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Author Topic: Nick Devlin's article  (Read 17077 times)

JohnBrew

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Nick Devlin's article
« on: August 14, 2011, 08:44:41 pm »

This is a different response than Mark Fredricksons. I think Nick is dead on with example/idea #4. Driving the camera with an iPad or separate computer. Get rid of all the superfluous in-camera computer related items and the LCD and make it compatible with an outside computer source and large or larger HD screen. I'd be all over that.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2011, 08:46:17 pm by JohnBrew »
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jdemott

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #1 on: August 15, 2011, 12:06:27 am »

I'm sure everyone has their own ideas about what new features would be most valuable.  For me, voice commands have very little appeal.  But an iPad connection, particularly with touch screen interface, would be wonderful.
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John DeMott

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2011, 01:54:58 am »

Great article, and I agree with the ideas.  BTW, the bird in the 'Church Raven' picture really is a crow.  It's the biologist in me coming through.

Mike.
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2011, 02:20:05 am »

Hi,

Not sure about that voice control part. What chatter there would be early morning at Ox Bow bend! "You with the big L-lens using f/8 and IS off, PLEASE SHUT UP!"

Using iPad/iPhone as extension to LCD may be a bright idea.

ETTR? YES!

Zone system is not a bright idea in my humble view. Why, because ETTR is all we need! Zone system was about exposing for a given development, but now we do everything in "post", so even if "zone principles" still apply there is no use for the zone system itself while shooting pictures. Just expose to the right!

Best regards
Erik



This is a different response than Mark Fredricksons. I think Nick is dead on with example/idea #4. Driving the camera with an iPad or separate computer. Get rid of all the superfluous in-camera computer related items and the LCD and make it compatible with an outside computer source and large or larger HD screen. I'd be all over that.
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DaveCurtis

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #4 on: August 15, 2011, 03:21:53 am »

"Get rid of all the superfluous in-camera computer related items and the LCD and make it compatible with an outside computer source and large or larger HD screen. I'd be all over that."

As an option yes as a replacement no. The last thing I need is to have to lug around an ipad when Im out with my DSLR.
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jani

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2011, 05:36:04 am »

Using iPad/iPhone as extension to LCD may be a bright idea.
And it's a bright enough idea that there are products out there doing just that, already, sort of, such as DSLR Camera Remote.

The downside is that you need additional software running on a computer that you also have to lug around.

The upside is that it would be possible to solve certain other user interface desires, such as ETTR and focus masking.

(I'm with you on the voice control thing, as I've been an eager photographer of e.g. pool billiards and snooker, nobody's fond of people chatting too much...)
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Jan

Dave Millier

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2011, 05:47:05 am »

Thom Hogan has been discussing the lack of innovation from the big camera companies for some time. In particular, he laments the fact that they don't understand that cameras could offer connectivity and an integrated platform experience (ie follow in the footsteps of the sort of approach provided by the Kindle or iTunes)...
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AlexMonro

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #7 on: August 15, 2011, 05:52:56 am »

I'm not too sure about voice recognition (imagine an event with dozens of photographers in a small space, all yelling at their cameras, or even a tranquil landscape scene, with one snapper), and the idea of having to buy, and lug about, an iPad, has limited appeal.  But I guess if those are options, I can chose to ignore them.

Auto ETTR would be truly useful, though I'm not quite so sure about the touch screen zone system.  I'm not much of a fan of touch screens, they tend to lack tactile feedback and get smeared with fingerprints and hard to read, but it could be useful - though I tend to prefer to do the tonal mapping in the considered conditions of post processing, rather than in the field.  I think I'd have to use it for a year before I knew if I'd love it or hate it!

Live view focus marking would be great - true DoF preview!  However, what I'd really like to see is auto hyperfocal focussing with aperture priority, perhaps with user selected circle of confusion size, and display of near in focus distance.  A related idea is set AF points on the desired near and far points of the scene (I believe Canon used to offer this, not sure if it's on any current model), but sometimes that wouldn't quite do what you need in the real world, e.g. you want the maximum DoF before diffraction, but don't mind some of the foreground being a little soft).

Looks like there's quite a wide range of feeling about the ideas, with most of them having some people in favour, and some against.
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dreed

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Voice Recognition
« Reply #8 on: August 15, 2011, 06:04:09 am »

Voice recognition sounds easy and if you're lucky enough to have a voice that sounds like what the computer processing your voice has been trained to recognise, then it just might work.

"Might work?" you say.

Ask any person that speaks English and tries to work through a voice operated menu on any 1-800 number in North America how good "voice recognition" is. Maybe Nick is one of the lucky ones that has a voice profile that matches well with what the automated systems expect.

It is really quite hard and it takes a LOT of work data to implement. It would be necessary to either increase the weight or throw away other things that are inside the camera in order to make room for the storage requirements to support a voice activated system. Voice recognition is not simply a little bit of space on one chip nor just an extra chip.

There are many many other things that would make better photographs than having expensive and burdensome gimmicks like that.

My background here is that I've actually worked on a project where we were rolling out a new system to work with voice commands over the phone in place of using numbers on the handset.
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Tim Gray

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #9 on: August 15, 2011, 09:24:40 am »

Actually voice recognition that has been trained to a specific voice, particularly with a limited vocabulary isn't too bad. 
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #10 on: August 15, 2011, 09:36:26 am »

As soon as I read the "voice recognition" idea, I visualized sunrise at Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, with 40 or 50 photographers all trying to out-shout each other so their cameras will respond to their own commands instead of someone else's.

No, thank you!

Then again, I'm the kind of curmudgeon who believes that use of cell phones should be illegal not only when driving a car, but whenever you are within earshot of another human being who just might possibly enjoy silence.
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michael

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #11 on: August 15, 2011, 10:00:16 am »

The issue of a camera responding to other voices is a silly red herring. Firstly, the camera is usually held up to ones face with ones mouth just millimeters away from the mike. Secondly, just like voice control in a car, a button would be pressed to activate it.

Come on guys, think outside the box.

Michael
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dreed

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #12 on: August 15, 2011, 10:58:04 am »

The issue of a camera responding to other voices is a silly red herring. Firstly, the camera is usually held up to ones face with ones mouth just millimeters away from the mike. Secondly, just like voice control in a car, a button would be pressed to activate it.

Come on guys, think outside the box.

Nick's thinking about how to use voice recognition with a camera is too tied to the way he uses a camera. Do you tell your phone what numbers to push? No. You say "home" or "office" or your friend's name, etc.

What about if you could get rid of the "A" (Av) and "S" (Tv) positions on your mode dial and only have "C"? One "M" and 6 x "C" ? (B should just be an extension of 'S") And you can program the C's to be like A or S or any combination thereof? And then tag each "C" with a voice command?

Then maybe how you use the camera is:
"in door low light"
"animals"
"tripod landscape"
"normal handheld"

Why do I need to tell it F8, MLU, ISO 50, etc, if I can say "tripod landscape" and it does all of the above anyway?
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Rhossydd

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #13 on: August 15, 2011, 11:21:27 am »

The issue of a camera responding to other voices is a silly red herring. Firstly, the camera is usually held up to ones face with ones mouth just millimeters away from the mike. Secondly, just like voice control in a car, a button would be pressed to activate it.
That's not quite what Nick was proposing in later parts of the article when he starts talking about tethering tablets to cameras.

It's clear that there's no interest in voice control from the folk here and I completely agree, it's just plain daft.
As is some sort of zone system for digital exposure.
Tethering tablets is of dubious and minority use.
Focus masking ? I guess Nick just has no experience of using EVFs for any serious amount of time. I do through my broadcast work and hate the idea of it being on stills cameras.

« Last Edit: August 15, 2011, 11:28:53 am by Rhossydd »
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michael

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #14 on: August 15, 2011, 11:26:00 am »

The whole article smacks of trolling to me.

That's unnecessarily insulting. Nick is a very serious photographer with many years experience behind the camera. Trolling implies being a provocateur, which Nick most certainly isn't. He's a highly intelligent professional, a very decent person, and he happens to be a good personal friend.

So, be careful with your gratuitous insults.

Michael
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Rhossydd

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #15 on: August 15, 2011, 11:29:53 am »

Yes, probably written in haste and now removed, but still an article written to provoke debate, rather make serious points from what I see.
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fike

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #16 on: August 15, 2011, 12:12:22 pm »

Most of that list didn't resonate with me. Voice control doesn't interest me, though voice control for tagging and keywords would be cool.

Embedded geotagging support would be very good. 

I am surprised that there hasn't been more substantive efforts on in camera HDR. 

 If you had a gigabit ethernet port, you could do all sorts of control and communications through that standard interface.  WiFi is too slow for a great user experience on a real time device.

Perhaps the most useful thing that we will NEVER see would be an open API or scripting language like the CHDK, but with support and more robust options.  This could enable tinkerers to evolve the technology and could cause a surge in transformative innovation much like the those caused by the apple IOS development kit.
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fike

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #17 on: August 15, 2011, 12:13:49 pm »

...and I might add that an open development toolkit might be just the thing to rescue a marginal player like Pentax or Olympus.
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ndevlin

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #18 on: August 15, 2011, 02:20:46 pm »

It's clear that there's no interest in voice control from the folk here and I completely agree, it's just plain daft.
...
Focus masking ? I guess Nick just has no experience of using EVFs for any serious amount of time. I do through my broadcast work and hate the idea of it being on stills cameras.

My apologies for being unclear in the article.  Voice control would/could/should only be driven with the camera *up to the user's eye* -- that is, right up to their face.  It would require only a whisper, all but imperceptible to anyone around.  Basically, one would think out loud what the camera should do.  My description of this has obviously caused some confusion on this. Not sure why.

As re:  focus masking, my suggestions has little or nothing to do with EVFs, which generally suck and presently have zero application in serious photography.  This would be on the rear LCD initially, and on a wirelessly tethered larger screen, ideally. 

As for not carrying a tablet....if you're doing anything serious in the landscape realm, you are carrying a tripod. You can't tell me that adding an iPad or playbook adds any significant load.  Rather, it would be a return to working a la view camera - the real origin of landscape work, only in a much superior and user-friendly fashion.

Lastly,if there are 40 other photographers at a location, why the fuck would you want to be there???? I can't think of anything less pleasurable than doing nature/landscape photography in the company of the masses. Indeed, it's rather antithetical to the experience.

- N.
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Rhossydd

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Re: Nick Devlin's article
« Reply #19 on: August 15, 2011, 03:47:11 pm »

My apologies for being unclear in the article.  Voice control would/could/should only be driven with the camera *up to the user's eye* -- that is, right up to their face.  It would require only a whisper, all but imperceptible to anyone around. 
Well thanks for that clarification.
Do you think whispering into a mic works well for voice recognition ? It doesn't. I'll add the issue of wind noise in microphones used outdoors and how that diminishes the possibilities of successful voice recognition.
Quote
As re:  focus masking, my suggestions has little or nothing to do with EVFs, which generally suck and presently have zero application in serious photography.  This would be on the rear LCD initially, and on a wirelessly tethered larger screen, ideally. 
A tablet becomes an EVF(electronic viewfinder) as soon as you use it as such. I regularly use the Sony HD100VF which is a 10"OLED viewfinder, even at £22k it leaves a lot to be desired.
Quote
.if you're doing anything serious in the landscape realm,
You might be walking and need to carry a light weight kit, some us like to photograph more than 100m from a car. One of the key benefits of the high end DSLRs is that we can now get LF performance from handheld kit.
Lugging kit needing tablets and tripods is a retrograde step, not progress.
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