusters 95% of the time.

Amen. I've been casually shooting with a Nikon D70 and now a D7000 for around 15 years now. Here's an illustrated guide to every single physical control on the D7000, which isn't even a high-end camera:

http://kenrockwell.com/nikon/d7000/users-guide/controls.htm

...and for many of those I'd need to read the manual to find out what they even do (Fn? Lv?) and I struggle to find any reason I'd need to twiddle with, say, the image compression (QUAL) so urgently that it needs a dedicated shortcut button.

clra4• 9 years ago

...and for many of those I'd need to read the manual to find out what they even do (Fn? Lv?) and I struggle to find any reason I'd need to twiddle with, say, the image compression (QUAL) so urgently that it needs a dedicated shortcut button.

Right! Physical buttons and dials are great, but after a certain point adding new ones isn't an improvement to the interface anymore. Too many of them makes the interface overly complex and more prone to accidental adjustment. `QUAL` is a perfect example of something that belongs in a menu.

the_af• 9 years ago

But in practice, 95% of users aren't using 95% of these adjusters 95% of the time.

Not a snark: maybe 95% of users didn't need a semi-pro DSLR and should have gone with a smartphone or a point-and-shoot instead? The remaining 5% need those knobs and controls, and would be left with a less useful camera if they were removed or simplified.

oliwarner• 9 years ago

features are still bolted onto the camera that get used roughly never

I see your argument about making sensible choices on smaller form factors but DSLRs aren't point and shoot.

There's only one button I "roughly never" use on my D750 (the little "i" button). Everything else gets a hot supper. And it's not just that I use those features, I mean I use them all the time. In environments where I need the muscle-memory to affect them quickly. Things like ISO, bracketing, flash and focus and aperture priority modes. I don't think I'm unique.

I won't tolerate a camera that forces me to disengage with what I'm doing so I can fanny around in a menu system.

cageface• 9 years ago

I've been using a Sony A6000 lately, which has a great auto mode that will pick pretty much every parameter for a shot for you and do a good job of it. As you learn more about the camera and photography you can start taking more control.

However, I've found that smart phone cameras have gotten so good that they match or even beat the A6000 for a lot of shots so I tend to use it only for very specific kinds of pictures now.

1_2__4• 9 years ago

Maybe they HAVE thought of these things, and what you think consumers want in cameras is wrong? I disagree with almost everything you want for cameras and would consider them worse products if they implemented them. Not everything should be a shitty tap-screen mobile interface awash in whitespace and crappy icons. Physical controls are better, when you don’t have time or attention to fiddle with displays. That you don’t understand that is not a failure on the part of camera companies.

mark-r3• 9 years ago

There are actually very few controls that you need to fiddle with while you're taking the picture. Take white balance for example - you only need to set it when lighting conditions change, it's very unlikely that you need to change it on every shot. A touchscreen for that would be better than having to scroll through the choices with a control wheel or buttons.

The modern trend of replacing descriptive text with icons needs to die.

sliverstorm3• 9 years ago

They are already aware of this, and already tweak cameras accordingly. Have you ever compared the buttons, switches and dials on a Rebel to a 5D? Every time I try to shoot with a Rebel I find myself wondering where all the buttons I want to use have gone.

askafriend3• 9 years ago

I could only imagine if Apple took all of their camera expertise from the iPhone and all of their existing Chip expertise and all of their Operating Systems expertise to create a Semi-Pro Mirrorless camera.

Imagine full iOS integration, super fast A-11 Bionic chip (same as iPhone), high throughput wireless components, custom OS (like WatchOS), developer API, W2 chip for Bluetooth pairing, OLED screen, and beautiful lightweight aluminum housing.

That would completely change the market. But we can only dream.

buildbot2• 9 years ago

They could buy Leica and build a new M series camera, it could be massively expensive and still be an insane hit.

askafriend3• 9 years ago

This is closer to what a real world vision of my description would look like. However as others mentioned, it’s an incredibly small category relative to everything else Apple do. Apple isn’t one for distractions.

Beats worked because it built on their iPhone and music streaming strategy rather than replacing pieces of either.

pavlov• 9 years ago

The profit potential isn’t there. Apple probably makes more money selling dongles than they’d ever make with a camera.

Also, the Mac Pro fiasco makes me doubtful that Apple wants to be in any pro markets anymore.

ndtoeuin324tv• 9 years ago

How many years in a row are people going to make this proclamation? First it was not making screens anymore, then it was Final Cut Pro X, then it was iOS and the iPad, then it was the Mac Pro. Never mind that the Mac Pro is a great machine, and they've already announced the iMac Pro and hinted at a newer Mac Pro that is more in line with people's expectations. At this point, no matter what they do, people will say, "they don't care about the Pro market anymore." It's ridiculous.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr• 9 years ago

Sounds like an iPhone with a bigger camera chip.

I don’t think Apple will venture into dedicated camera equipment. The iPhone camera is one of the big selling points and keeps people upgrading. Apple will not sacrifice their cash cow for a comparatively niche market. A dedicated device also goes against the unification that Apple seems to pursue.

jaggederest4• 9 years ago

Especially considering that they're delving into multiple cameras, phased array cameras would let them create 'virtual' apertures the size of the phone back, for example.

I would very much enjoy playing with something along those lines.

hashmal• 9 years ago

Apple has no problems cannibalizing its own products. That being said, I don't think they would do dedicated cameras.

mysterypie• 9 years ago

Apple will not sacrifice their cash cow for a comparatively niche market.

I never understood that reasoning. As an individual, I can't simultaneously develop 10 different products, but a large company sitting on billions in cash could develop 1000 niche products simultaneously.

In fact, some large companies (Procter & Gamble, 3M, General Electric) have thousands or tens of thousands of products.

To use your Apple example, why couldn't Apple create a professional camera division, giving them $25 million startup money, and tell them to never bother the iPhone team, but do give them access to the source code, engineering drawings, and contacts in the supply chain.

It seems very fashionable for tech companies to be very narrowly focused. They work on the one thing that is making the most money at that moment. If any experimental development isn't a wild success, it's shut down right away. All of those make sense if you're an individual or struggling startup, but if you have billions just sitting there, what's the harm in trying many things at once?

dflock• 9 years ago

It's a fairly small and rapidly shrinking market - mostly because of camera phones, so this is incredibly unlikely, obviously

ekianjo3• 9 years ago

The Full Frame and above DLSR market is not really shrinking though. It's certainly not a huge market, but it's ripe for disruption since the pace of innovation of the current incumbents is very, very slow.

newsbinator• 9 years ago

Apple could take their MacBook experience and make a phenomenal netbook. There's no argument that it would be the finest netbook of all time.

But that, too, would be moving in the wrong direction.

Numberwang• 9 years ago

Finest and most expensive.

askafriend3• 9 years ago

You are absolutely right. It makes no sense for them to invest in something like that. Especially at the scale that they operate at. iPhones have completely changed what photography means at a basic level.

However, I would still love to have something like I described.

dagw2• 9 years ago

Apple could take their MacBook experience and make a phenomenal netbook.

They kind of did when they released the MacBook Air.

richardknop• 9 years ago

What about Macbook Air? That should count. Or what do you imagine as a "netbook"? Something even smaller? Or something cheaper?

Angostura• 9 years ago

They were pretty pioneering with the Quicktake camera in the 1990s, but ducked out when digital cameras started to become mainstream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake

Mikeb852• 9 years ago

That would completely change the market. But we can only dream.

No, it really wouldn't. Look at the heavyweights right now, they all either have a ton of expertise in optics or in sensors. That market cares more about glass selection, sensors and taking pictures than bells and whistles like iOS would provide.

headcanon• 9 years ago

An alternative - a partnership with Canon on Nikon where they would build a shell around the iPhone that would accept DSLR lenses, and build an iOS app to have all the DSLR features, with deep integration (like panorama, could make use of the other lens, AI, etc). They make more money on lenses anyway, let apple sell razors while they continue to sell razorblades. Furthermore, the case itself would cost $100-$200, which coupled with the phone would be > $1000, while the "normal" DSLR sensor shell is already about $600, so it still leaves room for both products. Also, it would even lower the barrier to entry to purchase DSLR lenses for current iPhone owners, which would increase lens sales. Assuming it works from a technical perspective, I don't really see a downside with this business model.

r00fus3• 9 years ago

It would only make sense from a financial perspective if the market they were entering (think: auto) is bigger than the one they could be endangering (mobile).

Also, would they then be making camera sensors? Or would they just figure Sony (whose profits they'd be stepping on) would just take it? Do they have a 2nd source for this critical component?

djrogers2• 9 years ago

No - what Apple will do is evolve the iPhone camera(s) and computational photography, over and over every year, pushing it further and further until most of the needs for a mirrorless camera are gone.

Rather than disrupt the high end consumer camera market with a camera in 2 years, they’ll do it with iPhone in 5 or 10 years.

l33tbro5• 9 years ago

My pet-peeve with modern DSLR's is that none of these manufacturers seem to care about motion-cadence with their video offering. There's been amazing leaps with 4k video and now 10 bit image depth with the Panasonic GH5, but the footage looks so damn robotic and souless compared to cinema cameras from Arri and Red.

I obviously don't expect a $2000 dslr to match a $50k Alexa in image quality, but surely they must be able to make the motion of the images smoother and less CCTV looking.

Blackmagic put out an amazing little pocket camera a few years ago with gorgeous colours and buttery smooth motion, why can't the big guys follow suit?

Steve444• 9 years ago

I think a lot of the problems relate to the experience of the person behind the camera.

Often you can see the choppiness when things are moving. That to me looks like they are using a high shutter speed which is inappropriate for cine work. In still photography if you take a picture of a waterfall on a bright day at 1/1000 you'll see every crisp drop, shooting at 1/30th will give a little bit of smoothing motion blur. Using a DSLR shooting at 25 frames a second and leaving the shutter speed on auto can result in a sequence of 1/1000 second shots which will look choppy. What they should be doing is using Neutral Density filters so they can choose the appropriate aperture for the shot whilst keeping the shutter speed at 1/30 or there abouts. This will give the smoother motion images but does take skill and time.

My other bugbear is many cameramen appear to have forgotten what a tripod is. The camera wobbling about can occasionally add to the atmosphere but most of the time it is just annoying and distracting. Again a combination of lack of skill and production values.

jaggederest4• 9 years ago

My other bugbear is many cameramen appear to have forgotten what a tripod is. The camera wobbling about can occasionally at to the atmosphere but most of the time it is just annoying and distracting. Again a combination of lack of skill and production values.

With projection and home displays lagging camera technology, I'd be surprised if the opposite didn't happen. You can do a lot of shake reduction with 2x the pixels you intend to keep.

Also I think a lot of the shake these days is added in post, partly to cover for production flaws and partly to add "atmosphere" as you say.

jrimbault• 9 years ago

Maybe someone here can answer my question:

During panning shots (horizontal, vertical), in recent films the image is blurry and uncomfortable (for me). Similar panning shots in earlier films seem cripser and more "comfortable".

Is there a technical reason (shutter speed fashion) ? Or is it in my head ?

dharma14• 9 years ago

I've got the Blackmagic pocket. I'd say the main difference is being able to shoot raw video. It's just like butter in grading compared to 8bit video. And their colour science is good.

I think we'll have h265 10bit video in most cameras (and mobile phones) pretty soon, and that will be a marked improvement in terms of colour and dynamic range of video footage.

Some higher end Sony and Canon dSLR's shoot raw video, but I guess it's generally a niche feature, most people wouldn't want to shoot or edit raw video.

l33tbro5• 9 years ago

Wouldn't you think that's the global shutter of the camera? Raw definitely helps with pushing the image in colour grading, but I always thought the nice motion cadence on the BMPCC comes from the fact that the global shutter scans the entire image at once when capturing a frame, which makes it more filmic and less jittery than rolling shutter sensors which scan a series of parts of the image to create the frame.

mikeytown2• 9 years ago

Using an ND filter to get a slower shutter speed is the way to go. The more expensive cameras usually have a ND filter built in. Shooting at 24fps is possible on most modern cameras these days.

If you want to have the ability to adjust the amount of blur in post shooting at 120fps+ allows for that workflow but it’s a pain to do.

Or is it something else like a bad video codec?

l33tbro5• 9 years ago

It's more to do with the way motion is captured by the sensor than shutter rates, ND or applying motion blur. Someone else posted an article about global-vs-rolling shutter, which gets to the heart of that jittery video look common to CMOS sensors found on DSLRs.

Also, in film, people generally keep the shutter angle at 180 degrees. So for 24 frames per second, the shutter speed is usually 1/48 of a second.

As for codecs, that's actually where some of these cameras are making leaps and bounds. The GH5 I mentioned is capable of 10 bit recording, which means you could record ProRes HQ with an external recorder.

gt_3• 9 years ago

To learn about what you're calling "shakiness", look up 'rolling shutter'. It's a way of processing only one row of pixels at a time. CMOS sensors all have this problem. They are able to have much cheaper and slower processors in cameras this way but he result is garbage and nobody notices except people like myself who worked in camera department and operator, and even many of them didn't understand.

Only after a decade of trash CMOS sensors are people starting to realize that cameras did not get exponentially better overnighy. They got worse.

Even RED cameras use these CMoS sensors, albeit very fast ones. Alexas have proper global shutters along with most Blackmagic cameras.

coldtea3• 9 years ago

There's not much to capturing motion besides shutter speed and frame rate. Mostly the latter.

Rolling shutter aside, given the same settings, there should be no real differences between Arri, Red and those DSLRs in motion capture (and not in image depth, dynamic range, resolution, and color science), and I don't think there are.

All kinds of movie, TV and documentary work use high end DSLRs from Canon and co, and the motion is just fine.

Of course the idea is that motion is usually set to 24fps in both those cameras and Arri, Red etc. If you want "smooth" motion of the hi-fps variety, jack up the fps. But then it would be soap-opera like and not what most people associate with cinematic motion.

cm2187• 9 years ago

I'd add to the list geotagging. It is extremely useful to embed in the Exif the coordinates where the picture was taken.

Viper007Bond• 9 years ago

My point and shoot did that like 5-10 years ago. Crazy that DSLRs don't.

avh02• 9 years ago

When I bought my most recent DSLR, I had to pick between a slighly older model with GPS or the latest model with wifi. They were essentially identical other than that I think, maybe touchscreen?

tolien2• 9 years ago

They do (or at least, my Canon EOS 7D mark 2 does). However, leaving the GPS switched on significantly reduces battery life.

petepete5• 9 years ago

My first DSLR, a Nikon D5300 had this built-in. I don't think any Nikon has had it since, thanks to SnapBridge, which is junk.

It doesn't geotag my D500 photos unless I've opened SnapBridge already on the phone, despite it being marketed as always on.

muro3• 9 years ago

Which phone? Works fully automatically for me with Android. No need to ever open the app.

muro3• 9 years ago

This is one of my favorite features of the Nikon D500 - enable link to snapbridge (app on android/iOS), all photos are automatically geotagged, as long as you have the phone in range.

frankzander2• 9 years ago

Hm The Canon DSLRs Can do that out of the box - at least 60D and 6D

madshiva2• 9 years ago

1/4" tripod socket is the best common option. I use it. No point there because the user don't use it. Don't undertand why remove a standard?

Optical remotes? I don't take selfie. I press the button.

Wifi? lol, no thanks. I want a camera not a phone and I don't want 1 hour of battery.

Battery problem? where? just buy battery pack...

arghwhat4• 9 years ago

1. 1/4" is a common, but terrible option. The suggestion is to replace it with a builtin plate for the current status-quo, the common Arca-Swiss mount.

2. Optical remotes aren't for selfies. Smartphones on stupid sticks are for selfies.

3. Most new cameras have WiFi. It doesn't affect battery life when you're not using it. They're just usually really slow, so picture upload/sync that should take 1 min tops take 1 hour instead.

Remote live-view and exposure/focus control works quite well, though, as it doesn't need that much bandwidth. There's also BLE, which in my camera allows remote control from smartphone without affecting battery life in any measurable way (BLE consumption is negligible).

4. Camera batteries are insanely expensive (and no, they don't contain anything magic or special, unlike what they want you to believe—apart from DRM, they're completely standard batteries worth about $20 retail when branded), they're DRM'd to avoid third-party manufacturing (which leads to more recent battery copies being unable to show charge level due to skipping this circuitry), they're often change shape just to force you to buy new batteries and chargers instead of reusing them, they don't support common charging specs (USB and Qi, for example—it would be practical to be able to juice up the camera while its in the bag between shootings), ...

There is nothing but battery problems.

petepete5• 9 years ago

Duracell make a really wide range of camera batteries that all come with a 3 year warranty.

http://www.duracelldirect.co.uk/

taejo• 9 years ago

Optical remotes? I don't take selfie. I press the button.

The OP had a specific complaint about cameras not having an IR receiver at the back, i.e., for non-selfies. Remotes are useful for bulb shots, for reducing camera shake, and many other things.

arghwhat4• 9 years ago

I think he was mostly joking about it being for non-selfies.

Depending on exact location, the accepted angles should be slightly less than 180 degrees in front of the camera—you don't need to be anywhere near the subject, unless you got a fisheye mounted.

It's just a bit silly that the default approach wasn't RF, rather than optical, even if they put receivers on all sides of the camera. Some new cameras have BLE though, which is nice and solves most problems (although I prefer physical remotes to poorly written apps).

madshiva2• 9 years ago

Then you have see by yourself that IR receiver are for selfie if they are on front... It strange when you are right people still downvote you.

Sorry if the majority of people buy DSLR without using it correctly. It's like owning a Apple, or a Gaming computer but don't understand nothing at all or do it by trends. Same apply with camera where everybody know everything.

Majority of people in the street have DSLR and take selfie by hand. You know now why it sucks.

buildbot2• 9 years ago

It’s funny, but for several of the authors main criticisms an old camera of mine would have done well:

A 60mp leaf credo on a Rollei HY6 body.

Histogram and blinkies processed from the raw image, the lenses where all made of extremely solid metal, it had a built in arca Swiss like tripod play on the bottom, a giant 3.5 inch touchscreen, USB 3 transfer and tethering, could charge the batteries from USB and run off USB power, and the lenses all had great depth of field and distance scales.

And the viewfinder was ludicrously massive!

Downside, it weighed ~2.5kg total or something and ate batteries, and hated any iso over 200. And cost something like 30000 when new.

frankzander2• 9 years ago

And the "Why?" is explained in short words: They will have things they can sell as new "innovations" for the next camera models.

mschuster912• 9 years ago

Tangentially related: I plan on buying a Sony a7s Mk2 this year. Aside from the screwmount and the battery issues, how is this camera affected by the other problems mentioned in the article (vibration, especially)? Is there anyone here who regularly shoots video with this camera?

arghwhat4• 9 years ago

Sensor- and lens-based stabilization takes care of the problem, as long as you don't kick your tripod. The problem isn't camera specific, and the long tele lens problem is more serious (although also pretty much fixed entirely by stabilization—some in-lens stabilization is hardcore enough that you can violently shake the setup with a tele mounted, and the image feed will still be perfectly stable).

Terretta2• 9 years ago

If you didn't purchase yet, did you consider the a9 mentioned a few times in this blog? You might not need the extra MP of the a7s II.

Comparison for video:

https://www.dpreview.com/articles/2661726126/alpha-better-so...

Field notes:

Used one on a trip in Europe. The light gathering is astonishing, both photos and video. Street shooting at night in dimly lit rural towns, almost every shot looks better than it did to naked eye.

Only took two very small lenses, FE 2/28 and FE 1.8/50, both gave results that belie their size and cost. It autofocused down to light levels that would need a 15 second exposure at f2 (candlelight is EV 4, autofocuses down to EV -3). It autofocused on stars.

The main thing I can't get over is its uncanny ability to nail tack sharp focus on the iris of either the main face in my image or the preferred registered face among many faces, at arbitrary distances from face larger than frame to far enough away focus doesn't matter.

mschuster912• 9 years ago

Yep, and the A9 is, with ~3k4€ just for the body, outside of my price range unfortunately :(

The A7s2 costs ~2k€, I'll have to spend at least a grand on lenses and another grand for the XLR/mike head and the external battery pack... thanks for the heads-up on the performance though, hope the A7S will live up to expectations ;)

lurker782• 9 years ago

Ignore the other poster who recommended buying an a9. If all you want to do is video (and you want a sony) then the a7s2 is the best machine for the job, a9 is more trying to be a fast sports shooter. I have the A7R2 and even its video is pretty darn good, no S-Log3 and not the same amazing (it really is this good) low light performance as the A7S2 though.

The only gripes which I have with the Sony systems are the unintuitive menu systems and unergonomic body styles, compared to Canon DSLR's though of 5D / 1D ilk (and most recently, the Leica SL which is just a dream to handle).

Other than that, technically, on paper, they are amazing cameras.

p.s: IBIS is amazing, you can take pretty much any old lens and all of a sudden it's stabilised.

wjnc4• 9 years ago

As an economist: isn't this 'just' an example of software eating the world?

One the one hand, quality camera's should keep upgrading the periferal hardware to keep match with modern IT-supplies and on the other hand keep a focus on durable products. Why wouldn't producers do this? Cost savings and probably price competition.

The competition (smart phones) have a whole different market. They have a product that people (regretably?) replace every 2-3 years. The market dictates the newest techniques. Pictures are sensors + software. Software has a much shorter improvement cycle. Hence, I would expect a continuously larger part of the camera market to 'fall' for the smartphone camera. Heck, the 'official' advice from my preferred reviewers is not to buy a small camera anymore, but use the savings for a better smartphone.

And then you have large old-camera corporations struggling because their highest margin products (just a guess that that was the little cameras in the former days, not the professionaly product) are falling away. So they don't have the money to keep their high-end products up quality wise nor the institutional awareness to quickly adapt. Cycle a few times... Read OP.

ekianjo3• 9 years ago

The competition (smart phones) have a whole different market. They have a product that people (regretably?) replace every 2-3 years. The market dictates the newest techniques. Pictures are sensors + software. Software has a much shorter improvement cycle. Hence, I would expect a continuously larger part of the camera market to 'fall' for the smartphone camera. Heck, the 'official' advice from my preferred reviewers is not to buy a small camera anymore, but use the savings for a better smartphone.

The old corporations in the field (Canon, Nikon, Sony) should make you pay for better firmwares (i.e. plugins or at least revisions) so that they have an incentive to keep improving their existing DLSRs. I think on my previous body there was only ONE update in x years and that did not bring anything new on the table.

Thanksfully nowadays we have MagicLantern for Canon DSLRs at least, which brings a ton of additional features for photo and video. It's still not at a parity level with the software available on phones and the like, but it's a big jump vs the base firmware nonetheless.

wjnc4• 9 years ago

Good point. That would be a camera as a platform-model. We're half-way there in re-assembling a market structure that can withstand the 'new' pressures. The only way for a truely decent product, would be a decoupling of 1. camera as high quality parts for making great pictures, 2. camera as a communications device, 3. software.

Alas, I can think of exactly no digital examples of that market structure to work. Perhaps the old-school PC hit that mark. How many of those are still around? Perhaps we can see cloud computing as hitting that mark (separating 1,2,3), but still we need a complete device (1+2+3) to interact with the cloud.

trm42• 9 years ago

At least Fuji and Olympus have realised the new model cycle is getting longer so they are releasing new firmware features until the replacing model is launched.

Canikon aren't doing new features in firmwares, seems more like bug fixes and Sony is somewhere inbetween at least with the A7-series...

Sony A7 series have also some kind of small apps you can buy and download from their store to your camera. Haven't seen that many apps there =(

tpeo4• 9 years ago

Why would they try to compete with smartphones? Dropping product differentiation when the competition comes from "a whole different market" doesn't really make sense.

This seems more like an issue of quality control.

jamesrcole2• 9 years ago

They're not choosing to compete with smartphones - smartphones are eating into their market thus forcing competition. As smartphone cameras have improved the more they've eaten into the market. Note that this argument does not require that all users of their cameras would ever consider using a smartphone instead.

deepGem• 9 years ago

My ideal camera is just a simple autofocus camera which has two modes of operation. Standalone and paired with a phone. Standalone mode is built for speed - just manual controls, snap and shoot. No screen, no buttons at the back nothing. Just the PSAM dial, front and back wheels for shutter aperture control. When paired with a phone - AF and all the gimmicky stuff to be done using the phone's interface which will also act like a viewfinder. Of course you can still use manual controls on the phone app. You can even edit the images on the phone and like the OP says, bloody mount the camera somewhere, sit in your tent and shoot. What all fancy stuff you can do - once you have all the controls on the phone. Automatically fire when a bird takes off and fun things like that.

spiderfarmer3• 9 years ago

I'm just a consumer ofcourse but I don't get it.

If Sony would stop making as many smartphone models and add a couple of those engineers to their DSLR team, they should be able to solve most of these issues pretty quickly.

Sony makes about 5 different smartphone models each year. If they focused on shipping just one or two I guess they'd have more time to develop a better DSLR?

This would give them a big advantage over Nikon and Canon. Sony has a lot of knowledge and experience that Nikon and Canon don't have. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB-c, batteries are all great in their smartphones. Why not use that to make their cameras better?

Terretta2• 9 years ago

Seems like they mostly did this with the a9, though the dig in the article about the upper card slot being slow is annoying, and Sony's mobile app for WiFi image transfer is bizarre, requiring the phone and camera to join a camera-created network, even though the camera can be manually configured to join your own access point.

sdfjkl• 9 years ago

My Nikon AW1 can't even charge its own battery. I have to take it out of the camera and put it in a (huge, blocky, AC powered) charger.

pasta• 9 years ago

Profit margins on camera bodies are extremely low (for resellers sometimes around 1%). All profit is made on accessories like lenses, bags and tripods.

So I can imagine that RnD is limited to chips and software instead of body work.

visarga• 9 years ago

The biggest problems in photography are dynamic range and low light. If they can fix these, we're set.

stefanve• 9 years ago

I feel that a lot of these problems are not purely born out of lazy engeniering but has to do with the review culture. In camera land as well as any other consumer products reviewers have quit a lot of power. If you get a bad review it can destroy your product. As most reviewers converse to the same opinion it is very tempting to please the reviewers. So if you create a semi pro camera is had to have a tripod mount even if most buyers have to use it. For a long time and party true today a simple interface was not something the reviewers would like.the interface should look like the Pro DSLR to be taken seriously. When Sony launched the original Xperia z every reviewer said the waterproofing was a gimmick now day's you get faulted for not having it. In the car world reviewers are constantly patting the top op the dashboard no other human does this as a result more car companies are making an effort to give it a nice feel, but stuff like a good feeling steering wheel seem more important to me. There are countless examples f reviewers dictating what is important with out looking at true usability but by looking at an spec sheet and see if it is 'better' than before

rplnt• 9 years ago

And they do the same thing phone companies do, don't support the device. I have a camera with wifi that got a shitty remote app on release and that's it. There is so much potential with remote controls, but no.. it can only take pictures on auto settings. At least document the API if you are lazy...

Camera itself got some bugfix updates, but is missing some essentials as working as a web cam, supporting timelapse, etc...

web642• 9 years ago

I have a Canon DSLR and my biggest frustration is with the software. I do a lot of night photography and the longest exposure possible is 30 seconds. To go beyond this you need to buy an external shutter release. It should be a simple thing to add a few more options with longer exposures to the menu.

Also, doing things like HDR or stop-motion can be a pain. Better software or the ability to run apps could solve this.

arethuza3• 9 years ago

Camera software reminds me a lot of car software (entertainment and nav stuff) in that its obviously a bit of an afterthought and its a checkbox exercise and they don't give much thought to the actual user experience.

e.g. My wife has a lovely Audi but when I drive it I get very frustrated by how long the nav/entertainment system takes to start up...

alkonaut• 9 years ago

If you are a tinkerer, you could (most likely, depending on model) use a custom firmware such as Magic Lantern. Gives you basically anything you could imagine, but that Canon couldn't imagine. http://www.magiclantern.fm/

musage2• 9 years ago

Magic lantern truly is, well, magic. When my 30D died, I bought an 50D with some ambivalence; I wanted a "real body" and can't justify the price tag any of the #D series, but the 50D can't record video. Then I installed magic lantern, and now it can record video and so much more. Didn't end up shooting much video, but the photography features are so numerous and useful.

web642• 9 years ago

Thanks! I will try out Magic Lantern!

Sharlin• 9 years ago

Canon have finally added a builtin bulb timer to many of their latest-gen models, as well as an interval timer. Of course, the most likely reason for not doing it sooner had to do with wanting to sell remotes rather than any technical difficulty.

epigramx• 9 years ago

And it's time movies started being high FPS. Low FPS is mainly a relic from a time film was expensive and the technology to produce it tough. Their usual excuse is that low FPS solutions do motion blur well.

musage2• 9 years ago

I wonder what, say, 100 fps video shot with an exposure of 1/25 would look like. You'd need 4 cameras or a special camera to record it, but that could be simulated. It would probably look bad, but maybe in an exciting new way? Has anyone tried that yet in, say, Blender?

lurker782• 9 years ago

My Leica SL luckily doesn't suffer from most of these 'issues'. It still only has 1 UHS-II slot though. It would be nice if it had IBIS though.

brudgers11• 9 years ago

I love 1/4-20 sockets. Attach my camera to a flash bracket? Yep. Attach an eyebolt to attach a carabiner to attach a neck strap? Yep. Attach a hand strap or a 40mm, 80mm, or 200mm Arca Swiss plate. Yep. Yep, Yep and Yep.

There's nothing stopping a photographer from permanently attaching an Arca-Swiss plate to the bottom of a camera body with a bit of cyanoacrylate or some screws if it makes better photographs. For me, walking around with an Arca-Swiss plate on my camera made me appreciate that 1/4-20 socket is flush. Walking around with a 120mm plate made me appreciate that the 1/4-20 socket is flush both top to bottom and front to back.

Like everything in photography 1/4-20 and Arca-Swiss are defined by engineering tradeoffs. The cost of slower direct attachment of 1/4-20 is in exchange for the physical strength of bolted connection and the flexibility adopting a broader standard affords - I can build a camera mount from general components available at the hardware store (including round stock and a 1/4-20 die in a statistically unlikely universe).

edit: I left out all the electronic/software rants because photography is undergoing Cambrian explosion in regards to controls and computation (but mirrorless cameras are nothing new).

shagie3• 9 years ago

As a Bogen hex plate user, I would be aghast at having an Arca Swiss mount on the bottom of my camera.

Furthermore, a permanent Arca Swiss would prevent innovative designs such as the Really Right Stuff L brackets (which would be my choice if I were to ever switch QR plate systems).

Furthermore, many QR plates are protected by patent. Having the classic screw isn’t.

matthewmcg2• 9 years ago

No kidding on standard components. When we have family gatherings and want to take a self timer group shot and I don't have a tripod, the shade attachment screw at the top of a lamp usually fits into my camera's tripod socket. The shade mount is sturdy enough to hold A small camera in place while also allowing enough pivoting and turning to frame up the shot.

_ea1k• 9 years ago

Wow, that is brilliant. I never thought of using a lamp like that.

matthewmcg2• 9 years ago

Update: clearly I am not the only person to notice this: https://books.google.com/books?id=nRsTBQAAQBAJ&lpg=PA57&ots=...

Finnucane• 9 years ago

It's like the old phone jack that Apple wants to be rid of--a common and cheap standard that attaches to every known thing in the universe already. And replace it with what? A proprietary system that may be better in some ways, but reduces your choices. Now, I also use the Bogen hex pads--which means if I am out with my Nikon, or my Hasselblad, or my Fuji 6x9, or even my Wista VX, I am good to go.

oasisbob• 9 years ago

Comparing the 1/4"-20 tripod mount to the 1/8" TRRS jack isn't a great comparison.

The tripod mount has been a standard for decades and decades.

The phone headphone jack fractured into competing standards years ago. Works fine for listening, but once you want to use a microphone you're dealing with different pinouts for different manufacturers, balkanized auto detection and signaling, incompatible plugs sizing, grounding issues with the phone case, etc. It wasn't a pristine situation when Apple left it behind.

dpark6• 9 years ago

The only thing wrong with the 1/4-20 mount is that there's only one. Camera manufacturers should add a second one half an inch to the side so that plates can be mounted with two points of attachment, which would eliminate concerns with twisting and loosening.

Wanting to force the weight and cost of Arca Swiss on everyone is just selfish. In fact most of these complaints are just examples of wanting everyone else to subsidize features they might not need that this guy happens to want.

The Qi demand on the other hand is just dumb. Wireless charging requires close proximity, so you'd have to set your camera down just so or it would fail to charge. With different lenses changing the balance point and accessories like portrait grips changing the shape, many people would never get Qi to work properly. Plus in a world where enthusiasts largely have multiple batteries anyway, wireless charging built into the camera seems utterly useless. I'd rather rapidly charge my battery in a dedicated charger than leave my camera on its own charging pad all the time.

brudgers11• 9 years ago

For some applications, Velcro on the bottom of the camera and top of the accessory might mitigate twisting. I've also read about people using compressible materials to increase friction. For what it's worth, there's nothing preventing modifying a camera to add a second screw.

shagie3• 9 years ago

Some QR plates have set screws that can be tightened down to reduce twisting. For example, you can see them in https://uniquephoto.azureedge.net/resources/uniquephoto/imag...

These positions line up with some locations on various medium and large format cameras (where there is a lot of weight in play).

ew6082• 9 years ago

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

nakedrobot25• 9 years ago

I absolutely agree... While Arca-swiss is ok, having this as "the #1 dumb thing camera companies do" really made me lose confidence in this article. I mean, seriously - it is the one thing that remains compatible with every single camera in the whole world made for the last 80 years...

snowwrestler3• 9 years ago

I think you're missing the point. If camera manufacturers just molded an Arca Swiss dovetail into the bottom edge of their cameras, then you could have both solid, easy QR compability and the 1/4 socket--simultaneously.

The way it works now, you have to use the 1/4 socket to get QR compatibility.

brudgers11• 9 years ago

When I use my flash bracket, I bolt the flash bracket to the camera. When I use the camera with flash bracket with my tripod, I bolt an Arca Swiss compatible plate to the flash bracket using another 1/4-20 hole in the bracket. A third 1/4-20 hole allows me to leave the $0.75 1/4-20 eyebolt (stainless steel no less) I use for a carabiner + neck strap on the flash bracket.

That said, from an engineering perspective the long term durability of a plastic molded dovetail when clamped in a metal Arca Swiss clamp might be a challenge because the Arca Swiss system is not designed around that degree of dissimilarity of material hardness (not that I have anything against plastic). One of the characteristics of Arca Swiss connections is that they are not based on a formal standard and this leads to minor dimensional variability among components that is mitigated by clamping the clamp tighter or buying components from a company like Arca-Swiss at the prices their products command.

Potential durability aside, a molded in dovetail would increase the bulk of a camera and generally the trend seems to be away from camera bulk all things being equal. While a molded in adapter might increase stability in some cases, in others it would decrease it. Setting a camera on a table is an obvious case. Any other mounting is also going to be through a longer lever arm and with a higher center of gravity.

ISL2• 9 years ago

A dovetail would change the way a camera feels in-hand. For all the non-Arca-Swiss users, a dovetail would forever be caught on things without adding utility.

zfedoran• 9 years ago

I'd prefer dual 1/4 threads on the bottom of the camera, then you could add the Arca Swiss dovetail and it wouldn't have the rotation issues. Also, the aesthetics and feel of the camera body wouldn't change.

Florin_Andrei• 9 years ago

Another thing with the 1/4" socket is that it's so easy to whip something up real quick to attach the camera to whatever. It could literally be as simple as pulling a hex bolt out of a box and tightening it in.

codingdave• 9 years ago

My biggest complaint is that they keep thinking we want Wifi more than we want GPS on high end cameras. Really, hooking up to a wire at home is far easier than adding on GPS data in the field. If I can only have one, give me GPS.

FussyZeus• 9 years ago

So many of these complaints can be leveled at manufacturers of pretty much every piece of tech widely used. As soon as a company becomes big, it's a race to the bottom for every silo manager to make his particular silo the leanest which leads to less quality materials, cheaper parts, and an overall worse product.

Dell and HP are the most brutal examples. Dell laptops I work on regularly are put together so incredibly cheaply, it's infuriating.

sethx• 9 years ago

I had a Sony RX100III until last year. It is considered a top-of-the-line compact camera. Yet sony thinks it's cool to have an app store for a camera that costs somewhere in the 800USD ballpark to sell you "apps" for 4 dollars to allow you to add software features. There are a handful of apps in the whole marketplace, proving that this is indeed a poor business idea. The whole "you bought a camera for ±1k but can't afford 4$" discussion is unrelevant, i am just frustrated that Sony can't develop these features in house and supply them to their users as it should have done in the first place.

wazoox• 9 years ago

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

[1] https://mondaynote.com/memo-to-camera-makers-put-android-in-...

speleo_engr• 9 years ago

If Android is on a camera, I want some sort of a hypervisor situation where it does not interfere with real-time operations. My Canon T4i will very responsively snap a picture once I have locked the focus, aperture, and shutter speed. I do not want to lose that and "gain" lagdroid.

fhood2• 9 years ago

That would be pretty easy. Lazy solution would basically to just stick an extra processor in the existing hardware that would just poll the camera for data and time critical operations would be handled by the original system

NegativeLatency2• 9 years ago

Also battery life considerations. I wouldn't want to have to carry extra batteries/ wait for android to boot if I go on a hike and need to conserve battery

dguaraglia2• 9 years ago

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

I love Android (I've only had Android phones since my first smartphone), but battery efficiency is definitely not its strong suit, even on a clean install on a flagship phone.

bitexploder• 9 years ago

Perhaps it just needs to be a separate system completely that shares a display and storage. Separate battery. Keep the existing highly tuned photo system. Augment by having an onboard computer.

I think people are missing the point of DSLR to some extent. They aren't meant for this sort of thing. If you want onboard editing, don't use a DSLR. It is meant to be very good at one thing. It doesn't /want/ you to edit photos in place. It wants you to load them up onto a secondary computing system. I like my D90 the way it is. It can sit for weeks and not need a charge, and it is an instantly responsive camera, that happens to have a computer.

ashark• 9 years ago

A way to connect your phone (any phone) to the camera with some kind of sync app seems like it'd be way better than putting all of freakin' Android on the camera. Phone makers can't even keep that updated and secure, plus battery life concerns, plus it's waaaay overkill for the job. Putting it on cameras is a bad idea. Add a wired or wireless sync-to-phone option, put the phone in your pocket, snap pictures, then do the editing or whatever on the phone if that's what you're into. Less work to implement that feature, more secure, easier on the hardware and the camera's battery, more future-proof.

IgorPartola2• 9 years ago

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

panopticon• 9 years ago

I love Android (I've only had Android phones since my first smartphone), but battery efficiency is definitely not its strong suit, even on a clean install on a flagship phone.

Except your DSLR (probably) isn't trying to drive a 6" 570ppi display with a bunch of always-on wireless hardware constantly being used. That 3" 270ppi on my D5300 is consuming almost nothing by comparison, and my camera is also very aggressive at turning the screen off.

It's like when people reminisce about battery lives in their old Nokia phones and forget that they didn't stare at the screen for 5 hours a day surfing Facebook. As long as the camera manufacturer limits some background services and continues doing the same aggressive display management, it should be fine. Until the day Nikon lets you install Facebook on your camera, that is...

matwood6• 9 years ago

While using my Nikon DSLR I won't turn it off at all until I'm done for the day and that seems to barely affect the battery.

FYI, for the most part Nikon DSLRs are always 'off' until you hit the shutter or some other button. The on/off switch just disables all the buttons so you don't accidentally hit anything. This is why people measure DSLR battery life in shots taken, not time with the camera on.

gambiting• 9 years ago

So a camera released just 5 years ago would be now running....Android 2.0? Slowly losing any ability to publish anything over time as services like google and facebook are cutting off support for older Android devices each year? It's the same argument as saying that PS VITA should have had Android - I disagree. If it did, it would be a horribly outdated piece of tech today, while as it is now it runs just as well as the day it came out.

TheSoftwareGuy• 9 years ago

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

bshep• 9 years ago

This! or develop a bluetooth SD card similar to the wifi ones that already exist, and have it communicate with your phone/tablet.... instant upgrade for all cameras

nogridbag2• 9 years ago

I believe Sony already has this starting with the A6300.

While my A6000 doesn't have bluetooth, it supports NFC and wifi and I can easily transfer photos to my phone. Sony's PlayMemories Android app is actually pretty cool. You can use it as a remote control - seeing exactly what the camera sees. You can adjust aperture, focus, set a timer, etc.

eropple2• 9 years ago

Panasonic's GH series has a WiFi connection (not ad-hoc, but an infra point) that you can connect to and use their app.

It's not a DSLR, but that's part of why the GH cameras are awesome. Panasonic, full-stop, makes really good gear that feels pretty modern; it has a couple of things I'll beef with, like what feels like really flimsy mini (GH3) and micro (GH4) HDMI connectors, but for the most part, I love 'em.

nakedrobot25• 9 years ago

The issue is startup time. Do you want to wait 30 seconds after you turn on your camera?

nakedrobot25• 9 years ago

By the way, some cameras do run linux, and they take 5-15 seconds to start up. If a camera does take long to startup, it is because it's running linux. These are typically security cameras, which are switched on basically only once, or as a periodic power cycle. Consumer cameras always use a RTOS. Ambarella makes chips for both cases. for example the H2 is for linux, while the S5 is the same chip but for RTOS.

mtgx2• 9 years ago

Even better, they should've started selling smartphone camera components to smartphone makers 5 years ago. Ride the disruptive innovation and all that, instead of fighting it (and now losing).

To be honest, I don't know if putting Android on DSLRs would've helped that much. Samsung tried a bit of that, too, and it didn't really work. Panasonic did, too. Eventually the smartphones just ate them up, from the bottom up. It's what disruptive innovations typically do. Incumbents usually can't win by slapping parts of the disruptive tech onto their older incumbent tech and call it a day. That doesn't seem to work usually.

So DSLRs makers becoming lens, sensor, ISP, etc makers for the smartphone industry would've probably been a more successful approach. But they were too afraid of "cannibalizing themselves". But what disrupted incumbents who fear cannibalization always seem to miss is that the cannibalization will happen whether they do it or not. Staying out of the market won't help them that much in the long term.

babesh• 9 years ago

Isn't that what Sony did? Don't they make the lens for many of the iDevices?

fooker• 9 years ago

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

kfriede• 9 years ago

I personally wouldn't care as much about that being on the camera if there was an instant and automatic way to transfer it to my phone (e.g. via bluetooth). I'd find it to be more useful that way.

rhinoceraptor3• 9 years ago

I don’t think people really want or need that. A big pro DSLR is a big investment, it will last 5-10 years easily. Any SoC will be ancient by the time it’s 5 years old, and no one will want to support it.

And who would want to edit photos on a big, heavy DSLR when they have a much more convenient smartphone, or iPad with a better screen?

The battery drain is also an issue. DSLRs use a mechanical shutter, which is sort of antiquated today. But it means one camera battery can last for hundreds or thousands of shots, and days of standby since the main screen is rarely on.

Pxtl4• 9 years ago

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

mizaru• 9 years ago

Sony cameras run Linux and contain an Android subsystem (mostly 2.x AFAIK). A "cold boot" takes a bit longer (3-4 seconds), the main UI and camera functions are implemented natively as far as I can tell and Android is only used for apps. It's possible to write homebrew apps [1], but there's currently no way to access the proprietary image processor, so there's not too much you can actually do. I don't think they'll open up the platform, unfortunately.

[1] https://github.com/ma1co/OpenMemories-Framework

brudgers11• 9 years ago

I found Filloux article thought provoking.

The argument reminds me of Polaroid film. There were two primary use cases. Ordinary snapshooters could at one point buy a new Polaroid camera for about $10. High end photographic systems accommodated Polaroid backs. A third use case was addressed by a few specialized camera models with robust high quality construction and dedicated Polaroid film paths. But for most people, 126 or 135 or 120 or sheet film was the a happy path.

The situation is similar today. Cameras running Android are ubiquitous and popular and widely used and the happy path for many many people. High end camera systems should probably be seen as including a laptop/desktop computer as part of the pixel pipeline. And there is an increasing middle ground of dedicated quality instant publishing camera equipment with a variety of engineering priorities (drones, gopros, point and shoots, and APS-C and fullframe DSLR/mirrorless).

The most useful feature of a cellphone camera is that it is always with people.

balls187• 9 years ago

From the article, the use case is being able to post photos to Instagram?

Rather than junk up my camera with Android, why not just enable it to easily sync with the smartphone of choice, and I can Instagram/Fb the pic from there?

tomc1985• 9 years ago

Ew. Open up the OS but please don't replace it with Android.

Pxtl4• 9 years ago

I feel like we need a good standard "light" OSS OS to fill the role for such devices - both for IOT and peripheral devices like this.

nradov9• 9 years ago

The camera doesn't need to run Android itself, and Android is probably too slow and power hungry to make sense in dedicated cameras. Instead think of the camera as a peripheral to the user's existing smartphone. There is a lot of room to improve connectivity and usability for that mode.

Pxtl4• 9 years ago

In that case the question becomes how? Bluetooth? USB? A proprietary solution like Moto Mods?

gaius• 9 years ago

The shutter lag on my Nikon is 40ms. Can Android do that?

jlarocco• 9 years ago

The pro photographers and photo journalists who spend the most money on "pro" cameras don't care about instant publication and on camera manipulation because they already have better workflows for those.

Android isn't required for those features, anyway. My Nikon allows quite a bit of manipulation and pre-processing before generating a JPEG.

For some context of what a big name pro photographer might be working with, check out [1]. He's spending a lot of money, and he's not manipulating pictures on camera and sending them to Instagram in real time.

[1] https://petapixel.com/2017/05/06/heres-one-photographers-cam...

Pxtl4• 9 years ago

I wish the Moto Z's mods became a standard - an Android phone that you can slap onto a device to make it "smart" would be best of both worlds.

Sadly, the Hasselblad camera mod available for the Moto Z is widely considered an overpriced joke, but it demonstrates how you can make a "have your cake and eat it too" design using the Mods concept.

TheRealPomax• 9 years ago

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

And of course, a full input mapping for all "buttons" on the camera so that I can "press" any of them from my android device. Don't even bother labeling them appropriately, just have a button signal protocol that says "the following numbers will work, and have the following N-step granularity" and then simply supply the relevant profile both on-camera (it's a USB device after all) and as download for each camera model that can be used to resolve "number" to "name of actual button on the camera".

In fact why stop there: I want that standard to be so open that any windows, linux, osx, raspi, android, iphone, etc. user can communicate with any camera. Got a Sony and a Nikon? Why would you care, just switch profile, done.

While Android on the camera itself would be a terrible idea (it would only be useful in such a stripped down config that user apps would be pretty much impossible), seemless interoperability backed by at least two open standards would be fantastic.

I guess we'll see how long it takes IKEA to make a good camera. None of these things are new, they've all been around for decades, camera makers just can't be bothered to make cameras for people. They purely make them for money.

NegativeLatency2• 9 years ago

Bluetooth might not be great. The max transfer rate is something like 24 Mbit/s (3 MB/s), and say a single RAW file is 20 MB, then you'd be looking at about 7 seconds of transfer time for each photo.

With high quality jpegs ~5MB it would be closer to 2 seconds per picture.

I think you'd need some kind of direct cabled connection for good perf for professional photographers.

Not to mention getting all the camera and app providers to standardize on a protocol and set of features.

hyperbovine• 9 years ago

Yes that's what cameras need... Java. Ever used Android TV? Or Android for that matter? Lags and crashes on the camera OS would absolutely bug the shit out of most photographers.

jstarfish• 9 years ago

Ha!

One of the biggest reasons I still lug a DSLR around is because of how unpredictable the Android camera can be. After I click the shutter button, I never know how long it's going to be for it to finish auto-focusing on every object at once, balancing colors, downloading updates, reticulating splines and whatever the hell else it's doing in the background.

By the time it finishes my kids have started wandering and come out as smears on a landscape.

iOS seems to be a little better at this.

Versus the DSLR-- Set exposure, push button, take picture. Fix errors in post.

knolan• 9 years ago

Having used the Lytro Illium, which appears to run in some flavor of Android I have to disagree.

I expect my cameras to be mechanically fast. I don’t want software getting in the way.

mozumder• 9 years ago

Android isn't really designed for fixed-function devices like cameras. The App model isn't suitable here.

What you really need is an API set that attaches to each function of the camera that third-party developers can use process/publish photos.

So, instead of turning on the camera and seeing a grid of apps, each one you have to figure out separately, you should turn on the camera and see the camera interface. Apps can then add additional functionality to this interface. And when it comes time to review the photo, a third-party app can enhance this section as well, perhaps to post on Instagram or other effects.

But the grid-of-apps is a horrible model for a fixed-function device like a camera. You're ALREADY in the camera, don't need to add another separate layer to interface to it. Just add the ability to enhance these sections.

monksy• 9 years ago

That's dead on. There is a video on Digital Review where they compared someone using their iphone to post an instagram photo vs a good camera and copying it via wifi to the phone to post.

With my LX10 you can batch transfer the photos so that it makes it easier. But it's still a pain. (You have to manually connect with the phone etc)

There should be a service connection on Panasonic's side to say: this camera id is configured for these services and accounts and I should be able to view the photo on the camera and post directly to say imgur. (No phone needed)

michrassena• 9 years ago

I've actually seen a camera which runs some flavor of android. It was a few years ago at Best Buy, maybe it was a Samsung, but I'm not certain. My first impression was turning it on and waiting for it to boot which took some seconds. If you've never used a digital SLR, that might seem acceptable. My Nikon D80, from a decade ago, takes some number of milliseconds (like 400) to become fully functional from a cold start. Here's an article from 2007 touting the D3s startup time of 120 milliseconds. https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9148811427/nikond3 That's a cold start, pop in a new battery and go times. Waiting seconds, puts the camera into the toy category.

The other factor is updates. I've had that Nikon D80 for 10 years, never had to worry about updates and never had to hook it up to a computer. Why trade in something with a offline, baked-in firmware for a constantly moving security target, or worse, as we see in the mobile space, an OS and app landscape that will be abandoned after two or three years and left vulnerable.

rrauenza4• 9 years ago

I really want the focus information in the display.

Tell me the DOF, and make finding the hyperfocal distance easier -- a button to just take me there, or a calculator that tells me the ideal distance and a display that shows me my estimated focal distance.

luckydude• 9 years ago

Agreed. The camera knows this stuff, why not display it. I've got the top of the line Canon 1DX II, a $6000 body. WTF, Canon? You can't put that in there?

jsjohnst• 9 years ago

Magic Lantern proves it’s possible to show it too, but alas, Canon can’t seem to follow their lead.

mi100hael• 9 years ago

I also wish split prism focusing screens were at least easier to get your hands on, if not the default. Makes it 10x easier to quickly tell when a subject is in focus instead of squinting & hoping.

sliverstorm3• 9 years ago

I believe split prisms work best at fast apertures. With the movement towards lower cost DSLR's and lenses, typical apertures are slowing down. Your typical Rebel might never see glass f/2.8 or faster.

High end cameras like the 1D and 5D series have always had better focusing screens and several different replacement options available.

slantyyz• 9 years ago

Some cameras do have this. The Fuji X10/X20 (and probably X30) had a focusing distance indicator on the screen, and I loved that feature. I can't speak for the other Fuji X models since I only had the X10 and X20. I really miss this feature on my other cameras.

iamatworknow4• 9 years ago

X100 cameras do too. I never find myself using it, personally, but I understand why some people would.

MikeTV• 9 years ago

Several mirrorless and pro compacts at least have focus peaking built in. Not perfect, but something that can be worked with.

brudgers11• 9 years ago

In the manual film days, all that information was often engraved on the lens. Some currently manufactured manual focus lenses also include depth of field scales as well. These make zone focusing easier...not that I don't like autofocus.

rb808• 9 years ago

I'd like to see more innovative lens design with software correction. IE many expensive lenses are complicated by the tradtional need to reduce barrel/pincushion distortion and Chromatic aberration. For film that is important but now with digital its relatively easy to correct in software. I was expecting lots of innovation in lenses because of this but I haven't seen much change.

dkrich4• 9 years ago

Call me skeptical, but this guy's rants sound to me like a super demanding, high-end user. No doubt his complaints are well-reasoned for him, but I have to say that as an amateurish photographer, I disagree with a lot of what he says.

First of all, what's wrong with having a standardized mount size? I like knowing that I can fit my camera onto any standard mount I want to buy without issue. The quick-release and plastic body concerns are a non-issue for me because most tripod manufacturers have fixed this by simply putting a quick-release plate on the tripod that has a rubber surface. Voila- when I am in the mode of taking mounted photos, I screw the plate on, and just leave it. Then I can quickly mount and unmount the camera as-needed. Sure, this might not pass the "smack the lens and there shouldn't be a single iota of movement test", but that's a very narrow use-case, as opposed to not having to spend hundreds of dollars on a more expensive camera whose manufacturer invested hundreds of thousands of man-hours to develop and test.

As for the remote, that also seemed to be a pretty narrow use case. I have a standard infrared remote I use when taking mounted photos, and it works fine 99% of the time. I don't like the Bluetooth idea for a few reasons. One, you have to toggle it on and off if you want to conserve camera battery. Two, you have to have a Bluetooth enabled device capable of controlling the camera (read, smartphone) which introduces a potential failure point because now you have to make sure you have two things charged (your phone and your camera) because remote batteries can last for years. You want to take pictures with your steering wheel? Sounds cool, but is that a use-case Sony should invest heavily to satisfy?

To me, the innovation in the camera market has been phenomenal. The speed at which cameras can autofocus and burst shoot, as well as the battery life have all improved while the prices have continued to drop. The one thing I think could definitely be improved (as a Sony Alpha user) is the software interface, which took me a solid month of study to master and is still cumbersome to use on a daily basis. But, the complexity of photography and understanding all of the variables involved is one of the most appealing parts to me.

devmunchies• 9 years ago

The one thing I think could definitely be improved is the software interface

This is me as well but its because I may go a whole month without using my Canon. There is a a 5-10 minute learning curve to remember how to do everything (ie changing aperture, shutter speed, etc.). I'm sure its not a problem for a professional who uses it regularly.

barretts2• 9 years ago

I am also a Sony Alpha user and the interface seems anti-designed. Like, willfully obtuse and user-hostile. I know UI is not easy, but relative to the scope/scale of Sony, how hard would it really be for them to cop even a few best practices in software design?

smileysteve2• 9 years ago

And sony typically focuses a lot on design.

But I disagree with this and the article; SLRs is based on historic professional use of manual cameras; to which, much of the manual design is useful for.

dkrich4• 9 years ago

Agreed. The Alpha software reeks of "design by committee" for the entire mass of camera users to allow anything to be controlled with equal weight. It's a major problem.

LoSboccacc• 9 years ago

super demanding, high-end user

I'd be ranting if he were a mid-range guy being demanding, but the point here is that no amount of money can buy a decently composed camera hardware

ksk2• 9 years ago

They made sense to me. Practically, it would be easy for camera makers to add these features on their pro bodies as they're not intended to be appealing to amateurs/casual shooters.

Sure, this might not pass the "smack the lens and there shouldn't be a single iota of movement test", but that's a very narrow use-case,

That is a mainstream usecase for pretty much every single professional! A more secure interface between the plate and body would mean the tripod and body are better integrated and would allow for improved vibration reduction IMHO.

as opposed to not having to spend hundreds of dollars on a more expensive camera whose manufacturer invested hundreds of thousands of man-hours to develop and test.

Okay but the cost of the kit is not a big concern if you're making money with it. I wouldn't think twice about sticking in 32 gigs of RAM or a thousand dollar CPU on my dev box either because I would make that back very quickly.

I don't like the Bluetooth idea for a few reasons. One, you have to toggle it on and off if you want to conserve camera battery.

Bluetooth LE devices can have upto a year of battery life !

Two, you have to have a Bluetooth enabled device capable of controlling the camera (read, smartphone) which introduces a potential failure point because now you have to make sure you have two things charged (your phone and your camera) because remote batteries can last for years.

Why does it have to be a smartphone?

To me, the innovation in the camera market has been phenomenal. The speed at which cameras can autofocus and burst shoot, as well as the battery life have all improved while the prices have continued to drop.

Yes, this has been amazing. Pretty much any basic DSLR can take great pictures. And having a common mount across the basic/pro bodies unlocks this huge library of lenses (which make more of a difference w.r.t IQ anyway).

FireBeyond2• 9 years ago

Bluetooth LE devices can have upto a year of battery life !

Bluetooth LE is highly unsuitable, if not impossible, to use with high bandwidth applications (like dumping a 40MB+ file to a remote destination potentially dozens of times a minute or more).

jfindley2• 9 years ago

this guy's rants sound to me like a super demanding, high-end user.

Yes. He is. He's a respected professional photographer, and most of his readership are also serious photographers, with many pro or semi-pros among them. His site is largely read by people looking to optimise for the best IQ their equipment can deliver, and he doesn't really write all that much that's targeted at more casual photographers.

First of all, what's wrong with having a standardized mount size? I like knowing that I can fit my camera onto any standard mount I want to buy without issue.

Arca-swiss plates are the de-facto standard. I don't know any serious photographers that don't use arca-swiss plates when they do tripod work - the issue here is that not all photographers actually do that much tripod work (I know several wedding photographers, for example, who rarely if ever mount the cameras on tripods (note: they still have tripods for lighting, but that's a different system with different requirements).

To me, the innovation in the camera market has been phenomenal. The speed at which cameras can autofocus and burst shoot, as well as the battery life have all improved while the prices have continued to drop.

This is less true at the end of the market he (mostly) writes for. A professional DSLR body has generally risen in price over the years, even taking into account inflation. Battery life has improved, but honestly battery life has never been the problem with pro DSLRs that it has been - and to some extent still is - with mirrorless and consumer cameras. The autofocus in the latest nikon pro DSLRs is a notable improvement over the previous generation, but, again, the nikon pro DSLR focus system has always been really good so again it's a lot less of a significant leap than you see in generations of mirrorless cameras, where technology is evolving more quickly.

To people at this end of the market, using high end canon/nikon DSLRs, the progress of innovation has been far slower, with lots of longstanding problems and frustrations that never get addressed. For example, neither the nikon d5 ($6500) or the nikon d850 ($3300) have a built in GPS (cost of GPS chip is less than $5), and the standalone GPS is bulky, interferes with holding the camera, expensive and is actually discontinued in some regions(!!).

dkrich4• 9 years ago

Okay, fine, that's exactly what I said- that I'm sure his points are valid for his use case, which is the upper, upper end of the market.

But surely he must understand that what's good for him and his very particular use cases isn't necessarily good for the other 98% of camera customers out there.

I engineer advanced web applications for a living. There are lots of things about OSX that would make my life easier for my use cases. That doesn't mean I think that all Macs should come preloaded with Atom, Slack, dual Thunderbolt displays, advanced Git integration built into the user interface or a host of other things that would make my use case easier out of the box. Because my use case isn't what moves 99% of laptops. If you want to outfit your setup with high end technology so your camera won't budge in a cat 5 hurricane, go nuts. I don't think it would be the best decision for mainstream camera makers to address it. If it were, then they would be doing it.

fulldecent2• 9 years ago

1/4" mount with no anti-rotate hole.

I have a 80D and there is a 1/4" mount at the bottom. But if you take a photo in portrait orientation with a long lens then the 1/4" bolt will not be strong enough and the camera will twist out of it. It's a joke!

rrauenza4• 9 years ago

I eventually went with an L bracket on my camera -- the bracket has Arca Swiss rails.

But now it's a little bigger and heavier :(

fulldecent2• 9 years ago

I just want to say when iPhone supports external flash I will probably never use Canon again. And I've used it for 10+ years professionally in the studio. Seriously, it's like Japan's products are moving at the same speed as their economy, i.e. not at all in the past 20 years.

nakedrobot25• 9 years ago

Most modern LED's are bright enough that you don't need a discrete "flashing" type of external light for most such use cases, you know?

NickBusey• 9 years ago

For me at least, having an external flash has very little to do with how bright it is, and very much to do with where the light is coming from. A flash coming from 1/4" away from where the lens is, usually doesn't look too great.

rrauenza4• 9 years ago

...sounds like a fun project to trigger an external flash on manual from the iPhone flash! I wonder if those lightning triggers would be sensitive enough.

Ah -- but the iPhone would need manual exposure settings or you'd likely overexpose.

techolic• 9 years ago

Here's to hope you don't shoot wildlife.

aloukissas• 9 years ago

A huge thing that's missing is a proper file system, especially with undelete/recycle bin capabilities. It's amazing how in a consumer product like this, "delete" is essentially `rf -f`.

shosko• 9 years ago

This is where I think Snap Inc can innovate. Traditional camera companies will never come up with a camera that shares well to any socially enabled device. Our devices (phones) are built to be do-it-all computers, not cameras and will never fulfill all the promises of new camera technology. What's missing is the real future of the camera.

_Codemonkeyism• 9 years ago

Funny, my Olympus, Panasonic and Fuji cameras have a lot of these issues fixed (Wifi, Bluetooth, good app, excellent tripod collar, etc.) it looks more like a Nikon problem.

Or as I tell people in my talks: Nikon is the new Nokia.

no-such-address• 9 years ago

From comments here, you can see the field of premium photography equipment is about to undergo some kind of massive disruptive consolidation and reorganization. Almost anyone who comments here is a prospective customer, yet we see so much fragmentation. Some customers just ask for a box with a great sensor, and plan to process the images elsewhere. Some ask for a retro-experience, or an open source photography platform, or an incremental improvement to existing products. Some ask for a high-end consumer experience like a Smartphone, or tighter smartphone integration. Maybe a smart equipment company would organize its products around those markets, instead of struggling to segment too finely using old concepts of cost and performance.

The traditional photography equipment business is in a world of trouble because, as others point out, software is replacing physics as well as the familiar mechanical human interface. This requires a lot of expensive software engineers and some computer science expertise, and the rate of change is only increasing now. For example consider how machine learning is affecting image processing, like this method of pixel-based image synthesis: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~aayushb/pixelNN/. Having lost the low end, DSLR companies can't amortize the cost of ambitious engineering projects over any significant volume of inexpensive products. Agree with the article by Thom Hogan - if anything it doesn't go far enough to convey the extent to which top line camera companies are out of touch with how the digital world has changed.

anon1253• 9 years ago

I just wish they would sell mono cameras more (e.g. without the Bayer mask). Heck, I don't even need the camera. Just sell the chip and let companies like Atik, StarlightExpress and QHY pick them up.

paulgerhardt• 9 years ago

I must say, I have a small Leica camera running Android and I totally adore it (CM-1).

It meets 9.5 of the 11 features the author is requesting but those aren't why I like it. It's also why I find his argument to be flawed.

The best parts of owning it aren't any of the authors points. It's that it solves a class of problem not addressed by the market. It fits the bill for: "ultimate international travel camera". It gives me: 1] nice photos (raw, 1" sensor) 2] that I can process immediately (runs Android, Photoshop, Lightroom, Instagram) and 3] publish directly (4G connection, WiFi N) in a 4] compact form factor (bit thicker than a smartphone). I'm sad to see this category not take off but I'm glad I have one for myself. As an added benefit its great for China and Taiwan where I can still have my primary iPhone and use my camera as WiFi hotspot to get cheap data with a local sim.

It was done as a design exercise with Panasonic similar to the Hasselblad True with Motorola. It's far from perfect (design exercises usually aren't).

But. And that's a big 'B'. This camera let's me solve my photo problem (How do I take nice photos and share them while on the go) in way fewer steps and with less equipment than the mainstream camera solutions and with better quality than smartphones. (I want the photos to be "Nice" remember? Also 1" sensor! Raw! )

The author is in effect pushing for more features. That's not how you solve your users problems. What the camera industry needs to do is diff assumptions made about how camera's were used when these platforms were created (D series, EOS series) and how they are being used today - then solve for the new problem classes that emerged. Not tack on more features and higher performance as the author is suggesting. In the former case you push for the ability to run Photoshop and Instagram on the camera and publish mobiley, in the later case you push for faster bus speeds and more stable camera mounts.

cratermoon• 9 years ago

I still shoot film using cameras and lenses built when my dad was a kid.

sgarg• 9 years ago

One area where I think camera makers could really improve is in coaching people how to take better pictures. I'm sure there are some good mobile apps out there but as a casual camera user, I would love to take my camera off auto-mode and actually learn how to use the advanced features. If I'm shooting portraits or landscapes, it would be great if the camera could intelligently let me know, "Why don't you try this exposure/aperture for a better picture". Pretty soon I would start to learn on my own.

mrisoli• 9 years ago

I share the same sentiment, cellphone cameras improved so much but because point and shoot is such a simple concept which serves most people companies don't really care about user onboarding.

Some builtin tutorials and gamification(such as trying to get better low-light photos) could help people like me go a long way with current equipment.

soared• 9 years ago

I'd play a game like pokemon go, except you have to take photos of specific scenes and get points for how good you're picture is. You can go back later and take more pics once your photography skill has improved.

snissn3• 9 years ago

I bought a GoPro - HERO5 Black 4K for $400 for a vacation - wanted to transfer my videos to my laptop and i'm hit with USB2.0 speeds.. So what do I do? Set up my camera as a wireless access point and use wget to transfer my files. ugh.

Synaesthesia• 9 years ago

And was it faster?

snissn3• 9 years ago

Oh yes - I should have included that - 2mbs on usb vs 40 mbs on wifi

kgen• 9 years ago

Yeah, I found the same with my GoPro, but you don't have to go to the trouble of setting up an AP, just get a UHS sdcard and pop it out and into a compatible reader.

snissn3• 9 years ago

Totally! I do that now, but couldn't on vacation and had to free up space for the next day of underwater videos!

smileysteve2• 9 years ago

I disagree with this article in a lot of ways; the tripod mount is about the closest thing to mattering to a field/wedding/studio photographer.

- IR Remote; Works in the studio (or in the field) because your lighting is to the sides or front (if it's behind the camera, you have shadow)

- USB/Wifi version. The typical pro is taking 300-3000 clicks before uploading to lightroom for post; between this there are many other time sucks: A) transportation back to the studio B) unpacking your camera gear backpack C) showering bathroom. I don't know how this is interfering. The field shooters are traditionally switching multiple cards from a day/week/second shooter - there HD gig and backup purposes never have them go camera to computer.

- Slow card writes; this affects burst and you'll find the best sports cameras either compensate with ram or have faster card writes. Of course, this matters more with video.

I can agree with some of the the points though; better AF UX; though I appreciate my classic dot that lights up and I can preference with a joypad. The better tripod mount. And battery grips should mount through the tripod/battery/base and need no cables (my camera battery grips work like this)

I also don't want android apps; for the most part, i even resist a program that does multi exposure for fireworks - especially now that anybody with an iphone can take that picture, probably better.

beezle• 9 years ago

D500 owner. Clearly the original post was directed at the high end and reads much like first world problems and to the extent that much of his wish list is not on all cameras can be attributed to profit margins.

I agree with the raw stuff and perhaps the focus as well (though what he asks is just a function of modern day laziness).

I disagree with the wifi and usb issues. I can count how many times I have used wifi. And only at home. Really do not want to be having to set up wifi access at every location, do not want the security risk of wifi, and most imporant - do not want the battery drain of wifi.

As to USB - give it a couple years and the usb connections will be type C. Camera companies are very conservative and won't punt on the traditional until they are certain it won't be a hardship. USB 3.0 is already available on the d500 and d850.

The d500 and d850 for sure have UHS-II, I'm sure similar Canon models do as well.

Which brings up another point - I don't transfer files over USB either. For the most part, I take the card out and use a reader with laptop or desktop. The USB is nice to have when using other equipment but I find it no inconvenience to use the card manually.

kayfox• 9 years ago

Agree on battery drain, I can leave my D300s on for days and it still has battery left.

If it had WiFi it would be a matter of hours.

stordoff2• 9 years ago

you'll find the best sports cameras either compensate with ram or have faster card writes

Don't most DSLRs do this? I know my low end Sony Alpha will buffer about 7-10 frames from a burst before getting constrained by card write speeds.

contingencies• 9 years ago

Slow card writes: CF is faster than all SD formats, IIRC. Which is why high end cameras always have CF. Usually at least on the Canon side for the past few generations they couple this with SD. If you shoot to an SD slot, you notice the buffering a lot more than if you shoot to the CF. FWIW, I've only very rarely encountered issues after purchasing a high end CF on high end Canons. Currently I have a 5DS. Previously 1DS Mk III.

jwr• 9 years ago

The problem is the lack of competition. Yes, you read that right: even though we have several "major competitors", they have reached a state of equilibrium, where they try to preserve the status quo as much as they can.

This isn't much different from the automotive market. All the cars are pretty much the same, except for Teslas. The DSLR world is waiting for their Tesla.

ringaroundthetx• 9 years ago

Sony's alpha series came out and disrupted this in some ways, breaking Canon and Nikon's duopoly of releasing the same camera every year even though the technology allowed for what they release 10 years ago prior.

I think Sony will continue innovating here, as long as people keep calling out the user experience problems.

Otherwise they will go into the incremental improvement phase too.

Animats2• 9 years ago

The camera people described are living in the past. They're talking about rigid mounts and tripods, not active stabilization. They're talking about aiming the camera, rather than taking a full spherical picture and selecting from that.

Here's a 360 degree camera on a gimbal mount [1] and a video taken with a similar rig.[2] View the video in 2160p, and click and drag the image to change the direction of view. No need to focus. No worries about depth of field. No need to aim. Not even that expensive.

Pointing the lens is so last-cen.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P69-mh-Jw6k [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTcx0OHehdE

heartbreak• 9 years ago

That channel is ridiculously over-sexualized.

Also 360° video is as much a gimmic as 3D video.

Animats2• 9 years ago

That's just the capture phase. You pick 2D images from the stream when editing.

nradov9• 9 years ago

Here's another dumb thing. The camera companies make things harder and more expensive for underwater photographers by making minor changes to size, shape, and control positioning in every new model. Much of this is just change for the sake of change and doesn't actually improve functionality. Every little change means photographers need a completely different waterproof housing. These are quite expensive, often more than the camera itself. So you see a lot of underwater photographers still using old cameras because even if they could afford a new camera they can't afford a new housing for it. The camera companies are missing out on those potential upgrade sales.

And one more dumb thing. They don't include internal GPS receivers or electronic compasses for geotagging even in fairly expensive models. The chips cost <$10 now so this is just a silly limitation. Add-on GPS receivers tend to be bulky and fragile.

alecdibble• 9 years ago

While GPS chips might seem like an obvious addition, it might negatively affect other camera functions like battery life.

tertius• 9 years ago

Many cameras have had GPS modules and none have suffered from this problem.

It's easily solved by polling infrequently (you don't move a lot when taking photos) and only polling when you're actually using your camera.

nradov9• 9 years ago

GPS can be turned off.

brians• 9 years ago

That has massive import/export implications, changes how you can ship them, all sorts of nonsense. As always, when a group of hundreds of smart engineers are doing something superficially inexplicable, it's actually either:

a) complicated, and a good idea, or b) complicated, because of the government.

vkjv• 9 years ago

If the author of this blog is here, there is a nice padding around the content at most breakpoints, but not at 1200px. It makes it very difficult to read.

dceddia2• 9 years ago

Here's another one: the 30-minute recording limit for video recordings. Apparently Panasonic fixed this in their GH4R [0], but it doesn't seem that Canon and Nikon have.

I was looking for a camera to record meetup talks, and I almost bought a new Canon 80d until I realized it couldn't go more than 30 minutes without restarting.

[0] http://cameras.reviewed.com/news/panasonics-gh4r-finally-kil...

jemfinch• 9 years ago

That's a heat-related issue; fixing it would require the ability to dissipate heat much faster (fans, etc.). That's one of the reasons why cinematic digital cameras are so much larger than DSLRs.

dceddia2• 9 years ago

I had read that it was tax-related, something about a higher tax on "video cameras" in Europe, and "30 minutes" was the defined limit.

Heat would make some sense too, but it's interesting that Canon and Nikon would both have the same heat issue that magically manifests after 29:59.

Mikeb852• 9 years ago

The dumbest thing they're doing is still making DSLRs. The mirror adds weight, the assembly can be a source of leaking light, it vibrates and wears out the camera, and offers no benefit of any sort. When the output comes from the sensor anyway, you might as well have a digital viewfinder that gives you the sensor's view.

one_redolent• 9 years ago

Oh god, don't get me started on this. Why can't we have modern day USB ports?

ultraviolet• 9 years ago

I can't wait until I have to worry about bluetooth attacks on my DSLR too.

whowouldathunk• 9 years ago

The dumbest is that their "auto" modes aren't as good as phones. I bought a Fuji X-T20 and am really disappointed with it; it is definitely capable of much better results than my phone as long as you have the time to switch all the knobs, which is way more annoying than I thought it would be and often not possible depending on your subject.

I have no desire to do any post-processing and didn't realize that most of the amazing photos I saw in camera reviews were the result of professional-level post-processing.

jbarham• 9 years ago

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

icanhackit• 9 years ago

While this article focuses on DSLR type cameras, one that I find odd is the lack of phase detection autofocus on compact/superzoom cameras that use 1/2.3" (7.66mm x 6.17mm) sensors when we've had it in our phones for 3-4 years? The only compacts/superzooms with fast/accurate contrast-detect AF are Panasonic's cameras that use their secret-herbs-and-spices Depth from Defocus AF.

And what about the lack of IBIS (In-Body Image-Stabilisation) in cameras like the D850? Many mirrorless cameras (and Pentax DSLRs...) allow you to use unstabilised old glass like Minolta lenses with excellent results thanks to IBIS. I understand Nikon has a wealth of stabilised lenses but it'd be nice to have a bulletproof camera feature-wise. Plus you could pair lens barrel stabilisation with IBIS as Panasonic does with the GH5 and G85 to create silky smooth gimbal-like footage or crisp slow shutter photos while hand-held.

I'm sure these things will come in time but they seem like they should have been here already. Everyone is playing musical chairs with features.

odbol_• 9 years ago

camera with Bluetooth

Enjoy your Blueborne security vulnerabilities. Because I'm sure you'll easily get a firmware update from Nikon from your 5 year old camera.

Also, since Apple breaks Bluetooth in pretty much every iOS release, something tells me you're not going to have fun trying to use your iPhone with your camera. Especially since cameras are designed to last decades, not a 2 year max like phones.

tenukitime• 9 years ago

This guy should write an article on technology in modern vehicles. (Excluding Tesla)

Dumb Things Camera Companies are Still Doing

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