One primary issue that we've seen with using smartphones as a primary camera is that you're forced to always shoot with a large depth of field, which means that you miss out on achieving that sought after bokeh for your close up or portrait shots.
I've actually been working with a team of former post-doc researchers who've been using SIFT flow techniques to estimate depth information in an image and apply filters to emulate different depths of field - effectively allowing for an image captured with a smartphone to look like it was shot with a different lens (see https://www.dropbox.com/s/7qhfgnwl08vtk63/compare.png?dl=0). We've got some pretty cool demos if anyone's interested.
Google's approach requires multiple images to be captured of the same subject from different angles in order to triangulate depth - our SIFT flow based approach can achieve similar performance using only a single image. This makes it as simple as capturing a normal image to capture one with an editable depth of field.
I assume that only goes for those situations where you are reducing depth of field. As in, sharper backgrounds or foregrounds can become blurry but not the other way around.
We've only looked at reducing the depth of field as the narrow aperture on smartphone cameras leads to an extended depth of field (meaning that everything is usually in focus within the frame).
That's fine, unless the last 5+ years of bokeh-fetishism has turned it into the modern-day equivalent of solar flare photoshops. It's basically a big "look how much lens I can afford!" dick-waving contest.
Since you're doing research, I'm sure you've seen the Lytro cameras. Maybe if they manage to get that technology into phones, it could really change the world. Samsung is already doing some stuff like recording photos several ms before/after the button was pressed, so you can do minor time-stream corrections. It's not long before DOF corrections through hardware or software comes along.
Bokeh can be overused, sure, but it still has its place. It helps immensely with separating the subject from the background and some (much better than me) photographers can do great things with narrow DoF. Beyond that, you don't even need that expensive a lens to get good narrow DoF. A nifty fifty is enough to get you there.
Nice, but I don't think the problem with soft edges are ever going to be solved satisfactorily. For instance, check the halo on the guy's hair next to the cabinet in your example. Or the shirt/cabinet edge. Besides, it looks like gaussian, not lens blur, in the background.
Even manually Photoshoped images often don't look perfect.
I think we simply need more data, it can't be done convincingly with a single lens/aperture shot. Maybe with multiple shots/focus points, but even then, I'm skeptical.
We're primarily targeting providing depth of field adjustment tools for video as having multiple frames of data to work with obviously makes the task easier (although we can still get great results with a single image).
We're also experimenting with other filters, not just Gaussian - it's the depth extraction part that we've been trying to innovate on.
Right, because it's the depth extraction part that's really hard. Particularly, the transitions. I haven't seen anything that struck me as natural, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
I'm pretty leery of faking depth of field since you can't blur in pixels that aren't there. What this really shows me is that sensor size is almost irrelevant when it comes to image quality now. Certainly a 1" sensor should be enough to satisfy most needs. It's all down to lenses and ergonomics now.
Even my six year old 5DMII shoots far better than my iPhone 6. Lenses, yes, but sensors too. With my 5DMII I've been able to pull the shop name off of a reflection of a guy's eye that I was doing a normal portrait for. There is far less photo AI magic going on in DSLRs to fake high quality results. Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the 6 for casual shots, but I still think it's much easier to get high quality from larger sensors.
If you're shooting with post-processing in mind, then that's another thing entirely.
> I've been able to pull the shop name off of a reflection of a guy's eye
Most needs, not occasional attempts to prove a point ;-)
We're at a point now where the latest M43 cameras can match the previous generation APS-C sensors (which exceed the 5dMk II, for example, in dynamic range and color depth, if not low light performance) -- if you're willing to lose a stop, that gets you below a 1" sensor.
I think Nikon's decision to make the 1-series was actually very good strategically (skating to where the puck is heading). I just think they've totally wasted their first mover advantage by failing to provide good bodies or lenses for enthusiasts. (I don't know why Nikon uses Aptina sensors instead of Sony -- it may be for the fast readout, since the first gen 1-series cameras could shoot full resolution at 60fps.)
There's two things I care about in a digital camera: low light performance, and dynamic range. I don't care about how much megapixels you can cram in there - if your lens is pixel-perfect, 6 is enough for most purposes anyway. The only reason I might want to upgrade from my Canon 40D is a drastically improved dynamic range, a compacter size and the ability to shoot movies. So far it's all not quite there yet to be worth it, from my point of view.
Plus, I'm having more fun developing my pictures taken with my Nikon FM2 anyway.
Ironically, recenty the Nokia approach with supersampling seems to have paid off most regarding low-light and dynamic range performance of phone cameras (especially dynamic range, which this article didn't address). I hope the others will catch up.
Is this still an issue? I can't recall using a camera made in the last 6 years that didn't take the picture near-instantly so long as you did the normal half-press prefocus, or used manual focus.
"Is this still an issue? I can't recall using a camera made in the last 6 years that didn't take the picture near-instantly so long as you did the normal half-press prefocus, or used manual focus."
This is absolutely still an issue. Go to your local camera store and play around with even a low-end 'fast' camera such as the Canon 7D and you'll see in no uncertain terms just how fast good SLRs are. Even Micro 4/3 cameras are catching up now.
Shutter latency is the single thing keeping point and shoot cameras, or smartphone cameras, from truly dominating.
I use SLR's pretty commonly, and I'm not sure how a 4/3's camera would be different given that as far as I'm aware they use a contrast-detection system that uses separate AF sensors, and not the imaging sensor. That's probably different for EVIL cameras, though.
Maybe we mean different things, though. There is a time between the half-press of the shutter and obtaining focus, and that can be half a second to several seconds depending on conditions. I don't consider that shutter lag, though - is this what you're referring to? I mean the time it takes to go from that half-press to a full press and capture the image.
On a 5 year old cheap Panasonic pocket camera I find that this time, half-press to full-press, is nearly imperceptible. Maybe I'm just fortunate, or not as discerning, though.
I disagree with lordbusiness - disregarding focusing time (as previous poster said, "half-press" the shutter first), EVIL/mirrorless cameras are going to be faster than SLRs unless incompetently engineered.
There are outliers like the NEX-5 which had a shutter lag of over 100ms, even when pre-focused, but the modern mirrorless equivalents of the 7D achieve less shutter lag.
A DSLR has the intrinsic problem of having to wait for the mirror to move out of the way before the image can be captured. The mirror mechanism's speed is limited by the strength and flexibility of its materials (too fast and it'll break), and the power level of the actuator moving it. Not to mention the faster you move the mirror the more slap you will get, causing vibrations in the camera that affect image quality. There is a "limit of physics and material science" problem inherent in SLRs.
A mirrorless camera has none of these disadvantages - and it shows, even the vaunted Canon 1D has a shutter lag between 40-50ms depending on model, while the Sony NEX-5N has a shutter lag of 22ms.
The Canon 7D lordbusiness brings up clocks in at ~70ms. In fact none of Canon's DSLRs can get below 40ms.
The Olympus E-M1 comes in at 50ms, as is the Fuji X-T1. Mirrorlesses already outperform even high-end DSLRs when it comes to shutter lag. And they will continue to get faster as more mirrorlesses move to electronic instead of mechanical shutters.
Shutter latency is the single thing keeping point and shoot cameras, or smartphone cameras, from truly dominating.
That depends on the use case. A couple years ago I took a train ride across the country, taking photos from the observation car with a P&S camera. The shutter latency was absolutely infuriating.
On the other hand, when I'm doing a landscape on a tripod with remote shutter release, I wouldn't even notice if it took an extra second or two.
IMHO, the biggest thing is control, of which shutter latency is just one facet. All the other stuff about aperture, ISO sensitivity, pre-focus, etc. come into play in various use cases.
The point is they also dominate in a metric where they shouldn't: the number of 'missed moments'. I can't count how many pictures I simply discard because they were taken 1/4 second after the point in time where they should have been. I keep trying but it's a constant source of frustration.
Absolutely. Nothing beats an old fashioned film based camera with the shutter pre-wound (yes, that's hell on the shutter life but it makes for it up with all those moments you caught instead of missed).
Just switching the camera 'on' takes too much time.
I don't really believe that shutter-lag is such an issue that it gives film camera's a defining edge.
My M3 lags 16ms, but you need to focus it yourself obviously, my flagship Canon is slower at 40ms, but has autofocus and hammers out images at an insane amount per second.
My fuji viewfinder cam is infuriatingly slow compared to the beast above, but I feel I have only myself to blame for any missed moments.
Yep. Nothing worse than bringing up the camera when you need it most and all you see is a black screen or the phone restarts. I'm talking about you iPhone!!!
Mechanical optical stablization does not help with shutter lag. It helps if the camera is moving during the shot, but it does not compensate for the delay between when you wanted to take the shot and when your smartphone actually took the shot, which can result in the shot being missed, or the shot being blurry because the subject started moving.
I doubt super-sampling beats Google's HDR+ [1] in either range or speed (the 1020 takes about 4 seconds per "normal" picture). The 1020 does have much better details and such, but that's most likely due to a 4x bigger sensor and higher quality lens.
Those 4 seconds are due to post-processing one sensor image. Google's HDR+ combines multiple images in a novel way to create a higher dynamic range. In theory you could use that with the Nokia camera as well.
>The only reason I might want to upgrade from my Canon 40D is a drastically improved dynamic range, a compacter size and the ability to shoot movies. So far it's all not quite there yet to be worth it, from my point of view.
There are modern high-megapixel sensors (2-3x) in much more compact cameras with 2-3x the high-ISO performance and 2-3 stops more dynamic range. If that's not a drastic improvement what is?
The idea that the MP race has given us worse cameras seems very prevalent but doesn't seem to be based on fact. The current crop of Sony full-frame sensors shows that very well:
The 36MP sensor is better in all respects than the 24MP one. The 12MP sensor has great high-iso performance at the cost of resolution, dynamic range and color quality.
I could definitely use the 2 stops more dynamic range and the 5x high-iso performance for day to day shooting. I'd love to have the good video as well sometimes. The 3x resolution wouldn't be too bad either from time to time, although it would take a bigger toll on the processing side (storage for the files and CPU usage for the raw conversion).
Take a look at the Sony A7S, it's dynamic range and low light performance are quite impressive. Reviewers seem impressed with it's video capabilities as well, though I only shoot stills.
TL;DR: "[T]he iPhone 5S currently sits 8-9 years behind the DLSRs in bright light, while the Nokia [Lumia 1020] trails by less than 6 years — probably nearer to 3."
"Step into candlelight, [...] the iPhone trails the DSLRs by about 10 years, and the Nokia about 8. "
For anyone working with or on computer vision applications, the difference is startling obvious: anything with a lens larger than the typical mobile phone/tablet slightly-larger-than-a-pinhole produces useful images, whereas mobile camera images are impressionistic blotchy messes. The reason they have such high megapixels is to hide that their pixel quality is piss-poor. I retain a consumer Canon A40 purchased in '98 for use with computer vision purposes; the highest resolution image it produces is 1024x768 - BUT EVERY SINGLE PIXEL IS STABLE AND CORRECTLY COLOR TONED. There is no blotchy pixel clumps revealed with a zoom. I also have access to a Nikon D7100, and my old Canon A40 produces more stable pixels and is better for computer vision.
Indeed. It's almost like the intended use case of a phone in your pocket, piggy-backing on the same device you use to call your friends or tell the time, is something other than computer vision.
I mean, I'm all for well-applied snobbery and picking the correct tools for the job. But, come on. A 30-second perusal of cute family photos on Facebook and a comparison to the photo album you used 15 years ago will tell you exactly what these devices are good for.
In my experience it's not "minor" it's more like "You need to just send me a text with that 10 digit number because we've tried 3 times and I've yet to copy 2 of the digits."
So, it seems physics has imposed a correlation between lens size and pixel quality. Makes sense. I have seen snap-on lens attachments for smartphones. Can anyone attest that those do or do not significantly improve the issues that bsenftner described?
I haven't seen a great data-driven review of the different smartphone cameras and accessory lenses, but there have been some attempts. Seems like the Schneider and ALPA are best (but pricey), with Olloclip coming in as a decent cheap choice. But to my eyes, reviews like this show the many depressing weaknesses of smart phone cameras:
Sure the tiny sensors of gadgets have come a long way, but looking at it from the other perspective: what are the trends in enthusiast "big" cameras? Basically it's sensor growing. This is of course mainly driven by shrinking costs of manufacturing sensors, but there is still a huge cost in terms of bulk and weight to carry a camera with a 35mm sensor. Yet this is still something people want to do.
Sadly photography is still very much a physics game, and while there is some room for improvement in sensor tech, and cheating e.g with multiple exposures, even a ten-fold increase in dynamic range and sensitivity wouldn't make large sensors obsolete.
I wonder how long it will be until a smartphone manufacturer introduces multiple sensors connected by an interferometer. If you take one of the 6-inchish smartphones on the market, that would give you a massive virtual aperture size, allowing fantastic resolution.
Well yes, but this is more about improving performance precisely fr that use case - zoom is the one thing that really lacks in a modern smartphone camera. If you can now resolve detail at a much greater distance, then you effectively have your zoom.
That's more a crop that gives you more "reach" than a true telephoto though. Of course most people just want more reach and don't really care for perspective when they say "zoom", so sensor array could definitely work for that. Also since a phone is just the right size to record stereo for vr as well, which is also bound to be the next big thing. Two sensors isn't far fetched given several applications for them, and low cost
This. to quote my father (who is actually a professional photographer): Pissy lens; pissy photo.
You need chunks of glass at the moment regardless of sensor size. I carry a basic DSLR around with me (D3100) and a decent but cheap lens (AF-S DX 18-55) and a shit smartphone. They cost less than a good smartphone and the results are amazing.
I was under the impression that there are basically not enough photons at the sizes that most smart phones sensors are. Once you get to low light levels a tiny sensor just can't be fed enough photons to give a good picture.
Sure. The more glass you have the more photons you can gather. I have a f1.2 50mm lense and the amount of photons it can pull in is amazing. There is no way any phone is going to be able to replicate this.
Lenses have to be a certain size of the sensors and apertures are a certain size. And those sizes are fixed, for a given image (with a specific depth of field etc). So physics (the optics) is a thing. A breakthrough in optics that removed the need for heavy glass to bend light would be a revolution.
The quality of your shot on a DSLR is, in many ways, a function of the glass you put on it. Do you have a stock 70-200 that you paid $500, or a fast-prime that you paid $2000 for? 99.99% of people don't put an external lens on their smartphone, so, that pretty much ends the conversation right there.
And there are entire arenas of photography that aren't even possible on a smartphone - wildlife photography is pretty much the zone of the 800mm+ lenses.
Really - so much of photography is about the lens, and honestly, except for low-light photography, the average $2k digital body from 2005 will get the job done today.
I've found that a lot of DSLR owners end up just sticking with the stock lens. Lenses are really expensive and stock lenses are usually pretty adaptable. For this reason, I've begun to prefer high-end point-and-shoots like the Powershot G16; it has many more features and much better processing abilities than my old Digital Rebel, and since realistically I'm not going to lug around the DSLR and 5+ lenses for any situation that may arise, I've found P&S cameras to be much more convenient and very versatile.
I would only use my DSLR if I knew I would need to photograph some circumstance that my P&S couldn't handle. I know this makes me a black sheep within the photography community and there are lots of people who like to make fun of me for it, but the reality is that unless you're trying to get a specific shot, a versatile, general-purpose lens is all you take with you on your DSLR anyway, and you're better off using the lighter, smaller, cheaper P&S.
For the vast majority of low end DSLR shooters, buying a fast prime lense (eg. 35mm 1.8 for 1.5x smaller sensor) will have the biggest single impact on their photography. It gives them much more headroom in low light and much shallower DoF for portraits.
It's also much smaller and lighter than the chunky 18-55 the camera probably comes with.
I can't upvote this enough. The owner of something old like an EOS 10D would be far better served investing $1000 better glass than they would upgrading their body. I purchased the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM for my EOS 10D ($400), and spent the next two years taking completely new pictures. The pictures that I took with my EOS 7D didn't look that much different from the EOS 10D (though the faster focus and startup was greatly appreciated)
The only problem with a fast prime lens is that it can be "too fast" - i.e., super shallow DoF (e.g.: in a portrait, parts of the face are in focus while others are already seeing bokeh).
The Canon 50mm 1.4 is in this range - you need to be very good to avoid the super-sharp DoF.
Personally, the best benefit of a DSLR is the external (bouncable) flash. That's something that smartphones aren't going to solve anytime soon.
Who are these people who regularly take photos at f1.8? At least with a full-frame sensor you'd almost always want more depth of field that that. Having a super-wide aperture may be an indicator of lens quality but it's not all that much use in itself.
I loved the pictures I could take with my f1.4 - particularly macro photography, insects, flowers, etc.. but also low-light portrait photography. The f1.4 lets in a ton of light, and shoots really fast, so you can get a low-light portrait with great bokeh. The second best lens I ever purchased for my camera was the Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM.
Bokeh is kind of subjective, so I won't argue that. If you're not using full frame then maybe having some wider apertures is useful for that, but I would think you'd almost always want more depth of field than f1.4 would give you.
Apart from that, you're only letting in around three more stops of light than a kit lens and half a stop more than a cheap 50mm prime. You can almost always work around that with some combination of (i) underexposing, (ii) using a slower shutter speed and (iii) bumping up the ISO.
People used to say the same things about f1.4 lenses before digital, but the fact is that shooting at ISO 800 you can get the same overall sensitivity/quality balance at f4 with a digital camera that you could at f1.4 with a film camera.
If you spend all your time trying to shoot fast moving completely-flat things in the dark -- and you can somehow focus fast enough at f1.4 -- then maybe f1.4 is useful, but that isn't representative of most photography.
I was about to write this same thing. For $200 you can get either the Nikon or Cannon version of the 35mm and greatly improve every picture you take. It also opens up a lot of artistic options with DoF and lighting.
With a nifty-fifty on it ($100), I was able to make poster-size prints that looked perfect (no jaggies) at 1-foot viewing distance.
6 megapixels!
So yep, totally agree that the body will get the job done.
You also need quite a lot of skill to be able to make the sensor look bad. For me personally, if something doesn't look good, it's my fault. I missed focus or exposed poorly.
That said, my camera sucks so bad in low-light. 5D MKII here I come...
I still shoot with a Digital Rebel XT as well, generally with a 28mm/1.8 but I also have a 50mm/1.4. I just finished a two week trip doing entirely street photography with the 28mm and an iPhone 6.
No question, the Canon wins in everything except ease of use. I don't use it to take a snapshot of some street food dish, I reach for my phone. But for walking around Taipei street markets at night the iPhone doesn't come close. The low light performance of a large sensor with a wide-aperture lens is superb, even with a camera that's now 10 years old (still going strong!).
But placing a cheap lens on a DSLR is basically crippling it. You might get some low-light advantages and a bit faster focus speed - but the entire purpose of a DSLR is to let you use the best lens for the situation. I read the review when it originally came out, and, while impressed with the hard work they put into it - It just felt like so much of an apples vs oranges comparison that I didn't get what they were trying to do.
One might claim that a $1,700 lens is a cheap lens. A fast prime for wildlife would be something along the lines of a 600mm f2.8. That's a $12,000 Canon lens.
Despite major hardware drawbacks such as much smaller sensors and cheap lenses, I think computational photography will play a big role in shrinking the gap with current gen DSLR's too, over the next decade. We are slowly managing to put bigger and bigger sensor sizes in phones, too, without any compromises in design, as Sony has shown with its 1/2.3" sensors in the Xperia Z series [1].
Maybe in 2-3 years a 2/3" sensor will fit just as well, too. Again, I'm talking about no compromises in design. I know there are already 1" sensors in some smartphones such as the Panasonic Lumix DMC-CM1 [2], but despite myself being fine with buying such a phone, I assume most OEMs or smartphone customers have no interest in those.
Not sure if it's what you meant by computational, but some pocket cameras already apply software correction to known lens distortions. The Sony RX100, for instance, which is presumably how they can have a 1" sensor and very bright lens in a really small camera.
> We are slowly managing to put bigger and bigger sensor sizes in phones, too, without any compromises in design
It helps that the phones are getting bigger. The camera in my Nexus 5 is a ton better than in my old Blackberry Pearl, but the phone is also twice the horizontal size.
I have a Pentax K-50 DSLR and a Pentax ME Super 35mm SLR. I love the pictures from the DSLR, but the size and feel of the film camera cannot be beat. It's about half the size of the K-50 and all the controls are quite simple.
Developing film is fun too, kind of nerve-wracking because you're pouring in chemicals blind but then you open it up and pull out this lovely strip of negatives and you can see it all came out OK.
I'm curious why they didn't include any medium format cameras (let alone large format cameras with movements ... how much does a 4x5 digital back cost?).
For under $2000, you can get a new 6x7 rangefinder with fixed lens and you'll pull tons more detail out of a slide or negative that large than you would out of a 35mm slide/neg.
If you're willing to buy used (and why wouldn't you considering they're using digital cameras from 2003 in this review) you can get an awesome medium format or large format system for under $1000.
I basically agree with you, but the price is a bit misleading if you don't include the cost of the scanner. I love shooting medium format, but on my $250 Epson the results are barely better (in terms of resolution) than I get from my iPhone 4S. Getting all the detail out of a negative usually works out pretty expensive. (Wet printing is cheap way to do it but it's really time consuming.)
I agree, scanning can be expensive (I've got a Coolscan for 35mm and I'm eyeing a v700 for 4x5).
But if prints are the desired end result, it's still less than $10 to develop and print a roll of 35mm film. What's the price and cost of an inkjet, paper and ink carts?
Then again, if all you're doing is taking quick snapshots to upload to instagram, just use whatever smartphone you have and don't bother buying an actual camera.
Yes, if you want prints then film is still an economical option. I think 120 film is kind of awkward for scanning because there are no affordable dedicated film scanners which handle it but it's still not quite big enough to get really good results from a flatbad. (It's tough to get more than 1200dpi of real resolution out of a flatbed and that only gives you 8MP for 6x6 negatives.)
I don't understand why these sorts of comparisons always contain wild exaggerations regarding differences in lens quality. For example, the author claims that the following pair of corner crops (which differ only in the lens used) illustrate a "dramatic" difference in sharpness:
In fact there is no actual detail that is visible in the one image but not the other (especially given the "smudging" from the noise reduction). The small difference in contrast (if this isn't just due to a change in lighting conditions) is easily fixed in Photoshop. All of this is to be expected given that both lenses are being used at f8 here, and any half-decent lens will give good sharpness across the whole image at that aperture.
One of the things that worry me, as I still enjoy shooting and am perfectly satisfied with my 6 megapixel DSLR camera, is programmed obsolescence. My camera, bought in 2006, is perfectly fine, the shutter still has a long way to go before hitting the 100 thousand actuations (it's just about halfway - and it may be repaired in the event it breaks), and I don't see the point why it may just stop functioning in a couple years. I also have a fancy new 24mp D5200, but I still find the old one useful - this thing is irritating.
I noticed the infamous symbol (two arrows surrounding a friendly "10") on the bottom of most of the DSLR camera models currently on sale from major manufacturers (Nikon, Canon, Sony) - with the possible exception of Pentax.
I hadn't known about this symbol before. It turns out to be the "China RoHS" (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) required by Chinese law. It estimates the shortest EFUP (Environmentally Friendly Use Period) of any component within the item. The reason that it's not on your 2006 camera is that the law came into effect in 2007.
From what I can tell, it's an estimate of the time after manufacture that the item can be safely recycled, and is independent of the useful lifespan of the item. And it seems that for legal compliance the manufacturers usually use a standard number suggested for the product category rather than actually calculating the specifics for the item: http://www.electronicsweekly.com/directive-decoder/china-roh...
If Pentax doesn't have the symbol, it's probably because they are not manufacturing or selling in China, rather than a difference in the construction. If the construction was different (and if they were adhering to the protocol) they'd have an 'e' inside the arrows rather than a number.
Thank you for the information. From your link: "the EFUP is the period of time before any of the RoHS substances are likely to leak out, causing possible harm to health and the environment - See more at: http://www.electronicsweekly.com/directive-decoder/china-roh...
"
The reason is the 10 years - somewhere in the electronics of the camera, some components (like capacitors, etc.) employ some different materials/process so that it is more environment-friendly once disposed. This is good, except that it means they will quietly fail in about 10 years (of course, from manufacturing date, not from when I bought the camera). The net result is, the camera will soon stop working despite being in excellent condition and, after 10 years, will at least require servicing. A currently 25 years old SLR will still be perfectly working!!!
I am not 100% sure you can classified this as planned obsolescence. It is the nature of the product. ie, the capacitors used only have a relative short life and will fail within 10 years. Just like the SLR will stop working, just much more later in time. It is just the way it is.
Planned obsolescence would be if the camera manufacturer specifically design to product to stop working in a specific time frame. They might do this for commercial, legal or safety reasons.
This is why people are willing to spend so much more on glass than camera bodies. The glass will continue to work forever, and depreciate very little relative to the camera which, like every gadget, will be "worthless" in 4 years.
The Sigma DP3M has a foveon sensor instead of a regular sensor with bayer filter array. It's based on different wavelengths of light penetrating silicon to different depths, which means that all 3 colours are stacked on top of each other, so you don't have to throw away 3/4 of your photons just because they happen to be a different colour than the dot they fall on.
At low ISO the image quality is amazing, at high ISO it's very noisy. Also, the red channel is much noisier than the blue one.
In bright light outside, I expected a fair fight between the phones and DSLRs. In dim light, I expected the DSLRs to eat the phones for breakfast.
So, how do they compare? I thought I knew. It turned out that I was completely wrong. Read on to find the answers.
In what way was he completely wrong? DSLRs eat the phones for breakfast in dim light, while they have a narrowish margin (against Lumia 1020) in bright light. The first page sets you up for a surprise, but it never comes.
Of course, the lens you put on the DSLR makes as big a difference as you're willing to invest. That's why they'll never really be comparable.
> Of course, the lens you put on the DSLR makes as big a difference as you're willing to invest. That's why they'll never really be comparable.
For a layperson, I don't think this is true. It takes a professional to extract the extra difference between say, a 50mm f/1.8 (~$100) and 50mm f/1.2 (~$1500). In fact, if I handed them both to a newbie, I'd expect them to do better with the 1.8. Myself included.
That said, the f/1.8 is a bit exceptional, especially for its price.
50mm is an aberration, it is the only glass you can get <f/1.8 affordably (35mm are ok in this regard as well). Go check out the price of a <=f/2 100m+, which is much more suited to portrait, macro, etc. Then go look at <f/4 for 200m+ for wildlife and sports. Now you see why it is so damn expensive to be a professional photographer, and why the average person isnt posting stunning wildlife or safari shots to their facebook wall.
> The graph is misleading at first glance because the phones and the cameras sit on different scales...
> Note that the scales for the DSLRs and the phones are different and not directly comparable...
It looks like graph is misleading at second glance too. :)
Author is comparing the steepness of the curves, which is closely related to scale. If you change the scale for phones you can make their progress much slower.
Not saying the phones won't reach DSLRs in terms of image quality, just that this graph should not be interpreted in this way.
While there is clearly a sensor gap, this actually sounds like a huge and valuable application problem. DSLRs are not conventionally software extensible, while phones are...
The processing of dslr photos usually takes place outside the camera (raw conversion etc.), so my requirements for in-camera processing are quite small for a dslr. For my smartphone on the other hand I need pictures usable directly (typically).
Isn't that because DSLR manufacturers don't want people with an entry level phone getting the same software as the pro-sumer phone, or the pro-sumers upgrading software to the pro version?
Most of them offer something a smartphone does not: optical zoom. This is part of why images aren't tack sharp: a cheap wide angle zoom is hard to make.
If you need a 3x zoom lens in a $200 camera this is what you want. So while not obsolete, it's likely the segment being eaten quickest by smartphones.
Put the other way around: if you can live with a fixed lens then $200 likely gets you something that has higher image quality than a phone, due to larger sensor and higher quality lenses.
They can still have additional features like waterproof and shockproof. Also the low price and single use means you'll use it in occasions you wouldn't bring your precious smartphone.
it is becoming more and more a niche, but there is room to evolve.
I think there's always a place for hardware dedicated for a particular task. Most of my relatives either don't have a smartphone or they still use the basic flip phones, so a simple compact camera simplifies things for them. I have friends that Instagram with their smartphones, but they still want a dedicated point and shoot for vacation purposes and events. While iPhone and Nokia may have a 6 year gap, the other mobile phones probably lag another 3 years behind them.
If you're comparing a $200 compact to a $200 phone, then chances are high that the compact is still better, keeping in mind that you're paying $200 for only the camera that you still have to take with you.
If you're comparing a phone that has high-end specs in every way, plus a good camera, and costs $600, that camera should be better than most $200 compacts at this point.
I think the game is over for compacts, even if all you can afford is a $200-$300 subsidized phone, and not a high-end one. My new Moto G 2014 takes quite good pictures with very little noise.
Not only is the game over for compacts, but many people who perhaps before would've bought a sub-$1,000 DSLR to take vacation pictures, now don't feel the need to do tat anymore if they have a current-generation high-end phone that costs $600-$700, even if that $1,000 DSLR would be significantly better.
The $600 phone cameras have become "good enough" for many people, except for those perhaps that have no trouble buying a $600 phone and a $1,000, or $2,000 or $3,000 DSLR to take with them in vacations.
If I were the CEO of a camera company, I would've started focusing on the smartphone market 3+ years ago, from multiple angles: making my own "cameraphone" (such as Lumix CM1), selling "low-end" lenses for smartphones (that should still be significantly better than the ones others make for smartphones right now, that don't have experience in high-end cameras), and through other type of know-how/technology licensing that would help smartphone companies accelerate how good their phone cameras become - with my company cashing in on all of that.
Out of Sony, Nikon, Canon, Panasonic, Samsung and so on, Sony is perhaps the best suited to do that. Not only are its smartphone sensors already highly popular, but it's also one of the top high-end camera makers. They also have their own smartphone company, so they have smartphone know-how, while others like Nikon or Panasonic don't. They could have so much synergy from that.
Unfortunately, Sony's strategy in this is complete crap. The fact that their smartphone sensors are the most popular is probably mostly a coincidence, or inertia from bygone times, because none of the other strategies match it.
Instead of making its own ultra-high-end cameraphone, Sony makes dumb camera accessories that nobody wants to use. Nokia received a lot of praise for its big bold 1020 camera, which had a halo effect on all of its other smartphones, too. Instead of trying to be recognized as having the best cameras, at least in the Android world, Sony rarely reaches top 3, because of bad software. And things are somewhat okay at the high-end, but all of their other phones have terrible cameras (both software and hardware).
Sony is in a unique smartphone/camera intersection and they aren't anywhere near close to taking full advantage of it. Apple continuously beats them, even though Apple uses Sony's own sensors that are one or even two generations behind Sony's current smartphone sensors. To be honest, that's a complete disgrace. If I were Sony's CEO and I'd be in charge of such a disgrace for a few years already, I'd probably quit myself in shame - especially if I was Japanese (who, I think still care about honor and such things?) - and let someone better take charge.
The inability of electronics companies to get to grips with software has to be one of the biggest, and saddest, stories of the past thirty years of industrial history.
I shot using Velvia 50 for many years (as mentioned in this article) and still yearn for that combination of grain/saturation - at least I think that's it, it's quite hard to put my finger on what was/is so fantastic about that particular film.
I've actually been working with a team of former post-doc researchers who've been using SIFT flow techniques to estimate depth information in an image and apply filters to emulate different depths of field - effectively allowing for an image captured with a smartphone to look like it was shot with a different lens (see https://www.dropbox.com/s/7qhfgnwl08vtk63/compare.png?dl=0). We've got some pretty cool demos if anyone's interested.