Generally speaking smartphones already took over photography.
Only small minority of crazies like myself are still shooting with cameras because it's more fun and smartphones are still limited in many areas (photography at night, photography of distant objects, etc.).
There’s probably a lot more you can do with a phone camera than I know, but I think it’s super boring to take photos with the phone. There’s no way to hold it properly and I miss the creative process I get with the camera. I’ve never been impressed with phone photos when you enlarge them on a screen either.
I switched to mirrorless because of the smaller size but don’t think I’ll ever switch to only using the phone.
There’s probably a lot more you can do with a phone camera than I know, but I think it’s super boring to take photos with the phone. There’s no way to hold it properly and I miss the creative process I get with the camera. I’ve never been impressed with phone photos when you enlarge them on a screen either.
I switched to mirrorless because of the smaller size but don’t think I’ll ever switch to only using the phone.
I hate using the phone for photos. I don't care if the latest smartphone can be enlarged to billboard size. I am used to the pro class cameras and over the years the combination of a pro-grade camera, stellar glass, and a wife who owned a pro lab which often did huge enlargements on her Fuji pro enlargement system which made prints 40" wide up to 140' long. Maybe she could do that with a smartphone image but as the Emperor said to Mozart in the movie Amadeus, "show us".
I didn't read the article fully but just skimmed it lightly. but other than the very beginning where they present a pros/cons list for dSLR vs. Phone, there was really nothing in that article that I saw that was phone-centric. Meaning, yes a lot of that stuff is happening with phones, but was there any single innovation in that list that couldn't be easily implemented in a more traditional camera body?
If anything the article simply points out that mobile phone manufacturers are being much more innovative and quick to get those innovations out to the masses than a lot of traditional camera manufacturers who sadly seem to be stuck in the 1990/2000s. Of course there will now always be more people with phones than cameras and certainly phones have made quality photography more accessible to many more people who may not have otherwise shown any interest in taking photos. But nothing is stopping Olympus, Sony, Canon, et al. from putting this sort of forward thinking, technology, and innovation into their own products except for themselves.
It's great to detail all of the innovations that have come to smartphone photography, but it feels like you missed a step. Where is the analysis of which of these technologies could be brought to ILCs? Could ILCs benefit from them? Are there some laws of physics that these computational techniques aren't ever going to be able to over come?
One of the reasons I picked m43 is I thought it might be the place where these technologies and ILC could come together into the best future devices.
Generally speaking smartphones already took over photography.
Only small minority of crazies like myself are still shooting with cameras because it's more fun and smartphones are still limited in many areas (photography at night, photography of distant objects, etc.).
Exactly. They sell roughly 10X less digital cameras now than they did before the iPhone HD came out in 2011. And this year they will sell much fewer digital cameras than they did analog 35mm film cameras in the 80's. It IS a camera phone world already. The rest of us are enthusiasts or professionals.
Hobbies are just that. The pros need more variety than phones can usually give as far as reach etc, regular people just need to record their grandkids and their trip to Cancun, and the rest of us just enjoy using a nice tool. I could commute to work on a 3 speed steel Walmart bike and get to work in roughly the same time, but I’d never trade that for my beautiful carbon fiber gravel race bike. I could just wear an Apple watch or even a timex, but instead I prefer my beautiful mechanical watch. Sometimes the joy (and the muse for your creativity) is the handling of an expertly crafted tool. That a phone will never (and can never) be, because it’s fundamentally a tool for a different purpose.
What the article is actually talking about (machine learning and computational photography) will eventually make it to every camera once processing gets suitably cheap (that stuff is crazy processing intensive). The E-M1x already uses it for focus tracking
It's great to detail all of the innovations that have come to smartphone photography, but it feels like you missed a step. Where is the analysis of which of these technologies could be brought to ILCs? Could ILCs benefit from them? Are there some laws of physics that these computational techniques aren't ever going to be able to over come?
One of the reasons I picked m43 is I thought it might be the place where these technologies and ILC could come together into the best future devices.
It’s processors, power, and software. The smartphone manufacturers design and make their own integrated circuits with proprietary firmware using low power techniques for small or fluid (video) images. They have a market in the billions. For the optical photo industry to do the same would require massive investments that aren’t available for a fractional market that cares mostly about optics.
Power and screen size and networking also play a role. Japan Inc. still struggles to put GPS in basic consumer cameras while every phone does so effortlessly. Processing larger sensor images takes huge battery power, and rear LCDs are simply outmatched by even low-end smartphone screens coupled to on-chip, discrete GPUs. The optical camera industry is still wedded to the desktop model of post production, when the majority of consumers rely solely on mobileOSs for the majority of their video and imaging consumption. Try and network RAW files wirelessly to a mobileOS device. Now try 4k video.
I have mid-range Samsung which is capable of making respectable images. It's absolutely brilliant for photographing machinery or circuitry prior to dismantling and for quick shots to stick on Facebook. But it is utterly vile to use and there's no sense that I've contributed in the least way to the photograph. I will not be surprised when the phone eventually shouts at me from my pocket "Oi! You should snap that!"
It’s processors, power, and software. The smartphone manufacturers design and make their own integrated circuits with proprietary firmware using low power techniques for small or fluid (video) images. They have a market in the billions. For the optical photo industry to do the same would require massive investments that aren’t available for a fractional market that cares mostly about optics.
Power and screen size and networking also play a role. Japan Inc. still struggles to put GPS in basic consumer cameras while every phone does so effortlessly. Processing larger sensor images takes huge battery power, and rear LCDs are simply outmatched by even low-end smartphone screens coupled to on-chip, discrete GPUs. The optical camera industry is still wedded to the desktop model of post production, when the majority of consumers rely solely on mobileOSs for the majority of their video and imaging consumption. Try and network RAW files wirelessly to a mobileOS device. Now try 4k video.
I find the 4K video from my Galaxy S9+ to be spectacular. It has IBIS. It is soooo convenient. All photography today is just CPU, RAM, and Software. Size matters. Put all that power in my back pocket and I will gladly trade heavy glass, huge batteries, and backpacks for specialty outings while taking the smartphone everywhere else.
ILC's and DSLR's will dwindle. The market will consolidate. There will be fewer vendors. In 10 years we will all wonder why we all needed these heavy things.
Imagine spending all that money on expensive glass with distortion correction and wide aperture, only to find that cheap plastic lenses on your phone is just as good for many.
Exactly. They sell roughly 10X less digital cameras now than they did before the iPhone HD came out in 2011. And this year they will sell much fewer digital cameras than they did analog 35mm film cameras in the 80's. It IS a camera phone world already. The rest of us are enthusiasts or professionals.
This is true. We big camera users are a tiny minority. If you watch people taking photos out in the world, 95% are using smartphones. I was at the Hiroshima Children's Monument and there was a crowd of maybe 150 high school students looking at the monument and taking photos. Their hands lifted up their cameras and easily 98% used smartphones. There were a few camera users, probably adult chaperones or teachers. I was one of the few visitors with a camera. I saw a few more cameras at Tokyo DisneySea.
Obviously, there are distinct advantages to cameras vs smartphones. When I have a choice, I use my camera. But, the smartphone is always in my pocket and I don't always have my camera. Face it, most people are not critical about photographs. Smartphones are good enough for them.
Our cameras are computers and already do a lot of computational photography. But, they could do more, not to take anything away from us, but to enhance what they and we can do. I hope manufacturers learn from smartphones and incorporate what benefits the creation of images.
To me it seems this has already happened. Also to me it seems that ILC sales have not dropped that much, which is totally understandable. Look at the red color and how it has changed after camera phones took over compacts (not ILC's nearly that much.) The drop in ILC's can also be explained in how the technology has halted so people don't update their cameras that much. E-M5 made a big jump in technology in 2012 (for M43) and this chart starts at 2010.
Camera phones just can't do the stuff the ILC's can, they are handicapped in many important ways and will be. I mentioned the ways in some other topic a while ago so won't go over it again. But some are ergonomics, evf and lenses. Lenses are very important as you lose your investment when you update/break/(drain the battery on) your phone.
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In this chart we can see that the total non-phone camera sales are a bit lower than the maximum before digital cameras arrived. Better camera phones might eat some more of the market, but there will surely always be people who need an ILC.
To me it seems more like smartphones have made a new boom for photography after digital compacts, and in time it could get more people interested in buying an ILC and become an enthusiast.
I for sure bought my first more expensive phone camera (LG G4, 16MP, OIS, f/1.8), until it broke after warranty period needing too expensive repair. I also found out that the one focal length was not nearly enough for my interests so got into M43 (2016) and it got my photography to a new level.
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