yes but you can turn all that stuff off.
imagine shooting with a nikon z series or a sony alpha, etc. and then having some wacky AI bokeh added in. no thank you. i'll add my bokeh in with expensive lenses please.
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The future of digital cameras
- Thread starter jwolf6589
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imagine shooting with a nikon z series or a sony alpha, etc. and then having some wacky AI bokeh added in. no thank you. i'll add my bokeh in with expensive lenses please.
The higher up the food chain you go on cameras, the less thinking-for-you they do.
The only real exception to that is things like eye/face detect AF and 3D focus tracking, which of course are better on higher end cameras. Still, though, I'm with the others who don't want my camera thinking for me unless I give it specific parameters in which to do so.
One of the keys too with the more automated types of AF is that they're super easy to over-ride. I don't mean going into a menu and turning them off, but I mean that if it picks or tracks wrong, you can just grab the focus ring and get it to where you want.
Of course for action I also use back-button AF(I've been getting into the habit of using it for everything just so that I'm not caught off guard when I pick up a camera so configured and it doesn't focus the way I expect) which gives a ton of freedom to stop, start, and hold focus independent of shutter release. A lot of lenses-my 70-200mm f/2.8 is my only one this way, but there are a lot of other lenses out there-have buttons to hold/lock focus when you get what you want.
The only real exception to that is things like eye/face detect AF and 3D focus tracking, which of course are better on higher end cameras. Still, though, I'm with the others who don't want my camera thinking for me unless I give it specific parameters in which to do so.
One of the keys too with the more automated types of AF is that they're super easy to over-ride. I don't mean going into a menu and turning them off, but I mean that if it picks or tracks wrong, you can just grab the focus ring and get it to where you want.
Of course for action I also use back-button AF(I've been getting into the habit of using it for everything just so that I'm not caught off guard when I pick up a camera so configured and it doesn't focus the way I expect) which gives a ton of freedom to stop, start, and hold focus independent of shutter release. A lot of lenses-my 70-200mm f/2.8 is my only one this way, but there are a lot of other lenses out there-have buttons to hold/lock focus when you get what you want.
My response was in regard to dedicated cameras needing to have more smartphone features. They basically have most of them already, and you typically get more granular control over each one, too. It’s not so much a comment about whether we use them or not, but more that we can if we really want to, and dedicated cameras aren’t “missing out” like it seems. The one advantage smartphones will likely always have over dedicated cameras of any kind is the instantaneous accessibility of the photo for sharing purposes. I think that’s what really adds to the appeal of using the phone as a camera. Not to say they take bad photos, but I think convenience really wins out. I’d go as far as to say that you could probably take all the AI features out of smartphones and they’d still be the primary choice for most people, because it’s just so easy to snap and share in the very format people use to share such content. Anyone still have a sleeve of photos in their wallet? 
I don’t use most of these extra features either. I do use face detect, but not animal detect, but that’s largely because I prefer to shoot candids where the moment is there and gone in an instant. I give the wild animals a sporting change to evade capture.
I don’t use most of these extra features either. I do use face detect, but not animal detect, but that’s largely because I prefer to shoot candids where the moment is there and gone in an instant. I give the wild animals a sporting change to evade capture.
Agree in the sense that you always must have the option. But when looking at night pictures from my iPhone 12 and my Canon FF RP there is not a comparison. The iPhone wins hands down.
There are features like night mode or that you can adjust the aperture after taking the picture or for example there is landscape mode. Many great features my iPhone has that my Canon RP lacks.
To be clear - of course I want to be able to have everything in full manual and being able to take RAW. But I think there are features they must add to stay competitive
To be clear - of course I want to be able to have everything in full manual and being able to take RAW. But I think there are features they must add to stay competitive
but aren't those just in-phone bracketing? sure it's faster on a phone, but i'd rather bracket manually.
More stacking than bracketing, but pretty similar. And yes, you can do it all manually, but I'd really love if the camera had a way to do it in-camera. I've got an Intel Mac, so it may be a lot faster on the M1s, but it's actually really time consuming to do manually and match the iPhone's quality. Generally if I think I'll need a 2" exposure, I'll set it to 1/30", and take 60 (!) handheld shots. Then you open them in Photoshop, auto-align layers, smart object, blending mode median, save. That process takes about 30 minutes of just waiting for Photoshop to do its thing! Meanwhile on the iPhone you hold the camera still for 2 seconds, and then about a second later it's done! Of course this is mostly a problem with the RX100, if I'm carrying a big camera now I've got an R6 which can just take a 2" handheld single exposure just fine with the lens IS + IBIS combo. Image stabilization on mirrorless cameras has gotten so good that stacking isn't really necessary!
If your getting better pictures on your iPhone I’d say you are using the wrong settings on your Canon.
You'd also never be able to make a clean wall print of a night image mode from a phone.
but your needs/wants may differ than mine. i don't print a lot, but i like the ability to print whenever i want to.
Agreed. iPhone pictures look good on an iPhone screen. Any bigger and things deteriorate. I suspect the algorithm the software uses, is designed to make it look good on an iPhone screen.
Night Mode uses a technique (among other things) called exposure stacking (or sometimes long exposure stacking). It's different from the bracketing HDR uses during the day. It essentially takes a bunch of photos at exactly the same settings (say 1/30" ISO 6400) where there will be no motion blur but a lot of high ISO noise. Then you can align all of the photos and average them. When you do this the noise from the high ISO is averaged out. If you take two 1/30" photos at ISO 6400 and average them, you're left with essentially the same you'd get with one 1/15" exposure at ISO 3200. The advantage of doing it this way is that you can align the photos before averaging, so if you move the camera there's no motion blur.
There's certainly still a limit to how big you can blow up a phone photo, obviously, but that's getting better every year. If I had to chose between my R6 and my iPhone, of course I'd always choose my R6. But I'd love if my R6 could do some of the stuff the iPhone could do in addition to having a large sensor (and of course a way to turn it off when I want full control).
And even now, I think you're not giving the phone enough credit. Usually if I have the big camera I use the big camera, and if I don't I'm glad to have the iPhone. But I did take a comparison shot when I first got an iPhone with night mode just to see the difference:
Can you tell the difference? Absolutely! But one was taken handheld with an iPhone. The other was with a tripod, R6, and 35mm f/1.8. Of course I'll take the R6 photo over the iPhone any day. But if I got somewhere cool and realized I forgot my tripod quick release (which has happened!) I'd still like the ability to get something.
What I really want is Apple Photos or some other Mac app that realizes people take photos like bracketed, panorama, long exposure, etc., and use some of the AI to line them up, just as the iPhone does. So if I dump 10 photos in and click panorama, I don't have to align and mask the edges, the app just understands.
I guess I want the smarts that Apple has designed into it's camera app, but standalone so I can use my pictures from my real camera.
Probably one of the many features of photoshop I've never seen, even though I spend literally every workday working in Photoshop.
Could you point me toward a youtube video?
I don't watch many videos but in the Edit menu there are options for Auto Align and Auto Blend; I use both of these depending on my needs. You could google those terms to find videos. ? Sorry I have used them for a few years and don't really like to watch editing videos.
I’d say it needs to look good on at least an iPad screen, as that is another oft-used consumption device, but yes, the number of people printing photos is probably at a pretty low mark now too. I don’t see any talk about the ”future of the photo printing” industry though.
I still like to print images, especially to give to people, but I think the iPad screen is actually a higher bar! I generally don't print above 16x24, and at home I can't print above 13x19. Especially at 13x19 but even at 16x24 I think you can get away with a lower quality image printed than viewed on an iPad! And the M1 iPad is supposed to have an even better screen than the one I have!
But I can definitely tell the difference between the iPhone and R6 shots on the iPad, even if they look similar on the iPhone screen.
There's an interview published today with Go Tokura from Canon on DPR about the their future of digital cameras. Seemed pretty relevant to this thread (both the more current discussion and the title) talking a bit about AI/computational photography, but also that they're still planning on focusing on good optics that can get photos right without any AI magic.
That's certainly what I want in a camera! Something that's capable of getting everything right with just good optics/large sensor, but also when you turn the dial to a different mode can do some magic to enable things that aren't possible yet.
www.dpreview.com
That's certainly what I want in a camera! Something that's capable of getting everything right with just good optics/large sensor, but also when you turn the dial to a different mode can do some magic to enable things that aren't possible yet.
Canon interview: 'Development of compact devices supporting 8K is a very high priority'
As part of our ongoing series of executive interviews at major camera and lens companies, we talked recently with Go Tokura, Chief Executive of the Image Communication Business Operations at Canon.
Good optics and a decent-sized sensor, absolutely! That makes all the difference..... Along with, of course, the photographer's ability and technical skills.....
They can look good even considerably larger than an iPhone screen (even remembering that the iPhone screen is extremely detailed, more than our monitors). And of course things improve even more if you shoot raw and then use proper profiling, etc before printing.
For a very good comparison of the iPhone 12 Pro in night mode vs Nikon 750 and 850, see here: https://www.northcoastjournal.com/N...s-iphone-12-pro-night-mode-vs-nikon-d750-d850
The TL;DR is that the Nikons of course have better resolution, and more detail and less noise at night. But the iPhone smashes them with long handheld exposures, like 10 seconds. So if you forgot your tripod, at least make sure you've got that iPhone in your pocket it might save the day, as long as you're only doing small prints.
Not true ... any lens you would put on a Nikon D750 or D850 will usually have VR capabilities. Not a fair comparison at all.
I'd contend that the greatest advantage you mentioned are the least technical ones. It's the manual controls and handling. At some point, especially with the help of computational photography, smartphones will close the gap entirely, but if I'm shooting an event, there's no way I'd even try doing so on a phone. I just won't be fast enough. On a phone, I'm never going to be able to spin around and shoot at some fast action I saw out of the corner of my eye and expect to come away with a good photo.
Here is an interesting concept that you can preorder. Takes my M43 lenses and everything!
alice.camera
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