Luminous Landscape Forum
Site & Board Matters => About This Site => Topic started by: Paulo Bizarro on March 14, 2014, 12:19:52 pm
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Michael, thanks for another very interesting article. I think it raises very valid points, and perhaps it helps explaining some recent trends, such as :
1. Going retro: people are indeed fatigued with an overflow of gadgetry and features and so on, so they perceive retro designs as going back to the old days, where things were simple. However, with a very few exceptions, camera makers that undertook that path are not doing things right.
2. Have camera makers been the victims of their own success? By achieving such amazing technological feats in such a short time, they are now at a dead end, just spewing out iteration after iteration of the same camera.
3. Some of the big names, especially Canon, have pursued the cinema market, where things are still volatile. I am by no means specialist, but in my mind, a lot of progress is still possible?
4. As for lenses, indeed there is room to keep improving, and third party makers are capturing that market. Even, again, in the cinema business. You mention Zeiss lenses for DSLRs, these have been around for Canon and Nikon for quite a few years now, not only in the last year or so. Sigma are producing amazing Art lenses as well. One thing though, is that technology has evolved a lot in lens making also, but this too will eventually plateau. I mean, the Zeiss Otus for sure is not intended as a large number sales product?
5. Pressure in the companies must be terribly high, hence the mad release of cameras every six months or so, to feed the (already) saturated market. Until this cycle is broken, and decision makers just pause and really think about it, no new breakthrough will happen.
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Hi,
Progress is very much possible. But, I guess the clondike is over. I guess we will see a lot of development in mirrorless. It is a new technology. We may see a new generation of lenses, personally I would like to see small medium aperture lenses with high quality. There are some indications that Sony may moving into that direction. Fully electronic shutters. Non line skipping video. Plenty of opportunity for development.
But, development needs to match perceived needs. Excellent technology that no one buys is a recipe for failure.
Best regards
Erik
Michael, thanks for another very interesting article. I think it raises very valid points, and perhaps it helps explaining some recent trends, such as :
1. Going retro: people are indeed fatigued with an overflow of gadgetry and features and so on, so they perceive retro designs as going back to the old days, where things were simple. However, with a very few exceptions, camera makers that undertook that path are not doing things right.
2. Have camera makers been the victims of their own success? By achieving such amazing technological feats in such a short time, they are now at a dead end, just spewing out iteration after iteration of the same camera.
3. Some of the big names, especially Canon, have pursued the cinema market, where things are still volatile. I am by no means specialist, but in my mind, a lot of progress is still possible?
4. As for lenses, indeed there is room to keep improving, and third party makers are capturing that market. Even, again, in the cinema business. You mention Zeiss lenses for DSLRs, these have been around for Canon and Nikon for quite a few years now, not only in the last year or so. Sigma are producing amazing Art lenses as well. One thing though, is that technology has evolved a lot in lens making also, but this too will eventually plateau. I mean, the Zeiss Otus for sure is not intended as a large number sales product?
5. Pressure in the companies must be terribly high, hence the mad release of cameras every six months or so, to feed the (already) saturated market. Until this cycle is broken, and decision makers just pause and really think about it, no new breakthrough will happen.
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I think all the points made in the article are valid but the main one to me is the question which can be summarised as "why should I buy another camera or lens if I am happy with what I already have?". I wonder if what we are seeing is nothing more than a slump in a market (digital cameras) which expanded dramatically over the past 10 years or so and has now reached saturation.
Before digital photography became ubiquitous film cameras were mostly mechanical. I am still happily using a 1985 Hasselblad 503 with lenses that probably date from the early 1990s and before that used a Nikon F1. Both are built like bricks and I have no doubt that the Hasselblad will continue to give good service for years to come. Upgrades and new models offered added features and convenience but obviously did not affect image quality unless you were looking at esoteric and expensive lenses. Having purchased a Hasselblad there was no real incentive to purchase another one the following year unless you thrashed it into the ground. So how big was the camera industry prior to the introduction of digital cameras? Did people other than hard working pros really change cameras and buy new models on a yearly or bi-annual basis?
The advent of digital cameras changed that and I suspect created a new market amongst people who otherwise would not have bought a film SLR. During the past 10 years or so new models boasting improved performance and image quality apparently launch every few months. For a while there were great improvements in quality in each new generation of cameras but that is simply less so now - even my "ancient" Nikon D2x produces stunningly good images. I may be completely wrong but I suspect the size of the photographic market in 2014 is still significantly larger than it was in 1990 but the realisation has dawned on those who bought cameras during this period that buying the latest model isn't going to dramatically change either their lives or the quality of their work. The last camera I bought was a Sigma DP2M following Michael's review here. That did prove an eye opener and it is now the camera I use more than any other. I will look with interest at the new DP Quattro but unless there is some spectacular improvement in image quality (hard to imagine) I can think of no compelling reason to even consider buying one.
Is it not the case that those who are serious about their photography now have the tools to satisfy their ambitions and those who just want something to post images of their friends and pets on the web have already bought a camera. In both categories there is nothing compelling in the new releases to make them take out their credit cards. The market may have reached saturation and from here on in first time buyers are fewer than previously and sales are thus dependent upon people replacing broken and stolen gear?
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Most people don't want a camera. They want pictures. The digital revolution meant, for a couple of reasons, that for a time the way to obtain pictures was to buy an entry level DSLR with the kit lens. Now the right answer is your phone.
First DSLRs wrecked the market for low end portrait studios, and now phones are wrecking that same market - people who want pictures - again
The market is currently contracting to its pre-digital size, and we can expect it to be made up of enthusiasts again. There are a bunch of implications. Some good, some bad.
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The market is currently contracting to its pre-digital size, and we can expect it to be made up of enthusiasts again.
I wonder how much of this downturn (beyond recent economic fluctuations, most recently for the Chinese middle class) is just this: a return to the rate of camera buying and replacement that we had in the film era, where I am sure that many SLRs and compact film cameras saw several decades of life. DSLR unit sales levels are currently comparable to those of film SLRs at their peak, but surely to a far smaller fraction of all camera buyers, with those fewer DSLR users upgrading far more frequently -- until recently.
The very modest improvements in Nikon's new flagship model, the D4s, and the sometimes delusional efforts of enthusiasts to argue for its great advantages over the D4, is a good sign of why it make sense for camera users to be slowing way down on camera upgrading, in favor of judicious lens acquisition and learning to use what we have. (I will allow myself one main exception: for the next big steps in EVF performance and tracking AF in a small, light system.)
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IMO a spot-on article from Michael. I went on a bit of a camera/lens binge last year, but that was after more than 5 years of using the same gear. Now with one or two lens exceptions I'm all set for some time to come. I'd be thrilled if camera makers put more effort into ease-of-use and especially thrilled if they sought out feedback from a broader spectrum of photographers. Maybe declining revenues will help concentrate their minds in this regard.
-Dave-
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I wonder how much of this downturn.........
This is a lot of it.
The economy.
People want to cite mobile phones and the web but honestly semi serious to professional photographers didn't care much for tiny cameras that would fit in your pocket and rarely carried a camera 16 waking hours.
Photographers that produced good work, didn't have any desire to throw it up on anything for the world to see for free. That's what's new about the world of images, the free view syndrome.
Sure, digital let everyone have a semi professional result in capture and printing, but there is only so much wall space, so many things you really want to personally shoot and once again, shooting your cat on the sofa isn't usually that interesting, regardless of the camera.
In the professional world the lighting, the grip, the supports, the production is pretty much the way it was a decade ago, except we now shoot digital and view it that second and the overall numbers are squeezed down, i.e. less margin.
That's true in all industries, western world or emerging markets. The real money for the average person is much lower than before and you can't have 1.6% growth in an established market and labor participation the lowest it's been in 36 years and in turn think people have extra money to spend on $2,000, $4,000 to $25,000 camera systems.
I think the digital upgrade syndrome let the imaging equipment world ride high, but now it's leveled. Now do you really need 40 million iso, or 80 million pixels?
Probably not.
Cameras don't make content, people do, cameras don't decide what is interesting, how to conceive or stage a shot, light it, place it, or even when to push the button.
Talking equipment is fun, takes your mind of more pressing issues, but it's just that, talk. Just like most content, commercial or artistic is just data with not that much originality.
It's out there, there is good work being produced every second, but there is also a lot of clutter that gets in the way.
My studio's business is good, but we work harder because we have a larger skill set, offer more and never stop pushing. That's really the key to any endeavor.
I know the realities of our industry, but I also know that if your going to work, your really going to have to work.
As far as the other issues like Getty giving away stock photography, that's fine as I gave up on stock a long time ago. So if Getty wants to proliferate the market with free imagery, it makes that imagery less unique, less valuable to a commercial client, which in turn makes commissioned projects more attractive.
The wheel always spins back.
IMO
BC
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In the 1970s, Japan was shifting about 2.5 million SLRs a year. In 2012 they shifted 16 million DSLRs.
Figures approximate.
http://photothunk.blogspot.com/2013/10/pictures-and-cameras.html
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In the 1970s, Japan was shifting about 2.5 million SLRs a year. In 2012 they shifted 16 million DSLRs.
Figures approximate.
http://photothunk.blogspot.com/2013/10/pictures-and-cameras.html
Even with the burgeoning middle class in China and SE Asia that trajectory of sales is unsustainable.
Tony Jay
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I think that the camera market is driven by many types of consumers:
The Nerd with G.A.S.
The Uber-wealthy Show-off wanting a status symbol (Lunar)
The less wealthy Show-off wanting a status symbol (amateur with 1DX)
The wealthy hobbyist who knows how to use the equipment effectively (bird photographer with 10K lens)
The Proud Parent wanting an easy-to-use camera
The average income hobbyist
The Tourist
The Outdoors Adventure Tourist (those indestructible submersible compact cameras and the GoPros)
The Specialist-hobbyist (macrophotographers)
The Retro Hipster
The retro Film User (but this is applicable mainly to the used market)
The Wanna-be Pro
There aren't that many really new ideas out there. I will tell you that the local store can't keep the quad-copter/GoPro set in stock - there's one demo sitting by the front door, everyone walks right toward it and picks it up.
The genuine Pro
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A lot of the huge spurt in sales was the replacement of film cameras, which were often used for decades, followed by replacement of those cameras with dramatically better digital cameras. But now digital cameras aren't getting dramatically better -- the current ones are good enough for almost all purposes, so why buy another? In terms of sales, if not tech, we're simply returning to the pre-2000 days.
Michael said, "All of this tells us that the smart people at the independant lenses makers also see that the bigger, better sensor bandwagon is slowing down, and that photographers who are interested in improving their image quality are now turning to quality lenses rather than hoping that the latest and greatest camera will do the job. Just saying."
That may well be true, but it's also probably hurting the main manufacturers on whom we really rely (Canon and Nikon, perhaps Olympus.) So is the advent of good cameras from Sony and Panasonic -- I suspect those makers jumped on the bandwagon because of the exploding sales rate, and I worry that as the market dramatically cools, they will jump back off. To continue really good innovation and competition in cameras, we need two or three really healthy businesses, not a whole bunch of marginal ones.
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Thank you Michael for a very good article; I could not agree with you more. I am looking forward to the Schneider lenses as that is one of the reasons I shoot MF digital and hope I can one day tweak my mirrorless kit with Schneider glass.
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There are a lot of valid points in Michael's article. I see an analogy in the HDTV scenario. Initially, large-screen HDTVs were very expensive. 65" models used to cost around $40,000, about the same price as the first cropped-format DSLRs.
As with all new technology, prices eventually come down as performance and features simultaneously increase.
Nowadays, just about everyone in developed countries, who's interested in watching TV, has an HDTV model of some description. Why is there any need or desire to upgrade, when all of the TV broadcasts are below the full HD standard that one's TV is capable of displaying?
I get the impression that the recent introduction of 4k Ultra HD sets is an attempt by the manufacturers to lure people into upgrading what is often a completely satisfactory product in relation to the current broadcast standards.
In other words, if one normally sits at a distance of 3 or 4 times the diagonal of one's current HDTV set, a new 4k Ulta HD set will offer no advantage, even if one is able to source 4k video or still images for display, unless one buys a significantly bigger screen, or moves one's furniture much closer to the TV set.
The only size of 4K Ultra HDTV screen that makes any sense to me is the 84" models, which are currently too expensive. I would love to display 20 MB images on an 84" 4K TV screen, even though it would mean I would have to reprocess hundreds of downsized jpeg images that I've already previously processed for slide shows on standard HDTV.
As I've already written, this is an analogy for the DSLR market. A long time ago I bought a professional Epson 7600 printer which takes 24" wide rolls. It's mainly because I sometimes want to make a large print, and am able to make a large print, that I'm interested in DSLRs with increased resolution.
The largest print I've made so far is a panorama about 4ft x 12 ft. It's a stitch of 4 shots I took with my Canon 5D about 7 years ago, of the Himalayan mountains at dawn. In order to print it, using my limited 24"-wide printer, I had to create a polyptych, ie, 6 vertical segments about 4 ft high, joined horizontally, and separated by a thin black line.
When I look at this image, close up, I can't help thinking, "If only I'd had a Nikon D800E at the time."
I recently revisited the place in Nepal where I took these shots 7 years ago, hoping to do a better job with my Nikon D800E. Alas! The weather was miserable, so I'm stuck with the print from the Canon 5D shots, which is fantastic and magnificent from the appropriate viewing distance, but lacks a bit of realistic sharpness from close up.
I recall when Nikon overtook Canon in terms of DR at base ISO, there was a general assessment that Canon could not respond because it didn't have the manufacturing capability, the technology and the patents to compete in that respect with the Sony-manufactured sensors, which Nikon used.
A lot of photographers are still waiting for Canon, not only to catch up, but to overtake Nikon. Canon could do this by offering a 54 mp full-frame DSLR with higher DR and lower noise, at the pixel level, than the Nikon D7100. I'd buy such a camera in a flash, provided the price were reasonable. I'd be able to use all my Canon glass again, which leads to another point which I think Michael has not clarified.
Michael writes in his article, "A high quality lens will always trump the sensor when it comes to producing superior image quality." I don't believe this is true. Image quality is always a product of both lens quality and sensor quality. A high quality, high pixel-count sensor, used in conjunction with a mediocre lens, can produce even a better quality image than a first class lens used with a low pixel-count, low quality sensor.
ps. I should add, that when I wrote, higher DR and lower noise, at the pixel level, than the Nikon D7100, I meant significantly higher DR and lower noise, in the order of at least 1/2 a stop. Anything less than half a stop is nit-picking, and irrelevant.
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Thanks for that article Michael - about the pithiest and most accurate assessment of the industry I have read.
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Was that page of graphs supposed to be a joke? It's so horrible that I almost puked when I saw it. Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but by including it you did make the article "meh" at best.
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Was that page of graphs supposed to be a joke? It's so horrible that I almost puked when I saw it. Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but by including it you did make the article "meh" at best.
No it wasn't a joke. It was meant to specifically annoy you and make you nauseous. I'm glad to see that it succeeded. ::)
Michael
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No it wasn't a joke. It was meant to specifically annoy you and make you nauseous. I'm glad to see that it succeeded. ::)
Now that's what I call personalized content delivery! ;)
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No it wasn't a joke. It was meant to specifically annoy you and make you nauseous. I'm glad to see that it succeeded. ::)
Michael
Wow, you're really good at _whatever_ you do!
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I still don't understand why camera manufacturers are in dire straits. In the 70's (as far as know) all companies were healthy or so. Now with fewer protagonists in the arena and more than double the earth's population they are struggling. Cameras then, were like one unit per household or less. Now, every western house has at least two real cameras plus 3 smartphoens (my estimate). These figures should double at least in Asian power countries. With the apparent exception of sensor development, all electronic technology should get half as cheap to develop every year. Buyers fatigue? Ok, I buy that but that is only a small part of it. The big remaining would be only speculation from my part. Other than wild speculations like conspiracies and such, I have to agree with Michael that manufacturers know shit what to do next. For example, I've been suffering GaS since my first dslr, a Canon 10D. But somehow, i haven't been able to buy another real camera in years. They all are lacking at least one or more features that would move me or come with shocking new novelties. This reaches the ridiculous. For example, the new amazing Nikon V3 uses a micro sd card. C'mon guys! WTF? Whatever it is, is beyond my intelligence. All I can affirm is that manufacturers btw almost all japanese, lost it. I don't want to sound irreverent but I have thoughts at times that Fukushima radiation had something to do with it. Laugh at your discretion. Like I said before, I still don't undestand why. It's been said many times by major bloggers and photojournals that this is the gollden era of photography. It beats me, really! Eduardo
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Thanks for that article Michael - about the pithiest and most accurate assessment of the industry I have read.
Agreed. I'll bet it made some industry management types pith in their panth.
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No it wasn't a joke. It was meant to specifically annoy you and make you nauseous. I'm glad to see that it succeeded. ::)
Michael
I'm glad to see you've kept your sense of humor and an overall balanced view of the industry Michael! ;)
Best
Georg
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Very good points in this thread. I also think, and wonder, if prices are just too high in some segments? Coupled with the economic crisis, it makes for difficult times for people to keep changing cameras as often as they did.
I have seen several examples of cameras being introduced at expensive prices (for example, in Portugal hardly anybody has money to buy a EOS M or EP-5 at close to 1000 euros when they were introduced); but after 1 year, at discount price, they were being sold in good numbers.
When price comes down, people see that some products are worth buying.
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In the 1970s, Japan was shifting about 2.5 million SLRs a year. In 2012 they shifted 16 million DSLRs.
Figures approximate.
http://photothunk.blogspot.com/2013/10/pictures-and-cameras.html
EDIT: According to Nikon at http://imaging.nikon.com/history/chronicle/history-f3/
Production of single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras in Japan reached the 7.56 million mark in 1980 from the 2.76 million mark in 1974, having reached the peak of its popularity. (Fig. 6-5).
This can be compared to the latest CIPA figures for 2013 Japanese production of DSLRs [13.6 million] and for all interchangeable lens cameras [16.8 million] at http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2013_e.pdf
Only 2012 was better, with all previous years well below this "dumpster" level of 2013! Back in 2007 and 2008, before the "great recession", the numbers were 7.5M and 9.8M. See Japanese digital camera production and shipments for all years since 1999 at http://www.cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html, with interchangeable lens digital cameras broken out for the first time in 2003.
So that 2.5 million is correct for the mid-70's, but not the all-time high (which I think was driven by affordable 35mm SLR favorites of that era like the Nikon FM and Pentax K1000.)
If these numbers are roughly right, most of what we are seeing is just the end of a decade-long "digital transition bubble", not a state any worse than in the 70's and 80's, but painfully coinciding with recent economic downturns. I submit that in the longer term, smart phones have not so much replaced film SLR's as they have replaced Kodak's Instamatics (and disc film cameras) and Polaroid's instant picture cameras.
On the other hand, pocket-computer-phone-cameras probably are consigning dedicated consumer-level video cameras (other than waterproof specials like Go Pro) to the dumpster of history: I cannot remember the last time I saw one of those in public!
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Hi,
I actually think that phone cams are doing the job, perfectly good photos for many applications.
(http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Travel/Sextener-Dolomiten/i-TMkHf3R/0/XL/20130818-_DSC2421-XL.jpg)
http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Travel/Sextener-Dolomiten/i-TMkHf3R/0/O/20130818-_DSC2421.jpg
This image, which may not be very, I like very much. It was shot with a DSLR. Behind my back was an MFD camera sitting on tripod making this picture: (http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Travel/Sextener-Dolomiten/i-PBnjFz6/0/XL/20130818-CF043796-XL.jpg)
http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Travel/Sextener-Dolomiten/i-PBnjFz6/0/O/20130818-CF043796.jpg
I guess all cameras in the picture and behind the picture made a decent job and give their owners nice pictures that work perfectly well on a 24" computer screen.
Ah, and yes, you can use a DSLR like a phone cam:
(http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Travel/Sextener-Dolomiten/i-vgMqH42/0/XL/20130818-_DSC2432-XL.jpg)
GPS: 46°37'57" N 12°13'48" E
Best regards
Erik
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A friend of mine wrote yesterday and said he was selling his 50D. I asked "oh, so are you upgrading?" And he said "no, I don't have the time to do it anymore." He's keeping his lenses for the day when he will have time again. Interesting, I thought, that he'd rather sell his body and not have any camera (other than a cell phone) than keep it while it depreciates.
Hidden in this sample-of-one is a story that I think multiplies out. A glut of new technology drove people into buying expensive ensembles. And for a time, they had their fun; some even thought they could make a go out of it. But the pressure of maintaining a time/tech/cash-intensive hobby at that level of ambition is only sustainable in some cases (especially in a challenging economy). Many of those people will not see a need to upgrade for quite a while. But some of them will be back later. Meanwhile, the last-generation gear available on the used market is pretty darned good for most people's needs, and it's affordable.
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If camera sales are down in Hungary this summer, this could be one reason:
http://petapixel.com/2014/03/15/taking-photos-without-permission-now-illegal-hungary-photographers-outraged/#more-131573 (http://petapixel.com/2014/03/15/taking-photos-without-permission-now-illegal-hungary-photographers-outraged/#more-131573)
Such a photogenic country, too.
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The point about lenses and bodies is well made. My local camera store (in the UK) has a good selection of trade-ins. The pries of camera bodies is well below what they cost originally, the price of good spec glass in good condition does not drop much. H
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Some of the points in the article are unconvincing.
"Yes, we now have cameras with OK image quality at ISO 25,000, but who really cares?"
I'd say that many people cares. First you have the group that Michael dismiss as "camera nerds". Be that as it may, those people probably contribute to the bottom line, and affect prospective buyers outside of their own kind.
Secondly (and more importantly, in my view), using a camera in low light is an important usage for many regular people. They may not carry a stand at all times, and their subject may not be a (slow moving) golden sunset. For these people, being able to shoot passable images of their kids at some school event without the horrible built-in flash, is a great feature, and one that cell-phones does not do very well. If there is movement in the scene, and you want some DOF, and flash is unavailable, good ISO performance is a great feature.
"A high quality lens will always trump the sensor when it comes to producing superior image quality"
Like most bold statements, one is bound to found exceptions to this "rule".
Many have speculated that once digital camera development slows down, we will return to 70s/80s DSLR sales figures (number of units? number of dollars?). My question is what the complexity of digital design does to "system/enthusiast camera market of 2020" vs "system/enthusiast camera market of 1982". Because it seems that we will never return to the situation where there were umpteen manufacturers each covering their own small niche. Rather, it seems that we will have 2-3 giants and the rest will (more or less) disappear.
I agree with Michael that a lot could be done to make camera use more of a joy. Much like how Apple did not invent the mp3 player or the cell phone but sure made the experience into one that the masses appreciated. Not saying that mp3 players and cameras are the same thing. Perhaps this is an area that will get more attention once the image quality stops improving.
I believe that an "enthusiast" today have access to decent tools with a consumer system camera, a consumer laptop, aa A3 photo printer and Lightroom/Aperture/... It does take some patience to get everything working "close to optimal". I.e. color management is still way beyond most people. I think that if the industry was ever capable of agreeing on some supported standards for how these things connect, behave etc, a lot more people would have better results. Non-proprietary raw camera file formats, automated download/matching of printer/paper profiles, working OS/computer/display exchange of (pre-recorded) display response, sensible printing menus,... Without resorting to least-common-denominator sRGB / manufacturer-proprietary quality/progress-limiting tactics.
-h
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BJL and I are in agreement one hundred percent. I think the analysis of the current state of things as the end of a digital bubble is inescapable, correct, and obvious.
What is irritating is that very few pundits can be bothered to do more than copy one another's dumb camera-phone are ruining everything bleating. The research is not hard, it takes ten minutes on the web.
To be clear, BJL and I agree on the situation. whether we agree about the pundits is less clear!
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Another thought: regardless of debate about the causes, it seems very likely that digital cameras are not going to be purchased and replaced at the rate they were over the last decade, and that the market will not sustain the unusually large number of interchangeable lens camera systems it has now. In the film era, there were about five mainstream interchangeable lens camera systems (Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Pentax, with Olympus and Konica a bit more fringe) and Thom Hogan has said that only about three were consistently profitable (Canon, Nikon, and maybe Minolta and/or Pentax). Currently we have nine brands (Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Sigma, Sony and Samsung) with eleven or more lens systems. Even if one or two of these take up profitable fringe roles akin to the Leica and Contax rangefinder systems, that looks like too many to be sustainable.
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I can't understand why the camera manufacturers failed to pair up with the cellphone manufacturers right away. Why do we not have iPhones with "Canon Inside" placards stuck on them? It's another "Kodak Moment." Kodak misread digital, Canon, et al, misread cellphones.
It's not like this snuck up on us.
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I can't understand why the camera manufacturers failed to pair up with the cellphone manufacturers right away. Why do we not have iPhones with "Canon Inside" placards stuck on them? It's another "Kodak Moment." Kodak misread digital, Canon, et al, misread cellphones.
It's not like this snuck up on us.
In a way it did. Phone makers drove large-scale manufacturing of the camera-on-a-chip concept in a way that was foreign to the camera makers. Then what use were the camera makers to them? I don't see people clamoring for a Nikon "experience" with their cellphone cameras. Not to say that cellphone cameras couldn't use some improvements. But what incentive did cellphone makers have to sign expensive deals with camera makers?
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Why do we not have iPhones with "Canon Inside" placards stuck on them?
iPhones are currently "Sony inside" for sensor and lens modules (which is probably more prestigious than Canon for sensors right now), but Apple markets its own brand prestige, not anyone else's. There are no "Intel Inside" stickers on Mac's, even though that is true these days.
Likewise, Samsung is set on building its own brand prestige, such as with its new ISOCELL (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/news-events/press-releases/detail?newsId=13041) sensor technology.
P. S. It could be that those two companies are each earning more on photography (through the value that the camera part adds to the hundreds of millions of phones they sell) than any traditional camera maker, and are in a position to invest more in photographic technology than any one camera maker.
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iPhones are currently "Sony inside" for sensor and lens modules (which is probably more prestigious that Canon for sensors right now), but Apple markets its own brand prestige, not anyone else's. There are no "Intel Inside" stickers on Mac's, even though that is true these days.
Likewise, Samsung is set on building its own brand prestige, such as with its new ISOCELL (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/news-events/press-releases/detail?newsId=13041) sensor technology.
P. S. It could be that those two companies are each earning more on photography (through the value that the camera part adds to the hundreds of millions of phones they sell) than any traditional camera maker, and are in a position to invest more in photographic technology than any one camera maker.
Interesting that none of the cellphone makers are after delivering a "Sony Experience" when they put Sony sensors and camera assemblies into their phones. But HTC was touting its "Beatz" licensing. I suppose it's more consistent with cellphone being lifestyle accessories. [Does Beatz even make a decent headphone, or are they just pretty?]
I have a feeling that it isn't for a lack of trying that the camera makers have not succeeded in getting their brand names on the outside of the cellphone.
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EDIT: According to Nikon at http://imaging.nikon.com/history/chronicle/history-f3/This can be compared to the latest CIPA figures for 2013 Japanese production of DSLRs [13.6 million] and for all interchangeable lens cameras [16.8 million] at http://www.cipa.jp/stats/documents/e/d-2013_e.pdf
Only 2012 was better, with all previous years well below this "dumpster" level of 2013! Back in 2007 and 2008, before the "great recession", the numbers were 7.5M and 9.8M. See Japanese digital camera production and shipments for all years since 1999 at http://www.cipa.jp/stats/dc_e.html, with interchangeable lens digital cameras broken out for the first time in 2003.
So that 2.5 million is correct for the mid-70's, but not the all-time high (which I think was driven by affordable 35mm SLR favorites of that era like the Nikon FM and Pentax K1000.)
If these numbers are roughly right, most of what we are seeing is just the end of a decade-long "digital transition bubble", not a state any worse than in the 70's and 80's, but painfully coinciding with recent economic downturns. I submit that in the longer term, smart phones have not so much replaced film SLR's as they have replaced Kodak's Instamatics (and disc film cameras) and Polaroid's instant picture cameras.
On the other hand, pocket-computer-phone-cameras probably are consigning dedicated consumer-level video cameras (other than waterproof specials like Go Pro) to the dumpster of history: I cannot remember the last time I saw one of those in public!
Well said, and I agree! At the beginning of the digital wave it was inevitable that we all wanted a new camera every 12-16 months. In the end I think that not only are more pictures being taken than ever before but more people are taking them. The market is still strong and vital. The tide is simply receding from the "golden years", and what will be left in it's wake is a restructuring. Some camera formats will be left behind as well as some manufactures who will decide to pull out.
Until the next revolution, the pie is simply getting smaller.
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Most people don't want a camera. They want pictures. The digital revolution meant, for a couple of reasons, that for a time the way to obtain pictures was to buy an entry level DSLR with the kit lens. Now the right answer is your phone.
First DSLRs wrecked the market for low end portrait studios, and now phones are wrecking that same market - people who want pictures - again
The market is currently contracting to its pre-digital size, and we can expect it to be made up of enthusiasts again. There are a bunch of implications. Some good, some bad.
You took the words out of my mouth. The DSLR/mirrorless market will contract to comprise only those enthusiasts and pros that are really fascinated or need those cameras.The millions captivated by the digital revolution have become bored and cannot be bothered to carry about a clunky camera they don't understand.
They DO like pictures and thus billions more photos are being taken.
The real issue is the price increases necessary to support meaningful R&D for a shrinking enthusiast market.
Moreover, any innovations will almost certainly migrate to phones thus negating the momentary advantage of a DSLR. AND phones won't be standing still either.
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With the deflation of the digital bubble it seems film decrease has also come to a constant and low baseline.
Which is good - I don't want it to die.
And yes - planning to buy a 4x5 monorail in the not too far future.
Cheers
~Chris
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Meanwhile, I think there will be a fairly steady supply of incoming college students who want DSLRs and high-end mirrorless cameras to do creative work. Being a kind of polymath is more standard fare these days.
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Interesting article and some valid points.
Right now though I feel the tech side is getting rather tedious, reality of modern day is that there are a lot of devices that can capture images, you pick your weapon of choice and use what you want.
For system users (like myself) there are only so many lenses, bodies, flashes one will buy..and after some time you will find yourself with most of what you want and only the odd purchase here and there. You can't keep selling the same stuff over and over again..even new users may be more reluctant to invest.
In fact still annoying me to this day is one of the better photos I've ever taken was with some beaten up old 35mm compact, which now lives in the boot of the car (and still works) not the sharpest lens, very basic camera. Sometimes I wonder if I should dump the entire SLR range and just shoot with a really basic camera at times.
Reality is I have to keep some kind of system camera for work I do, but for many people they now have the choice to capture images in many ways. I see the market settling down and system cameras (be they SLR/ILC etc) are what they always were..mostly for enthusiast shooters. The only difference now is people don't buy a lot or compacts, they use their phone
Use what you want I'm really only interested in being able to capture images, and that's all that really matters.
Honestly couldn't care less if half the makers went out of business tomorrow, as long as I can take pictures that's all that bothers me.
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Honestly couldn't care less if half the makers went out of business tomorrow, as long as I can take pictures that's all that bothers me.
With the old film cameras we could take that position. Today, electronic devices just don't have that long a life.
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I will say that Michael's remarks on what the camera industry ought to do are both somewhat offensive, and correct, albeit for the wrong reasons.
He says, I paraphrase, that camera makers need to make cameras with feature sets that camera enthusiasts will appreciate. Appropriate features for actual working photographers.
There is an assumption here that camera makers are incapable of market research. There's an excellent reason for having what appears to be a bizarre mix of misfeatures, and that reason is SIXTEEN MILLION UNITS PER YEAR. These guys are not idiots, they've shifted many many billions of dollars in product in the last decade. The fact that they don't make the perfect mix of features for this self-styled expert or that one is irrelevant, they're been shifting product like nobody's business, and they're been doing it by performing excellent market research and product management. To even hint that these guys were shifting several billion dollars a year in cameras in spite of their ham-fisted and incompetent product management is silly, bordering on idiotic. While success does not imply genius, success in a tough, consumer oriented, competitive marketplace, *is* pretty much a guarantee of at least competence.
The market is contracting. The people who "just want pictures" are using cell phones now. The market is contracting back to its pre-digital size and, more importantly, shape. The people buying digital cameras in future will tend to be camera enthusiasts, people more like Michael, more like most of the readership of LuLa. The market research engines in the surviving and considerably smaller companies will drive future models appropriate to maximizing revenue out of that old/new reshaped market.
So, yes, you can look forward to cameras that have what YOU think is a more appropriate set of features. It won't be because the camera makers have "matured" and finally started to do the right thing, it will be because the market has changed, and the surviving players will change with it.
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Andrew,
As someone that has worked in the industry for almost 50 years, has run several public companies, has worked as a senior national manager for one of Japan's largest consumer electronics conglomerates, I can tell you that for all of their billions, for all of their market research, and for all of their smart people, many if not most of these companies are clueless when it comes to the needs of serious photographers and pros.
I have been in product planning meetings where focus groups of specifically invited photographers, all with vast experience and credentials, are asked by these companies for their feedback and input on a new product, and then when the product in question appears 12-18 months later, the simplest suggestions are not included and major shortcomings, which were openly discussed, are still there.
Call it hubris, call in corporate blinders, call it management stupidity, but the camera industry is nowhere near as attuned to the top segment of the marketplace as you seem to give them credit for.
And anecdotally, I was speaking with a colleague today who, as I do from time to time, does alpha and beta testing for a few companies. He was telling me about an upcoming camera which he was alpha testing which has a major flaw, which he noticed the first day, and which when he reported it was told..."Really? We never noticed that".
In other words, you think I was "offensive" in some of my comments. I think that you, on the other hand, over estimate the good sense of many of the companies when it comes to designing the products that knowledgable photographers need. Their lame track records proves it.
Michael
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But the point is, michael, 5 years ago the needs of the serious photographers and pros were irrelevant. When you're got a $5B sales target, you're not going to let some niche market -- which might be a $100M market -- screw up the $5B with their special needs.
ETA: I never claimed that the camera markers were "attuned to the top segment of the marketplace", indeed what I did say is almost the opposite of that.
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Andrew, I think you're not taking into account the fact that people need cameras. That is, they will buy them even if they're not particularly good, because they need the machine. To argue that the camera company people are actually wizards whose massive market research produces the best possible overall outcome is simply wrong -- major companies screw up all the time, and persist in their problems, even when EVERYBODY knows that it's wrong. And they still, as you put it, manage to shift a lot of whatever they're selling, because people need them...until something better comes along. Ask the once-dominant cell-phone makers Blackberry and Nokia about that.
One camera company after another has come up with menu systems that drive photographers nuts -- because it's one thing to look at a menu system on your computer screen as you're programming it, and another thing to look at it on a tiny LCD in a snowstorm. People bought them anyway, and suffered with them, because they needed the cameras. To use a non-camera example of the same thing, BMW had a control system called iDrive, and I had it in a $70,000 7-series automobile. I never did completely figure it out. BMW kept it for years, in the face of massive and universal criticism by almost everybody outside the company, and, no doubt, quite a few inside. They kept dinking around with it, pretending it only needed a couple of touches to fix, but they were wrong. In fact, what iDrive required from the customer was a long initial study (this to turn on the heat) followed by refreshers every week or so. It was an engineering marvel and a consumer nightmare. Eventually, they mostly gave up -- it simply wasn't a suitable system to their cars, and almost everybody knew it about 20 minutes after the first car was released. But the company didn't. People bought BMWs anyway because they wanted the style and performance, which didn't mean that iDrive was a good idea -- and they might have sold more cars if they didn't have iDrives. I myself have shifted to a competitor company, and have never gone back to BMW.
What Michael *didn't* emphasize enough (IMHO) is that this situation tends to be self-correcting, as in the case of Blackberry and Nokia; and some of these camera companies are going to find that out, if they're not careful.
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That is certainly true. Canon and Nikon are in the process of missing a massive shift in the mass market. Probably because they're simply not the companies that can follow that shift. They ARE the companies that can follow the other side of the splitting market, and start building for the enthusiasts again.
Worth noting: The mass market is NOT shifting toward the camera Michael has always wanted to buy, which someone is FINALLY building.
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"But the point is, michael, 5 years ago the needs of the serious photographers and pros were irrelevant."
I'm really not sure where your information comes from or where your expertise lies, but in my view the above statement is so patently wrong, that I think I'll leave this thread for now. No point in responding further.
Michael
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As someone that has worked in the industry for almost 50 years, has run several public companies, has worked as a senior national manager for one of Japan's largest consumer electronics conglomerates, I can tell you that for all of their billions, for all of their market research, and for all of their smart people, many if not most of these companies are clueless when it comes to the needs of serious photographers and pros.
That is an interesting background.
May I comment that:
1. Recognizing what will be perceived as a flaw by "serious photographers and pros" is not the same fixing it? I have many strong opinions on UI, but I am aware that I am incapable of doing it myself.
2. Building what the customers say that they want is not a bulletproof recipe for selling lots of products.
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - attributed to Henry Ford
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” - attributed to Steve Jobs
3. You may know what serious/pro photographers in your sphere wants. But do you know what wealthy amateurs in Russia or China wants? Or scientific photographers? The big manufacturers probably needs to have a broad appeal globally.
-h
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2. Building what the customers say that they want is not a bulletproof recipe for selling lots of products.
Agreed. There needs to be a dialectic with the customer base. But there also needs to be a master architect at work, someone with a vision, someone who understands purpose (as in the greek telos).
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There are lots of fallacies in play here, and in similar discussions across the internet (they all pretty much look the same).
Another one is that a great *product* is something that does its job very well. Let us examine a great product, the iPhone. This is a great product, make no mistake. This is a triumph of product design. And, this is important: It does NOTHING well. It is a mediocre phone, a terrible web browser, a terrible email client, and not a very good camera. There is literally NO FUNCTION it performs particularly well. Add to that, it's too big, simultaneously too small, its battery life is terrible, the UI is sketchy, and a host of other issues.
Why is it a great product?
Because it performs the right suite of functions *well* *enough* and in a form factor that is *good* *enough* to hit an enormously large market. The iPhone defined a new market, which now has several more or less indistinguishable players, and it has destroyed or damaged at least two completely separate multi-billion dollar markets. That's a *hell* of a product. And it isn't good at anything. Think that over a bit.
Manifestly, Nikon and Canon have done a tremendous job of mining the mass market with cameras that are, frankly, not very good cameras. Obviously they could have built much better cameras. You can decide that they're incompetent, and if only they had listened to the serious and pro photographers, they would have built great cameras. And that is probably true, they would have built great cameras. I predict that, in fact, one of them would have built some great cameras, while the other one obliterated them by building not great cameras but great *products*. By building cameras that, while not very good, were *good* *enough* for a large enough market to capture that market and wipe out the competition.
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I would have to agree with Michael on this (a rare event for me)
I honestly think that whatever goes on in a board room or by a design team, has very little to do with the actual needs of photographers.
Whilst I've not deal with many makers, I have with a few..including Sony, Pentax, Nikon and Ricoh
Whilst all bar Ricoh were in relation to service issues, I can say that after a warranty send in and about a month later, Sony didn't actually know where my camera was, and despite making lots of phone calls most of the people I spoke too barely knew the day it was let alone anything about the product. Cutting a long story short I ended up annoying Sony on facebook to the point where someone had to pick up the phone and sort it out (which they did eventually after hitting them worldwide on social media) I literally had to hold the to ransom and kick up a fuss to the point where they compensated me for the cost of the camera.
I've had equally bad experiences with Pentax (who admitted a problem, but then ignored any correspondence about it) and Nikon's service is highly unreliable too, after about 4 service trips I ended up dumping all my Nikon gear as my confidence in the company was completely gone.
You could argue customer service isn't product development. But my point is this, if companies are so poor at looking after their paying customers. Why on earth would anyone expect them to be highly tuned into "what people want with new stuff"
My experience with Ricoh was a loaner camera (which was returned after testing) I gave them a very comprehensive list of my experience and suggestions after using one for about a month, they were polite but never even adopted one single suggestion, despite many review sites saying the same thing I did (ie improvements to make)
I'm not sure if this is Corporate arrogance in Japanese camera companies, but it surely smells a lot like it to me.
Looking at the QC issues we've seen from various makers (and quite a lot of problems in total) I'd be amazed if any kind of "serious" field testing goes on at all
Whilst I've soft spot for Fuji (one company that has been at least trying) you have to admit they've had a fair few "beta cameras" launched on customers in their time
The situation is quite frustrating in some ways, I can see (and so can others) some very silly and obvious mistakes in terms of design or bugs/ergonomics. Question is why can't they?
I think the last company to be most in tune with photographers is gone from the business. Minolta you are missed!
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Hi,
I would argue that today's cameras are good enough. Also, I would argue that development is incremental, a small improvement here and a small improvement there.
On the user interface issues, I would say that there are lot of things I would like to have behave differently, but it is in no way given that a majority of photographers would like to have it my way.
Just two examples. I like presets and I like switches. Should a preset override a switch? On the Sony Alpha 99 they got rid of the AF-switch and the switch for Antishake. I don't want any AF with camera on tripod and no Antishake. So I got it my way… But I don't think it's everyones liking.
Best regards
Erik
There are lots of fallacies in play here, and in similar discussions across the internet (they all pretty much look the same).
Another one is that a great *product* is something that does its job very well. Let us examine a great product, the iPhone. This is a great product, make no mistake. This is a triumph of product design. And, this is important: It does NOTHING well. It is a mediocre phone, a terrible web browser, a terrible email client, and not a very good camera. There is literally NO FUNCTION it performs particularly well. Add to that, it's too big, simultaneously too small, its battery life is terrible, the UI is sketchy, and a host of other issues.
Why is it a great product?
Because it performs the right suite of functions *well* *enough* and in a form factor that is *good* *enough* to hit an enormously large market. The iPhone defined a new market, which now has several more or less indistinguishable players, and it has destroyed or damaged at least two completely separate multi-billion dollar markets. That's a *hell* of a product. And it isn't good at anything. Think that over a bit.
Manifestly, Nikon and Canon have done a tremendous job of mining the mass market with cameras that are, frankly, not very good cameras. Obviously they could have built much better cameras. You can decide that they're incompetent, and if only they had listened to the serious and pro photographers, they would have built great cameras. And that is probably true, they would have built great cameras. I predict that, in fact, one of them would have built some great cameras, while the other one obliterated them by building not great cameras but great *products*. By building cameras that, while not very good, were *good* *enough* for a large enough market to capture that market and wipe out the competition.
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The iPhone does nothing well? Come on.
It was the first phone in which the complete array of lifestyle uses for it came bundled together with it. The entirety of the iTunes store would work seamlessly with it, and with all of your iPod libraries. It drew millions of people into developing Apps. It made the word "app" a household name. Every media company in the world wanted to put their media on it and sell their media through iTunes. The iPad was inevitable.
This is what it means to do something well. It's the "telos" people. The telos. The device has a purpose in your life. They made sure of that.
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But, iPhones no longer dominate the market, Android does as far as I know. Like Android having 74.9% and iPhones having 14.4%.
Best regards
Erik
The iPhone does nothing well? Come on.
It was the first phone in which the complete array of lifestyle uses for it came bundled together with it. The entirety of the iTunes store would work seamlessly with it, and with all of your iPod libraries. It drew millions of people into developing Apps. It made the word "app" a household name. Every media company in the world wanted to put their media on it and sell their media through iTunes. The iPad was inevitable.
This is what it means to do something well. It's the "telos" people. The telos. The device has a purpose in your life. They made sure of that.
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iPhone, Android. Pretty much the same thing, from a sufficiently high level. The details vary, of course, but they're basically the same bundle of features in basically the same form factor. And neither one does any particular task well, but they do the suite of things they do well enough.
It is the difference between "do well" and "do well enough" that is critical here.
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But, iPhones no longer dominate the market, Android does as far as I know. Like Android having 74.9% and iPhones having 14.4%.
Agreed. But not before Apple made billions coming in with something that suited the purpose. The fight for the market moved then to the tablets. They defined that market too. Nothing lasts forever. After Jobs, I'm not sure how much genius they have left in them.
Android signals the rise of the commodity phone. Apple would have to make a game-changing move to reverse that. It takes a visionary to understand the one thing that is important, and that is defining and filling a purpose in people's lives.
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But, iPhones no longer dominate the market, Android does as far as I know. Like Android having 74.9% and iPhones having 14.4%.
"Android" is not a phone; it is a piece of free software used in many dozens of phones from numerous makers.
So you are comparing unit sales rather that what people spend (revenues), and sales of hardware from one company versus sales of many models and brands of hardware that simply use a common piece of free software. This makes little sense, especially when you note that the market value of the software is a small fraction of the total market value of the product (As a guideline: MS Windows Phone sells for about $20 per unit.)
Even comparing unit sales rather than revenues is rather pointless when the products have substantially different average market value (as indicated by average unsubsidized retail price.)
By analogy, more people buy Honda vehicles than Toyota vehicles, but people in total spend more on Toyota vehicles than Honda vehicles, due to the very different average selling price. (The key to that puzzle is that the majority of Honda vehicles are motorbikes, whereas Toyota sells only cars and trucks.)
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Hi,
Several interesting points.
Best regards
Erik
Agreed. But not before Apple made billions coming in with something that suited the purpose. The fight for the market moved then to the tablets. They defined that market too. Nothing lasts forever. After Jobs, I'm not sure how much genius they have left in them.
Android signals the rise of the commodity phone. Apple would have to make a game-changing move to reverse that. It takes a visionary to understand the one thing that is important, and that is defining and filling a purpose in people's lives.
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To use a non-camera example of the same thing, BMW had a control system called iDrive, and I had it in a $70,000 7-series automobile. I never did completely figure it out. BMW kept it for years, in the face of massive and universal criticism by almost everybody outside the company, and, no doubt, quite a few inside. They kept dinking around with it, pretending it only needed a couple of touches to fix, but they were wrong. In fact, what iDrive required from the customer was a long initial study (this to turn on the heat) followed by refreshers every week or so. It was an engineering marvel and a consumer nightmare. Eventually, they mostly gave up -- it simply wasn't a suitable system to their cars, and almost everybody knew it about 20 minutes after the first car was released. But the company didn't. People bought BMWs anyway because they wanted the style and performance, which didn't mean that iDrive was a good idea -- and they might have sold more cars if they didn't have iDrives. I myself have shifted to a competitor company, and have never gone back to BMW.
Another example of a misguided product, designed by a large company who should have been able to do better, is Windows 8.
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iPhone, Android. Pretty much the same thing, from a sufficiently high level. The details vary, of course, but they're basically the same bundle of features in basically the same form factor. And neither one does any particular task well, but they do the suite of things they do well enough.
It is the difference between "do well" and "do well enough" that is critical here.
I think you're simultaneously being too hard and too easy on various products & companies. IMO iOS/Android products do many things well. There are things they could do better, of course, but the basic concept is strong. Same with the various camera brands. That's the "too hard" part.
Now for "too easy": in my experience many entrepreneurs & companies suffer from the delusion that past successes inoculate you against present & future shortsightedness. When such individuals & corporate entities solicit feedback from customers what they're really looking for isn't useful information but rather a kind of "Oh, yes, you know best!" deference. Anything other than that doesn't register with them. They know they know best, and they expect to hear it from you too! Sometimes insight, innovation and arrogance can coexist in the same person or corporate team over a sustained period—Steve Jobs being the textbook example—but arrogance usually corrodes the other two qualities sooner rather than later. The camera industry is in no way immune to this.
-Dave-
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Apple's design philosophy is simple, and clean design. Though practical aspects take a back seat at times (ie no front USB ports Apple tv for example design over functionality)
And of course they charge a premium for it, though I think they are fast becoming seen as "teen brand" in some ways.
Back to cameras there have been some notable goofs in terms of design and handling. I hope and pray the team that came up with the very first NEX models and did the menus are never allowed to touch a camera again. I'm pretty sure if you dragged someone in off the street to design a camera they could not have done a worse job. I'm also convinced the Fuji X100 was never field tested before it hit production, granted many issues were resolved but still it does make you wonder what some makers do for field testing, if they actually do any!
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Andrew,
As someone that has worked in the industry for almost 50 years, has run several public companies, has worked as a senior national manager for one of Japan's largest consumer electronics conglomerates, I can tell you that for all of their billions, for all of their market research, and for all of their smart people, many if not most of these companies are clueless when it comes to the needs of serious photographers and pros.
I have been in product planning meetings where focus groups of specifically invited photographers, all with vast experience and credentials, are asked by these companies for their feedback and input on a new product, and then when the product in question appears 12-18 months later, the simplest suggestions are not included and major shortcomings, which were openly discussed, are still there.
Call it hubris, call in corporate blinders, call it management stupidity, but the camera industry is nowhere near as attuned to the top segment of the marketplace as you seem to give them credit for.
And anecdotally, I was speaking with a colleague today who, as I do from time to time, does alpha and beta testing for a few companies. He was telling me about an upcoming camera which he was alpha testing which has a major flaw, which he noticed the first day, and which when he reported it was told..."Really? We never noticed that".
In other words, you think I was "offensive" in some of my comments. I think that you, on the other hand, over estimate the good sense of many of the companies when it comes to designing the products that knowledgable photographers need. Their lame track records proves it.
Michael
To add to this, my [very busy] local camera shop is forever informing Canikon what their customers keep asking for and no attention is being paid to what is very useful market research/feedback from the very people they are trying to sell to.
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Andrew, I think you're not taking into account the fact that people need cameras. That is, they will buy them even if they're not particularly good, because they need the machine. To argue that the camera company people are actually wizards whose massive market research produces the best possible overall outcome is simply wrong -- major companies screw up all the time, and persist in their problems, even when EVERYBODY knows that it's wrong. And they still, as you put it, manage to shift a lot of whatever they're selling, because people need them...until something better comes along. Ask the once-dominant cell-phone makers Blackberry and Nokia about that.
Absolutely. I tend to choose products, all too often not by the 'which is the best criteria' but by the frustrating 'which is the least crap, least annoying product'. Small cameras were the prime example of this in photography. Compact and pocketable 35mm film cameras were as good as a big SLR as they could use the same film, but there hasn't been a digital equivalent to say the tiny Olympus XA rangefinder as of yet.
The recent Panasonic GM1 seemed to be getting there, but the design is so flawed that two minutes playing with the camera showed it was a waste of space. A great example of a massive, very rich company putting out a product with glaringly obvious problems.
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There are lots of fallacies in play here, and in similar discussions across the internet (they all pretty much look the same).
Another one is that a great *product* is something that does its job very well. Let us examine a great product, the iPhone. This is a great product, make no mistake. This is a triumph of product design. And, this is important: It does NOTHING well. It is a mediocre phone, a terrible web browser, a terrible email client, and not a very good camera. There is literally NO FUNCTION it performs particularly well. Add to that, it's too big, simultaneously too small, its battery life is terrible, the UI is sketchy, and a host of other issues.
Why is it a great product?
Because it performs the right suite of functions *well* *enough* and in a form factor that is *good* *enough* to hit an enormously large market. The iPhone defined a new market, which now has several more or less indistinguishable players, and it has destroyed or damaged at least two completely separate multi-billion dollar markets. That's a *hell* of a product. And it isn't good at anything. Think that over a bit.
I think what you forget is that the iPhone was a vast improvement over previous phones and yes its camera may not be as good as a DSLR, its web browser may not be as good as the one on your desktop or that image tweaking software is not as good a photoshop, but none of them fit in your trouser pocket. And that's what it did so very well, it replaced numerous bulky, heavy complicated objects with something quite small and easy to use.
I DJed some while back with CDJs[+mixer+coffin case] which weighed 40+kg, I can now DJ with my phone and did so a while back when I had a sound card issue with my laptop. The laptop DJ setup will fit in a backpack so is way smaller than a coffin case, but still not quite pocketable. Heck I'll often mix music in the car on long journeys [as a passenger] and this putting a multifunctional computer in your pocket is what the iPhone really did.
A computer that could make phone calls too.
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I think we are in total agreement, jjj.
The iPhone isn't particularly good at anything it does, you say it yourself. But the combination of features and form factor make it a great product, in spite of the fact that it's not particularly good at anything. It is *good* *enough*.
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I think we are in total agreement, jjj.
The iPhone isn't particularly good at anything it does, you say it yourself. But the combination of features and form factor make it a great product, in spite of the fact that it's not particularly good at anything. It is *good* *enough*.
Not quite in agreement. It is infinitely better than the device that does not fit in your pocket and that you do not have use of. So in fact very good indeed. :P
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I think we are in total agreement, jjj.
The iPhone isn't particularly good at anything it does, you say it yourself. But the combination of features and form factor make it a great product, in spite of the fact that it's not particularly good at anything. It is *good* *enough*.
Analyzing the success of a product is a bit like analyzing the success of a piece of music. We can apply all kinds of statistics, musical theory, etc to Beethovens 5th symphony. We might find that he did this and that, and speculate what contemparies felt when they heard it. We might even construct a "Mozart generator" that generates music that resemble Mozart.
The original iPhone did something different from competing phones at the time. It was a big commercial and cultural success. Now, repeating that success is hard (either for Apple or Samsung).
If anyone are interested in _my_ speculations, I'd dare to say that the combination of a working touch interface, a UI experience that made people happy (to such a degree that they could never stop fondling it), availability of apps and media, and a nice physical design were key factors at the time. Add to this that the Apple name had a certain aura or status, and that they seem to excel at clever marketing.
The bad judgement by Nokia & friends was that they judged the iPhone on established phone quality metrics (sound quality, radio quality, camera quality,...), aspects that the iPhone may not have been particulary good at. Being a disruptive product, it was able to compete in a different arena than the established players, something that seems necessary in order to shake up an established product cathegory.
How can this be related to cameras? Perhaps that Sony or Samsung at some stage may hit the lucky formula that obliberate Canon and Nikon that seem contempt at refining stuff. Or they may not. Oh, and the winning factor of a successful $500 - $1000 camera may not be DR at base ISO or MTF50 or some other techie spec. I sure don't know what the magic part will be but I sure hope it is something more imaginative than a crude facebook integration.
-h
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... I think you're not taking into account the fact that people need cameras.
Do people "need" more camera than they now have in their phone?
... a certain aura or status, and that they seem to excel at clever marketing.
"When iPhone finally launched in June 2007, consumers lined up for days for the chance to purchase one and over 500,000 units sold on the first weekend."
pdf "What factors contributed to the success of Apple’s iPhone? (http://www.msitmonline.com/media/Cin/compre/ITM610%5B5%5D_What%20Factors%20Contributed.pdf)"
but just look at the statistics below. (http://lensvid.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Infographic-1920-1200-ver-2-0.jpg)
2013 for ILC seems much like 2011 -- were some really attractive DSLRs and mirrorless cameras introduced in 2012 that prompted high sales?
In any event, that's not the the market that Japan Inc., is concerned about any longer. Those sales were eaten by smartphones some time ago. (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/what_matters.shtml)
Aren't "[t]hose sales" the "45% drop in shipments of compact cameras" (and the majority of the "40% drop in shipped cameras") shown in the graphic?
[1] - Most cameras are better than most photographers.
[2] - Most cameras frustrate their owners with too much complexity and unneeded and unused functionality.
[3] - Most cameras are highly flawed in one way or another, but their users just don't understand how and why.
[4] - It doesn't matter what camera you have if your photography has nothing worthwhile to say.
I'm not sure if you were thinking in the broadest terms or more narrowly about "enthusiasts" and professional photographers, but:
1) So most cameras are good enough
2) My wild guess is that most cameras are used on auto everything and the owners are untroubled by the functionality they don't use
3) If owners don't understand how or why their camera is flawed, then maybe they don't encounter the flaws and the camera is good enough
4) I daresay the baby photos say something so vital that the parents actually bought a dedicated camera (in addition to their phone camera)
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Hi,
I think most cameras are good enough to make a perfect print in A2 (17" hight). Ctein said it essentially in an interview with Michael Reichmann some while ago.
Some of us may have a higher goal. That is no reason to denounce others.
It is easy to f___k up. A couple of years ago I was in Yellowstone, shooting at small apertures to get long shutter times. So I got diffraction, Two years ago I went back with a variable ND filter, got no diffraction, but lack of DoF killed my pictures.
Striving for excellence, we balance on the edge, mistakes come easy. And it may take a few years before getting another chance.
A good eye for light and composition may matter far more than knowledge, experience or equipment.
Best regards
Erik
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Some of us may have a higher goal. That is no reason to denounce others.
Agreed. When we talk about "the camera industry" that covers a lot of different needs and goals.
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It is easy to f___k up. A couple of years ago I was in Yellowstone, shooting at small apertures to get long shutter times. So I got diffraction, Two years ago I went back with a variable ND filter, got no diffraction, but lack of DoF killed my pictures
Have you tried focus stacking? Not normally used for landscapes, but why not?
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Yes, I do that, of course.
http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/29-handling-the-dof-trap?start=5
Best regards
Eik
Have you tried focus stacking? Not normally used for landscapes, but why not?
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Have you tried focus stacking? Not normally used for landscapes, but why not?
What makes you think focus stacking isn't now "normally" used for landscapes?
For example, see page 144 "Expanding Depth of Field" in Digital Landscape Photography (http://books.google.com/books?id=HmCUQQAACAAJ), Michael Frye 2010 -- and this picture (http://www.michaelfrye.com/landscape-photography-blog/2014/03/17/poppies/wildflowers-above-the-south-fork-of-the-merced-river-sierra-nf-ca-usa/).
... but why not?
Even on a still day, there can be enough breeze to cause noticeable movement moment-to-moment.
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...Call it hubris, call in corporate blinders, call it management stupidity, but the camera industry is nowhere near as attuned to the top segment of the marketplace as you seem to give them credit for...
Bingo. Detuning from the marketplace is a common corporate disease.
From "3 Companies that Failed to Listen (http://www.newincite.com/marketing-soapbox/3-companies-that-failed-to-listen/)"...
Businesses that have experienced high-growth can get myopic and full of themselves. Some make the big mistake of failing to listen to the marketplace....
Blackberry, which just reported a $4.4 billion loss and a 56 percent revenue decline for its fiscal third quarter, believes it knew better what consumers wanted in smart phones. As a result, it took Blackberry six years to come out with a phone that better fit the growing demand for cheaper phones with apps and more powerful operating systems – a market being served by Apple and manufacturers of Android devices. An article in The Globe and Mail quoted an unnamed Blackberry stakeholder:
“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did.”
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What makes you think focus stacking isn't now "normally" used for landscapes?
It is rarely a necessity. Whereas with say macro work is it far more useful.
Even on a still day, there can be enough breeze to cause noticeable movement moment-to-moment.
I also wondered about that, but I suggested it to someone using long exposures, so may not be relevant.
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It is rarely a necessity. ... I also wondered about that, but I suggested it to someone using long exposures, so may not be relevant.
We want to have our cake and eat it too!
In that example (http://www.michaelfrye.com/landscape-photography-blog/2014/03/17/poppies/wildflowers-above-the-south-fork-of-the-merced-river-sierra-nf-ca-usa/), the foreground poppies are sharp and the background stream is smoothed.
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We want to have our cake and eat it too!
That saying bugs me every time I hear it, as it should be the opposite way around for it's accepted meaning. As a stickler for careful wording Isaac I'm surprised at you. :P It really should be "we want to eat our cake and still have it"
In that example (http://www.michaelfrye.com/landscape-photography-blog/2014/03/17/poppies/wildflowers-above-the-south-fork-of-the-merced-river-sierra-nf-ca-usa/), the foreground poppies are sharp and the background stream is smoothed.
But if it was windy then they would be blurred regardless of focus stacking or using a smaller aperture, if using a long exposure.
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In that example (http://www.michaelfrye.com/landscape-photography-blog/2014/03/17/poppies/wildflowers-above-the-south-fork-of-the-merced-river-sierra-nf-ca-usa/), the foreground poppies are sharp and the background stream is smoothed.
But if it was windy then they would be blurred regardless of focus stacking or using a smaller aperture, if using a long exposure.
If you were a photographer, you wouldn't be so puzzled that a photograph could be taken with a short exposure to freeze the in-focus foreground poppies, a second photograph taken with a short exposure focused on the stream-side flowers, and a third photograph taken with a long exposure focused on the background stream; and then combined into a single picture ;-)
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Do people "need" more camera than they now have in their phone?
On my current expedition it seems virtually everyone has a smartphone and is using it as a camera. Me too! Probably heard the word selfie used two dozen times today, mostly by kids (spring break) and often as not in a mocking or sarcastic vein. :D I took a series of panos with my iPhone this afternoon that are up there with any I've ever done. Nothing really meticulous about it...just a bit of previz, tap the shutter button, pan left to right, tap the button again, done. The results are really good. At one spot I was doing this, with my Oly E-M1 around my neck, when I noticed another guy, Nikon SLR around his neck, doing the same thing. We made eye contact and started laughing.
BTW, the product mix I see here beyond smartphones leans heavily towards larger compacts and mirrorless. Almost no small compacts...you can see the effect smartphones have had on those. Some SLRs but very few large ones. One guy had a pair of Nikon D610s, each with a big zoom (and a partner willing to carry half his stuff). It's an international crowd, well represented by citizens of Asian countries, so there ya go.
-Dave-
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I think that the iPhone reference is only partially relevant. It says a lot about what happens with consumer products. The general smart-phone success says a lot about what happened to simple compact cameras. But neither tells the full picture about enthusiast cameras (where most of us have an interest?).
A $1000 "iCamera" may or may not be commercially successful. It certainly won't please the hardcore techie "in control of all aspects of photography" types. Rather, it might have a state-of-the-art (but nothing more) 1" sensor, a dumbed-down interface (producing "great" images with minimal user intervention), nice design/UI and some unexpected usability/connectivity/integration features.
This still does not answer the question: what are Canon and Nikon and Sony & friends to do with the >$500 enthusiast camera segment? Should they continue refining existing system cameras (add 1/2 stop of DR here, 10% more megapixels there), jump on the retro-wave, jump on the "camera wants to be a smartphone" wave, try to rethink everything (upsetting 50 y.o. gray-haired photographers), give up on stills and go all in on video?
I have a feeling that there is some unexplored territory on the low-level lens/sensor/capture side that may or may not appeal to Photographers (big P). Stuff that either is too expensive or never got out of the research labs. More exciting stuff than facebook integration or smile-detection. Lytro may not be it. Kinect may not be it. But surely modern tech + mass-production should enable us to move away from the limitations of film and into a brave new world where altogether different kinds of images are possible (not only "more accurate").
-h
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If you were a photographer, you wouldn't be so puzzled that a photograph could be taken with a short exposure to freeze the in-focus foreground poppies, a second photograph taken with a short exposure focused on the stream-side flowers, and a third photograph taken with a long exposure focused on the background stream; and then combined into a single picture ;-)
I'm aware that that can be done, but to repeat myself, it was a solution for Erik - who said he wanted to shoot with a long exposure.
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The thread seems to have shifted focus to an analysis of Apple's products. I was a very early adopter; by 1987 I owned 2 Macs. I shudder to recall how much I spent on these plus an early laserwriter. I recall a magazine article at the time calculating that the manufacturing cost of a Mac SE was about $300. In the UK I paid about £2K for mine - in 1987...
My attitude at the time resembled that of today's iFanatics, amongst whom I do not include myself. What they are really good at is creating a public perception which validates the purchasers' self-image. The absurd pricing of these products only seems to reinforce the effect. Now I don't follow the progress of the individual devices' development but it strikes me as daft that people who own a current version of the iPhone/Pod are queueing up to buy the latest release which differs only microscopically from its predecessor. Maybe camera brand fanatics are no different?
Apple have been through a success/decline cycle before. In the late 80s the "killer application" was DTP, initially in combination with Pagemaker which was rapidly overhauled by Quark. By the mid 90s a combination of pre-OSX instability and the introduction of Windows NT had Apple staggering. I was pretty surprised when the first iMacs started appearing. Same old cr@p OS in a nasty two-tone plastic box. But people bought them.
It still amazes me how much people are prepared to pay for these terrible value products. A greedy, rapacious business. The sooner the second decline begins the better.
Roy
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Just an observation....
of the 1.1 Million people who visited LuLa from around the world last month 49% were using Mac OS or IOS devices.
Guess not everyone (especially photographers) agrees with your assessment.
Michael
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Me too!
Went from Linux to Windows XP to be able to use RawShooters Premium, than from Windows XP to Mac OSX to be able to use Lightroom early betas.
Best regards
Erik
Just an observation....
of the 1.1 Million people who visited LuLa from around the world last month 49% were using Mac OS or IOS devices.
Guess not everyone (especially photographers) agrees with your assessment.
Michael
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Apple have been through a success/decline cycle before. In the late 80s the "killer application" was DTP, initially in combination with Pagemaker which was rapidly overhauled by Quark. By the mid 90s a combination of pre-OSX instability and the introduction of Windows NT had Apple staggering. I was pretty surprised when the first iMacs started appearing. Same old cr@p OS in a nasty two-tone plastic box. But people bought them.
It still amazes me how much people are prepared to pay for these terrible value products. A greedy, rapacious business. The sooner the second decline begins the better.
Roy
It never ceases to amaze me how much negativity people have in them...
If you do not like it (anymore) I would assume you are not (no longer) using it and if so, why do you even care whether Apple goes through another decline or not?
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My attitude at the time resembled that of today's iFanatics, amongst whom I do not include myself.
Clearly you've just traded one object of devotion for another. Not being of the fanboy persuasion I just use whatever best meets my needs at a particular time. UNIX, Linux, Windows, OS X, iOS, Android...I'm comfortable with all of 'em, emotionally hung up on none of 'em.
I do have a soft spot, though, for AmigaOS. That was a fine OS that deserved a far better fate than it got.
-Dave-
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… but to repeat myself …
I can see what you wrote the first time (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=88094.msg720002#msg720002). Whatever.
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On my current expedition it seems virtually everyone has a smartphone and is using it as a camera. Me too!
Is there a danger that you'll lose the camera carrying habit?
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I can see what you wrote the first time (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=88094.msg720002#msg720002). Whatever.
And yet you chose to ignore the relevant facts.
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Just an observation....
of the 1.1 Million people who visited LuLa from around the world last month 49% were using Mac OS or IOS devices.
Guess not everyone (especially photographers) agrees with your assessment.
Michael
Another observation -- people who like cameras, IMHO, tend to like design, as witness the many discussions here about camera design aesthetics, which is why so many LL members use Macs. I'm actually somewhat surprised that the percentage is not larger. If you surveyed only North American users, I suspect the percentage would be more like 80%. I'm about 90% Mac (I have a Windows Surface Pro 2, everything else is Mac, and I do have a bunch of them) and have to say, Apple does design better than anybody, and that extends not only to the cases, but also to the OS. It's as though the Mac front-end is designed by designers, and the Windows front-end is designed by engineers. Mechanically, they are quite similar (Intel machines, at least for now) and in terms of OS function, Windows is quite a bit more flexible, if also quite a bit uglier. That's why more than 90% of business machines are still Windows, although Apple has made some small inroads in the business world, according to the WSJ. I doubt Apple will quickly get further into the business world, outside of "creatives," because Apple insists on dictating to its customers how the machines are to be used, while businesses, of course, have to use the machines in the way that works for their businesses. (Which is why the iMacs are now sleeker than ever, but have dropped such useful things as internal DVD players. I will hang on to my current iMac as long as I can, because sometimes when I'm working I like to kick back and watch a few minutes of a favorite movie.)
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Apple have been through a success/decline cycle before. In the late 80s the "killer application" was DTP, initially in combination with Pagemaker which was rapidly overhauled by Quark. By the mid 90s a combination of pre-OSX instability and the introduction of Windows NT had Apple staggering. I was pretty surprised when the first iMacs started appearing. Same old cr@p OS in a nasty two-tone plastic box. But people bought them.
It still amazes me how much people are prepared to pay for these terrible value products. A greedy, rapacious business. The sooner the second decline begins the better.
I have used Macs back in the 90'ties and in the early 90'ties Mac OS was so much better than Windows, but after Microsoft got their act together with Windows NT4 I switched from the unstable Mac OS to Win NT4. When I started my photo workshops in 2008 I saw an occasional Mac blinking at me in the workshop groups. Now it is the opposite ... a lonely Windows laptop. Strangely enough whenever somebody comes with a Windows laptop then the fan is always making a lot of noise where the Macs for most part are quiet. Maybe an example of good design.
I changed to Mac OSX (again) in 2009 and I was able to replace both a desktop and a laptop with a single laptop that could also drive my 30" screen. I have not looked back since although the Windows laptops have gotten better and certainly can drive a big screen today. Now I have a MacBook Pro 15" retina with 1TB SSD. I'm not sure where I would find an equivalent laptop ... although I have not searched either. Last time a looked a couple of years back there were no other choices for an equivalent machine for less money and I would have to put up with ugly Intel Inside stickers and generally unelegant design. I'm happily paying extra, if at all, for the elegance of the MacBook's of today. However Apple is not in the low end market for either MacBooks, phones, tablets or desktop Mac's.
However if Apple falls back to deliver bad products as in the mid 90'ies and forward when they were almost bankrupt then they will fall again. For now I'm a happy iUser but will change anytime if the products are no longer competitive. They same goes for cameras. The only alternative for me to Canon is Nikon which I also shoot but don't like much except for the sensor (D800E). The Sony A7R looks perhaps interesting but for me it is a half baked product at the moment. The arrogance that Sony shows to the many reports on shutter shake on the A7R also makes me wonder what they are smoking. The way Sony changes strategy constantly is not good either. I'm not here to defend Canon or Nikon, but honestly I don't find the fuss over a mirrorbox really worth discussing that much as long as there are no other real advantages. As long as lenses have the size and weight for a given aperture there is not that much to gain. A break through in lens design that would lower the weight and size without changing the max aperture would make me really interested going with a leigther camera body. Yes, the lenses that Sony has released are lighter but they are also for the zoom lenses f/4 so don't compare them with the heavy f/2.8 lenses in the bag at the moment.
Canon and Nikon will no doubt come with a new camera one day that does not have a mirrorbox when they have made an autofocus system that is consistently better than the phase detection system used today. It's not a matter of innovation or protecting their base, it is as simple as delivering a product that is better than what they produce today.
To a large degree I'm with Michael about what he said in the article. I have in my past IT career similar experience from being close to product management and marketing functions in a large IT company. What I fail to understand (maybe!) is why the camera companies don't utilizes the fact that there is a relatively powerful computer in each camera to automate more functions that we now do manually. There are lots of them. But as long as professionals love to distinguish themselves from amateurs by doing everything fully manually I don't think the camera companies who listen to them will make more things automated. For me composing and shooting pictures and not being distracted by unneeded technical matters when shooting is an absolute nirvana which I don't think will happen any day soon. Sigh!
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Is there a danger that you'll lose the camera carrying habit?
No way! How else would I be able to take selfie gems like this one (see attachment) if not for a camera I can place on a flat rock without it tipping over? ;) I'm not aware of smartphone IR filters either, though maybe they exist. More seriously, the phone cam is great for some impromptu stuff—I particularly enjoy the pano feature—but I like having a rangefinder/SLR/electronic viewfinder to look through. And I like having more image data than I really need when it comes to editing & printing. And I love interchangeable lenses far too much to give 'em up. For me smartphones and dedicated cameras co-exist happily.
-Dave-
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What I fail to understand (maybe!) is why the camera companies don't utilizes the fact that there is a relatively powerful computer in each camera to automate more functions that we now do manually. There are lots of them. But as long as professionals love to distinguish themselves from amateurs by doing everything fully manually I don't think the camera companies who listen to them will make more things automated. For me composing and shooting pictures and not being distracted by unneeded technical matters when shooting is an absolute nirvana which I don't think will happen any day soon. Sigh!
Yep. Consider me amazed that in 2014 you can still overexpose when using the full Auto mode on any camera. The thing should realize when you've blown highlights—and should be smart enough to recognize the difference between unimportant blown specular info and blown image-relevant info—and either let you know to take another photo (auto-compensated to prevent blowout) or just go ahead and take one automagically. But camera makers mostly don't think like pic-takers, which gets back to the arrogance thing.
-Dave-
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Consider this.
Cameras are accessing sensor data many times a second so that the rear LCD or EVF can display an image. Therefore the camera can know the value of the level of each pixel at any and every moment. That's how he have live histograms, blinkers and zebras.
So in an new automatic mode, the camera could set the exposure properly (ETTR) for raw, and then "normalize it for display and in-camera JPGS. There is already a field in the raw files and Lightroom and Camera raw for the normalization value.
I've been proposing this to camera makers for several years. Enthusiasm is shown, but nothing is ever done.
I should have patented it. One of these days, soon, I'd guess, someone will offer this.
Michael
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So in an new automatic mode, the camera could set the exposure properly (ETTR) for raw, and then "normalize it for display and in-camera JPGS. There is already a field in the raw files and Lightroom and Camera raw for the normalization value.
I've been proposing this to camera makers for several years. Enthusiasm is shown, but nothing is ever done.
There ya go. Make that an option in Av & Tv mode too and for RAW + JPEG shooters (like me) it would be a big win-win.
-Dave-
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Certainly automatic exposure optimization would be one thing that I would love to have. It could be done in several ways, but the light metering in matrix mode or by an extra shot before the real one with RAW data analysis to optimize the exposure (for landscape shooters). Bracketing on top could further optimize quality since Lightroom has the automatic highlight recovery to further push the boundary for HDR blending for landscape shooters. For bird and sports shooters the less accurate lightmeter optimization could be used. In essence no more chimping and bracketing could be minimized and blown out white birds could be avoided. Of course some intelligence had to be built into the algorithms to work in the real world.
Focus stacking could be another one. Simply focus at the near foreground that should be in sharp focus and the camera would automatically shoot enough shots with moving focus distance until infinity to have the entire scene in focus with proper focus stacking software and the camera could make one too and save it as RAW or TIFF in desired bit depth.
What about optimizing DOF by having the camera automatically refocus at the hyperfocal distance and calculated with a COC for set parameters. This could e.g. be an option when shooting in live view. The way this could work is to stop down the lens and check sharpness at infinity given thresholds set by the COC conditions. There could be a warning if the aperture would go below a certain limit if the entire scene should be within DOF. Basically what we do already manually today using live view, right (except for the accuracy)? In such cases the focus stacking could be invoked by the photographer.
Sorry, I must wake up ;D
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Consider this.
Cameras are accessing sensor data many times a second so that the rear LCD or EVF can display an image. Therefore the camera can know the value of the level of each pixel at any and every moment. That's how he have live histograms, blinkers and zebras.
So in an new automatic mode, the camera could set the exposure properly (ETTR) for raw, and then "normalize it for display and in-camera JPGS. There is already a field in the raw files and Lightroom and Camera raw for the normalization value.
I've been proposing this to camera makers for several years. Enthusiasm is shown, but nothing is ever done.
I should have patented it. One of these days, soon, I'd guess, someone will offer this.
There is this: http://www.dpreview.com/news/2014/03/15/olympus-patent-hints-at-selective-exposure-in-live-time-mode?utm_campaign=internal-link&utm_source=news-list&utm_medium=text&ref=title_0_22
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Hi,
In Sony/Minolta nomenclature a seven means intermediate level. So they left room for a more serious camera.
To me it seems that a A7r is a rush product, while the A7 is a bit more mature. The problem with the A7r is that the sensor lacks electronic first curtain, in combination with a less than optimal shutter mechanism.
I don't think a firmware solution is possible as it seems that most of the shake is coming from the fist shutter curtain, so my guess is that it is just to design a new camera with a new sensor and a new shutter that causes less vibrations.
As a side note, the A7 has on sensor phase detection which helps with AF.
Best regards
Erik
The Sony A7R looks perhaps interesting but for me it is a half baked product at the moment. The arrogance that Sony shows to the many reports on shutter shake on the A7R also makes me wonder what they are smoking.
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Hi,
I would suggest we have a pretty saturated market, with two dominant players using traditional DSLR technology. Personally, I am pretty sure there is a development potential, but the technology is essentially good enough to make perfect pictures for most uses.
It is very hard to foresee a new idea revitalising the market. What I would expect:
- Internet enabled cameras, a GSM chips belongs to any advanced camera!
- On sensor phase detection AF
- My guess is that DSLRs will yield to mirrorless (but it may take a few years)
- High quality medium aperture lenses, improving quality and reducing weight
- Better user interfaces, although I am a bit skeptical about that going to happen
Nothing of the above is a revolutionary change
Best regards
Erik
Michael, thanks for another very interesting article. I think it raises very valid points, and perhaps it helps explaining some recent trends, such as :
1. Going retro: people are indeed fatigued with an overflow of gadgetry and features and so on, so they perceive retro designs as going back to the old days, where things were simple. However, with a very few exceptions, camera makers that undertook that path are not doing things right.
2. Have camera makers been the victims of their own success? By achieving such amazing technological feats in such a short time, they are now at a dead end, just spewing out iteration after iteration of the same camera.
3. Some of the big names, especially Canon, have pursued the cinema market, where things are still volatile. I am by no means specialist, but in my mind, a lot of progress is still possible?
4. As for lenses, indeed there is room to keep improving, and third party makers are capturing that market. Even, again, in the cinema business. You mention Zeiss lenses for DSLRs, these have been around for Canon and Nikon for quite a few years now, not only in the last year or so. Sigma are producing amazing Art lenses as well. One thing though, is that technology has evolved a lot in lens making also, but this too will eventually plateau. I mean, the Zeiss Otus for sure is not intended as a large number sales product?
5. Pressure in the companies must be terribly high, hence the mad release of cameras every six months or so, to feed the (already) saturated market. Until this cycle is broken, and decision makers just pause and really think about it, no new breakthrough will happen.
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Consider this.
Cameras are accessing sensor data many times a second so that the rear LCD or EVF can display an image. Therefore the camera can know the value of the level of each pixel at any and every moment. That's how he have live histograms, blinkers and zebras.
So in an new automatic mode, the camera could set the exposure properly (ETTR) for raw, and then "normalize it for display and in-camera JPGS. There is already a field in the raw files and Lightroom and Camera raw for the normalization value.
I've been proposing this to camera makers for several years. Enthusiasm is shown, but nothing is ever done.
<wears corporate suit>
And to what degree does this make for more happy customers, more willing to shell out cash? Our users seems perfectly happy with the DR that we offer at low ISO. We get 10x more requests for the ability to superimpose dinosaur hoods on peoples faces than we get for this feature.
Even among the narrow group of "enthusiasts" (that make a lot of buzz on the net but are actually a fraction of our customers in all segments), performance at high ISO is more relevant than low ISO. Most of our 6D/D610 users are using JPEG, and they want some highlight headroom. If they have particulary high DR scenes, most prefer our excellent in-camera HDR feature.
</wears corporate suit>
_I_ would love the feature that you describe. Let the user input how many clipped sensels are allowed (0%, 3%, whatever), let the camera figure out how hot an exposure is possible, let the user trade exposure time vs aperture (vs ISO for cameras where this makes sense).
-h
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Just an observation....
of the 1.1 Million people who visited LuLa from around the world last month 49% were using Mac OS or IOS devices.
Guess not everyone (especially photographers) agrees with your assessment.
Michael
I can only speak from personal experience. Within my family, I have had the grand total of 3 iPods in the last 6-7 years: one Classic, and two Nanos. All of them have broken down in less than one year of not heavy use. I still have one Sony mp3 music player from 2005 that works flawlessly. The sound quality of Sony mp3 music players is superior to the iPods. Apple's products are "cooler", but they are overpriced, and not even the best at what they do.
When recently researching to get a new "smartphone" I opted for a Windows Phone device, it does what is supposed to do very well, better than iPhones. And it has some cool factor too:)
So indeed Apple have managed to get a hold on a large percentage of the market, introducing some revolutionary products, but they are far from producing the best quality/price ratio.
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hjulenissen: Precisely.
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This is actually a great example. Let's imagine how it plays out in real life:
You spend $50K or something building this feature. Software and QA are not, it turns out, free. That's $50K you could have spent any number of ways, but you spend it on this.
You shift a few hundred cameras to some enthusiasts, cool, maybe a few hundred grand in gross revenues. That's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Then you get some reviews. Some dweeb says the feature is great except that he can't map the Zeta Parameter to the LEFT hand rear control wheel, only the RIGHT one, and so it's unusable. Someone else says that the it does something imaginary to the image quality. 12 people complain that the menu system is now completely out of hand. Another 4 reviews are from people who couldn't even figure out what the feature does, misunderstand it completely, and then claim that it's completely broken. The number of people who say it's great and perfect as-is is Zero.
The net PR fallout is 'neat feature, but the implementation was just so bad it was unworkable'. Sales dip slightly on the perception that your camera company is a bunch of wonkish dolts who build cameras with incomprehensible features, completely obliterating the 18 cameras you sold to:
- serious gearheads
- ... who are wonkish enough to use ETTR
- ... and who are willing to use anything other than M mode
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This is actually a great example. Let's imagine how it plays out in real life:
You spend $50K or something building this feature. Software and QA are not, it turns out, free. That's $50K you could have spent any number of ways, but you spend it on this.
You shift a few hundred cameras to some enthusiasts, cool, maybe a few hundred grand in gross revenues. That's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
Then you get some reviews. Some dweeb says the feature is great except that he can't map the Zeta Parameter to the LEFT hand rear control wheel, only the RIGHT one, and so it's unusable. Someone else says that the it does something imaginary to the image quality. 12 people complain that the menu system is now completely out of hand. Another 4 reviews are from people who couldn't even figure out what the feature does, misunderstand it completely, and then claim that it's completely broken. The number of people who say it's great and perfect as-is is Zero.
Michael and others on this site have been quite vocal and consistent in trying to educate the public on this matter.
The net PR fallout is 'neat feature, but the implementation was just so bad it was unworkable'. Sales dip slightly on the perception that your camera company is a bunch of wonkish dolts who build cameras with incomprehensible features, completely obliterating the 18 cameras you sold to:
In all fairness, the camera manufacturers have been willing to put in features before that have earned them ridicule and head-shaking. "PictBridge" dedicated buttons, anyone?
The PDAF tracking settings buried deeply in my Canon 7D seems to have been designed by engineers, for engineers. Or, rather, by engineers trying to conceal how their algorithm actually worked, while still offering sufficient options to cater for all kinds of uses. I see little problem with that, it is a complex subject made for people with particular needs.
- ... and who are willing to use anything other than M mode
Better exposure feedback would be welcome in M mode as well.
-h
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But they don't put in *every* feature.
Every customer thinks that they're the only one with a really good feature idea. In reality, every enthusiastic customer has a couple of ideas. Some of them are terrible, some of them are pretty good. Most of them are pretty specific to that customer. If you've got 10,000 customers with that level of enthusiasm, that's a WHOLE LOT of features you could stick in there. Just imagine the menu system then, eh?
As the product manager, I have to weigh these ideas and pick the ones likely to generate the most revenue for the least cost, interpreting cost quite broadly here. Customers are always offended and put off when their pet feature never shows up in the product, and they think I am not paying attention. I am. Their feature just didn't make the cut, largely for reasons which are opaque to the customer. I don't have the resources available to build their feature, and I also don't have the resources available to teach them product management, so, unfortunately, these customers remain in the dark and upset.
I've spent a lot of time building very complex products for very serious people, and I *still* spend oodles of time fending off features like this. The "enthusiast" equivalent in my field *is* my customer base, and the calculation still produces "No" almost all the time. In the consumer products area, where the "enthusiasts" are still the loudest voice, but the market is almost completely not them, I can't even imagine the nightmare to PMs.
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Every customer thinks that they're the only one with a really good feature idea.
And every customer thinks that they are the typical customer.
"Perspective is worth 80 IQ points."
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The solution here is crowdsourcing. Efing listen to your customers—actively solicit their feedback—and build a database of their likes, dislikes, wants, needs, comments & concerns. That way the data isn't skewed towards any particular person or interest group's idiosyncracies. Then study the data and see what your customers are telling you. Then have enough humility to take the data seriously.
That said, the fact that electronic cameras in 2014 are still capable of overexposure in full Auto mode is a disgrace.
-Dave-
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I can only speak from personal experience. Within my family, I have had the grand total of 3 iPods in the last 6-7 years: one Classic, and two Nanos. All of them have broken down in less than one year of not heavy use. I still have one Sony mp3 music player from 2005 that works flawlessly. The sound quality of Sony mp3 music players is superior to the iPods. Apple's products are "cooler", but they are overpriced, and not even the best at what they do.
When recently researching to get a new "smartphone" I opted for a Windows Phone device, it does what is supposed to do very well, better than iPhones. And it has some cool factor too:)
So indeed Apple have managed to get a hold on a large percentage of the market, introducing some revolutionary products, but they are far from producing the best quality/price ratio.
Statistics says that you cannot say anything meaningful with a few data points ;)
As for my own experience the grand total of our family has 10 MacBook Pros, 6 iPads, 10 iPhones and during the last 4 years one iPhone has broken down. Again not statistically significant conclusion of product quality. Another "quality" factor is that the older devices is supported with new software updates where a lot of things a sold and never updated with new software. E.g. I have a perfectly well running HP multifunction printer 6-7 years old which effectively can only print since the scanning function requires software updates that was never supplied. Apple is pretty good at supporting older devices which for me ways into the quality/price ratio.
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The net PR fallout is 'neat feature, but the implementation was just so bad it was unworkable'. Sales dip slightly on the perception that your camera company is a bunch of wonkish dolts who build cameras with incomprehensible features, completely obliterating the 18 cameras you sold to:
- serious gearheads
- ... who are wonkish enough to use ETTR
- ... and who are willing to use anything other than M mode
I'm not sure where you are coming from, so to speak, but I know a lot of enthusiast photographers who shoot ETTR (including my humble self) and who don't spend time using M mode unless needed. Also I almost never look at histograms on the camera!!
Now given your analysis: Who are Canon and Nikon building all these f/2.8 zoom lenses for and these 300, 400, 500, 600 and 800mm lenses? Is this just a few nerds which does not justify to build them? I think it is absolutely the people (pros and enthusiasts) that buy these lenses for quality that also would appreciate to get their shots easier without chimping, bracketing, etc.
Exactly the thinking you are demonstrating here is what the corporate product managers will be thinking in most cases unfortunately, so in this sense I agree (by experience) with you. Also there are always lots of engineers who are experts on explaining why a suggested feature cannot be done and work reliably in all cases. And most likely the users are too dumb to understand it anyway. Unless: In some rare cases you have a team where a few thought leaders can think out of the box and see what is needed to distinguish them from the competition. That's what we need from Canon and Nikon where seriously I think the real next level of products will be coming from for the highest quality below MF.
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Consider this.
Cameras are accessing sensor data many times a second so that the rear LCD or EVF can display an image. Therefore the camera can know the value of the level of each pixel at any and every moment. That's how he have live histograms, blinkers and zebras.
So in an new automatic mode, the camera could set the exposure properly (ETTR) for raw, and then "normalize it for display and in-camera JPGS. There is already a field in the raw files and Lightroom and Camera raw for the normalization value.
I've been proposing this to camera makers for several years. Enthusiasm is shown, but nothing is ever done.
I should have patented it. One of these days, soon, I'd guess, someone will offer this.
Michael
I can't help smile at this post since you you more or less gave the reason some posts back in this thread ;) These people you have talked to might have gone back to the their teams and discussed it and I'm pretty sure the engineers could give good reasons not to implement this or the product managers could not show a positive revenue flow from adding this feature. I do agree with you about the value of such feature. But as usual the devil is in the details....
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Telecaster, that is exactly what any competent product management team does. They do not share the database, however, so in general you don't know about it.
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No way! How else would I be able to take selfie gems like this one (see attachment) if not for a camera I can place on a flat rock without it tipping over? ;)
Have a pocketful of small stones to prop camera upright. Job done. ;D
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Apple is pretty good at supporting older devices which for me ways into the quality/price ratio.
You are kidding right? Legacy support is where MS craps all over Apple.
Apple like to move on and drop things they no longer deem necessary like Firewire or what ever display connector they are using this month on a regular basis. Apple's business model is predicated on people buying hardware regularly and willingly upgrade the OS without maintaining compatibility for older kit. My neighbour had a perfectly good MBP he didn't need as he uses Windows and I reset it all and got it running as best I could but couldn't install the last two OSs. I've known people to keep old Macs running was past their best as the essential software for their work didn't work on new machines.
Last year I found that I couldn't run FCPX on my MacPro and to make situation even more absurd I couldn't upgrade to a new MP [which was barely any different to mine anyway] as they weren't available and hadn't been here for some time. And even now if I want to buy the new MP here in UK, I can't. I can place an order, but it'll be couple of months until availability.
Oh and regarding the Apple reliability issue. The only Apple product in our household that hasn't been back to store to be fixed/replaced due to being duff is the Nano. iPad lasted two weeks, before being replaced due to flakey lightning port. Charles Arthur a UK tech journalist for one of the main newspapers and big Apple fan wrote a column one day after he realised that every Apple product his family had owned has had reliability issues. Most of the photographers I know locally have talked about visiting Apple store with problems, then there's the various recalls and Apple cables despite being absurdly expensive are also the crappiest and most fragile you can get. The feedback on the Apple store about them is anything but positive.
I'm about to buy some Sugru (http://sugru.com/buy/8-mini-packs-of-sugru-8x5g) to stop mine falling apart. Unsurprisingly Apple connectors are used to illustrate where it can be used/is needed. And as for the Magic mouse's scroll wheel.....
The other thing to bear in mind is a [particularly stupid] facet of human nature where the more expensive a product, the less likely people are to admit it is in any way flawed. Now seeing as Apple only make expensive equipment, there will be serious underreporting compared to other products like phones/computers which are usually cheaper and a more defensive attitude to criticism. Which explains Macolyte behaviour.
Personally the more expensive something is, the louder I will complain if it doesn't work properly. Because it should be better.
Oh and as someone who has spent a lot of time in my local Apple store buying bits and getting stuff fixed there's a huge number of people coming in with dead/dying kit or having to pay a lot of money for expensive batteries that have died in newish phones/iPads. Obviously a skewed source, but still it shows that Apple stuff needs fixing, just like all other products.
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I think it's reasonable to expect that all hardware products conform to the following cycles:
1. The product category is new and super hot. It's also super expensive and hardly any good. Example: digital cameras with floppy drives, computers that can't do much besides text and simple games, cars that barely shifted from horse power to gas. People who can afford it buy that stuff, but upgrade as soon as a new model comes out.
2. The product is decent, but has huge flaws. It is usable for specific tasks, but requires so many workarounds that people can't wait for a new model with a fix. Example: first generations of dSLR cameras, PC computers that are slow but functional, cars that are generally fine but can be safer, more reliable and use less fuel.
3. Mature phase; the product does everything well and users have no reason to upgrade; products are replaced when broken or worn out. The new models always have this or that advantage, which is nice but not enough to warrant an unprovoked change. Example: washing machine, fridge, dishwasher, modern cars, modern PC computers, modern dSLR cameras, a view camera, a pocket calculator etc.
In my opinion, we entered the mature phase of the camera market with Canon 5d. At least that's how it is for me. Since I got it, I never had any wish to upgrade because it does everything I need well enough. I also have a two year old iPhone 4s which works just fine and I'll replace it when it dies of old age, and several core2duo generation computers that work just fine and have no flaws that would require an upgrade.
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...The other thing to bear in mind is a [particularly stupid] facet of human nature where the more expensive a product, the less likely people are to admit it is in any way flawed. Now seeing as Apple only make expensive equipment, there will be serious underreporting compared to other products like phones/computers which are usually cheaper and a more defensive attitude to criticism....
There's that.
And there's this: Apple causes 'religious' reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists (http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-causes-religious-reaction-in-brains-of-fans-say-neuroscientists/#!ATyJD)
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There's that.
And there's this: Apple causes 'religious' reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists (http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-causes-religious-reaction-in-brains-of-fans-say-neuroscientists/#!ATyJD)
Yeah, and then there's the fact that I have five Apple products at home (wife's stuff included) and they've all been well behaved, the batteries lasted far longer than average for the respective devices' classes, and they've all been cheaper than the competition at that performance level. For instance, a Lenovo in the spec range cost more than my Mac Air, and Samsung and HTC alternatives cost more than my phone and tablet, so basically that entire line of thought you're advertising just made a loud *pop*.
Also, since I need a laptop with a Unix OS (for work), it's either Mac or Linux, and you can't run Lightroom on Linux.
The only complaints I have with my Mac Air is that after 3 years of use the screen hinge became a bit loose and the battery life shortened to around five and a half hours. I'm sure there are lots of pro-Apple wackos around but there are at least as many anti-Apple wackos.
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You are kidding right? Legacy support is where MS craps all over Apple.
No, I'm not kidding and I'm sorry for your experience which does not match mine at all. I'm not a fanboy of anything. If things does not work good I will switch any time. This goes with cars, phones, laptops, cameras, etc.
If your MBP cannot be upgraded to the last OS it is very old. Certainly 2009 models with core2 duo processors can run Mavericks. iPhone 4 can run IOS 7. Look at Android phones that cannot be upgraded. I meet a lot of photographers on my workshops and I have not heard a single complaint about Apple products. On the contrary all like their MacBooks which generally runs so much better than the Windows laptops. Not that there cannot be a well running Windows laptops, of course.
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Telecaster, that is exactly what any competent product management team does. They do not share the database, however, so in general you don't know about it.
Yes, any competent product management team will gather information about how their products are sold, used, satisfaction levels, number of repairs, etc.etc. However I have never seen any innovation come from such groups. I think Steve Jobs was right when he said that the customers don't know what they want. Also requests from customers even from high-end IT customers in large businesses will mostly be formulated as requests for specific functions and often formulated as an implementation suggestion (like a competitor products has this so your product should have it too) rather than formulation a problem that needs a solution which might not even include a specific suggested function.
I think innovation in the camera industry will come from forward thinking engineers who work with university researchers and see new possibilities and eventually radical ones.
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Apple like to move on and drop things they no longer deem necessary like Firewire or what ever display connector they are using this month on a regular basis.
Firewire is certainly supported. The display port on MBP's is the same since a very long time and compatible with Thunderbolt. The power charger connector was the same for a very long time and was changed with the new MBP's and a converter was available. So I find the exact opposite the case where on Windows laptops there is a new charger connector for every new model from even the same company that is not compatible.
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I'm not sure where you are coming from, so to speak, but I know a lot of enthusiast photographers who shoot ETTR (including my humble self) and who don't spend time using M mode unless needed. Also I almost never look at histograms on the camera!!
Hans,
If you practice ETTR and don't use the histogram, then how do you judge exposure at the time of the shoot (rather than later via Rawdigger or similar)? Blinking highlights are another option, and these tell where in the image that the actual overexposure is occurring. IMHO the two methods are complementary and I use both.
Regards,
Bill
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Hi,
I also use both. The blinkies show where and the histogram shows how much. It works for me reasonably well on both the Sonys and the P45+ I have
Best regards
Erik
Hans,
If you practice ETTR and don't use the histogram, then how do you judge exposure at the time of the shoot (rather than later via Rawdigger or similar)? Blinking highlights are another option, and these tell where in the image that the actual overexposure is occurring. IMHO the two methods are complementary and I use both.
Regards,
Bill
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Firewire is certainly supported. The display port on MBP's is the same since a very long time and compatible with Thunderbolt. The power charger connector was the same for a very long time and was changed with the new MBP's and a converter was available. So I find the exact opposite the case where on Windows laptops there is a new charger connector for every new model from even the same company that is not compatible.
Most PC laptops I've encountered use the same standard connector. Dell excepted.
Recent Mac monitor connections include DVI, Mini DVI, Micro DVI and Thunderbolt. You need overpriced and clunky adaptors to get devices to work if you change your Mac, no to mention Apple cables are poorly made so tend to fail. There only current current Mac with a FW connection is the bottom of the range MacPro and bottom of the range Apple products tend to be best avoided as are usually poor value. They only seem to exist so Apple can hit a lower starting price point for whichever range. There's not even an ethernet connector on the new MBPs. So you need yet another an adaptor for that too.
There are several Mac chargers which may or may not be suitable for your needs. I've wasted lots of time trying to get a Lightning adaptor to use with a device that uses micro USB, Apple only offer adaptors to full sized USB connectors and a USB female to male micro attached to one of them wouldn't talk to device. To get around this I had to buy a lightning to 30pin adaptor and use that on a 30 pin to micro USB, bodgy. Daft really as small devices designed to work with small devices like the iPad/iPhone will tend to use smaller connections. I could probably spend almost as much on overpriced connecters to an iPad to connect to other devices as a basic iPad would cost. This one of the many reasons Apple is so incredibly profitable.
I can't stand the recent Apple bollocks about making everything smaller just so that can make fatuous claims about so and so be the thinnest whatever yet. Because you now need to carry or attach the things that used to be inside Macs with a plethora of cables and adaptors, which not only takes up more room but is untidy and anything but minimal.
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If your MBP cannot be upgraded to the last OS it is very old.
Not as old as PCs that can run current versions of windows. :P MS try to maintain legacy as much as possible because they know people do not want to buy new equipment just to run a new OS, remember MS are a software company. Apple are a hardware company and it is in their interest to make old hardware obsolete. This is why they give away their OS, because they will make far more back in hardware and accessory upgrades than they will by simply selling software. And it's a better business model than MS it would seem.
I meet a lot of photographers on my workshops and I have not heard a single complaint about Apple products. On the contrary all like their MacBooks which generally runs so much better than the Windows laptops. Not that there cannot be a well running Windows laptops, of course.
Two things there. Newer computers always work better than older ones, so if they've changed of course it will seem faster, but if they'd bought an equivalent PC they'd probably be just as happy. I used PC laptops for years, but cost as much as MBP and were very good. More reliable in fact and I preferred them too - which is why I used them! MBPs however got better and I swapped. Though having recently played with Win Laptops with touch screens and the new Surface Pro, MBPs/iPads seem a bit antiquated in comparison.
Secondly, don't forget what I said above about the fact that the more expensive an item is the less likely people are to admit to any faults. So Apple are buffered against complaints by virtue of being a high end luxury item.
The MBP that I helped my neighbour with was being sold as he never used it and preferred his PC kit.
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Yes, any competent product management team will gather information about how their products are sold, used, satisfaction levels, number of repairs, etc.etc. However I have never seen any innovation come from such groups.
Loads of feature requests in Adobe forums have been adopted over the years.
I think Steve Jobs was right when he said that the customers don't know what they want.
He was indeed. Also most manufacturers do not know what the consumer needs either. Jobs included as he came up with some pretty dumb ideas in his time too. Attempting to get rid of cursor keys on computer and using single button mice was him forcing his bad ideas onto the end user. No cursor keys on iOS is where he finally got his way and it's one of the worst things about it. Using spacebar to accept autocorrect suggestions is probably the most useless thing and is turned off on my devices for that very reason.
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Telecaster, that is exactly what any competent product management team does. They do not share the database, however, so in general you don't know about it.
I'm well aware of that, having been part of such teams. (In my working life I switched between software development and product management multiple times.) There is thus an implied point re. camera makers. ;)
-Dave-
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Yes, any competent product management team will gather information about how their products are sold, used, satisfaction levels, number of repairs, etc. etc. However I have never seen any innovation come from such groups. I think Steve Jobs was right when he said that the customers don't know what they want. Also requests from customers even from high-end IT customers in large businesses will mostly be formulated as requests for specific functions and often formulated as an implementation suggestion (like a competitor products has this so your product should have it too) rather than formulation a problem that needs a solution which might not even include a specific suggested function.
I think innovation in the camera industry will come from forward thinking engineers who work with university researchers and see new possibilities and eventually radical ones.
I pretty much agree with this. You need creative innovators to come up with great products in the first place. Then you need good refiners to smooth out the jagged edges those products often originally feature. The second part of that equation is where the customer data gathering & analysis comes into play.
In the SLR/mirrorless world we're well into the refinement phase of the game. The next innovative breakthrough in photography/video/imaging might come from one (or more) of the current camera makers, but personally I think it'll happen elsewhere.
-Dave-
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A good PM group's biggest job it to properly prioritize feature development and release. They use CRMs and whatnot as both a source of ideas for features, and also as a place they can use to model what kinds of revenues they can expect.
It's extraordinarily rare that a customer is going to come up with a game-changing idea for you, it's all incremental stuff, usually very tactical, like Michael's idea. "Here's a thing you could do that would solve this problem I have" roughly. Often what's much more interesting is the description of the problem, rather than the proposed solution.
When a game-changer does come along, PM can still use their customer data, and their contacts within the customer base (focus groups etc) to test those ideas, and try to get some estimate of how much revenue there is attached to it. That list of problems customers want solved can be powerful, if managed well.
Product Management is a discipline, it's teachable, and done well it's at least as robust and reliable as engineering, in terms of its work products: neither PMs nor engineers are always right about how long it's going to take, how much money it's going to cost/generate, and what it's actually going to do in the end. But, done well, either side of the fence can do pretty well.
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...I'm sure there are lots of pro-Apple wackos around but there are at least as many anti-Apple wackos.
There's no lack of wackos on either side. From Fanboyism and Brand Loyalty (http://gizmodo.com/5555953/fanboyism-and-brand-loyalty):
The Misconception: We prefer the things we own over the things we don't because we made rational choices when we bought them. The Truth?
The truth is that you prefer the things you own because you rationalize your past choices to protect your sense of self.
The Internet changed the way people argue.
Check any comment system, forum or message board and you will find fanboys going at it, debating why their chosen product is better than the other guy's.
In modern consumer cultures like America, people compete for status through comparing their taste in products. (You can read more on how that works here: Selling Out).
Mac vs. PC, PS3 vs. XBox 360, iPhone vs. Android – it goes on and on.
Usually, these arguments are between men, because men will defend their ego no matter how slight the insult. These are also usually about geeky things that cost lots of money, because these battles take place on the Internet where tech-savvy people get rowdy, and the more expensive a purchase, the greater the loyalty to it.
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Actually I'm much more questioning of myself when I buy something expensive rather than moderate in costs.
I like my em1 but if I stops working tomorrow, the costs is equal to the lens adapter I bought for a Leica S2.
The S2 purchase I will question myself if anything glitches, the em1, that's life.
I like some of the cameras I use some of the time, but if there is any issue with any camera it's usually my selection, not the camera.
A R1 RED isn't the camera of choice to run around shooting documentaries, a panasonic gh3 really shouldn't be the selection if your working in Hollywood and btw: by the time you get a gh3 or 4 to working professional spec it just about equals the price of the R! RED.
In regards to what Sony, Nikon, Olympus, Leica, Canon offer, it is what it is.
I'd like more of a personal choice, like tethering on an em1, or 4k raw from a gh4, or real autfocus that made sense from a RED but there are other cameras that do that and it just requires me to lift something heavier and usually my wallet go lighter.
In regards to the camera industry selling less cameras, I'm good.
Not that I want anyone to go out of work, or for that matter any countries economy suffer, but there are way too many photos being displayed anyway, so if the crowd gets smaller, so does the clutter and honestly that won't happen because everybody on the planet seems to be carrying a camera in their pocket.
Personally, I think the more camera companies specialize and stop trying to being mainstream the better. I know the board of directors of the respective companies won't agree, but I don't care about a new plastic covered blob that has 20% more iso or detail than the last plastic covered blob.
Regarding crowd sourcing of ideas, to me that's a big problem. It's like shooting a movie and doing focus groups per scene. (it happens) though have you ever seen one of those movies. If you have you won't remember it.
But this shouldn't be about equipment, it should be about images. Do you shoot something interesting to you . . . then the rest of the world? That's important and I can promise you whether it's 6mp or 60 the most creative content will win, technical perfection, choice of camera, lens or light plays a very small part.
The thing that gets everyone spinning is so many people are selling and I can't tell the paid spokespeople from the fans.
You can't click an e-mail without going to a video showing some professional someone, (sometimes real, usually self proclaimed) that isn't talking up some product.
IMO
BC
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Hans,
If you practice ETTR and don't use the histogram, then how do you judge exposure at the time of the shoot (rather than later via Rawdigger or similar)? Blinking highlights are another option, and these tell where in the image that the actual overexposure is occurring. IMHO the two methods are complementary and I use both.
Regards,
Bill
Actually quite simple: As standard for landscape shooting I bracket 3 ways (shots in bracket sequence) with one stop between. My simple rule is: There must be one shot that blinks and at least one that does not. Exposure compensation is used to achieve the above if this is not the case. Either one stop down or one stop up. Then I know that I can choose the best one in Lightroom when I import. In cases of large DR I will shoot 5 ways or extremely seldom 7 ways. The histogram is rather unreliable anyway compared to the RAW histogram and I use this method as I find it distracting to chimp. I'll from time to time quickly check according to this rule and this serves me very well. No need to look at histograms when shooting. I do look at histograms in Lightroom ;D Using this simple method it is very seldom that I don't have an optimal exposure to work on in Lightroom.
Of course I may check the histogram occasionally in special situations, but the point is to avoid doing it and concentrate on composing and moving around to get the best shots, especially when lots are happening. There are as we all know also times when we are just waiting for the light and one could check histograms, but that would be useless anyway.
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Most PC laptops I've encountered use the same standard connector. Dell excepted.
Recent Mac monitor connections include DVI, Mini DVI, Micro DVI and Thunderbolt. You need overpriced and clunky adaptors to get devices to work if you change your Mac, no to mention Apple cables are poorly made so tend to fail. There only current current Mac with a FW connection is the bottom of the range MacPro and bottom of the range Apple products tend to be best avoided as are usually poor value. They only seem to exist so Apple can hit a lower starting price point for whichever range. There's not even an ethernet connector on the new MBPs. So you need yet another an adaptor for that too.
There are several Mac chargers which may or may not be suitable for your needs. I've wasted lots of time trying to get a Lightning adaptor to use with a device that uses micro USB, Apple only offer adaptors to full sized USB connectors and a USB female to male micro attached to one of them wouldn't talk to device. To get around this I had to buy a lightning to 30pin adaptor and use that on a 30 pin to micro USB, bodgy. Daft really as small devices designed to work with small devices like the iPad/iPhone will tend to use smaller connections. I could probably spend almost as much on overpriced connecters to an iPad to connect to other devices as a basic iPad would cost. This one of the many reasons Apple is so incredibly profitable.
I can't stand the recent Apple bollocks about making everything smaller just so that can make fatuous claims about so and so be the thinnest whatever yet. Because you now need to carry or attach the things that used to be inside Macs with a plethora of cables and adaptors, which not only takes up more room but is untidy and anything but minimal.
Ok, I don't think it makes sense to continue this OT discussion :) You obviously mean that since there is no physical port for FW that it is not supported. Apple did the right thing IMHO to supply a cable for FW and the same for Ethernet. Who needs and Ethernet port or FW port can buy such a cable. I really like the slimness and loss in weight of the new MBP's.
As I mentioned before I never had a cable from Apple break. And it has nothing to do with high price defending the product. As mentioned I will change in a split second whenever the products form Apple is second rate or there something much better on the market for my needs.
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Actually I'm much more questioning of myself when I buy something expensive rather than moderate in costs.
I agree - I would have thought that was more usual. But this behaviour does not have the convenient benefit of explaining why the anti-Apple zealots don't find their claims borne out by statistics.
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I think it's reasonable to expect that all hardware products conform to the following cycles:
...
In my opinion, we entered the mature phase of the camera market with Canon 5d. At least that's how it is for me.
I guess that you are referring to something ala this?
http://productlifecyclestages.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/product-life-cycle-stages.jpg
(http://productlifecyclestages.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/product-life-cycle-stages.jpg)
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I can't help smile at this post since you you more or less gave the reason some posts back in this thread ;) These people you have talked to might have gone back to the their teams and discussed it and I'm pretty sure the engineers could give good reasons not to implement this or the product managers could not show a positive revenue flow from adding this feature. I do agree with you about the value of such feature. But as usual the devil is in the details....
Question:
What is making smart-phones so popular these days? What made personal computers so popular in the 90s?
(One) Answer:
Because they are generic. The makers did not pretend to know every single use-case for their product, so they made them (to a variable degree) open, documented and friendly for small-scale add-ons (application developers).
I would love for Canon/Nikon/... to make their platform more open. The USB/WiFi interface, the raw file formats, the possibility of running applications locally. Apple has shown that this is possible while maintaining a reasonably stable and secure product. If there are a small group of enthusiasts that would really like ETTR-type tools, why not let them develop these tools with as little effort as possible. Why force your paying customers to reverse-engineer raw file formats and your binary firmware (with all kinds of nasty potential issues) in order to do what they want, when they might be perfectly happy with running a small "app" written in a high-level language that had access to basic camera hardware?
I think that Samsung and Sony are headed in this direction rapidly, while Canon and Nikon will be dragged, kicking and screaming, in that direction.
-h
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I guess that you are referring to something ala this?
http://productlifecyclestages.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/product-life-cycle-stages.jpg
Close, but no. This seems to relate to a single product, and I ways thinking more in terms of a product category, ie. "car" and not "Ford Focus mk1".
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Close, but no. This seems to relate to a single product, and I ways thinking more in terms of a product category, ie. "car" and not "Ford Focus mk1".
I believe that the website (and I) was thinking about cathegory and not individual product.
http://productlifecyclestages.com/
Here is the example of watching recorded television and the various stages of each method:
Introduction - 3D TVs
Growth - Blueray discs/DVR
Maturity - DVD
Decline - Video cassette
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I believe that the website (and I) was thinking about cathegory and not individual product.
http://productlifecyclestages.com/
Ah, then it is the same. I stand corrected.
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Actually quite simple: As standard for landscape shooting I bracket 3 ways (shots in bracket sequence) with one stop between. My simple rule is: There must be one shot that blinks and at least one that does not. Exposure compensation is used to achieve the above if this is not the case. Either one stop down or one stop up. Then I know that I can choose the best one in Lightroom when I import. In cases of large DR I will shoot 5 ways or extremely seldom 7 ways. The histogram is rather unreliable anyway compared to the RAW histogram and I use this method as I find it distracting to chimp. I'll from time to time quickly check according to this rule and this serves me very well. No need to look at histograms when shooting. I do look at histograms in Lightroom ;D Using this simple method it is very seldom that I don't have an optimal exposure to work on in Lightroom.
Of course I may check the histogram occasionally in special situations, but the point is to avoid doing it and concentrate on composing and moving around to get the best shots, especially when lots are happening. There are as we all know also times when we are just waiting for the light and one could check histograms, but that would be useless anyway.
That is an interesting approach, but it does entail taking a lot of shots. The blinking highlights have similar implications as the camera histogram, and these vary according to the camera, but tend to be conservative. With the Nikon D800e, here is a shot well short of clipping as shown by Rawdigger:
(http://bjanes.smugmug.com/Photography/D800-Stouffer/i-Gm3qwBc/0/XL/img2-XL.png)
The camera histogram shows the highlights just short of clipping:
(http://bjanes.smugmug.com/Photography/D800-Stouffer/i-p6MJvFr/0/L/LCD_0002-L.png)
And the blinking highlights show clipping in step one of the wedge:
(http://bjanes.smugmug.com/Photography/D800-Stouffer/i-hg3Zv2p/0/L/LCD_0002h_800-L.png)
Lightroom with PV2012 and default settings is not a good program to judge clipping in the raw file because of the baseline offset and automatic highlight recovery.
Regards,
Bill
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That is an interesting approach, but it does entail taking a lot of shots. The blinking highlights have similar implications as the camera histogram, and these vary according to the camera, but tend to be conservative. With the Nikon D800e, here is a shot well short of clipping as shown by Rawdigger:
I'm not looking at avoiding clipping any highlights. I'm looking at the maximum exposure that does not clip any essential highlights. The latter is relevant in case of e.g. a sun. And Lightroom will as you point out, not show where the RAW file is clipped and I would like to have an option for showing this. So I will visually judge of there is an issue with areas that are clipped slightly. Most of the time this is simple to do and I do use RAW Digger sometimes to double check the area. But this is a very small number of cases. In 99%+ of the cases from my experience Lightroom does a really good job. If there is a sky and clouds that look not quite right what I do is to copy the edits to the other exposures in the bracket sequence to judge the others in the area where an issue has been discovered. In casas where a single exposure will provide a good image edited in Lightroom due to noise, bad colors etc. I will then do an HDR merge with the 32bit plugin from Hdrsoft and then do the editing (tone mapping) in Lightroom from the bracketed seqence. Typically then 5 or more exposures. I will also in many cases shoot a sequence at f/8 and f/11 and even f/16 and you could calll that DOF bracketing and back in Lightroom I will judge which one has the best combination of sharpness and DOF.
Remember the essential reason for this approach is that I can spend as little time judging my exposures when capturing them as possible and concentrate on the compositions and leave the final choice of exposure back at my computer. In fact the same goes for compositions as I will shoot many more compositions than e.g. the one I first come up with and thing is the best. You could that composition bracketing ;D
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Actually I'm much more questioning of myself when I buy something expensive rather than moderate in costs.
Yup. I've been intermittently house-shopping since 2011. Haven't been able to pull the trigger yet.
Personally, I think the more camera companies specialize and stop trying to being mainstream the better. I know the board of directors of the respective companies won't agree, but I don't care about a new plastic covered blob that has 20% more iso or detail than the last plastic covered blob.
In any industry or market I think it's healthier when you have a bunch of smaller & more distinctive companies battling it out rather than two or three giants. The latter scenario IMO inevitably leads to the kind of blandness you describe. In the Interwebs I'd rather use (for example) Twitter for one thing, Instagram for another, Vimeo for yet another rather than an all-encompassing blob like Facebook. But that's me...I'm a fan of the modular approach to most things.
Regarding crowd sourcing of ideas, to me that's a big problem. It's like shooting a movie and doing focus groups per scene. (it happens) though have you ever seen one of those movies. If you have you won't remember it.
I could not agree with this more. IMO this kind of crowdsourcing is so wrong. Creative folks should be allowed to be creative! If you're lucky enough to work with innovative people in any endeavor, you've gotta give 'em the freedom to do their thing. Unencumbered to the greatest degree possible by corporate concerns. The film industry already has an appropriate form of crowdsourcing: ticket sales.
But this shouldn't be about equipment, it should be about images. Do you shoot something interesting to you . . . then the rest of the world? That's important and I can promise you whether it's 6mp or 60 the most creative content will win, technical perfection, choice of camera, lens or light plays a very small part.
I suppose all this discussion is about stuff in the last five percent of what makes a camera a creative tool. Maybe it's a symptom of the fact that our gear is so much better at what it does than we are at what we do. :)
-Dave-
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Re. exposure: taking photos in the Grand Canyon area (where I am currently) is not unlike astrophotography. You're often dealing with a fairly compressed tonal range, which then needs to be stretched in post. Since I'm shooting RAW + JPEG for easy sharing with friends & family, ETTR is out. But I have done a bit of it just to see if I can see any significant difference (on my iPad Air, which is pretty representative of my primary intended final output...screen display rather than printing) after processing. Guess what: I can't.
Now keep in mind I can do some in-camera fine-tuning (with my E-M1) to the RAW data & then create a modded JPEG, so if the white balance is off or I'd prefer less/more initial contrast I can get what I want. But I haven't had to do much of that. I've been working some of the JPEGs pretty hard and they're holding up really well. I'll make my final versions using the RAWs but I could manage just fine with the JPEGs if I had to.
I used to be insistent on exposing just so. But I'm finding with current gear it's not as important as it once was.
-Dave-
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As I mentioned before I never had a cable from Apple break.
I've never had a heart attack, so should I not believe they really happen? :P
Apple replaced everyone's magsafe cable because it was they were forced to do a recall on it, two out of three of my iPhone cables is doing the standard Apple fray and if you want general info on fragile Apple cables (https://www.google.co.uk/search?num=100&safe=off&espv=210&es_sm=119&q=apple+cables+breaking&spell=1&sa=X&ei=QzIvU_vjE-Tb7AbErIGwBg&ved=0CCgQvwUoAA&biw=1925&bih=1079). Actually the third cable is showing signs of impending breakage in the exact same place and the two already fraying ones tend to be left in situ, i.e the plug/charger and yet have still failed. It's a shit design, looks come before functionality, unless of course if the function is the need to be expensively replaced on a regular basis.
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In the Interwebs I'd rather use (for example) Twitter for one thing, Instagram for another, Vimeo for yet another rather than an all-encompassing blob like Facebook. But that's me...I'm a fan of the modular approach to most things.
But then I just think of FB as a different [and very useful] tool to all the other ones you mentioned.
The film industry already has an appropriate form of crowdsourcing: ticket sales.
Which sadly is only really a reflection on how well films are marketed, not how good they are. It's all about first weekend gross nowadays.
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Which sadly is only really a reflection on how well films are marketed, not how good they are. It's all about first weekend gross nowadays.
That's certainly true to a large degree, but once a film is made it's made. It may not find its audience initially but if it's good it will eventually. Sometimes a film mangled by studio meddling gets a second chance too if there's a good film there to begin with (and all the footage is preserved). Blade Runner comes to mind. And not all films are 1st-weekend-gross dependent. Some directors have built brands for themselves and have audiences who'll reliably turn out for their films. Like Alexander Payne and Nicole Holofcener (two of my favorites).
-Dave-
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I'm not looking at avoiding clipping any highlights. I'm looking at the maximum exposure that does not clip any essential highlights.
Exactly! Good point!
I used to frequently bracket exposures when using Canon DSLRs, in order to give myself more options during processing. The choice might be between a correctly exposed background sky, as seen through the gaps in the trees, but with very noisy shadows in the main subject of the composition; or completely blown patches of sky, but much cleaner shadows without banding.
If the subject was fairly static, one might be able to get the best of both worlds through selection/copy & paste, or merging to HDR if one had been using a tripod, or had a very steady hand.
However, I found that Nikon offered some additional options for this type of process, such as bracketing ISO, which allows one to maintain the desired shutter speed and aperture for the circumstances, and an AF-ON button which completely separates focus from exposure whilst in full manual mode, allowing one to lock focus on one part of the composition whilst one determines an appropriate exposure for another part of the composition, such as the sky, by moving the camera or focusing square to that other part of the scene, then recomposing.
The other advantage of Nikon DSLRs is the wider DR at base ISO, which makes it less of a priority to fuss around trying to get the perfect ETTR.
Nevertheless, when I compare shots taken with my 24mp Nikon D7100 with the same scenes shot with my D800E using appropriately longer focal lengths, the lower shadow noise and smoother mid-tones of the D800E are very obvious. There is great scope for improvement here.
I want a DX camera, or Canon EOS, with the performance of a D800E in terms of resolution, DR and SNR. Are you listening, Nikon and Canon? ;D
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I'm equipment agnostic and not to take this to the computer brand wars, but sometimes I think Apple is just arrogant.
I have twenty apple computers and two new Imacs, was going to buy the new macpro for an editing station, but it doesn't have pci slots, thunderbolt 2 doesn't allow for external pci boxes with 16 lane access, (which kills of my RED Rockets for debayering footage and for most use, except transferring data isn't not really any faster than the top of line Imac which also doesn't allow 16 lane pci cards.
Since I move studio to studio, workstation to workstation, the newer macs are a problem with thunderbolt and I'm going to have to start working in usb 3 to make my drives backward compatible to older machines.
With apple killing off fcp 7, going to the totally different mindset of fcp X and then limiting the macpro to our way or the highway business model is crazy.
Had I known this was coming I'd have moved our workstations to windows machines a long time ago.
So I guess this relates to new cameras. If you buy a new camera and your on the apple system you usually have to go to a new operating system, then a new computer.
I wish they had gotten away from the proprietary file system a long time ago.
The beauty of my Leica is it connects with usb, it shoots a dng file that will run in computers and software that is 4 years old.
IMO
BC
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I don't think anything useful could be accomplished by including ETTR as a metering mode, for several reasons. First, it's an advanced technique, used by a fraction of the ones who shoot raw, who represent a fraction of the market. Second, people who use advanced techniques prefer to have a hands-on approach and judge the histogram personally. So basically it would be similar to expecting macro photographers to use a "flower" scene mode. It'll never happen.
Also, I must admit that I tried using ETTR and gave it up, and it wasn't even a difficult decision because the digital cameras have such a vast tonal reservoir in the shadows, and are so fragile in the highlights, so sensitive to clipping, it only creates problems. Of course, a decade ago when digital cameras usually had very small and noisy sensors it made sense to avoid the shadows as much as possible, but with anything close to a modern camera with a large sensor you'll never see a problem ETTR is meant to solve. Not at low ISO, and if you raise ISO in order to push exposure planning to pull in processing, you'll be better off lowering the ISO and exposure in the first place.
To illustrate what I mean by exposing dark (Canon 5d):
(http://www.danijel.org/uploads/tx_photographiclibrary/IMG_6332w.jpg)
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That's certainly true to a large degree, but once a film is made it's made. It may not find its audience initially but if it's good it will eventually.
Except films tend to disappear from cinemas pretty quickly if they don't hit pay dirt on first weekend. Sleeper hits do not happen in cinema anymore and is why hollywood stuff is tending towards summer blockbuster/spectacle type films these days all year around and trying to maximise first weekend grosses. Destroying entire cities/half the planet seems to be the norm now. Though Feb/March tends to be when 'better' quality films are briefly around as all the more serious Oscar hopefuls get released around then.
The cinema I go to, when it was owned by the French Cinema company UCI, used to show a lot of interesting world cinema too. Sadly since it was taken over by Cineworld it now shows mainstream Hollywood + Bollywood films with very rare excursions into anything else. :(
Sometimes a film mangled by studio meddling gets a second chance too if there's a good film there to begin with (and all the footage is preserved). Blade Runner comes to mind.
Which was made 30 years ago, is a very, very rare exception and only had a second chance because those involved were still very big names years later and the studios wanted to cash in and make up for the poor box office first time around. Still didn't really make any money (http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1982/0BLRU.php) and even the various Director's cuts were not how film was originally intended. It's worth reading Paul M. Sammon's book 'Future Noir, The making of Blade Runner' on the travails of making the film and the later failed attempts to do a definitive version.
And not all films are 1st-weekend-gross dependent. Some directors have built brands for themselves and have audiences who'll reliably turn out for their films. Like Alexander Payne and Nicole Holofcener (two of my favorites).
Yet Nebraska quickly disappeared from cinema before I got to see it. It got a single extra screening run due to it doing so well during award season and luckily I was free at tea time on that one day.
The British art-house director Peter Greenaway, used to get funding for his films relatively easily, despite their somewhat esoteric nature. This was because he made them cheaply [by film standards] and they always grossed enough to pay back costs - he was particularly popular in Holland I believe.
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I'm equipment agnostic and not to take this to the computer brand wars, but sometimes I think Apple is just arrogant.
I have twenty apple computers and two new Imacs, was going to buy the new macpro for an editing station, but it doesn't have pci slots, thunderbolt 2 doesn't allow for external pci boxes with 16 lane access, (which kills of my RED Rockets for debayering footage and for most use, except transferring data isn't not really any faster than the top of line Imac which also doesn't allow 16 lane pci cards.
Since I move studio to studio, workstation to workstation, the newer macs are a problem with thunderbolt and I'm going to have to start working in usb 3 to make my drives backward compatible to older machines.
With apple killing off fcp 7, going to the totally different mindset of fcp X and then limiting the macpro to our way or the highway business model is crazy.
Had I known this was coming I'd have moved our workstations to windows machines a long time ago.
The claim that the new MP is for working pros is a bit of a joke as a smaller box with less options is not what many pros want or need. The internals are now external, so the tiny new machine is no smaller once you add the previously internal content back with added spaghetti. Plus connectivity and customisation options have been reduced and price dramatically increased over previous version. At end of the day it's more like a really powerful Mac Mini, aimed more at consumers with deep pockets than working professionals.
This neat but sadly non (http://blog.alex4d.com/2013/06/12/2013-mac-pro-expansion/)-existent idea kind of points up the poor form factor.
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It's extraordinarily rare that a customer is going to come up with a game-changing idea for you, it's all incremental stuff, usually very tactical, like Michael's idea. "Here's a thing you could do that would solve this problem I have" roughly. Often what's much more interesting is the description of the problem, rather than the proposed solution.
Yup it's extremely unlikely that millions of end users who actually use the product in real world conditions, can think of something that a 2 or 3 people sitting in a design studio won't have already come up with. [/sarcasm]
The problem with too many products is that they are made by [usually very talented] designers, where is too often a big disconnect between someone who is a good designer and an end user. A designer by nature of his job is very unlikely to be say a professional user of his end products so may not grok the reality of real world usage of say a pro camera, even if they say take photographs themselves.
Take for example this cycling jacket aimed at commuters. It has a small led placed within back of jacket to let other road users see the cyclist. A pretty good idea, except there's one big problem. If commuting/using a bike around town a backpack is often used, which will then cover light as it is much higher up jacket than it needs to be and make it stick painfully into your spine. :o
If recreational cycling, usually done without a backpack, then the light's position is just fine. But you'll probably use a much snugger, less baggy top for that sort of riding and not a commuter style jacket. Light should have been placed below waist level to clear backpacks, where it will still do it's job nicely and also be out of the way, should you crash and land on your back.
(http://www.cyclesense.co.uk/smsimg/6/13650-0-full-al22evo53---altura-night-vision-evo-13-jacket-red-back-with-i-lumi-6.jpg)
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I have twenty apple computers and two new Imacs, was going to buy the new macpro for an editing station, but it doesn't have pci slots, thunderbolt 2 doesn't allow for external pci boxes with 16 lane access, (which kills of my RED Rockets for debayering footage and for most use, except transferring data isn't not really any faster than the top of line Imac which also doesn't allow 16 lane pci cards.
Not that I have any idea of motion but are these alternatives ?
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/archive/2012/11/13/video-editing-supercomputer-z820-red-edition.aspx
" Windows offers an advantage in this context because you can stack an arbitrary number of RED ROCKET cards (based on how many PCI slots are available) which is not possible on other platforms. Since it takes a dedicated RED ROCKET card per layer of 4K/5K video being transcoded or decoded, that means that Windows offers the most powerful capability for viewing and editing multiple layers of 4K/5K footage on this kind of workstation. "
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Yup it's extremely unlikely that millions of end users who actually use the product in real world conditions, can think of something that a 2 or 3 people sitting in a design studio won't have already come up with. [/sarcasm]
With all due respect, it you're going to quote me, please make some effort to understand what I am actually saying first before getting all snotty.
Thanks.
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I don't think anything useful could be accomplished by including ETTR as a metering mode, for several reasons. First, it's an advanced technique, used by a fraction of the ones who shoot raw, who represent a fraction of the market. Second, people who use advanced techniques prefer to have a hands-on approach and judge the histogram personally. So basically it would be similar to expecting macro photographers to use a "flower" scene mode. It'll never happen.
Also, I must admit that I tried using ETTR and gave it up, and it wasn't even a difficult decision because the digital cameras have such a vast tonal reservoir in the shadows, and are so fragile in the highlights, so sensitive to clipping, it only creates problems. Of course, a decade ago when digital cameras usually had very small and noisy sensors it made sense to avoid the shadows as much as possible, but with anything close to a modern camera with a large sensor you'll never see a problem ETTR is meant to solve. Not at low ISO, and if you raise ISO in order to push exposure planning to pull in processing, you'll be better off lowering the ISO and exposure in the first place.
To illustrate what I mean by exposing dark (Canon 5d):
Your downsized image looks OK, but that does not prove your point since downsizing reduces noise. I downloaded your image and it is 1024x683 pixels. The 5D resolution is 5920x3950 pixels, so the ratio is 5.78:1 by linear image size and 33.4:1 by area. The signal:noise due to photon statistics (shot noise) varies as the square root of the number of photons collected. Your downsizing is effectively pixel binning and you are cramming the number of electrons into a space 33.4 times smaller, improving the SNR by a factor of sqrt(33.4) or a factor of 5.8. Why don't you post a full size image and then we could see the real SNR.
Regards,
Bill
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Some recent discussion of ETTR sounds like bracketing exposures, choosing the best frame, and if necessary adjusting its levels. You can get a three or five frame bracket in a fraction of a second, far quicker that examining in-camera histograms (and worrying about their unreliability), and hundreds of such bracketing groups ft on on a single card (and cost a fraction of a cent to store on hard drive even if for some reason you keep them all).
So I am not sure that I see much value to adding a special ETTR light-metering mode for this.
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Your downsized image looks OK, but that does not prove your point since downsizing reduces noise.
The full-size image looks more-less the same as this, there is no noise. I made a completely smooth B2 sized exhibition print out of the file. I actually can't figure out why you would expect there to be noise, it's ISO 100 on Canon 5d, it's not made with a smartphone.
If you want to count photons, I'm not giving that one away, but I do have one technically similar for those purposes - exported from LR 4:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_V_KsUHLnURUi1ZWG8yQnE4enc/edit?usp=sharing
There are many things wrong with it, but noise and shadow tonality aren't among them.
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Except films tend to disappear from cinemas pretty quickly if they don't hit pay dirt on first weekend. Sleeper hits do not happen in cinema anymore and is why hollywood stuff is tending towards summer blockbuster/spectacle type films these days all year around and trying to maximise first weekend grosses.
All I can say is: DVD, Blu-ray, On Demand, streaming. The Stunt Man, a film that did nothing at the box office, is available in a really nice Blu-ray release with in-depth supplemental material. Cimino's notorious Heaven's Gate (I'm a fan) is out via Criterion Blu-ray with a new director's cut, again with good supplemental stuff. Fassbinder's World On A Wire, a 3 1/2 hour mind-f**k extravaganza shown once on German TV in the 1970s, is also out via Criterion Blu-ray. I missed Nebraska in the theater too but watched the Blu-ray on its release day. Once a film is made it has a shot at surviving, and if it survives it has a shot at being seen. It's not a perfect scenario by any means but at least good stuff still gets made.
-Dave-
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The full-size image looks more-less the same as this, there is no noise. I made a completely smooth B2 sized exhibition print out of the file. I actually can't figure out why you would expect there to be noise, it's ISO 100 on Canon 5d, it's not made with a smartphone.
If you want to count photons, I'm not giving that one away, but I do have one technically similar for those purposes - exported from LR 4:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_V_KsUHLnURUi1ZWG8yQnE4enc/edit?usp=sharing
There are many things wrong with it, but noise and shadow tonality aren't among them.
Thanks for the upload. I did download and look at it and does look very good. Of course, it does have some minimal noise visible in the smooth out of focus areas in the upper left portion of the image--due to photon statistics noise is inevitably present. The DR of your image is not that high and ETTR was not necessary to get good results. However, in a high dynamic range situation ETTR is still necessary to obtain the full DR of the sensor. I do agree that ETTR is less critical with modern full frame sensors, but it still has a place even at base ISO.
Regards,
Bill
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So I am not sure that I see much value to adding a special ETTR light-metering mode for this.
Bracketing is a band-aid to many photography troubles. I would prefer accurate, predictable tools that would aid in setting automatic/semi-automatic exposure rather than "spraying and praying".
-h
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I don't think anything useful could be accomplished by including ETTR as a metering mode, for several reasons. First, it's an advanced technique, used by a fraction of the ones who shoot raw, who represent a fraction of the market. Second, people who use advanced techniques prefer to have a hands-on approach and judge the histogram personally. So basically it would be similar to expecting macro photographers to use a "flower" scene mode. It'll never happen.
Also, I must admit that I tried using ETTR and gave it up, and it wasn't even a difficult decision because the digital cameras have such a vast tonal reservoir in the shadows, and are so fragile in the highlights, so sensitive to clipping, it only creates problems. Of course, a decade ago when digital cameras usually had very small and noisy sensors it made sense to avoid the shadows as much as possible, but with anything close to a modern camera with a large sensor you'll never see a problem ETTR is meant to solve. Not at low ISO, and if you raise ISO in order to push exposure planning to pull in processing, you'll be better off lowering the ISO and exposure in the first place.
To illustrate what I mean by exposing dark (Canon 5d):
(http://www.danijel.org/uploads/tx_photographiclibrary/IMG_6332w.jpg)
I think you missed my point: The way I shoot as described previously is to have to look minimally on the LCD when shooting and come back with optimal or very close to optimal results in terms of exposure. In Lightroom I will choose the best exposure and I can tell you that I get much overall results by using this method than chimping which I did in the past. I still have shots from the old 5D than are suboptimal and I wished that I had used the method I use now. Also using the 1Ds mkIII and D800E I can say the same although for the D800E it is mostly to avoid highlight clipping. I now use mainly 5D mkIII and although many shots are just perfect with no bracketing and EC, there are plenty where this is not the case. I find chimping severely distracting in my creative process and actually unnecessary.
You image does not prove anything as you kept shadows really dark. That can be fine in some scenes but in others it does not work, at least for me :)
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Exactly! Good point!
I used to frequently bracket exposures when using Canon DSLRs, in order to give myself more options during processing. The choice might be between a correctly exposed background sky, as seen through the gaps in the trees, but with very noisy shadows in the main subject of the composition; or completely blown patches of sky, but much cleaner shadows without banding.
If the subject was fairly static, one might be able to get the best of both worlds through selection/copy & paste, or merging to HDR if one had been using a tripod, or had a very steady hand.
However, I found that Nikon offered some additional options for this type of process, such as bracketing ISO, which allows one to maintain the desired shutter speed and aperture for the circumstances, and an AF-ON button which completely separates focus from exposure whilst in full manual mode, allowing one to lock focus on one part of the composition whilst one determines an appropriate exposure for another part of the composition, such as the sky, by moving the camera or focusing square to that other part of the scene, then recomposing.
The other advantage of Nikon DSLRs is the wider DR at base ISO, which makes it less of a priority to fuss around trying to get the perfect ETTR.
Nevertheless, when I compare shots taken with my 24mp Nikon D7100 with the same scenes shot with my D800E using appropriately longer focal lengths, the lower shadow noise and smoother mid-tones of the D800E are very obvious. There is great scope for improvement here.
I want a DX camera, or Canon EOS, with the performance of a D800E in terms of resolution, DR and SNR. Are you listening, Nikon and Canon? ;D
You must have used a very old Canon like e.g. the 5D. All Canons since ca. 2007 has an AF-ON button, before that folks remapped the *-button for AF. I always used AF separate from the shutter.
The issue with the D800E is more to avoid highlight clipping than the consequence of underexposure although noise will creep in in such cases and sometimes in distracting ways.
If I was to think of a sensor for my liking, it would be something like:
35mm full frame, 50MP resolution, each pixel consisting of 2 pixels for PDAF and one for exposure time. No mechanical shutter. Exposure start by resetting all pixels, end of exposure would happen when either the electronic shutter ends the exposure or for individual pixels the well is full and the exposure time pixel will record the exposure time which could be shorter than the overall exposure time. Then the RAW format would contain the light levels for each pixel and exposure time and the RAW converter could convert this into a final picture. This could be Bayer type sensor or eventually full color at each pixel. Such a sensor could almost infinite DR if the overall shutter time was long enough. Such a sensor would never clip highlights. Unless the shutter time was chosen too short there also would be automatic ETTR.
Well, well :) I'm probably dreaming.
Besides that I would like a very compact body and a single lens 14-300mm f/4 fully corrected in HW (in the lens and not in SW) and a resolution to match the sensor. The lens should be fixed on the camera to avoid issues of dust etc. It should be very compact and light and made of light materials. LCD should be touch screen and with automatic DOF and also manual DOF by pointing on the screen from where to where the DOF should exend to. Here assuming traditional technique as we know from today of how lenses work wrt. DOF.
That would be my dream landscape camera. It could possibly weigh just one KG or less.
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I think you missed my point: The way I shoot as described previously is to have to look minimally on the LCD when shooting and come back with optimal or very close to optimal results in terms of exposure.
Well, I must admit I don't spend much time fussing with exposure in the field; I take a look to see whether I clipped something and usually make minor exposure adjustments in raw conversion, but other than that, I have a "knack" for nailing exposure from years of shooting chromes, which are quite unforgiving in both shades and highlights. Compared to that, digital is so easy to get good results with I'm just not motivated to geek it out. :)
Also, most of the stuff I shoot doesn't lend itself well to ETTR principle; if I shoot handheld in variable lighting conditions, it's difficult to nail it as it is, but if I add another variable it spirals out of control. For instance, this:
(http://www.danijel.org/uploads/tx_photographiclibrary/IMG_2211.jpg)
Go even the tiniest bit to the right and it's ruined. It's so vital to guard the highlights, nothing else matters, especially with a modern large-sensor camera that renders blacks so velvety smooth.
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The Stunt Man, a film that did nothing at the box office,
I saw stuntman years after it's release. Obviously the clothes and pace were dated, but the story and in particular Peter O'toole's talent were off the scale.
I heard through the crew/studio/industry/BS rumor mill that the studio was pissed and I think held it back, finally opening it in Seattle. It built a small following then they yanked it, but then there was no netflix, or twitter feeds.
There is a film about the film
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2048498688/tt0238606?ref_=tt_ov_i
which details it.
Usually though shows about the industry fail. A few make it but only if the distributors are 100% behind it and nobody gets worried.
Remember studio heads have good jobs . . . they don't want to lose them.
IMO
BC
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Not that I have any idea of motion but are these alternatives ?
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html
http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/archive/2012/11/13/video-editing-supercomputer-z820-red-edition.aspx
Yes, except it's just changing complete systems is tough. Especially with multiple places, and traveling.
Then there is the problem that you can't make a pro res file or any quicktime in a windows box.
QT may be leaving, but today it's the delivery standard, at least for my clients.
Proprietary to make money I understand, such as lens mounts (though I don't like it).
Proprietary just to make a statement like the new Mac Pro is an insult to the professionals that propped Apple up in the bad times.
All the talk today is 4k. Yes you can edit 4k in proxy's or dumb down the NLE to play essentially a 1080 proxy, but work in real 4k and your going to glitch.
This is where the camera makers aren't communicating with the software companies and the computer makers.
You can now shoot 4k on the cheap, but editing and delivery is far from simple, same with color and compositing.
No reason on this planet that Apple builds a new box that doesn't have a way to put 16 lane pcI cards to it, either onboard or off.
No reason that Apple tosses out fw800, at least leave one powered plug. I mean it's hubris to think that professionals that have hundred of stored terabytes are all going to dedicated two months and a team to transfer everything to thunderbolt, especially since thunderbolt is not the most secure connection.
IMO
BC
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You must have used a very old Canon like e.g. the 5D. All Canons since ca. 2007 has an AF-ON button,
Quite right. My only full-frame Canon DSLR was the 5D. I almost upgraded to a 5DII but was seduced by the impressive quality of the Nikkor 14-24/F2.8 lens, and the impressive DR of the latest Nikon DSLRs.
The disadvantage I found with the 5D, when using auto exposure bracketing to capture an optimal exposure, was that sometimes the best exposure for clean shadows was too slow for a sharp image.
Auto ISO bracketing with fixed aperture and shutter speed would have been a better option, especially considering how much the shadows are improved with increasing ISO on all Canon cameras. The greater ISO-less nature of the Nikon cameras lends itself to greater flexibility in this regard. Underexposure at a low ISO may be only very marginally worse, with regard to shadow noise, than the same exposure at a high ISO.
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Telecaster, that is exactly what any competent product management team does. They do not share the database, however, so in general you don't know about it.
Wondrous!
Might it even be possible they actually know how much profit they make on each of their cameras and lenses!
Of course, our unlimited speculation completely depends on not knowing any of the information that people on-the-inside actually have available to justify their decisions ;-)
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I saw stuntman years after it's release. Obviously the clothes and pace were dated, but the story and in particular Peter O'toole's talent were off the scale.
I heard through the crew/studio/industry/BS rumor mill that the studio was pissed and I think held it back, finally opening it in Seattle. It built a small following then they yanked it, but then there was no netflix, or twitter feeds.
I guess I'm among the few folks who saw The Stunt Man during its original brief release. It played for maybe a week at one theater in the Detroit area. My friend Dale & I went to an early evening show...there were less than a dozen other people there. I wanted to see it mainly 'cuz I thought Barbara Hershey was cute. :D Afterwards we both thought it was one of the best films we'd ever seen. It doesn't hold up to that standard now—as you note it's of its time, and its type of twist ending has since been done to death—but I watched it again not long after Peter O'Toole died and was still impressed. A lot of my favorite films are ones with huge ambition that may not quite reach what they were going for but still take you on a real good (& sometimes wild) ride. The opening sequence of The Stunt Man is a classic IMO.
-Dave-
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The discussion of optimal exposure reminds me of audio engineers who feel they still have to push recording levels just short of 0dB on the digital scale, even though with 24-bit recording you can hold peaks to -12 or even -15dB for the sake of headroom and still preserve high fidelity while maintaining an inaudible noise floor. We don't have quite that degree of latitude with electronic photography, but with the cameras I'm using now fussing over exposure to such an extent gains me nothing. The quality of shadow gradation I'm seeing is very impressive even exposing for optimal JPEG use. It's a surplus of data actually, and thus I no longer have to worry about it. This is good!
-Dave-
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The discussion of optimal exposure reminds me of audio engineers who feel they still have to push recording levels just short of 0dB on the digital scale, even though with 24-bit recording you can hold peaks to -12 or even -15dB for the sake of headroom and still preserve high fidelity while maintaining an inaudible noise floor. We don't have quite that degree of latitude with electronic photography, but with the cameras I'm using now fussing over exposure to such an extent gains me nothing. The quality of shadow gradation I'm seeing is very impressive even exposing for optimal JPEG use. It's a surplus of data actually, and thus I no longer have to worry about it. This is good!
-Dave-
Dave, if it is good for you and the way you photograph and your requirements, then that's all good. The point I was making was not about this.
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The discussion of optimal exposure reminds me of audio engineers who feel they still have to push recording levels just short of 0dB on the digital scale, even though with 24-bit recording you can hold peaks to -12 or even -15dB for the sake of headroom and still preserve high fidelity while maintaining an inaudible noise floor. We don't have quite that degree of latitude with electronic photography, but with the cameras I'm using now fussing over exposure to such an extent gains me nothing. The quality of shadow gradation I'm seeing is very impressive even exposing for optimal JPEG use. It's a surplus of data actually, and thus I no longer have to worry about it. This is good!
-Dave-
Thing is that with audio you just listen to it. A raw image is just the very beginning of the processing pipeline. The information is there so that we can get to that final low fi jpg.
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Well, I must admit I don't spend much time fussing with exposure in the field; I take a look to see whether I clipped something and usually make minor exposure adjustments in raw conversion, but other than that, I have a "knack" for nailing exposure from years of shooting chromes, which are quite unforgiving in both shades and highlights. Compared to that, digital is so easy to get good results with I'm just not motivated to geek it out. :)
Also, most of the stuff I shoot doesn't lend itself well to ETTR principle; if I shoot handheld in variable lighting conditions, it's difficult to nail it as it is, but if I add another variable it spirals out of control. For instance, this:
(http://www.danijel.org/uploads/tx_photographiclibrary/IMG_2211.jpg)
Go even the tiniest bit to the right and it's ruined. It's so vital to guard the highlights, nothing else matters, especially with a modern large-sensor camera that renders blacks so velvety smooth.
ETTR means that you exposure maximum without blowing out any highlight. The way I shoot I preserve highlights and I agree, of course, that any essential highlights should not be blown out. If you have a low DR scene you can underexposure by one stop and no problem, but if you have a high DR scene this is not good if you want to see details also in the shadows. Therefore I have adopted my approach which also lends itself to do an HDR merge if needed. So all cases are covered. The downside is many more exposures. The upside is no wasted time or attention to non essential technical details when shooting. In many cases there is time enough but when the light and weather really plays in the landscapes then one need to maximize the attention on the shooting, compositions, moving around etc. In such situations errors are made by even the most experienced shooters :) Believe me I have been there ....
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The discussion of optimal exposure reminds me of audio engineers who feel they still have to push recording levels just short of 0dB on the digital scale, even though with 24-bit recording you can hold peaks to -12 or even -15dB for the sake of headroom and still preserve high fidelity while maintaining an inaudible noise floor. We don't have quite that degree of latitude with electronic photography, but with the cameras I'm using now fussing over exposure to such an extent gains me nothing. The quality of shadow gradation I'm seeing is very impressive even exposing for optimal JPEG use. It's a surplus of data actually, and thus I no longer have to worry about it. This is good!
-Dave-
Imagine the joy of those audio engineers if the manufacturers told them "sorry, you won't be able to add your required N dB of headroom based on metering of raw inputs. Rather, we'll do some dynamic range compression and mp3 encoding of the audio first, then provide you with level estimates from that output".
-h
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Imagine the joy of those audio engineers if the manufacturers told them "sorry, you won't be able to add your required N dB of headroom based on metering of raw inputs. Rather, we'll do some dynamic range compression and mp3 encoding of the audio first, then provide you with level estimates from that output".
Good one!
Really, as an audio engineer, I would not settle for -12 to -15dBFS peaks. Those are more like ENG or film dialog levels. I really do prefer to get it up at least to -6dBFS or better. A little fast compression and limiting on the way in is not a bad thing either. Usually it's only a very few things that blow your levels -- big tom-tom hits, etc.
And yes, you can really hear the benefits of preserving bits in audio. First of all, there are no real 24 bit converters. The most you can meaningfully get is 20-21. But that's /a lot/ better than 16. You can hear it in the reverb tails. The more processing you do (we work in a 64-bit float space) the more you can appreciate how those extra bits help.
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I guess I'm among the few folks who saw The Stunt Man during its original brief release. It played for maybe a week at one theater in the Detroit area. My friend Dale & I went to an early evening show...there were less than a dozen other people there. I wanted to see it mainly 'cuz I thought Barbara Hershey was cute. :D Afterwards we both thought it was one of the best films we'd ever seen. It doesn't hold up to that standard now—as you note it's of its time, and its type of twist ending has since been done to death—but I watched it again not long after Peter O'Toole died and was still impressed. A lot of my favorite films are ones with huge ambition that may not quite reach what they were going for but still take you on a real good (& sometimes wild) ride. The opening sequence of The Stunt Man is a classic IMO.
I saw it at a preview showing as I was reviewing the film for the student newspaper I worked for. It's one of my favourite films too. So I gave it a very positive review, bar the dip in the middle for the romance scene, which made for a lurch in the momentum of the film. I'm pretty sure have the soundtrack for it in my vinyl collection too. Considering the film got nominated for 3 big Oscars, director, best actor and screenplay, it's strange it got such a limited release. But then studio heads can be complete dicks.
Sadly I doubt the DVD release will have gained it many new fans as it will have suffered from not being the fresh and original film it was back then, for the reasons you mention.
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ETTR means that you exposure maximum without blowing out any highlight. The way I shoot I preserve highlights and I agree, of course, that any essential highlights should not be blown out. If you have a low DR scene you can underexposure by one stop and no problem, but if you have a high DR scene this is not good if you want to see details also in the shadows. Therefore I have adopted my approach which also lends itself to do an HDR merge if needed. So all cases are covered. The downside is many more exposures. The upside is no wasted time or attention to non essential technical details when shooting. In many cases there is time enough but when the light and weather really plays in the landscapes then one need to maximize the attention on the shooting, compositions, moving around etc. In such situations errors are made by even the most experienced shooters :) Believe me I have been there ....
Yes, I agree with you that if you really need information in the shadows, it might be a good idea to blend several exposures in HDR software, but honestly, I never had good results with that. To me, it looks like geeking it out, like, let's get all the information we can, but my experience is that photography is as much about letting information go, as it is in obtaining it. You need to discard stuff. This desire to include everything, to mourn every white and black pixel as a tragic loss due to clipping which would be better recovered, I don't know, I can't really adopt that attitude. For me, it's like this: I know what I want to get and if I'm getting it, I'm happy. To me, it's getting the blacks to look clean and smooth, defined by the subject and not by sensor readout noise or banding. If the blacks look good, I'm quite satisfied to leave them black, I have no great need to push 2ev of shadow detail out of it and make blacks look muddy brown. Actually, the point where I fell in love with a large-sensor camera is when I saw a picture of deep dark rock on cascading waterfalls, rock that was perfectly defined and yet deep black, and I understood that I couldn't make that shot with either C41 or E6 film, or my small-sensor digital. The silde has no color definition in the shades, the negative would define it as an empty hazy blob and the small sensor would also define it as brown due to noise. But only a large-sensor digital would define it as pure, 3d volume of darkness.
ETTR technique assumes there's a problem with shadows when shooting digital, but I can't confirm that, not with low-ISO shots with modern large sensor cameras. In fact, I find the opposite to be true; the shadows are defined in the most perfect tonality, it's the greatest asset of digital photography compared to film. Also, Michael's explanation which says that the left side of the histogram is defined by a very limited binary number-space sounds flawed; in my understanding, the sensor element uses photoelectric effect to charge a capacitor with photons, and at readout the ADC converts the charge of the capacitor, from 0 V to MAX V, into a binary number that defines luminance. Why LSB of that number would carry more information than MSB, I have no idea. The information is limited by photon count, by the readout noise that could corrupt the information in pixels adjacent to the readout conduits, by the ADC noise, EM noise from the PCB and similar things, but once the ADC has delivered its number, all bits are equal. Sure, if a pixel is so dark it has a luminance value of 3, there isn't much between that and zero, only 2 bits of data to work with. But if you're working in 8-bit space and you're working with pixel brightness of 253 to 255, you're still working with those same two least-significant bits to the left, because everything else is set to 1. So the entire logic that refers to the limited number space at the left side of the histogram, compared to the right, is flawed.
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So the entire logic that refers to the limited number space at the left side of the histogram, compared to the right, is flawed.
That observation has been made some time ago by Emil (http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/noise-p3.html#ETTR). It is not the number of "levels" but rather the signal to noise ratio that is the proper rationale for ETTR. One should not clip highlights by overzealous ETTR, but even though the histograms on current cameras are flawed, you are safe if the RGB histograms show no clipping, since these histograms are conservative.
Bill
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ETTR technique assumes there's a problem with shadows when shooting digital, but I can't confirm that, not with low-ISO shots with modern large sensor cameras. In fact, I find the opposite to be true; the shadows are defined in the most perfect tonality, it's the greatest asset of digital photography compared to film.
I don't get your reasoning here.
Any exposing assumes that there is a "problem" with your camera (combined with light itself): it has limited DR. If DR was unlimited, there would be no need to think about exposure, just set exposure time and aperture from purely aesthetical goals wrgt DOF, motion blur etc.
ETTR is simply an advanced name for something that digital audio engineers have practiced for a long time: keep signal levels high, but avoid clipping. The two goals conflict, and in practice you should find some compromise. The better feedback you receive, the more aggressive you can do that compromise.
Of course, if your gear has far more DR than your requirements, you can relax the compromise (and rather focus on other aspects of photography).
-h
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To me, it looks like geeking it out, like, let's get all the information we can, but my experience is that photography is as much about letting information go, as it is in obtaining it. You need to discard stuff. This desire to include everything, to mourn every white and black pixel as a tragic loss due to clipping which would be better recovered, I don't know, I can't really adopt that attitude. For me, it's like this: I know what I want to get and if I'm getting it, I'm happy. To me, it's getting the blacks to look clean and smooth, defined by the subject and not by sensor readout noise or banding. If the blacks look good, I'm quite satisfied to leave them black, I have no great need to push 2ev of shadow detail out of it and make blacks look muddy brown.
My view exactly.
If it looks good it is good. I don't care if the histogram is combed or if I've not captured every pixel I could when the end result is what I require. With film I sometimes used Kodak recording film, not the best quality film in the first place and then pushed it in a speed developer. This 'degraded' quality further, but I really liked the end result, so that was fine. ;D
ETTR has its place too, if you are shooting an image where the histogram data is clustered down the dark end and if you ETTR so that the lump of data moves to the right and doesn't get clipped then in theory you get a more malleable image. Whether it 'looks' better is purely an aesthetic choice. It also depends on the sort of work you are doing. Landscapes and other other similar considered work where you have time to tweak, ETTR is an option. If you shoot more spontaneous work, then shooting 'a bit dark' as I heard it described the other day [by a very well paid wedding photographer] helps to preserve highlight from being blown. This is more important than the potential gains of ETTR.
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ETTR is simply an advanced name for something that digital audio engineers have practiced for a long time: keep signal levels high, but avoid clipping. The two goals conflict, and in practice you should find some compromise. The better feedback you receive, the more aggressive you can do that compromise.
Signal levels were kept high to stay above the noise floor, a practice needed with older audio equipment that isn't really analogous to what photographers do.
Poor quality sound recording, simply sound bad. However poorer quality photographs can look great as it can be deliberately done as stylistic thing, so not necessarily a compromise at all. This is why a well shot film where the sound is off is perceived as a badly made film. Whereas a film with deliberately lo-fi/poor quality camera work and high quality sound will be seen as well made.
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Signal levels were kept high to stay above the noise floor, a practice needed with older audio equipment that isn't really analogous to what photographers do.
Signal levels and noise levels are topics of interest for audio and image people alike. "why are my ISO50000 shots so noisy??"
Poor quality sound recording, simply sound bad. However poorer quality photographs can look great as it can be deliberately done as stylistic thing, so not necessarily a compromise at all.
Musicians have probably used "lowfi" recording as a stylistic thing for nearly as many decades as they have been able to record at all. The most prominent example is perhaps overdriven tube amplifiers and crappy 12" speakers used as sound shapers for electric guitars. A more recent thing is the popularity of early 8/12-bit samplers and drum machines, vinyl record simulation, etc.
The question is not if "poor quality" can be used for artistic purpose (of course it can). The question is if stribing for "high quality" can be a worthwhile thing to do.
-h
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That observation has been made some time ago by Emil (http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/noise-p3.html#ETTR). It is not the number of "levels" but rather the signal to noise ratio that is the proper rationale for ETTR. One should not clip highlights by overzealous ETTR, but even though the histograms on current cameras are flawed, you are safe if the RGB histograms show no clipping, since these histograms are conservative.
Bill
I agree with the S/N rationale, that's the part I have no problem with, with the disclaimer that modern sensors have very clean shadows at base ISO and the problem there isn't so obvious as to warrant looking for a solution. :)
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I don't get your reasoning here.
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Of course, if your gear has far more DR than your requirements, you can relax the compromise (and rather focus on other aspects of photography).
Exactly. Not only do I have more DR now with digital than I remember having with C41 film, but also the noise is less than I remember having anywhere. In fact, ISO 800 digital looks about the same as scanned Sensia 100. Digital is so insanely good for so many years already, I actually feel ungrateful if I find myself nitpicking.
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Signal levels and noise levels are topics of interest for audio and image people alike. "why are my ISO50000 shots so noisy??
As I have already mentioned I and indeed many others like grainy images. However try and find anyone who like hissy recordings.
"Musicians have probably used "lowfi" recording as a stylistic thing for nearly as many decades as they have been able to record at all. The most prominent example is perhaps overdriven tube amplifiers and crappy 12" speakers used as sound shapers for electric guitars. A more recent thing is the popularity of early 8/12-bit samplers and drum machines, vinyl record simulation, etc.
The question is not if "poor quality" can be used for artistic purpose (of course it can).
You are confusing things here. You were talking about recording quality, not the sound being produced that is then recorded. Making lo-fi music is quite different from a bad recording of a lo-fi styled output. I have plenty of music that is distorted, has feedback etc, but the reproduction of that 'mess' is still high quality.
The question is if stribing for "high quality" can be a worthwhile thing to do.
Don't think anyone is arguing against that. But thinking that is the most important part [of photography] is however misguided. My observation is that those who tend to be obsessed with this aspect of photography take pictures that are technically very good and that's about it. There's rarely any art or beauty in the photos.
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That observation has been made some time ago by Emil (http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/noise-p3.html#ETTR).
Interesting, although I don't see any suggestion in Mr Reichmann's 2003 article (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml) about raising ISO to ETTR; just "slower shutter speeds and/or larger apertures".
If one has the option to lower the ISO and the shutter speed (or widen the aperture), the highest S/N for the image is obtained by (http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/noise-p3.html#ETTR) increasing the exposure, pushing the right end of the histogram right up to the upper edge of the range of exposure on the horizontal axis. This is the usual ETTR philosophy.
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Interesting, although I don't see any suggestion in Mr Reichmann's 2003 article (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/expose-right.shtml) about raising ISO to ETTR; just "slower shutter speeds and/or larger apertures".
There has always been some confusion as to whether or not ETTR applies to above base ISOs. Exposure is in terms of lux seconds and is determined by the f-stop and shutter speed (for a given scene). Raising the ISO while keeping the shutter speed and aperture constant is useful for most Canon dSLRs when one is constrained by shutter speed and aperture considerations. This does not change the exposure, but does move the histogram to the right. With most CCD sensors and recent Sony CMOS sensors, raising the ISO yields minimal benefit and compromises highlight headroom.
Bill
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I think what needs to be noted about ETTR is that like many tools is that sometimes it's useful, but most of the time it's irrelevant to either the photographer or the situation.
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So the entire logic that refers to the limited number space at the left side of the histogram, compared to the right, is flawed.
Worrying about spacing between raw levels (quantization noise) might make sense with a digital camera that has ADCs that at best match the DR of the sensor, so that quantization noise is a significant worry, and that might still be an issue with some very good sensors when used at base ISO speed (say 14 bit ADC with a "14-stop sensor".) But it is becoming irrelevant, and the best way to eliminate that worry entirely is doing ADC with a few bits of headroom relative to sensor DR -- as DMF has been doing for years, using 16 bit ADCs with 12 to 13 stop sensors. And at elevated ISO speed, it has probably always been irrelevant: the extra analog gain pushes sensor noise well above quantization noise.
The real issue these days is getting as much exposure as possible to the sensor without highlight damage, and even this is only significant when dealing with scenes of unusually high subject brightness range, higher than the ten stops or so present in the vast majority of scenes. And this "sensor exposure optimization" sounds like a job for good old-fashioned exposure bracketing.
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Worrying about spacing between raw levels (quantization noise) might make sense with a digital camera that has ADCs that at best match the DR of the sensor, so that quantization noise is a significant worry, and that might still be an issue with some very good sensors when used at base ISO speed (say 14 bit ADC with a "14-stop sensor".) But it is becoming irrelevant, and the best way to eliminate that worry entirely is doing ADC with a few bits of headroom relative to sensor DR -- as DMF has been doing for years, using 16 bit ADCs with 12 to 13 stop sensors. And at elevated ISO speed, it has probably always been irrelevant: the extra analog gain pushes sensor noise well above quantization noise.
The real issue these days is getting as much exposure as possible to the sensor without highlight damage, and even this is only significant when dealing with scenes of unusually high subject brightness range, higher than the ten stops or so present in the vast majority of scenes. And this "sensor exposure optimization" sounds like a job for good old-fashioned exposure bracketing.
I totally agree. Good old fashioned bracketing is what I do to postpone the decision of what the best exposure is for high DR scenes to post processing time and to automate the shooting process as much as possible to avoid human errors. Sometimes in landscape shooting a lot happens within a few minutes and mistakes are typically made in sub situations. I have clouds open up and close again within minutes and the shot of the year was within these minutes and the last thing one wants to do is staring at the LCD.
I shoot both Canon 5D III and Nikon D800E. For both the bracketing is to protect essential highlights and especially for the Canon it is to protect the shadows. Sometimes also on the Nikon and both require occasionally an HDR blend which I do using either Photoshop CC or the Photomatix 32bit plugin and then tonemap in Lightroom. This works well most of the time but at times it falls apart. I'm still dreaming of my dream camera mentioned earlier ;D
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There has always been some confusion as to whether or not ETTR applies to above base ISOs.
There's always some confusion :-)
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The real issue these days…
Please, please, please, may I have this in my next entry-level camera --
What one would like is to somehow be able to use ISO 100 to keep all the highlights, while at the same time using ISO 1600 to recover all the shadows. But how can one have two ISO settings at once? By having two separate amplifiers fed from the same sensor data, running in parallel (http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/tests/noise/noise-p3a.html).
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Please, please, please, may I have this in my next entry-level camera --
It made sense for the Canon, and an earlier generation of Nikon architecture. But I think the technology has moved beyond that.
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There's always some confusion :-)
;D
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My two passions are photography and fly fishing. Regarding gear I see several strong similarities. People buy camera gear for many reasons--producing great photographs is only one of them. There is the whole gear head and gear acquisition thing (because cameras are cool gadgets, or collectible, or whatever). There is also a large group of folks who confuse the technical capabilities of gear with the ability to produce work product with the gear--great photographs or, in the case of fly fishing, catching fish. Fishing gear went through a decade of technical improvements and sales coinciding with the change from bamboo or fiberglass rods to graphite based rods as well as the popularization of the past time in the media by movies such as "A River Runs Through It". During this time period I acquired new equipment nearly every year and lusted after each new innovation. However, around ten years ago or so most fly fishing equipment reached a point of "very likely good enough" and I stopped buying new gear. It was at that point that I fully realized that any problems I was having with making effective casts was not due to the rod, it was due to me. I mean a great caster can pick up broom stick and cast the complete line without a problem...it's a matter of timing and skill. At the same time, domestic rod manufacturers started seeing decline in sales of expensive American made rods because of much cheaper imports using last generation (read: one or two year old) technology made in Asia. So the industry saw a decline. Actually, you can fill in the blank...a great golfer can hit a straight drive with a ten year old club. Same thing.
I think that cameras hit the point of "very likely good enough" a few years ago from a technical standpoint and recent improvements have been mainly in the area of usability (Fuji 100s, etc) and portability (mirrorless). I switched to Micro 4/3's because I like the lenses and the ability to carry what I need with me without rupturing a spinal disc. I now choose bodies based on how intuitive they are and reject bodies that are difficult to use to make photographs. Today any of the available cameras are more than capable of producing technically successful images. If my photographs aren't to my satisfaction, the problem is me, not the camera. But, then again, this has always been true, yes?
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As I have already mentioned I and indeed many others like grainy images. However try and find anyone who like hissy recordings.
I have never heard about anyone that prefer the look of a DSLR at ISO50000 to that of ISO100. Do you?
There seems to be quite a few people who like to listen to flawed vinyl when there are available more accurate music distribution means. Much like there are people who prefer grainy film to more accurate techniques. I believe that many have a liking for "good old" errors (typically analog), but I'd speculate that this is a culturally learned thing.
You are confusing things here.
I know exactly what I intend to say, thus I am not confused about my contribution. If you think that I am interpreting your posts erroneously, please tell me in what way.
You were talking about recording quality, not the sound being produced that is then recorded.
Samplers are recording devices. Cameras are recording devices. Both can be used to make art.
I have plenty of music that is distorted, has feedback etc, but the reproduction of that 'mess' is still high quality.
The art of making contemporary music cannot easily be distinguished from the art of recording music. The analogy for photography would be music making and recording. If you are interested in the technology of music distribution, that would be something like shipping JPEGs of a wedding to your client.
But thinking that is the most important part [of photography] is however misguided. My observation is that those who tend to be obsessed with this aspect of photography take pictures that are technically very good and that's about it. There's rarely any art or beauty in the photos.
I believe that you (like many others) are constructing a false contradiction between being into technique and producing great art (whatever that is). Some great artists were (for all intents and purposes) nerds. Most nerds are not great artists. But then, most people are not great artists, either.
I believe that everyone in this discussion have by now gotten the point that ETTR might not matter and that other things might matter more for any particular shot. Everyone agrees on this, so please lets move on.
-h
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Some great artists were (for all intents and purposes) nerds.
Ansel Adams: something of an artist; and something of a nerd ("The Camera (http://books.google.com/books?id=H-5jQgAACAAJ)", "The Negative (http://books.google.com/books?id=WUU_ngEACAAJ)", "The Print (http://books.google.com/books?id=CJaTC63At4UC)").
"If there was a new route to excellence in a photographic technology, Ansel either led the climb or pushed others up it."
David Brower, 1938
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But I think the technology has moved beyond that.
I'm quite willing to believe you; but it's difficult to keep track of where the technology has reached for a particular camera model, and what "wisdom" no longer applies.
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I believe that everyone in this discussion have by now gotten the point that ETTR might not matter and that other things might matter more for any particular shot. Everyone agrees on this, so please lets move on.
-h
I certainly disagree. Optimum exposure does matter.
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I have never heard about anyone that prefer the look of a DSLR at ISO50000 to that of ISO100. Do you?
Never said that, try reading post properly. Many people like grain, however try and find anyone who like hissy recordings.
Besides I already said I used to develop Kodak recording film in a speed enhancing developer. At it's base ISO of 1000 it was rather low quality, at 3200 ISO as I used it, it would give pixel peepers dyspepsia. ;)
And the new Nikon at 50,000 ISO is in fact better quality than how I used Recording film. So :P
There seems to be quite a few people who like to listen to flawed vinyl when there are available more accurate music distribution means.
I think you'll find they listen to vinyl because it sounds better to them. This obsession with accuracy tends to make people not see the wood for the trees.
Much like there are people who prefer grainy film to more accurate techniques. I believe that many have a liking for "good old" errors (typically analog), but I'd speculate that this is a culturally learned thing.
Or far more, it's likely their innate taste.
I know exactly what I intend to say, thus I am not confused about my contribution. If you think that I am interpreting your posts erroneously, please tell me in what way.
As I said above, you conflated making music with the recording of music. They are not the same thing.
Samplers are recording devices. Cameras are recording devices. Both can be used to make art. The art of making contemporary music cannot easily be distinguished from the art of recording music. The analogy for photography would be music making and recording. If you are interested in the technology of music distribution, that would be something like shipping JPEGs of a wedding to your client.
Are you indulging in some Burroughs-esque random cutting and pasting style of posting now?
Actually shipping JPEGs is exactly what wedding photographers do.
I believe that you (like many others) are constructing a false contradiction between being into technique and producing great art (whatever that is). Some great artists were (for all intents and purposes) nerds. Most nerds are not great artists. But then, most people are not great artists, either.
It's not about being a great artist, they are outliers anyway. I was talking about those who are obsessed with technical perfection and long experience of such people has shown that with very few exceptions they do not produce interesting work. Or frequently show no work at all.
Those who do actually produce creative work however do not tend to be so hung up on that sort of thing. They learn enough to master their craft and get on with it and not only do they not mind if if something isn't perfect, but may actively seek the opposite.
The other similar truism is those that slag off photoshop/post processing etc tend to have no ability in that area of photography.
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I certainly disagree. Optimum exposure does matter.
It's defining what optimum exposure is, that is the sticking point though. :)
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It's defining what optimum exposure is, that is the sticking point though. :)
In general yes and implementing automatic ETTR will reveal that, I'm sure. For the individual shot in a bracketed sequence that stretches from no clipping to clipping, it is easy to determine in post processing.
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I'm about to buy some Sugru (http://sugru.com/buy/8-mini-packs-of-sugru-8x5g)
Strange synchronicity - I had never heard of this before, and then almost immediately saw an article about it in the Grauniad:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/mar/16/sugru-inventor-jane-ni-dhulchaointigh
Looks handy.
Monkeys, shakespeare, an' all that.
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Perhaps jjj also read that Guardian story.
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I certainly disagree. Optimum exposure does matter.
I did say that ETTR might not matter _for a particular shot_. My experience is that if the scene DR is low compared to the camera DR, exposure is not critical.
Do you think that ETTR techniques (as compared to regular in-camera suggested exposure) matters visually for every shot?
-h
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Never said that, try reading post properly. Many people like grain, however try and find anyone who like hissy recordings.
The context here (or at least my initial post that you chose to comment on) is about ETTR and relevant audio analogies. If you are not talking about the appearance of under-exposed digital, please be more specific about your comment.
Besides I already said I used to develop Kodak recording film in a speed enhancing developer. At it's base ISO of 1000 it was rather low quality, at 3200 ISO as I used it, it would give pixel peepers dyspepsia. ;)
And the new Nikon at 50,000 ISO is in fact better quality than how I used Recording film. So :P
why is this relevant?
I think you'll find they listen to vinyl because it sounds better to them. This obsession with accuracy tends to make people not see the wood for the trees.
I'd suggest that there are many reasons why a format is popular, and audible characteristics is only one.
Or far more, it's likely their innate taste.
As I said above, you conflated making music with the recording of music. They are not the same thing.
Since the Beatles, the act of making popular music and the act of recording it has been hard to separate.
Actually shipping JPEGs is exactly what wedding photographers do.
That is surely one thing that wedding photographers do, yes. Have anyone said otherwise?
It's not about being a great artist, they are outliers anyway. I was talking about those who are obsessed with technical perfection and long experience of such people has shown that with very few exceptions they do not produce interesting work. Or frequently show no work at all.
Those who do actually produce creative work however do not tend to be so hung up on that sort of thing. They learn enough to master their craft and get on with it and not only do they not mind if if something isn't perfect, but may actively seek the opposite.
Ansel Adams was the guy that I had in mind when writing that post.
Those obsessed with telling other people how their interests or talents are counter-productive, or how their kind of people rarely contribute anything of value, or dividing people into "us" and "them", rarely themselves do anything worth mentioning (itself an ironic statement)
-h
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As I said above, you conflated making music with the recording of music. They are not the same thing.
That's so ludicrously wrong that I've submitted it on your behalf to David Letterman's Top 10 Stupid Internet Forum Tricks.
I hope I spelled your name right.
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That's so ludicrously wrong that I've submitted it on your behalf to David Letterman's Top 10 Stupid Internet Forum Tricks.
I hope I spelled your name right.
I think about a million (rough estimate, don't ask for documentation) bar bands would disagree with you. They're about performance, not recording, which ARE radically different things. One of the guitar magazines on the newstands now has a long interview with a former guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, John Frusciante, and he goes off on a long intricate commentary about the way he makes music now -- and it's all about recording, with no live performance. The thing he now does to produce his music couldn't be done live, because track after track are layered on top of each other to get the final sound. Much of what he does doesn't even use conventional instruments. And anyone who has ever played an instrument in performance (or even been in the mosh pit) knows that the impact of a great performance is entirely different that the impact of a great recording. They ARE entirely different things. I wouldn't even say that they are closely related.
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I did say that ETTR might not matter _for a particular shot_. My experience is that if the scene DR is low compared to the camera DR, exposure is not critical.
Do you think that ETTR techniques (as compared to regular in-camera suggested exposure) matters visually for every shot?
-h
No, not every shot and actually I can say that shooting landscapes with either 5D III and D800E the majority of shots is pretty much spot on ETTR in camera and slightly under seeing in Rawdigger, but visually not a problem at all. For me it is about optimizing IQ and shooting practice to avoid mistakes which happens for even the most experienced from my experience.
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Hi,
I would say both techniques, ETTR and bracketing, work. I haven been shooting digital for a long time and I really seldom found that DR has been an issue.
I can also agree with Hjulenissen that with low scene illumination ratios exposure is not critical.
This image was something like two stops underexposed (just grabbed the DSLR while shooting MF, had wrong settings):
(http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Sweden/Some-new-pictures/i-dth6ztS/0/XL/20131117-_DSC3260-XL.jpg)
Full size is here: http://echophoto.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Sweden/Some-new-pictures/i-dth6ztS/0/O/20131117-_DSC3260.jpg
Best regards
Erik
Best regards
Erik
No, not every shot and actually I can say that shooting landscapes with either 5D III and D800E the majority of shots is pretty much spot on ETTR in camera and slightly under seeing in Rawdigger, but visually not a problem at all. For me it is about optimizing IQ and shooting practice to avoid mistakes which happens for even the most experienced from my experience.
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I did say that ETTR might not matter _for a particular shot_. My experience is that if the scene DR is low compared to the camera DR, exposure is not critical.
And if the scene DR is high compared to the camera DR, you have no spare latitude for ETTR. Which makes ETTR possible and relevant only in the cases where you have a low-latitude scene and high-latitude sensor, but with noisy shadows (which, really, makes its usable latitude far less).
The only camera I own which could benefit from intentionally avoiding the shadows due to noise is iPhone, and its highlights are so prone to clipping I keep it in HDR mode so the technique is out of the question. With all my large sensor cameras (including m43), I simply expose the shot in such a way that the scene fits into the histogram and if I don't mess anything up, the result is usually fine.
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And if the scene DR is high compared to the camera DR, you have no spare latitude for ETTR. Which makes ETTR possible and relevant only in the cases where you have a low-latitude scene and high-latitude sensor, but with noisy shadows (which, really, makes its usable latitude far less).
I tend to see "ETTR" as a concept that loosely describes the process of being well-informed about what highlights will be accurately recorded, and what will not, while setting exposure.
Any process that makes it possible to raise exposure by e.g. 1 stop while still being reasonably confident that critical highlights are not clipped, will raise signal levels across the histogram. Parts of the image that have marginal SNR for whatever your editing/presentation intent will be improved accordingly.
My posts about ETTR should not be seen as a claim that everyone should ETTR all of the time. Rather, I am argueing that ETTR seems to be based on sensible theory and proven practice in that it (subject to some constraints) maximize the recorded (scene) information. Being a technical concept, it can actually be discussed and analyzed in a civil manner. The relevance for a particular user/application is left to the reader.
For many of my uses, I have limited freedom in choosing exposure time and aperture due to movement and DOF. Thus, bumping exposure time in order to capture a "hotter" signal may be an option that I want to rule out. In other cases, I can choose exposure time and/or aperture with great freedom, and would like to do so in an "optimal" manner. I have some experience with images that seem "excellent" at the time, that show warts a few years later when I am able to print larger, have (perhaps) higher standards, and want to do more processing.
-h
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Perhaps jjj also read that Guardian story.
I have now.
I've known about the product for a while now, things really kicked off for them about 4 years ago (http://sugru.com/story).
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As I said above, you conflated making music with the recording of music. They are not the same thing.
That's so ludicrously wrong that I've submitted it on your behalf to David Letterman's Top 10 Stupid Internet Forum Tricks.
I hope I spelled your name right.
Ironic Post of the Year.
Do you think seriously music only started once the first recording device was invented? ::)
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That's so ludicrously wrong that I've submitted it on your behalf to David Letterman's Top 10 Stupid Internet Forum Tricks.
I hope I spelled your name right.Ironic Post of the Year.
Seemed like you were making a straightforward statement of non-identity to me.
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I tend to see "ETTR" as a concept that loosely describes the process of being well-informed about what highlights will be accurately recorded, and what will not, while setting exposure.
Any process that makes it possible to raise exposure by e.g. 1 stop while still being reasonably confident that critical highlights are not clipped, will raise signal levels across the histogram. Parts of the image that have marginal SNR for whatever your editing/presentation intent will be improved accordingly.
My posts about ETTR should not be seen as a claim that everyone should ETTR all of the time. Rather, I am argueing that ETTR seems to be based on sensible theory and proven practice in that it (subject to some constraints) maximize the recorded (scene) information. Being a technical concept, it can actually be discussed and analyzed in a civil manner. The relevance for a particular user/application is left to the reader.
For many of my uses, I have limited freedom in choosing exposure time and aperture due to movement and DOF. Thus, bumping exposure time in order to capture a "hotter" signal may be an option that I want to rule out. In other cases, I can choose exposure time and/or aperture with great freedom, and would like to do so in an "optimal" manner. I have some experience with images that seem "excellent" at the time, that show warts a few years later when I am able to print larger, have (perhaps) higher standards, and want to do more processing.
-h
There will never be an agreement on what is optimal is this respect, I think ;D For me ETTR is a free bonus using the bracketing approach I do with landscapes. Sometimes this is a real bonus giving extra IQ based on the editing I choose for the specific image. It could be years later that I choose to edit in a specific way where optimum IQ is essential. When you shoot you never know what the picture could be used for some time in the future and therefore I like to optimize the quality as much as possible although in the majority of cases it does not matter. We also don't know what display technology we might have in the future. I'm thinking that at some point we will have projectors able to display our photos of today in full resolution large like meters across.
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The one thing I would really like to see from camera manufacturers is user configurable firmware. There is no technical reason why this could not be implemented and it would go a long way to ending the bloatware of menu choices that are present in virtually all cameras. Users could also elect to stay with the manufacturers proprietary file format (NEF in my case) or change over to DNG if that's desired. IMO this would get the industry out of 'my dumpster.'
Alan
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Well, you never know what you'll find in one of these threads. I found Sugru!
I've been thinking about a substance with precisely these properties for a few months. I need it to reinforce the connection between a cable and socket (mini-display port) on a Surface Pro 2 which I'm unfortunate and misguided enough to own. Price of Sugru is a bit steep though and the website doesn't specify quantity in the packs either by weight or volume.
Not many people know this:
In about 1975 there was a pub landlord in Kilburn High Road (London) named Butty Sugru. He gained a lot of publicity at the time by promoting a "buried alive" Guinness Book of Records attempt. The buried attemptee was a gentleman by the name of Michael Meany. He amused himself whilst down there in a coffin by reading boxing magazines. I guess he had a torch. I can't recall whether the attempt succeeded.
Not many people know that.
Roy
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The one thing I would really like to see from camera manufacturers is user configurable firmware. There is no technical reason why this could not be implemented and it would go a long way to ending the bloatware of menu choices that are present in virtually all cameras. Users could also elect to stay with the manufacturers proprietary file format (NEF in my case) or change over to DNG if that's desired. IMO this would get the industry out of 'my dumpster.'
Alan
I picked up magic lantern for my 7D (again) this weekend. Apart from a few gui glitches it seems that they are doing quite a few things just about the way that I would have hoped that Canon did it:
http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=5693.0
(http://s20.postimg.org/qn507pcx9/AETTR3.jpg)
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^ Magic Lantern looks cool but unfortunately I have a Nikon. :-[
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There will never be an agreement on what is optimal is this respect, I think ;D For me ETTR is a free bonus using the bracketing approach I do with landscapes. Sometimes this is a real bonus giving extra IQ based on the editing I choose for the specific image. It could be years later that I choose to edit in a specific way where optimum IQ is essential. When you shoot you never know what the picture could be used for some time in the future and therefore I like to optimize the quality as much as possible although in the majority of cases it does not matter. We also don't know what display technology we might have in the future. I'm thinking that at some point we will have projectors able to display our photos of today in full resolution large like meters across.
Good point!
I believe some time this year LG will be introducing a few OLED Ultra HD (4K) large-screen TV models. http://www.wired.com/2014/01/new-lg-oled-tvs/
A large 4k TV screen seems an ideal way to display one's photos, although 8K would be better still. However, all current models of 4K TV screens seem to be LCDs with their limited contrast ratio and narrow viewing angle. Why upgrade for the sake of higher resolution whilst taking backward steps regarding other aspects of image quality.
OLED screens seem to provide a big leap in performance. The color has a wider gamut and the contrast ratio is sometimes described as infinite, which is of course an exaggeration. It's probably more like 100,000,000:1, which is still pretty amazing. ;)
In order to produce an image in 16:9 aspect ratio for 4K display, without downsampling, one needs a minimum of a 10mp DSLR with 2:3 aspect-ratio sensor, such as the Canon 40D. If you have a lots of images with noisy shadows because you haven't bothered bracketing or using an accurate ETTR exposure, such noise will be more noticeable on a future OLED screen.
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Good point!
I believe some time this year LG will be introducing a few OLED Ultra HD (4K) large-screen TV models. http://www.wired.com/2014/01/new-lg-oled-tvs/
A large 4k TV screen seems an ideal way to display one's photos, although 8K would be better still. However, all current models of 4K TV screens seem to be LCDs with their limited contrast ratio and narrow viewing angle. Why upgrade for the sake of higher resolution whilst taking backward steps regarding other aspects of image quality.
OLED screens seem to provide a big leap in performance. The color has a wider gamut and the contrast ratio is sometimes described as infinite, which is of course an exaggeration. It's probably more like 100,000,000:1, which is still pretty amazing. ;)
In order to produce an image in 16:9 aspect ratio for 4K display, without downsampling, one needs a minimum of a 10mp DSLR with 2:3 aspect-ratio sensor, such as the Canon 40D. If you have a lots of images with noisy shadows because you haven't bothered bracketing or using an accurate ETTR exposure, such noise will be more noticeable on a future OLED screen.
I have been looking at 4K displays but would not be interested until my MacBook Pro can display in 60Hz so it can be used as a main display.
I also looking at the support for 4K displays by the new Mac Pro is limited. The Sharp 4K is supported http://store.apple.com/us/product/HD971LL/A/sharp-32-pn-k321-4k-ultra-hd-led-monitor?fnode=53
But it does not seem that the Dell is http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&sku=210-ACBL
8K displays http://www.wimp.com/ultradisplay/ will come and they are 33MP in resolution. Of course it will take time until such displays even become available at a price point that "normal" people can buy them. Projectors in 4K will come as 4K TV's will be more affordable and content is available, http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-4k-ultra-short-throw-projector/
So it's not a wild guess that we in 10 years from can display our current DSLR pictures in full resolution. Already now my 10 year old pictures from a Canon 10D on my 30" screen is almost full resolution.
Prints might even be replaced by display technology like physical media has been replaced by downloads and streaming for audio and video. People might subscribe to wonderful photos to be displayed in their homes in large format. There will be a demand for higher quality.
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I have been looking at 4K displays but would not be interested until my MacBook Pro can display in 60Hz so it can be used as a main display.
I also looking at the support for 4K displays by the new Mac Pro is limited. The Sharp 4K is supported http://store.apple.com/us/product/HD971LL/A/sharp-32-pn-k321-4k-ultra-hd-led-monitor?fnode=53
But it does not seem that the Dell is http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=en&sku=210-ACBL
8K displays http://www.wimp.com/ultradisplay/ will come and they are 33MP in resolution. Of course it will take time until such displays even become available at a price point that "normal" people can buy them. Projectors in 4K will come as 4K TV's will be more affordable and content is available, http://www.cnet.com/products/sony-4k-ultra-short-throw-projector/
It's very inexpensive to build a Home Theater Computer that will work with 4K televisions; I've already built three of them. Of course you will have to leave Apple for the PC world!
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A large 4k TV screen seems an ideal way to display one's photos, although 8K would be better still.
Better than ideal? :-)
In order to produce an image in 16:9 aspect ratio for 4K display, without downsampling, one needs a minimum of a 10mp DSLR with 2:3 aspect-ratio sensor, such as the Canon 40D.
A Bayer sensor of 10 MP has only 2.5 million red or blue sites. A 4k tv has roughly 8 million (full-color) pixels. Thus, you would "need" a 40 MP camera in order to feed all subpixels of a 4k tv with potentially independent information. You might have to multiply this number even further to account for OLPF filtering, overlapping color filters, etc.
In practice, images tends to not contain such fine color detail, and we humans tend to not be able to perceive it. In an interesting twist, the HDMI 2.0 that allows high frame-rate 4k content flags 4:2:0 support as one of its benefits, where color (difference) resolution is subsampled by 2x2.
If you have a lots of images with noisy shadows because you haven't bothered bracketing or using an accurate ETTR exposure, such noise will be more noticeable on a future OLED screen.
Perhaps. Displays are often limited by the ambient light in the room. If you are in a bright day-lit room, display blacks won't be any blacker than charcoal, I guess. The whites won't be any whiter than the maximum display output (or the setting that feels comfortable to you). The gazillion to one measurements can probably only be achieved in a dark home cinema with black paint on the walls.
-h
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Better than ideal? :-)
Okay! For the benefit of those who demand complete literalism and precise language all of the time, I'm prepared to rephrase that statement as follows:
"A large 4K TV screen seems to be an ideal way to display one's photos with currently available technology, although, when, and if, 8K becomes an option and becomes readily available, then that will be even better, setting a new ideal."
Any criticism? ;D
A Bayer sensor of 10 MP has only 2.5 million red or blue sites. A 4k tv has roughly 8 million (full-color) pixels. Thus, you would "need" a 40 MP camera in order to feed all subpixels of a 4k tv with potentially independent information. You might have to multiply this number even further to account for OLPF filtering, overlapping color filters, etc.
The Bayer system of complementing each pixel of a specific primary color, with additional, interpolated pixels comprising the other two primaries, is a necessary process in order for us to see a color image, whether the image be an in-camera jpeg or a RAW file converted in post processing. One could describe such a process as 'up sampling' or interpolation. Whatever the terminology, an 8mp camera, such as the Canon 20D, produces an image with 8 million pixels, each consisting of the 3 values of R,G,B, resulting in a 24MB file, in 8 bit color.
That's the image we start off from. If the image is 8mp with a 3:2 aspect ratio, then a small amount of downsampling will be required to fit it onto a 4K screen. If the image is cropped to a 16:9 aspect ratio, then a small amount of upsampling will be required to fill a 4k screen. Hope that is clear to the literally-minded. ;D
Displays are often limited by the ambient light in the room. If you are in a bright day-lit room, display blacks won't be any blacker than charcoal, I guess. The whites won't be any whiter than the maximum display output (or the setting that feels comfortable to you). The gazillion to one measurements can probably only be achieved in a dark home cinema with black paint on the walls.
Of course! Whatever the quality of the display, whether it be a TV screen or a print, the lighting conditions in the viewing environment have to be appropriate in order for one to fully appreciate the detail, contrast and color. If there's no light at all, you see nothing on a print. If you have a bright beam of sunlight shining through your window onto your TV screen, then that's going to seriously upset the quality of the image you see. That's understood.
However, these new OLED screen from LG appear to have 4 pixels, one of which is white. The screens not only have the potential to be brighter than a conventional LCD screen, but each individual pixel can be gradually dimmed till it's completely switched off. All the reviews I've read of the few standard-HD OLED TV models that are available, claim that the picture quality is stunning, just 'out of this world'. (Not literally, of course). ;D
The 4k models should be even more stunning, but not so stunning that one is just 'floored' and unable to appreciate the picture, I hope. ;D
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The Bayer system of complementing each pixel of a specific primary color, with additional, interpolated pixels comprising the other two primaries, is a necessary process in order for us to see a color image, whether the image be an in-camera jpeg or a RAW file converted in post processing. One could describe such a process as 'up sampling' or interpolation. Whatever the terminology, an 8mp camera, such as the Canon 20D, produces an image with 8 million pixels, each consisting of the 3 values of R,G,B, resulting in a 24MB file, in 8 bit color.
The Bayer system is not a "necessary process" in that other, competing technologies does this differently (with other drawbacks).
If you have a (uncommon) scene that in practice only excite the red sensels, then a Bayer camera featuring 10 million sensels will have 2.5 million scene-recording sensels. If you display this on a display featuring 8 million full-color pixels, then you are obviously not exploiting the displays spatial resolution capabilities. That was my only point, and I am sure that you are aware of this.
Now, there are many practical reasons why people should not worry about this.
-h
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The Bayer system is not a "necessary process" in that other, competing technologies does this differently (with other drawbacks).
If you have a (uncommon) scene that in practice only excite the red sensels, then a Bayer camera featuring 10 million sensels will have 2.5 million scene-recording sensels. If you display this on a display featuring 8 million full-color pixels, then you are obviously not exploiting the displays spatial resolution capabilities. That was my only point, and I am sure that you are aware of this.
Indeed I am. Your point is about the image quality differences between the Foveon and Bayer systems per megabyte of image data. I accept that a 15mp Sigma DP Merrill can produce more detailed images than a 15mp Canon 50D. However, to fit those images from both cameras on a 4k screen they would both have to be downsampled or cropped. That is, a certain amount of image data would have to be discarded in both cases, regardless of the initial starting quality.
On the other hand, a full image from the 4.7mp SD15, sometimes described as a 14mp camera, would have to be interpolated to fit the height of a 4k screen. The resolution of the 4k screen is unnecessarily high for that camera and earlier Foveon models.
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I can only speak from my own experiments, but the sigma images do well in enlargement as 4k is only around 8mp I would be surprised if they didn't look good at that
Even a 6mp bayer would look fine