Love it. I really wish classical mirrorless camera makers would get their head out of their collective asses, and make a camera that is not stuck in the 80-s mentality.
Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups.
Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. A physical button for the shutter and an analog knob for fine tuning are fine, but I don't need a manual switch for AF/MF. Or a "shutter delay" selector that is too easy to accidentally bump.
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches [...].
You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject. Touchscreens suck at blind controls. (That’s not to say touchscreens aren’t useful: choosing the focus point doesn’t exhibit this conflict, even if some prefer a joystick; or if you’re already digging into menus to do something very particular and non-time-sensitive—astrophotography, focus stacking, live compositing—a touchscreen can be better than a D-pad.)
Cameras also weigh quite a bit and are supported with the fingers you’re using to operate them, so significantly shifting anything except maybe your right thumb usually means a real risk of dropping the camera. The weight also mounts a two-pronged attack on the size of your touchscreen (I’m assuming a walkaround camera, not weddings or sports): the camera needs to be smaller in order to be lighter, and a large part of its surface area needs to be available for you to grip. So, realistically, you don’t want a camera with a 6-inch touchscreen.
In conclusion, please please please don’t take away my physical controls. I know a touchscreen is cheaper, but please don’t. I’ll pay.
(Side note: it’s been almost fifteen years, and I still type slower on my Android phone than I used to on the QWERTY keyboard of my Nokia.)
I'm reminded of how long it took Garmin to add touchscreens to their sports watches, and how controversial it was in the user community.
If you want to check your heart-rate while sitting at your desk, scrolling through the touchscreen on an Apple Watch is great. But if you're wearing gloves while skiing, or your hands are covered in mud and sweat during a trail run, a touchscreen is not a great option.
Garmin's modern sport line now has optional touchscreens, but all major functionality is still accessible via physical controls alone. Their lifestyle models are touchscreen-first, though, which really demonstrates the different requirements for different use-cases. I suspect the same is true in the camera world.
When you're doing street photography, or any photography with a DSLR/Mirrorless, you don't look at the controls at any given moment.
You see a potential subject, you "arm" the camera via its power switch instinctively.
Your finger goes to front/back dial and you set your parameters depending on the mode, sometimes only paying attention to numbers on the screen or top LCD or viewfinder.
You're tracking your subject now. If you need, you select the AF point blindly via the touchscreen (which is off and is a touchpad if you're looking via viewfinder), and fine tune it via the joystick if you need one.
Looks good, half-press, AF Locks. You release the shutter and camera clicks. It's done.
You turn off your camera blindly and continue walking.
> When you're doing street photography, or any photography with a DSLR/Mirrorless, you don't look at the controls at any given moment.
Why? You're looking at the screen to track the target anyway. Show the controls there, including focus points and maybe "exposure" settings.
And with the computational photography, you can just take multiple pictures and synthesize various "exposure times" later. And it'll likely be better than what you set blindly, hoping to get the right combination.
> Why? You're looking at the screen to track the target anyway
Not necessarily. You might be looking through the viewfinder, which will almost always have better contrast in bright sunlight than even a sunlight-readable screen; and even so, if you're using the display, fumbling through a touchscreen interface will always be slower than doing the same with a haptic interface you're used to.
> And with the computational photography, you can just take multiple pictures and synthesize various "exposure times" later. And it'll likely be better than what you set blindly, hoping to get the right combination.
I think this shows some disconnect over what many photographers are trying to do with their cameras. The goal often isn't to maximize the use of technology to get the best possible photo _technically speaking,_ but to use your own familiarity with techniques and tools to make something great _yourself._ Computational photography is an anti-feature for many photographers.
Beyond that; you usually aren't shooting blind unless you choose to. Cameras come with metering (and have done so for many decades now), and it's gotten pretty damn good at telling you when your photo's properly exposed. Newer (<15 years old) cameras will often also have a histogram which gives you even more data than an EV meter.
> Not necessarily. You might be looking through the viewfinder, which will almost always have better contrast
Most mirrorless cameras have electronic viewfinders. They are _worse_ than a phone screen. And they still show you only an approximation of the final image, filtered through an underexposed sensor and whatever processing steps the camera has.
And if the viewfinder is purely optical (in a mirrorless camera) then it won't show the autofocus feedback.
> if you're using the display, fumbling through a touchscreen interface will always be slower than doing the same with a haptic interface you're used to.
Except that you bumped the control wheel on top some time earlier during the day, and it's now at +3 exposure instead of "0". You don't see that in the viewfinder, and find out only when the pictures are downloaded to your computer 2 months later.
Ask me how I know about this scenario.
Oh, or another one I learned at school while taking pictures for the class: if you don't have a perfect vision, and you focus the optical viewfinder until the image is in focus, the actual film image will demonstrate to everyone else exactly how you see the world with your imperfect vision.
> The goal often isn't to maximize the use of technology to get the best possible photo _technically speaking,_ but to use your own familiarity with techniques and tools to make something great _yourself._
And for me, the goal is to take good pictures for my memories, utilizing as much technology and automation as possible. I don't want to spend time learning every function of that 15 knobs on my camera. I want optical zoom and a full-frame sensor, but the same UI experience as on my phone.
> Most mirrorless cameras have electronic viewfinders. They are _worse_ than a phone screen. And they still show you only an approximation of the final image, filtered through an underexposed sensor and whatever processing steps the camera has.
Not in newer designs. Modern cameras have similar or higher perceived pixel density, with very little or no perceptible screen dooring. Latency on later-gen cameras is also very low to the point of being imperceptible.
> And if the viewfinder is purely optical (in a mirrorless camera) then it won't show the autofocus feedback.
I think what you're describing is a rangefinder, as seen on some Leicas for example. This is correct, but rangefinder cameras are a niche within a niche. Frankly I don't know how rangefinder users make use of that in the first place.
> Except that you bumped the control wheel on top some time earlier during the day, and it's now at +3 exposure instead of "0". You don't see that in the viewfinder, and find out only when the pictures are downloaded to your computer 2 months later.
I mean, I can't help you here, this kind of misinput is just as likely if not more on a touchscreen in my experience. The fact is that:
- Normally, on any camera I've used between Sony and Nikon, one click of the control wheel is +/- 1/3 EV. Hitting it nine times and failing to pay attention to the live preview or EV metering scale sounds like user error to me.
- If it takes you 2 months to unload your photos, you probably aren't the target audience for these cameras to begin with, to be blunt.
- Assuming it was _less_ than 3EV, most modern cameras shooting in RAW will, for most scenes, be able to give you the dynamic range to still work with the photo in post.
> Not in newer designs. Modern cameras have similar or higher perceived pixel density, with very little or no perceptible screen dooring. Latency on later-gen cameras is also very low to the point of being imperceptible.
Wow, so just like my phone! My point is, the viewfinder is _still_ electronic. It doesn't really provide much advantage compared to just showing an image on the screen. That's why some of the mirrorless cameras don't even have a viewfinder anymore (e.g. EOS M6 Mark II).
> I mean, I can't help you here, this kind of misinput is just as likely if not more on a touchscreen in my experience.
It can be shown on the screen, and the UI can more faithfully reflect the settings.
> - If it takes you 2 months to unload your photos, you probably aren't the target audience for these cameras to begin with, to be blunt.
Sure. That's why I want GPS, on the photos. But I still want a good optical system, there's just no way around the sensor size and the lens quality.
> Wow, so just like my phone! My point is, the viewfinder is _still_ electronic. It doesn't really provide much advantage compared to just showing an image on the screen. That's why some of the mirrorless cameras don't even have a viewfinder anymore (e.g. EOS M6 Mark II).
I guess? Superficially?
It's normally better than a phone screen since it's hooded, meaning you can get consistently high contrast and good colour representation in a wider range of environments without worrying about glare.
I'd also say that it's not a question of "some mirrorless cameras don't have viewvinders anymore" so much as there exists a segment-within-a-segment which doesn't have viewfinders.
Sigma's fp fits in there (though there's an optional viewfinder attachment); so does Nikon's Z30 and Sony's ZV-E10. It's not a popular design choice to remove the viewfinder since most users of ILCs do get use out of the viewfinder.
> It can be shown on the screen, and the UI can more faithfully reflect the settings.
This doesn't address the issue of having to navigate multiple layers of menus or having to do weird on-screen gestures to get to settings, all without haptic feedback; besides that, it's not like this information's hard to read on a traditional-layout display. 1/40, 5.6, iso400, and an EV scale pointing to 1.3 is pretty intuitive if you have a basic understanding of photography concepts. If you don't care about that stuff and spend most of your time in auto, most cameras offer layout options to hide that information.
> Sure. That's why I want GPS, on the photos. But I still want a good optical system, there's just no way around the sensor size and the lens quality.
The hard truth is that you'll have to compromise on something here.
- GPS used to be a popular option for halo-product cameras. I used to own a Sony SLT-A55 which had it, but it was often unreliable and battery life took a hit whenever I had GPS turned on. It was a decent camera otherwise. Nowadays, most cameras just don't ship with GPS built in. Some will offer a hot-shoe attachment, but these still have reliability and battery drain issues. Others rely on a phone link to encode that into the EXIF. Modern phones are pretty good about using standalone, unassisted GPS, so shooting in remote locations while using your phone as a location source is generally an okay solution. If this is a hard requirement for you, you'll have to resort to a camera design that's a few years old, partly because this feature has kinda fallen out of style, and partly because camera generations move slower than smartphone generations (for good reason; outside of professionals in demanding areas like sports or event photography, the value add has to be clear from generation to generation for the bigger enthusiast market to buy in).
- You seem to be hell-bent on having as few physical controls as possible, and even no viewfinder. This cuts out most high-end, midrange, and even most entry-level ILCs, and leaves a small segment of vlog ILCs, plus point-and-shoots (though there are some very respectable higher-end options in that market these days, like the Sony RX100 series, which has a cult following at this point).
- You still want interchangeable lenses and a bigger sensor than what you can find on phones. The latter's easy, most dedicated cameras have a bigger sensor than phones; the former less so given your other constraints, since most cameras with interchangeable lenses will fail on one of your other constraints. Out of the major manufacturers, this basically leaves you with the Sigma fp, Nikon Z30, EOS M6 Mark II, and the Sony ZV-E10, all of which, regrettably, have that control wheel that you might still accidentally hit nine times and bump your exposure up by +3.0EV.
- If you want _specifically a full-frame_ sensor, and you don't want to pay for niche products like Leicas, Zeiss halo products, or something weird like the Sigma fp, the unfortunately the camera you're looking for doesn't exist. The feature set you want represents a tiny sliver of a niche that's mostly been eaten up by smartphones at this point.
- You also want computational photography built in, which, to be honest, as it's currently implemented in phones, largely negates the limitations of the small sensors and cheaper lenses. As in; for casual photography, you're pretty unlikely to see a clear improvement over your phone with a dedicated camera these days, whether or not it comes with phone-style computational photography built in. I can't underscore this enough. If you take pictures of challenging scenes, or if you're going for a specific style, then yeah, phones are outclassed, at least as difficulty of the shot goes -- but for casual stuff? Phones are the way to go, almost unquestionably.
Snark aside; if you're looking at something like family photography, I strongly recommend something like an RX100 or a Z30 or Z5. The RX100 is a point-and-shoot, but it's best-in-class in a lot of ways even if the current rev is from 2019. It's also small enough to fit in your pocket and has a solid lens with a good zoom range. The Z30 and Z5 will probably lock out the control rings for you if you're in auto mode, which should help prevent any accidental overexposure. They also benefit from recent-gen sensors and image processors (though the sensors are APS-C). If you want a full-frame, stacked, or BSI sensor it'd likely break the bank while committing to using more conventional controls since you're looking at an enthusiast camera at that point. No two ways about it.
The GPS thing is the biggest hurdle you'll still have to clear. I don't have a great solution for you. The Z30 and EOS M6 MkII both probably have good smartphone app integration and they'd likely be able to sync location from there, but that can be finnicky, and it tends to be a battery hog.
On the other side of the spectrum I guess you could look at something like Beastgrip. I hear it's what they're using to rig up iPhones for the new 28 Years Later movie.
> The GPS thing is the biggest hurdle you'll still have to clear. I don't have a great solution for you.
Sony also has a great smartphone app which doesn't eat any battery at all. It waits for your camera to connect and activates the GPS when it connects and feeds data to it. I have never seen it eat my battery more than it should on my old iPhone X.
Sony's app also can do remote shooting and image transfer via WiFi and it's not half bad at either.
> As in; for casual photography, you're pretty unlikely to see a clear improvement over your phone with a dedicated camera these days
Phones are great for panorama shots, but they can't zoom. It's a physical limitation, you _need_ larger lenses for that. Another big problem is the low-light shots. Software does wonders, but it's still limited by the amount of light that the sensor can gather.
> Snark aside; if you're looking at something like family photography
I love travels, and most of my photography are either wild nature or landscapes. For the wild life photos you _really_ need optical zoom, you don't generally want to come close and ask a bear (or a lion) for a selfie.
I kinda adapted, and each time I take pictures with my camera, I also take a couple of pictures with my phone, so I can later use it to get the GPS position and correct the timestamps.
And yeah, I really want camera makers to try and go after my market niche. They think that it's small, but I seriously doubt it. There is a lot of people who like to take better-than-a-phone pictures, but can't care less about exposure timings and ISOs.
> And yeah, I really want camera makers to try and go after my market niche. They think that it's small, but I seriously doubt it. There is a lot of people who like to take better-than-a-phone pictures, but can't care less about exposure timings and ISOs.
That may be the case, but many "compact" cameras, like the Sony Rx100 mentioned in this thread wipe the floor with phone cameras. But they're very niche. If there was a market for it, I doubt manufacturers would come up with a random reason not to tap it. I think there are actually very few people who want better than phone pictures and are ready to spend the money and lug around the resulting camera.
As GP says, I doubt you'll find a model that checks all of your boxes (especially the integrated GPS one). But you can probably go to a camera store and try out a few models. My camera with many dials and buttons ignores all of them when in "full auto" mode. It also ignores "picture settings" or whatever they're called (things like custom tone curve, white balance tweaking, etc.). It even has a physical lock on the mode dial, so this should prevent you from unwillingly bumping the mode dial and ending up in some weird under/over-exposed situation because you've also unwittingly bumped 9 times a separate dial. Sure, the camera may have a zillion options for you to configure, but if it ignores them in full-auto mode, it's basically what you're asking for.
My specific camera is an 8+ years old model, so you probably don't want this (olympus pen-f), but there should be newer models with a similar behavior. I'd look at the Panasonic S9, which I wanted to like but dismissed because of the lack of dials. It's a "full-frame" model, so be prepared to carry big and heavy lenses for it, though.
Viewfinder shows all that information in real time already, but after a certain point, you know what your camera gonna do with these settings:
Hmm... It's a bit too bright and this thing gonna overexpose a bit so, let's compensate it with -0.7EV...
Hmm... With this settings, it'll track the face automatically so I don't need to think about it now.
This is how you instinctively think while taking a photo. It's automatic. I don't know what my metering says me for most of the time, because I already know from experience. Metering is always there though. If it says something contrary to you, it's worth paying attention (again a split second).
If I can take this [0] with a single frame, why should I bother about multiple frames? Or, if I can take this [1] with a simple 7-shot bracket (which is overkill, 3 will already do, but why not) and simple compositing, why should I bother? Lastly, if I can take this [2] again with a single shot, with a bog standard lens and with a good tripod, why should I bother with tracked shots, etc. (You can always take better astros, but this is a great shot for a single frame and some post processing).
In photography, sensor size is still the king. A mirrorless camera is much crisper than a phone camera, the comparison is still moot. Esp. when you compare full frame sensors to phone camera sensors, even the best ones (like Sony's 48/12 Quad-Bayer systems) fall way short of even an APS-C sensor. It's physics. A RAW image from a big sensor is 90% there. When taking a photo with a phone, you're adding much much more to make it look good.
The joy of photography comes from capturing that fleeting moment and framing it to create something worth looking and remembering that moment. Not synthesizing artificial looking colors with extreme post processing which bends the truth in that moment.
> Hmm... It's a bit too bright and this thing gonna overexpose a bit so, let's compensate it with -0.7EV...
Why should _I_ do that instead of the camera?
> If I can take this [0] with a single frame, why should I bother about multiple frames?
You shouldn't. The camera should. It already knows the illumination level, and it can take multiple measurements from its CCD, until the total amount of transferred charge per pixel is enough to build a good picture. And while at it, just take a couple more pictures with intentionally over-exposed sensor to automatically offer the HDR version.
You know, the thing that phone cameras have been doing for a decade or so.
> In photography, sensor size is still the king.
Yes, and that's why I want a mirrorless camera with changeable lenses. There's only so much software can do with a phone's optical system.
However, the same software can do so much more when coupled with a big sensor and a good optical system.
First, every machine has its limits, second every photographer has a style.
> You shouldn't. The camera should.
No. The camera should do exactly as I say. It's an instrument, which shall allow footguns. Because one person's footgun is other person's style. Camera should be a blunt instrument, and should completely get out of the photographer's way, shall become transparent.
It's not the camera's interpretation of the scene. It's the photographer's interpretation through the camera.
> ...offer the HDR version.
If you feel lazy, many mirrorless cameras do that, but the results are may not fit your taste. Sony A7III's Auto-HDR is nice, but it's not exactly what I want, so I merge mine manually.
> You know, the thing that phone cameras have been doing for a decade or so.
I have quite a few cameras: A Canonette 28, a Pentax MZ50, a Nikon D70s and a Sony A7-III. I also used Canon AE-1, etc. All of these cameras have metering, and all of them are excellent for their era. They are not infallible or perfect.
For example, D70s freaks out in CFL and LED environments, because these indoor lighting was non-existent when it was designed. So a custom WB is a must in this case. A7-III sometimes struggles in colored LED (sodium yellow-ish) environments, so you again set custom WB. That machine was the most accurate camera in terms of color when it came out.
As I said, every machine has its limits.
> However, the same software can do so much more when coupled with a big sensor and a good optical system.
The thing is, photographer's don't want the software. They want what they exactly see recorded in a file, and that's more of a dynamic range thing more than a color thing, and it's directly related to sensor hardware (regardless of its size), not software.
From my understanding, you want a mirrorless (or full frame) point and shoot, and that's OK. What I want is total control over the camera hardware, regardless of its form factor.
> First, every machine has its limits, second every photographer has a style.
This is such a bullshit statement...
> No. The camera should do exactly as I say.
Well, time to throw your camera away, I guess. Unless you have a very old DSLR camera, of course.
> It's not the camera's interpretation of the scene. It's the photographer's interpretation through the camera.
The thing is, the camera can take multiple exposures at no cost, and then you can just discard the ones that you don't need. So you basically want to artificially limit the software and hardware to simulate the old-timey workflows.
> For example, D70s freaks out in CFL and LED environments, because these indoor lighting was non-existent when it was designed.
See: smartphones.
> The thing is, photographer's don't want the software.
This photographer wants it. And the market has clearly spoken in agreement with me.
> From my understanding, you want a mirrorless (or full frame) point and shoot, and that's OK.
The only thing I can say is, what we think about photography is very different.
> Well, time to throw your camera away, I guess...
I have film SLRs, a DSLR and a mirrorless. None of them are trash. They still work the way they should.
> See: smartphones.
If you think smartphones are impeccable in white balance, I'd tell you otherwise, because I have seen them fail the same way. It's physics. Even an iron skillet can take good photos in ample light. The difference starts to show itself when light goes down (starting sunsets and going from there + indoors at night). I take (sometimes) grainy photos with my camera, and smartphones just emit line noise from their sensors.
> The thing is, the camera can take multiple exposures at no cost, and then you can just discard the ones that you don't need.
Who says I don't shoot consecutive photos when required? A7III can track an object and keep focus on it at 30FPS, and shoot at 10FPS. Higher end cameras like A9 can go up to 120 AF corrections per second.
However, if you don't know what you're doing, spray and pray is no magic bullet. Also, taking shots is not free. If you can't press the shutter in the correct moment, that action and frame is gone forever. So, your burst shoot is for nothing.
Generally, when you're doing something like Tango nights, a 3-4 frame burst gets what you want. If you're tracking a dog, it's generally ~10 frames. Street is again ~3-4 shots (traffic, walking people, etc.), but I challenge myself to a single shot if I feel good, because why not.
There's no "old time" workflows. There are workflows for different scenarios. Sometimes I shoot and share from camera directly. Sometimes I process on my phone. Sometimes I let the photo sit and process post-trip. Sometimes it's one shot, sometimes it's burst. I have no frames. I just do what feels right at that moment.
These cameras have dedicated DSPs to handle these tasks. They are not bound to their processors, so a camera doesn't lose tracking because it also has to do AF corrections at the same time. Phase detecting AF cameras can scan whole AF surface (not all image pixels are AF pixels) without bogging down even while shooting 4K/8K videos at their max frame rates, because they're designed to do that.
> This photographer wants it. And the market has clearly spoken in agreement with me.
Smartphones are in your service. If you want heavy duty post processing for RAWs on the go, any iPhone later than X can post-process 24-32MP RAWs on board. I know, because I do.
However, the image quality of modern smartphones are not there by a great margin. Esp. in the Dynamic Range and Noise department. My A7-III can shoot in pitch black and create noiseless images. Google Pixel 9 Pro? Can't [0]. Even "portrait mode" creates washed out colors in bright daylight. Compare that to Fuji's XT-50, a mid range APS-C camera [1]. The difference is night and day.
> Pretty much.
I think you can seriously consider XT-50. It's not a full-frame machine, but it's a great APS-C camera with great ergonomics, which can handle 99% of your needs, without even needing post processing.
BTW, you say that "the viewfinders are electronic, anyway". They are calibrated OLED screens which shows the resulting image (after cameras processing) in real time. They are not less capable just because camera viewfinders don't draw yellow ractangles around faces, they track them just fine, incl their eyes. Sony not only focuses to faces. It focuses to eyes, even when they're behind sunglasses (you can tell A7III to show real time tracking markers).
I guess you never used a mirrorless, or any enthusiast camera for any matter. The possibilities they open beyond a single shutter button is immense.
This photo [2] is taken 15 years ago, and post processed in Darktable IIRC. It's taken as a JPEG, and processed from there. This is what good hardware and software can do.
If you don't have the data in the image to begin with, you can't go there even with the best software, sans you hallucinate and make details up, which is more generative AI and less photography.
> They are calibrated OLED screens which shows the resulting image
No they don't. For example, in low-light conditions the sensor doesn't get enough light to faithfully show the long-exposure result.
And my phone also has a calibrated OLED screen, so it's not like it's something exotic.
> I guess you never used a mirrorless, or any enthusiast camera for any matter. The possibilities they open beyond a single shutter button is immense.
I have worked professionally with optical systems and lasers, and for a time I had astrophotography as my hobby. I did plate stacking, and all other kinds of post-processing.
Sorry, yes they use a long shutter, and you get a blurry photo with the noise combined. It's a double whammy.
> And my phone also has a calibrated OLED screen, so it's not like it's something exotic.
Yes, but is the whole pipeline calibrated to each other? IOW, does what you see equals what you save? It's not always true on a smartphone, but it's "What you see is what you get" on a mirrorless.
> I have worked professionally with optical systems and lasers, and for a time I had astrophotography as my hobby.
Nice, but you might have done the same astrophotography with a CCD module designed for astro or with a wet plate, and both are very different from using a mirrorless camera, esp with one of the latest generation of sensors, which you can just point and shoot and get a more than decent photo of the sky above you. So, my point still stands.
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and get my camera and leave for some greener pastures before the rains start.
> You're looking at the screen to track the target anyway.
What? No. You present the camera to where it shall be, pin it where the image aligns with the framing you had in mind, and press the shutter. Almost the exact the same as guns minus violence(unless you consider artistic expression a form of violence). This applies to phones too.
> And with the computational photography, you can just take multiple pictures and synthesize various "exposure times" later.
The technology isn't there. Yes, it's 2024, there has to be half a dozen competing models of multispectral LIDAR slaved mirrorless cameras with Gaussian splats features, I agree, but it's easier and cheaper to just load couple AA batteries to a regular clip-on flash and physically stop down the aperture for portraits, or just be where you want to be with a flask of hot coffee for scenery photos.
Indeed, buttons and dials can be learnt to operate blindly so that you can focus on what really matters: scene and composition. There is a reason why Fujifilm have become the darlings of the semi-pro scene over the last decade. Look at anything in the X-T series and every single parameter that you need to change in a second or lose the shot has a button or dial for it; without them being as bulky as full-fledged SLRs.
Phones with touch screens are great for shots where you have a high degree of control over the subject (yourself, food, etc.) and your physical relationship to it. But one must realise that there is a great deal of photography where this will not be the case.
> You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject.
I completely agree.
Touchscreen interface and touch button are terrible UI in a car for the very same reason: you're looking at the subject/the road, not at your camera/your dashboard.
Just to add to this, I don't think we even need a physical button to trigger a photo. There should just be one big touchpad and screen like the tesla car. Speaking of, why does the tesla car have a steering wheel and gas pedal at all? these would be better served with the humble touchscreen. programmatic interfaces and such, a software update can completely revamp your gas peda.. i mean gasscreen
This way, with limited input, as I fumble with my camera my hamfists won't randomly press buttons, just as I fumble with my car hamfoot won't randomly press pedals. It's like all those little buttons and bobs were put there just to annoy me, it's awful.
Oh, and all these things needs to be "smart" everything "smart". Internet of things, wi-fi, bluetooth, redtooth, cloud connectivity. For the camera, the car, the dishwasher, the spoon, all of it. The internet of spoons. Touchscreen spoons.
Weight is also due to the cameras being built like tanks - they need to be absolutely dependable in any weather and survive drops bangs and falls. Most pro bodies are made with a rigid metal frame and are waterproofed with seals. They also have to hold lenses on the front bigger and heavier than 6lbs in a lot of cases.
I agree with both sides. if you want to experience a manual camera lacking controls visit the Nikon 1 series which has mostly a horrible user interface. The flip side is something like the Z9 which has touch, buttons and knobs everywhere.
The only questionable thing is 5G since cameras usually are built for 5 to 10 year working lives and live on for many more past that. Tethering to a phone seems like a fair compromise that also gives great battery life.
IMO the way black magic does it with their cinema cameras is a great middle ground. Big bright touchscreen that can do all + some physical buttons and dials for often used things.
In their early series I had one of those touchsrcreens die on set, but those reliability issues seem to have gone since.
There have been a few different attempts that look like this. Samsung Nx, Samsung Galaxy Camera, Sony has tried phone add on accessories. Basically they all sort of flop in the market.
People that don’t want to think about their photos use a smartphone. People that want to think about their photos still want a camera that they can control. I use a mirrorless Nikon camera and to take a single picture I normally want physical controls that can handle exposure, focus, zoom level and shutter release independently, but simultaneously without having to remove my attention from the image. The ability to do all that with physical, not menu controls, is a tremendous asset for most people that want to spend the money on a camera. If you slapped the latest technology inside a camera that didn’t have all the physical controls, photographers wouldn’t want anything to do with it.
I wouldn’t say that camera design is stuck in the 80s, either. The form factor is necessarily constrained by needing a tubular lens projecting in front of a flat imaging plane. The photographer is going to want to view the image from the opposite side as the lens. There’s only so much you can change the form factor with those constraints. Camera companies do have a few retro models, but even stodgy old Leica is making modern designs these days.
If you take tens of thousands of photos per year, you sort of realize that all cameras have more or less the same interface and form factor as they have for a while because it is what works best.
I want my camera to just take a photo at whatever the sensor can do, and give me that file.
Too many photo-taking devices are now like "lemme just AI that for you, and give it to you at a quarter of the resolution of the sensor." I don't think Samsung phones even let third-party apps access the full sensor any longer, all are crippled, IIRC.
> There have been a few different attempts that look like this. Samsung Nx, Samsung Galaxy Camera, Sony has tried phone add on accessories. Basically they all sort of flop in the market.
There was exactly ONE attempt. One. And it was pretty successful, at that: Samsung NX1. I had it, it was pretty good, but with a first-gen teething issues.
Phone add-on accessories don't work because they're clumsy and connectivity just sucks. And ultra-professional $6k cameras from Zeiss miss the mark entirely, you need to target a prosumer market (i.e. me).
> I wouldn’t say that camera design is stuck in the 80s, either. The form factor is necessarily constrained by needing a tubular lens projecting in front of a flat imaging plane.
But why do you need a large protrusion on the right? You don't have a film canister anymore. I already wrote about a myriad of physical controls. Just make it large enough to hold the camera.
There was one interchangeable lens attempt, and multiple non interchangeable ones. As mentioned, the Samsung galaxy camera, as well as Polaroid branded android cameras.
You need the large protrusion on the right because you have to hold the thing. It’s a handle. It needs to be somewhere, most people are right eye, right hand dominant. It makes a lot of sense to have it that way. The primary hand holds the camera, the other hand holds and supports the lens.
In the olden days, the film canister was physically stored on the left in almost all cameras (and certainly in all SLRs), so the protrusion on the right isn’t really a remnant of film designs.
Older film cameras actually have smaller less ergonomic protrusions on the right (look at a Nikon F2 vs. the modern Z8). The big ergonomic protrusion on the right has been an evolution of newer modern technology and expectations.
You can get a camera with gps, wifi, Bluetooth etc. do they have you screens that don’t have multitouch? It’s pretty hard not to get all that TBH. I can do crops and color treatments on my Nikon if I don’t want to just transfer directly to my phone and do the editing there. Yeah, the camera doesn’t automatically put it all in my iPhoto, but that is literally just a few taps.
There are MILC cameras that have minimal physical controls and touchscreens so I’m not really sure what you’re looking for? The sigma FP is pretty minimal, and you just strap on what you need.
You must not have checked very thoroughly, because these cameras absolutely exist, they're just not popular because of the limited utility of GPS in a camera compared to the battery drain and time it can take to resync an outdated almanac if your camera's been turned off for a few days.
I'll note that that's a limitation not of how powerful cameras are or aren't, but one of most GNSS systems architecturally; the almanac in these situations communicates to client devices information about any updates the satellite constellation, broadly speaking, and because this is a low-bitrate system in GEO, there isn't much client devices can do to speed this up.
Of the top 10 most recent entries on that list, only one (the Hasselblad) weighs in at over USD$7k, though others like the D6, Z9, and EOS-1D are high-end cameras that clock in around $5-6k new on B&H.
Olympus's offerings all fall under about $2500 with most of those options available under $1000.
Others are connecting their cameras to their phones over Bluetooth which gets all the images tagged with GPS location too. Eg. a sub-$1000 Sony ZV-E10 with an iPhone according to a user on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SonyAlpha/comments/17sco5v/comment/...
> Others are connecting their cameras to their phones over Bluetooth which gets all the images tagged with GPS location too
It requires Sony's crapp running on your phone when taking a picture. Right now, it has 1.8 stars in the Play Store, which should tell you how well it works.
> There are no cameras cheaper than around $7k with GPS
false. E-M1X, K-I, K-1II, 6DII, 5DIV, SLT-A55V, SLT-A65V, SLT-A77V all has/had it well under $7k. There are also few compact models intended for construction and/or field research purposes that has Wi-Fi && GPS.
No changeable lenses and not a full-frame sensor, does not support RAW.
I'm seriously interested in buying a reasonably-priced modern mirrorless camera with GPS. I'm not joking, I've been looking for a while to replace my old Sony Alpha.
I recommend Olympus for that. They're reasonably priced, generally more technologically progressive than bigger brands like Nikon, Canon, or Sony, have a small form factor owing to their Micro Four Thirds sensor, have GPS, and still have a decent set of modern and legacy lenses (which are also commensurately lighter and smaller than similar lenses on APS-C or full-frame systems).
> And ultra-professional $6k cameras from Zeiss miss the mark entirely, you need to target a prosumer market (i.e. me).
Zeiss is generally not a camera maker, at least not these days; the ZX1 is more of a halo product than anything. They're much better-known for their optics, which are often niche, but usually worth the money if it's your niche.
In any case, a better example of a professional camera would be something like Nikon's Z8 and Z9, Sony's A7/9/1 models, or Canon's newer EOSes. They're also a good amount cheaper than USD$6k, in most cases.
> But why do you need a large protrusion on the right? You don't have a film canister anymore. I already wrote about a myriad of physical controls. Just make it large enough to hold the camera.
Because that's where your right hand goes. Most people are right-handed, and having a comfortable grip is nice. Your left hand will usually go under the lens (or at the base of the lens for short or light lenses).
I would add that Zeiss (ZX1) and Leica (T typ 701, TL2) tried this modern touch-first approach at a premium and both products weren't exactly hits. The Zeiss was even running Android with Lightroom preinstalled.
Ehhh, I feel like I have to mention that optics like a Schmidt–Väisälä camera exist, and notably have their focal plane right in the middle of the tube.
They readily go as fast as e.g. 400mm f/2.0 with 2 tame (iirc literally just spherical) optical surfaces (mirror and near-sensor plano-convex lens) and 1 more elaborate wavy surface (back side of front glass), naturally achromatic for a 20~30 MP large image circle.
Modern technology (ability to manufacture of array waveguides that act like a bundle of fiber optics, to de-flatten the sensor's focal plane) also allows making better use of objective designs that perform well in every way but field flatness.
I've been using a professional camera (Sony A7C) for a bit over two years now, and my wishlist looks very different than yours.
- Modern computational photography: Imagine having access to a high-end sensor combined modern computational photography tooling. Smartphones do incredible things with computational photography, including HDR, low light stacking, noise reduction, upscaling, and picking out smiling faces from multiple photos. Most of these things can be done in post on a professional camera with tools like Photoshop, but often they are inferior, using a single image to worse affect, requiring a lot of manual work, or just having less mature tooling. I'd love to have access to the raw data and computational pipelines to selectively apply different processing and tweak computational settings in post.
- Better UI: Sony notoriously has a terrible UI in their camera menu systems. Working with it feels like something I would've used on a flip-phone from 20 years ago, with things buried multiple levels down in obscure menus and vague, sometimes poorly translated descriptions. The hardware is great, but the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users.
Exactly, the modern mirrorless camera should be providing options to use the latest technology as well as the full manual control for when you need it. Imagine what you could do with the stacking capabilities of modern smartphones with a stacked image sensor like on the Sony A9 series that can essentially take full resolution photos at video speed.
Relying solely on image processing isn't be a feasible product. Artists want full control to create the image that they visualized, not just what some ML algorithm determined was best, but at the same time there are many situations where you can gain improved image quality that these features can accomplish. Additionally, cameras have to support unedited images as a large customer base is journalism that requires minimal to no editing be done on images.
The UI thing is massive. I'm surprised nobody has created a UI more similar to the Hasselblad one that looks good and shows your settings very clearly. It would be great if the interface you interacted with was clear and looked like a modern UI, but still had the plethora of options available under the hood in an organized and quick to access manner. You don't often need to change many options, but when you do they need to be easy to find.
Most computational photography inherently breaks giving the photographer direct manual control over how a picture is taken (shutter speed, aperture, ISO).
For example, HDR or low light staking means taking multiple photos. This requires a fast shutter speed to minimise change in the scene or subject. However, photographers sometimes intentionally want a slower shutter speed for motion blur, or to shoot at lower ISO for less noise and more resolution.
Actions like noise reduction, upscaling, etc are post-processing actions. They are best done on a large, high-resolution, color-calibrated screen; instead of a portable device with a small battery where you want to maximise the number of shots you can take before swapping or recharging batteries.
Bear in mind that modern cameras easily shoot in 40, 60+ MP. To truly perform noise reduction, or upscaling on those images require a lot more processing power, even with fixed-function hardware. Your "48MP" quad-bayer smartphone is generally processing a "pixel-binned" 12MP image straight out of the sensor, that might be resampled to 24MP (iOS) after post-processing; but was never anything more than 12MP. The hardware was never more than 12MP, except they sub-divided each bayer pixel into 4 quad (or 12 for some Samsung chips) to claim 4x/12x the spec sheet w/o real world benefits.
Your smartphone's SoC, is usually manufactured on the latest, bleeding edge 3nm or 4nm processes. They are also the most expensive; made practical because tens of millions of each chip are shipped each year. There are ~1m dedicated cameras shipped each year; from many different manufactures using different chips; usually built on N16, N12, or N7 for the bleeding edge ones.
No, they cannot just use a smartphone SoC. Smartphone image signal processors simply can't process 61MP at 20FPS or 30FPS or whatever the burst rate sports photographers demand.
Your smartphone uses an electronic shutter. Your proper camera probably has a mechanical shutter, which is generally superior but also requires more force to move.
The battery in your smartphone is probably ~2x bigger than a professional mirrorless or DSLR. Pro photographers buy cameras, in a significant part based on how many shots they can take.
> the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users.
Think of the GUI as being built for professional photographers who's been using an UI for the past 20 years of their livelihood. You would probably be really upset if your OS decided to change established keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V. You probably wouldn't choose that OS, and if professional photographers won't buy a camera because the UI is "weird to them", you've wasted your R&D costs because the dedicated camera market for the past decade is essentially only professionals; with some amateurs and hobbyists.
Everything you say is pretty much on target, except the UI. I know my Sony camera, and every time I need to do a change in a setting, it's plainly horrible. Confusing naming, no feedback, sometimes you're thrown back to the main UI without explanation... and the bugs. For the longuest time the auto off was not working properly, which, on an hybrid camera leads to a very short battery life.
From what I've seen, it's not better on Canon and Nikon hardware.
They spent a lot of time refining the manual control, so it's very good and intuitive but then fails so bad at the electronic UI...
Sony is the manufacturer who had me search for the battery release camrra for a solid minute - it was on the opposite side of the camera.
If I didn't have to use those cameras they would be engineering marbels, but their professional video segment really could use a new generation of designers.
I’ve been doing a lot of extreme low temp (-70C ambient) photography with a Sigma FP. It’s basically a full-frame box hybrid movie camera. The addon EVF works well long after the LCD freezes. I really don’t want multi touch. I do want at least two physical dials with chunky detents. I don’t want auto-everything. USB charging is nice but I use a cabled external battery most of the time. The battery will die in minutes outside and for whatever reason Sigma decided not to add USB power pass through in the EVF. A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts.
The power solution I came up with is a modified battery charger with a removable base (Wasabi Power). I added teflon coated cables and a connector to go to the (also butchered) dummy battery. Real battery gets stuffed into a pocket or up a sleeve. The camera doesn’t care how cold it gets, from experimenting.
It’s also small and the display is most of the back. If you make the display bigger, the camera gets bigger. At some point you aren’t serving pro photgraphers or people who would just use an iPad. Really you want a good OLED display or a high-res viewfinder. The FP has a weird loupe accessory back.
An on device editor? I don’t understand the need, if you can sync to a phone or computer. The same goes for wifi - a lot of new cameras have 2.4Ghz in them (my OM-D EM5ii from almost a decade ago can sync to an app).
> A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts.
Yeah, cameras also need to be vacuum-proof with a passive heat spreader (1 square meter should be enough), support depths up to 3 kilometers (what if you want to visit Titanic?), and be rad-hardened (everybody loves taking photos inside the Fukushima reactor). These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.
You can ignore the Antarctica side of things, but the features that are useful here are useful everywhere.
More cameras are moving to OLED rear displays (sunlight visible), full-frame mirrorless with electronic shutter (mechanical reliability), USB-C charging (took ages for this to become widespread), out-of-the-box UVC support for webcam mode, etc. These sorts of features have led to cameras that are not skeuomorphic representations of cameras from the 80s. They don't need a hump for a penta-prism and they can drop bulky mirror and shutter assemblies. I can fit my fp and the kit lens into a coat pocket.
> These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.
> Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups.
I think having WiFi+GPS alone is sufficient for this (irritatingly few pro cameras have GPS receivers). Then you can do the editing on a device which is actually suitable for it, and you reduce the risk of obsolescence in the camera. TV manufacturers have shown they're unwilling to support changing APIs long-term.
The interim solution is probably a smartphone with an add-on lens system like Moment's, and better RAW support.
For the sake of every professional (and semi-professional such as myself) photographer out there, I wish, to use your terminology, that the manufacturer's heads remain firmly up their asses. The only thing touching the LCD on my camera is my nose while I look through the viewfinder and when I am looking at the screen it's because I'm holding the camera in a strange position that doesn't allow me to use a touchscreen either.
Give me an open API so I can offload all the smarts to my infinitely more capable phone that already has a SIM card with a huge data plan and keep the camera a camera.
I'm not sure I want any of that in my camera. Maybe fast wifi for photo sync at home but still faster to plug in the cable/card.
You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down.
> You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down.
You can do that while still retaining smart features. For example, use a small OS to control the camera while the full OS boots up. Or use suspend-to-disk to speed up loading, with suspend-to-RAM for instant startup.
> Well, that's a reason why camera makers are struggling. You don't want these features, but a lot of people do. So they vote with their smartphones instead.
You’re not capturing any of the traditional photography market by throwing all of _their_ priorities straight out the window.
So the market for the device under discussion here would be the people who want to spend a substantial amount of money on a dedicated device that is essentially equivalent to their cell phone except bulkier and without the ability to send and receive texts and phone calls.
Camera makers are struggling because a substantial portion of the market doesn’t really care about photography, they care about capturing memories. You’re proposing to make a device that’s mediocre at all the things traditionally important in photography and mediocre at capturing memories (a separate dedicated device will never be as close at hand as the phone in your pocket that you take everywhere).
> You’re not capturing any of the traditional photography market by throwing all of _their_ priorities straight out the window.
You mean, the market that is crumbling fast because most people are not professional photographers?
> Camera makers are struggling because a substantial portion of the market doesn’t really care about photography, they care about capturing memories.
Exactly. And this market has a really unfulfilled niche: cameras with a decent optical system and changeable lenses. I have a Sony Alpha camera and it's plenty enough for me in image quality, but I now leave it home most of the time because I just don't want to fiddle with it.
>You mean, the market that is crumbling fast because most people are not professional photographers?
That's the whole point though. The market is crumbling because it no longer exists. Professional photographer are few and far between and they are the only ones that need the features provided by a professional camera.
Compare pictures take on an iPhone to those take on a top of the line F4 from thirty years ago, the iPhone pictures are _much_ better.
The only reason to have a professional camera is to be in full control of all settings, which would make your proposed DSLR without those controls purely a vanity device/big heavy smartphone minus the phone for people who want to show off how much money they have.
While they's always a market for people to show off their wealth, it won't be a useful camera.
That's an incredible over-generalization. My wife and I use professional photographers to capture lots of moments with my family. I've never seen so many professional photographers available to hire than now. I probably know of at least 15-20 off the top of my head that I have used in the past or know of personally.
They are definitely willing to purchase dedicated high-end equipment. iPhone cameras are absolutely not on par or better than a professional dedicated camera. They are actually known to be the worst camera in terms of clarity and accuracy than any other smart phone camera. Just check out any camera review comparing it to other smartphone cameras. There are a lot of AI enhancement models that alter the image in ways that are unrealistic and strange.
I personally purchased a nice Canon mirrorless because I want more control over my picture. I want to be able to set the mood of an image and capture the features I want to be visible on my own. It's also nice to have a separate camera that doesn't bother me with unimportant notifications and baggage that a connected device offers.
As for no business, I don't think that having a business that caters to a smaller demographic means that there is no money in it. There are few reasons why companies like Nikon, Canon, and Sony don't diversify into other markets with other products... which they absolutely do.
> The only reason to have a professional camera is to be in full control of all settings
I don't _want_ a "professional" camera. I'm not getting paid for pictures (and btw, the "professional photographer" market is saturated now).
I want a camera with good changeable lenses that can provide reasonable optical zoom, so I can take a picture of that curious bird on a tree branch. Or to take a macro picture of a really nice flower. And maybe a beautiful picture of the moon hanging just near that waterfall.
> Exactly. And this market has a really unfulfilled niche: cameras with a decent optical system and changeable lenses. I have a Sony Alpha camera and it's plenty enough for me in image quality, but I now leave it home most of the time because I just don't want to fiddle with it.
When I leave my MILC at home, it's because the optics are large and heavy, not because the body is. When I do take my camera, I usually opt for the Sony Zeiss 35 mm Sonnar T*, because it's so small. From an optical point of view, it's a good lens, but it's not the best 35 mm lens I have.
For capturing memories, the best camera really is the one you have with you at all times. For creating photographs, the bulk of the camera body really doesn't matter that much.
Case in point: My phone can go from "off" (sleep) to taking pictures in less than a second with basically no effort. Why not do the same on a dedicated camera? You'll get better battery from sleep if it has zero wakeups or radios on in sleep, which is fine for this use.
Dedicated cameras that can do this are widely available.
My (cheap, 15 year old) DSLR goes from “off” to capturing a photo in under 300ms. The battery essentially lasts indefinitely if you’re not actively fiddling with it. It will take about a thousand photos per charge, and changing the battery takes about 5 seconds.
> My phone can go from "off" (sleep) to taking pictures in less than a second with basically no effort
My Fujifilm X-E4 does the same? Flip the power switch, click the shutter. It's honestly identical in time to my smartphone - power on for these devices is crazy fast today IME
Right, no, obviously a dedicated device can power up faster than a general purpose computer. My point was that a general purpose computer can come out of sleep fast enough to be used in a camera, while maintaining acceptable tradeoffs in the process.
Ah right apologies, I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah absolutely, though it does require the SoC for the "phone camera" to not be under-powered, which unfortunately for the attempts so far, they usually have been
Digital camera SoCs are actually multi-core ARM with a DSP on bus and tons of RAM, and actually do what GP proposes(boots up and goes to sleep when battery is inserted). Some runs Linux, some really obscure RTOS. Lots of SoCs are OEM'd, but no one talks who supplies who. All those cheap plastic looking body shells are paper thin cast magnesium in black paint, not even aluminum. Some has Peltier based active cooling for years.
The bunches of hackers behind those... they don't like talking to anyone on anything unless you're asking about marketed features on finished products, or you show a badge or a business card they recognize. So the Internet never knows.
That I'm actually aware of; I was talking about the Samsung Galaxy NX and the Yongnou YN455, both of which have kind of underpowered SoCs driving the android side of it, sadly. The YN455 less so, but still.
A few have tried, and they all fail. Most people are just going to use their phone, and the ones that won't _want_ the old-timey looks and hardware dials.
I disagree; I think your overall point is correct, that people want high quality photos beyond what phone sensors and lenses can achieve, and they want the power of their phones software.
Thing is though, most camera makers are kind of crap at software in general, and their UX teams are nonexistent. So being able to delegate to your phone makes a fair bit of sense to the people who'd like that, even if you're not one of them.
It makes so much sense that there's even a second team taking a crack at it that I wasn't aware of: https://www.alice.camera/
That said, this is still a niche within a niche: I don't think either will be some mass market product. But being able to take my phone and a Alice or a SwitchLens to a concert in both pockets is pretty neat.
These will more replace the things like the Fujifilm X70, or a lot of what people use the X100(roman numeral) for, while getting the workflow benefits you're rightfully after.
I don't trust a camera manufacturer to keep their Android deployment up to date, or even to really fix that many bugs in it, and a whole Android OS is a lot more complex for them to manage than SwitchLens/Alice's apps and internal RTOS + comms layers.
Other alternative would be for one of the big players in the mirrorless space to open up their operating systems, but Fujifilm's X series communication app is bad that I simply don't see it as feasible: they really are terrible at software.
> It makes so much sense that there's even a second team taking a crack at it that I wasn't aware of: https://www.alice.camera/
It's a good idea, but I just don't think it's going to work. The mechanical connection between the phone and camera is awkward, and connectivity through Bluetooth/WiFi can not be seamless enough. Especially in challenging radio environments (like a concert).
> I don't trust a camera manufacturer to keep their Android deployment up to date, or even to really fix that many bugs in it, and a whole Android OS is a lot more complex for them to manage than SwitchLens/Alice's apps and internal RTOS + comms layers.
Android can allow third-party software, much easier than hacking into the proprietary OS.
Android allows, sure, but these systems have a chicken-and-egg problem where their sensors aren't exposed in a way that third party apps actually access to the ability they can. The YN455 has this problem today. Plus, it doesn't change the fact that you want that phone-camera to get android updates for security purposes, and now you're back to the fact that most camera makers are pretty crap at user facing operating systems. I think it's an impedance mismatch, really
Samsung did make a camera with most of those features (it was before 5G, so 3G I think). I had it, it sucked a lot.
Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment. Whenever I tried using that camera I lost so many shots due to the delay of fiddling with menus or the startup time.
> Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment.
Yeah, this really feels like the “cars should have physical controls not giant tablets” argument argued from the opposite stance.
If your focus is elsewhere (driving, trying to capture a photo) the last thing you want is a giant touchscreen that’s modal and has no tactile feedback. The only way you can operate it is to take your attention away from what you’re actually trying to do to fiddle with the touchscreen.
Personally, I prefer being able to turn on my defroster or blinker from muscle memory and without taking my focus off the road just as I prefer being able to adjust the aperture or ISO from muscle memory without taking my focus off the scene I’m trying to capture.
That does exist in most modern interchangeable lens cameras. You can adjust almost all settings through the touchscreen that are available. Hell, on a lot of cameras you can control most settings remotely via Wifi using your smarthpone. The only function I can think of that isn't available is zoom, since photography lenses almost never include a zoom motor.
The GP is asking for touchscreen ONLY, with no buttons for some reason.
The only thing that I wish that camera-makers would finally agree on is a common mount. I'd love to try out camera bodies from different manufacturers, but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well. No, thanks.
I agree on built-in GPS (currently need to pair with a smartphone - which I'd rather love to leave at home), but everything else seems like a non-feature to me. I have zero interest for that on my Camera, because the experience would just be insanely annoying. Touchscreens are awful for camera operation - the feature is turned off permanently on my camera. Camera needs to be operatable blind, touchscreens are awful for this. Please give me more buttons and dials.
> but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well
Sadly, this is entirely by design. Like other industries, camera manufacturers want to ensure lock-in. At least we can usually keep lenses across body changes within the same brand.
There are some more or less standard mounts from early days of film: LTM, 42mm, even Pentax K has been shared by numerous manufacturers. There is the m4/3 mount for digital which is shared across several manufacturers.
The problem is that the mount is always a design constraint. The LTM mount means your lenses cannot have AF. The M4/3 mount means that your sensor size is maxed out at 1/4 the size of a full frame camera. Using the Pentax K mount means that you can't ever have a piece of glass closer than 45mm to the imaging surface.
The most interesting manuever might be Nikon's new Z mount which has the closest flange distance of any full frame mount as well as the widest diameter. This makes it so that it is compatible with the largest amount of lenses of any mount when using adapters. Bizarrely, I can use old Canon EF mount lenses with new Nikon cameras with more features than I can using old Nikon lenses from the same era!
Yep, this is me. I like just capturing memories with my smartphone, and only wish it had a better lens. It's convenient that I can just carry it in my pocket and not have to carry a separate device.
If someone made this smartphone-like camera, I wouldn't buy one. What purpose would it serve? I already have a phone, and if I want to spend more money to get better-quality photos than it can provide, I can just go buy a higher-end phone that's aimed at people like me, with a bigger and better lens. Why would I want to carry a separate camera around and then worry about stuff like syncing photos?
If, however, I got back into doing more serious amateur photography, like I was into 15+ years ago, the last thing I would want is a smartphone-like camera with an annoying touchscreen. I'd want a "prosumer" DSLR, with lots of physical switches. And these already exist.
Half of the point of having a dedicated camera is better ergonomics. I'm finding current smartphones good enough for most uses, but they are simply awkward to use and very slow to control without an external grip.
Depends of the context. Might use the smartphone as it is on a day to day basis but decide to mount the grip when visiting a specific place, travelling, taking picture in a specific event.
You need physical buttons. It is about communicating with the machine what you really want and control it. If you want auto just have an option for auto.
A good example is auto focus. Many has a button on the back to activate on an area with focus size and point control by a joystick. And if it is good, fix it so the machine does not decide to autofocus another area, subject, …
Obviously, we are seeing movement in that direction, but it's still being balanced with size — you can't fill in the entire large sensor with a "short" lens easily, yet avoid all the problems cameras experience.
It would be great if any of the phones came with an interchangeable lens mount for an existing system, but that alone would add 4-5mm of thickness (30-50% of a modern phone).
It appears that availability in some parts of the world may be difficult for many of those phones: many seem to be sold only to Chinese, Japanese, or Asian markets, and others seems specifically unavailable in the US.
It's also worth noting that, from a camera rather than phone perspective, "1-inch type" sensors, which have no dimension approaching 1", are very small, half the image area of micro 4/3, and less than a seventh of 35mm; they are around 16mm by 13mm.
"1-inch" is "1-inch vacuum tube equivalent". Micro Four Thirds is likewise 4/3 inch equivalent. Both are smaller than the nameplate size because tubes had rims.
Most of those phone are available online through grey imports at around MSRP(...of ~$2.5k). The reality is that there are no real demands to capture in phones with ginormous cameras, cameras without inherent obnoxiousness, and possibly cars without turn signal stalks, too, for that matter.
Oh, certainly: but if people do spend money on phones with "1-inch" sensors, manufacturers will see it as a signal that people are willing to pay for ever larger sensors. How does one fit optics to illuminate the sensor is a different topic though.
You just described a camera from hell (minus the connectivity part). Muscle memory is very important in photography, half presses, AEL/AFL lock buttons, exposure compensation. There's so many things that have to have physical buttons, you will not be looking at the screen to do these things.
This is exactly the same problem Tesla created with the touch buttons for turn signals, not everyone is a BMW driver, we use turn signals.
I am a photographer with decades of experience, the vast majority of which is studio works.
My wishlist is the exact opposite of your's. I don't need multitouch, couldn't care less for anything wireless, much less automatic uploads and on-device editing. I need physical buttons for everything. The more the better. And I need a manual AF/MF switch badly.
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway.
No thank you. The whole point of a good camera is to have manual controls IF you want them. Nope that you can already use DSLRs and mirrorless cameras as fully automatic point and shoot cameras of you want to use them this way.
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway.
Yeah, you do. For the reasons others have given (adjusting the exposure compensation on my iPhone is a PITA. On my Olympus I just spin a dial).
But also: if you're "out shooting", this may happen when it's freezing outside. If you've found a pair of warm gloves that allows you to comfortably use an iPhone, I'd love to hear about them. My Olympus' dials are usable with my winter motorcycle gloves. My iPhone's screen is also a pain to use if it's wet. Sure, it won't brick the phone, but dragging things around the screen? Good luck.
Indeed. It's almost as if there were multiple uses for a given piece of technology.
> Here's a newsflash: people typically don't take pictures when it's super-cold.
Here's a newsflash: most of these people don't care for "real cameras" and are buying phones instead. The no-dial fully-automatic cameras are pretty much extinct because people find phones good enough for their needs.
I don't follow the camera news that closely, but I'm pretty sure at least Olympus and Panasonic have some models with few buttons. I don't know if they have integrated GPS (probably not), but apart from that, they sound like what you want. Those are smaller sensor cameras (but still big enough to be in a totally different league than phones). I think Panasonic recently came out with a "full-frame" compact with close to no dials. Sony has a compact full-frame, but it does have dials and buttons.
Either way, if you're willing to put up with lugging around a big-ass camera and a heavy lens, it's not clear to me what's the issue of there being 2-3 more buttons and dials. Just don't use them. Aside from the on-off button on my camera which is a braindead design, I never unintentionally bump dials or switches and there are a bunch of them on a tiny camera.
> Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups.
Most newer cameras have _many_ of these, minus integration with Google Photos, iPhoto, or WebDAV, and cellular connectivity since many areas of photography just wouldn't benefit from it enough to justify the extra cost, complexity, and battery life hit.
Many newer cameras also have smartphone control, with varying levels of actual usability, but that's a separate issue.
> Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups
An editor with any amount of value-add for the kind of person who still buys a standalone camera would be pretty big in storage and would likely be painfully slow; for me, on a 2019 Macbook Pro, Lightroom is consistently a pretty heavy app to run (to say nothing of Photoshop proper).
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway.
As others have said: a good haptic interface is essential for most shooting styles, and many of the settings do have automatic modes, but a big selling point of standalone cameras is that they allow you to express yourself creatively by exposing these manual controls to you.
Wanna take a picture of a waterfall at dawn? Throw your master mode and ISO into auto and you'll probably get a really nice shot of a waterfall. But what if you want to blur the water so it looks like white streaks? There's not an auto setting that can just infer that for you. With a good haptic interface you'll be able to set that up in the dark, or in the cold while wearing gloves, or in the wind or on rough terrain where it might be tricky to keep your hands steady over a touchscreen.
If you're shooting at an airshow, what balance do you want between shutter speed and ISO to balance crispness with the appearance of motion? With a good haptic interface you'll be able to configure that while following a jet through a long lens.
> A physical button for the shutter and an analog knob for fine tuning are fine, but I don't need a manual switch for AF/MF. Or a "shutter delay" selector that is too easy to accidentally bump.
Fortunately, there's a class of devices where these needs and gripes are served well: smartphones. The default camera apps and even some higher-end camera apps loaded onto modern smartphones are immensely powerful at making good shots with minimal effort.
Having said all that: smartphones are usually excellent cameras, and arguably _much more than enough_ for the average person, but if you want to break out of using the bog-standard auto settings, interfaces get tricky, annoying, and even in the best case can be difficult to work with. Halide, for example, is great in general, but struggles with short focus (much more than the stock iOS camera app) for some reason; it provides a manual focus slider to work around that, but for nearby scenes with a shallow FOV, you'd usually want a hold-to-keep-in-focus or even an AF-C setting.
Dedicated cameras -- and especially ILCs -- target a different audience with different goals. What you get is, relatively speaking, uncompromising flexibility and an ability to support a wide range of artistic visions, though often with a learning curve tied to it.
So, I'll ask you a followup: what do you want out of a camera that a phone can't get you?
I think this is an incredibly cool project. I think it'd be neat if they did something like MNT do and ran a crowdfunding campaign to try get these some what more mass produced, though I dont get the impression the author is looking to run a business like that and mostly developed it for their own enjoyment.
Regardless though, it does feel like open hardware is getting a lot more attainable than it used to be and that is surely a good thing
Hey OP, if you ever plan to turn this into a kit for sale for <$2000-ish I'd be highly interested.
I'm sick and tired of microscopic cameras like the RPi "HQ" camera being called HQ. I come from photography land and a full 35mm-ish sensor is the minimum of what I'd call HQ.
The design is pretty modern. But what is with the choice of the Kodak CCD sensor? CCD cameras got a resurgence in Chinese communities with second-hand camera prices increased like tenfold.
Also see Apertus Axiom where they also used the Zynq but used one hell of a CMOS sensor that can do 4K 300FPS.
> Well let's say I started this project before the recent CCD camera hype so that's not the reason. Part of me just wanted to be special and fullframe CCD is kind of special.
Being a small manufacture means you go to the bottom of the list for the vendors of the sensors. I'm sure the best sensors are pretty much already spoken for, and the lower quality ones are what's available to any one not the likes of Sony, Canon, Nikon, etc. Any other reason is pretty much an excuse.
We could just go back to full sized cameras with 3 CCDs. j/k
CCD sensors render differently than CMOS sensors and, if their strengths are what you are looking for they could still make sense. Compared to CMOS they require more light, but when you are capturing an image properly they do a really good job of rendering colors and details. CCD sensors also introduce less noise as part of their pipeline (though again, the ceiling on how sensitive they can be is much lower than CMOS).
Basically there has always been a community of photographers who like the "CCD look" and it's not surprising to me that someone who's geeky enough to make his own camera went with one.
That sounds like the stuff you read on audiophile websites where they are trying to sell you a special "audio-tuned" ethernet cable for thousands of dollar. The sensor simply converts photons into electrons binned into colors based on the bayer pattern, how can they "render" colors differently? That's a function of the digital processing pipline.
Also I don't understand how a CCD can introduce less noise than a CMOS, but is less sensitive at the same time? Light sensitivity is largely governed by the noise floor of the sensor I would say.
I don't really know either. My understanding is that the process of increasing ISO (i.e. boosting signal) works a lot better in CMOS, but also that because of how CMOS works read noise is higher overall. So a CCD will give you a cleaner record at base sensitivity (generally iso 100) or slightly elevated iso, but as soon as you get away from that CMOS sensors will do better. Whatever read noise they introduce is less impactful than the fact that they are much better at amplifying the light you did detect in a clean(er) way.
You are also welcome to dismiss me as a goofy photophile. I am not trying to sell you anything, just reporting what I understand people think. Maybe this article seems less snake oil-y[1]?
Sorry if it came across like it, I didn't mean to accuse you of snake oil pandering. I just read the article and I think you misremembered, the article states CMOS has in fact a significantly lower noise floor (I wondered about this, because I remember when the next gen CMOS sensors came out in the pentax K5 and the Nikon D400(?) it was possible to push the shadows so strongly that you could essentially take a completely black photo and push it up to the same as if you would have taken with higher ISO). CCDs have a "more pleasing/film-like" nonlinearity, but I believe if you shoot raw a linear response is always better, because it gives you more flexibility for post processing.
IIRC the author scored a few trays on local equivalent of eBay. Obsoleted Kodak/OnSemi KAF line of sensors are rare kind of large film-sized sensors with public full datasheets; most manufacturers don't even confirm or deny existences of sensors in public.
I have interest in assembling this, but I'd love to buy it.
I wasted about 1k on trying to design a small backup phone before realizing I couldn't get it down to the dimensions I wanted. I'd need like half a million to actually build this thing.
However, I really want to see more hardware with open software. On the other hand you have open firmware for some cannon cameras if you want to do that route.
A lot of modern (DSLR or mirrorless era) lens intentionally accept a lot of optical flaws that are easy to correct with software (e.g. vignetting; sometimes even mechanical/hard vignetting where the lens does not fully cover the sensor); to prioritise addressing flaws that are difficult to correct with software (i.e. resolution, sharpness).
The software in the camera automatically correct these things before you see it; and when it's particularly bad, usually this correction cannot be disabled. On most brands, RAW will tell you something closer to what the sensor is really seeing.
Probably the author is not using digital optimized "telecentric" lenses. It's known that digital sensors are less tolerant with respect to incident angles compared to films.
Because the lens mount alone is as thick as the phone, lenses are heavy so the phone's.frame must become stronger and this heavier, and the result becomes a pretty silly phone, heavy and weird-shaped without a lens, and even more weird-shaped with an attached lens.
Not as a primary phone. I mean a purpose made mirrorless but reusing the screen, motherboard and battery from some ultra cost-optimised phone. Easy to use SDK, loads of third party photo sharing and camera control apps.
I want a camera that works digitally, but all is through physical controls and only the photometer is digital as well. Not a single "auto" feature. All manual, but saves to an SD.
Not cheap, but you can get a Leica that doesn't even have a screen, it's all manual and just treats the sensor as though it were film stock. One of the things I like about the Leica digitals is that they are still rangefinder cameras so your experience of using them is still through the viewfinder and much more akin to an analog experience because of the manual focus / exposure / speed control. Now I just need to save up :-)
As others have said, the Nikon Zf is a nice manual feeling digital option too.
Love it. I really wish classical mirrorless camera makers would get their head out of their collective asses, and make a camera that is not stuck in the 80-s mentality.
Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups.
Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway. A physical button for the shutter and an analog knob for fine tuning are fine, but I don't need a manual switch for AF/MF. Or a "shutter delay" selector that is too easy to accidentally bump.
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches [...].
You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject. Touchscreens suck at blind controls. (That’s not to say touchscreens aren’t useful: choosing the focus point doesn’t exhibit this conflict, even if some prefer a joystick; or if you’re already digging into menus to do something very particular and non-time-sensitive—astrophotography, focus stacking, live compositing—a touchscreen can be better than a D-pad.)
Cameras also weigh quite a bit and are supported with the fingers you’re using to operate them, so significantly shifting anything except maybe your right thumb usually means a real risk of dropping the camera. The weight also mounts a two-pronged attack on the size of your touchscreen (I’m assuming a walkaround camera, not weddings or sports): the camera needs to be smaller in order to be lighter, and a large part of its surface area needs to be available for you to grip. So, realistically, you don’t want a camera with a 6-inch touchscreen.
In conclusion, please please please don’t take away my physical controls. I know a touchscreen is cheaper, but please don’t. I’ll pay.
(Side note: it’s been almost fifteen years, and I still type slower on my Android phone than I used to on the QWERTY keyboard of my Nokia.)
I'm reminded of how long it took Garmin to add touchscreens to their sports watches, and how controversial it was in the user community.
If you want to check your heart-rate while sitting at your desk, scrolling through the touchscreen on an Apple Watch is great. But if you're wearing gloves while skiing, or your hands are covered in mud and sweat during a trail run, a touchscreen is not a great option.
Garmin's modern sport line now has optional touchscreens, but all major functionality is still accessible via physical controls alone. Their lifestyle models are touchscreen-first, though, which really demonstrates the different requirements for different use-cases. I suspect the same is true in the camera world.
When you're doing street photography, or any photography with a DSLR/Mirrorless, you don't look at the controls at any given moment.
You see a potential subject, you "arm" the camera via its power switch instinctively.
Your finger goes to front/back dial and you set your parameters depending on the mode, sometimes only paying attention to numbers on the screen or top LCD or viewfinder.
You're tracking your subject now. If you need, you select the AF point blindly via the touchscreen (which is off and is a touchpad if you're looking via viewfinder), and fine tune it via the joystick if you need one.
Looks good, half-press, AF Locks. You release the shutter and camera clicks. It's done.
You turn off your camera blindly and continue walking.
> When you're doing street photography, or any photography with a DSLR/Mirrorless, you don't look at the controls at any given moment.
Why? You're looking at the screen to track the target anyway. Show the controls there, including focus points and maybe "exposure" settings.
And with the computational photography, you can just take multiple pictures and synthesize various "exposure times" later. And it'll likely be better than what you set blindly, hoping to get the right combination.
Beyond that; you usually aren't shooting blind unless you choose to. Cameras come with metering (and have done so for many decades now), and it's gotten pretty damn good at telling you when your photo's properly exposed. Newer (<15 years old) cameras will often also have a histogram which gives you even more data than an EV meter.
> Not necessarily. You might be looking through the viewfinder, which will almost always have better contrast
Most mirrorless cameras have electronic viewfinders. They are _worse_ than a phone screen. And they still show you only an approximation of the final image, filtered through an underexposed sensor and whatever processing steps the camera has.
And if the viewfinder is purely optical (in a mirrorless camera) then it won't show the autofocus feedback.
> if you're using the display, fumbling through a touchscreen interface will always be slower than doing the same with a haptic interface you're used to.
Except that you bumped the control wheel on top some time earlier during the day, and it's now at +3 exposure instead of "0". You don't see that in the viewfinder, and find out only when the pictures are downloaded to your computer 2 months later.
Ask me how I know about this scenario.
Oh, or another one I learned at school while taking pictures for the class: if you don't have a perfect vision, and you focus the optical viewfinder until the image is in focus, the actual film image will demonstrate to everyone else exactly how you see the world with your imperfect vision.
> The goal often isn't to maximize the use of technology to get the best possible photo _technically speaking,_ but to use your own familiarity with techniques and tools to make something great _yourself._
And for me, the goal is to take good pictures for my memories, utilizing as much technology and automation as possible. I don't want to spend time learning every function of that 15 knobs on my camera. I want optical zoom and a full-frame sensor, but the same UI experience as on my phone.
> Except that you bumped the control wheel on top some time earlier during the day, and it's now at +3 exposure instead of "0". You don't see that in the viewfinder, and find out only when the pictures are downloaded to your computer 2 months later.
I mean, I can't help you here, this kind of misinput is just as likely if not more on a touchscreen in my experience. The fact is that:
- Normally, on any camera I've used between Sony and Nikon, one click of the control wheel is +/- 1/3 EV. Hitting it nine times and failing to pay attention to the live preview or EV metering scale sounds like user error to me.
- If it takes you 2 months to unload your photos, you probably aren't the target audience for these cameras to begin with, to be blunt.
- Assuming it was _less_ than 3EV, most modern cameras shooting in RAW will, for most scenes, be able to give you the dynamic range to still work with the photo in post.
> Not in newer designs. Modern cameras have similar or higher perceived pixel density, with very little or no perceptible screen dooring. Latency on later-gen cameras is also very low to the point of being imperceptible.
Wow, so just like my phone! My point is, the viewfinder is _still_ electronic. It doesn't really provide much advantage compared to just showing an image on the screen. That's why some of the mirrorless cameras don't even have a viewfinder anymore (e.g. EOS M6 Mark II).
> I mean, I can't help you here, this kind of misinput is just as likely if not more on a touchscreen in my experience.
It can be shown on the screen, and the UI can more faithfully reflect the settings.
> - If it takes you 2 months to unload your photos, you probably aren't the target audience for these cameras to begin with, to be blunt.
Sure. That's why I want GPS, on the photos. But I still want a good optical system, there's just no way around the sensor size and the lens quality.
It's normally better than a phone screen since it's hooded, meaning you can get consistently high contrast and good colour representation in a wider range of environments without worrying about glare.
I'd also say that it's not a question of "some mirrorless cameras don't have viewvinders anymore" so much as there exists a segment-within-a-segment which doesn't have viewfinders.
Sigma's fp fits in there (though there's an optional viewfinder attachment); so does Nikon's Z30 and Sony's ZV-E10. It's not a popular design choice to remove the viewfinder since most users of ILCs do get use out of the viewfinder.
This doesn't address the issue of having to navigate multiple layers of menus or having to do weird on-screen gestures to get to settings, all without haptic feedback; besides that, it's not like this information's hard to read on a traditional-layout display. 1/40, 5.6, iso400, and an EV scale pointing to 1.3 is pretty intuitive if you have a basic understanding of photography concepts. If you don't care about that stuff and spend most of your time in auto, most cameras offer layout options to hide that information. The hard truth is that you'll have to compromise on something here.- GPS used to be a popular option for halo-product cameras. I used to own a Sony SLT-A55 which had it, but it was often unreliable and battery life took a hit whenever I had GPS turned on. It was a decent camera otherwise. Nowadays, most cameras just don't ship with GPS built in. Some will offer a hot-shoe attachment, but these still have reliability and battery drain issues. Others rely on a phone link to encode that into the EXIF. Modern phones are pretty good about using standalone, unassisted GPS, so shooting in remote locations while using your phone as a location source is generally an okay solution. If this is a hard requirement for you, you'll have to resort to a camera design that's a few years old, partly because this feature has kinda fallen out of style, and partly because camera generations move slower than smartphone generations (for good reason; outside of professionals in demanding areas like sports or event photography, the value add has to be clear from generation to generation for the bigger enthusiast market to buy in).
- You seem to be hell-bent on having as few physical controls as possible, and even no viewfinder. This cuts out most high-end, midrange, and even most entry-level ILCs, and leaves a small segment of vlog ILCs, plus point-and-shoots (though there are some very respectable higher-end options in that market these days, like the Sony RX100 series, which has a cult following at this point).
- You still want interchangeable lenses and a bigger sensor than what you can find on phones. The latter's easy, most dedicated cameras have a bigger sensor than phones; the former less so given your other constraints, since most cameras with interchangeable lenses will fail on one of your other constraints. Out of the major manufacturers, this basically leaves you with the Sigma fp, Nikon Z30, EOS M6 Mark II, and the Sony ZV-E10, all of which, regrettably, have that control wheel that you might still accidentally hit nine times and bump your exposure up by +3.0EV.
- If you want _specifically a full-frame_ sensor, and you don't want to pay for niche products like Leicas, Zeiss halo products, or something weird like the Sigma fp, the unfortunately the camera you're looking for doesn't exist. The feature set you want represents a tiny sliver of a niche that's mostly been eaten up by smartphones at this point.
- You also want computational photography built in, which, to be honest, as it's currently implemented in phones, largely negates the limitations of the small sensors and cheaper lenses. As in; for casual photography, you're pretty unlikely to see a clear improvement over your phone with a dedicated camera these days, whether or not it comes with phone-style computational photography built in. I can't underscore this enough. If you take pictures of challenging scenes, or if you're going for a specific style, then yeah, phones are outclassed, at least as difficulty of the shot goes -- but for casual stuff? Phones are the way to go, almost unquestionably.
Snark aside; if you're looking at something like family photography, I strongly recommend something like an RX100 or a Z30 or Z5. The RX100 is a point-and-shoot, but it's best-in-class in a lot of ways even if the current rev is from 2019. It's also small enough to fit in your pocket and has a solid lens with a good zoom range. The Z30 and Z5 will probably lock out the control rings for you if you're in auto mode, which should help prevent any accidental overexposure. They also benefit from recent-gen sensors and image processors (though the sensors are APS-C). If you want a full-frame, stacked, or BSI sensor it'd likely break the bank while committing to using more conventional controls since you're looking at an enthusiast camera at that point. No two ways about it.
The GPS thing is the biggest hurdle you'll still have to clear. I don't have a great solution for you. The Z30 and EOS M6 MkII both probably have good smartphone app integration and they'd likely be able to sync location from there, but that can be finnicky, and it tends to be a battery hog.
On the other side of the spectrum I guess you could look at something like Beastgrip. I hear it's what they're using to rig up iPhones for the new 28 Years Later movie.
> The GPS thing is the biggest hurdle you'll still have to clear. I don't have a great solution for you.
Sony also has a great smartphone app which doesn't eat any battery at all. It waits for your camera to connect and activates the GPS when it connects and feeds data to it. I have never seen it eat my battery more than it should on my old iPhone X.
Sony's app also can do remote shooting and image transfer via WiFi and it's not half bad at either.
> As in; for casual photography, you're pretty unlikely to see a clear improvement over your phone with a dedicated camera these days
Phones are great for panorama shots, but they can't zoom. It's a physical limitation, you _need_ larger lenses for that. Another big problem is the low-light shots. Software does wonders, but it's still limited by the amount of light that the sensor can gather.
> Snark aside; if you're looking at something like family photography
I love travels, and most of my photography are either wild nature or landscapes. For the wild life photos you _really_ need optical zoom, you don't generally want to come close and ask a bear (or a lion) for a selfie.
I kinda adapted, and each time I take pictures with my camera, I also take a couple of pictures with my phone, so I can later use it to get the GPS position and correct the timestamps.
And yeah, I really want camera makers to try and go after my market niche. They think that it's small, but I seriously doubt it. There is a lot of people who like to take better-than-a-phone pictures, but can't care less about exposure timings and ISOs.
> And yeah, I really want camera makers to try and go after my market niche. They think that it's small, but I seriously doubt it. There is a lot of people who like to take better-than-a-phone pictures, but can't care less about exposure timings and ISOs.
That may be the case, but many "compact" cameras, like the Sony Rx100 mentioned in this thread wipe the floor with phone cameras. But they're very niche. If there was a market for it, I doubt manufacturers would come up with a random reason not to tap it. I think there are actually very few people who want better than phone pictures and are ready to spend the money and lug around the resulting camera.
As GP says, I doubt you'll find a model that checks all of your boxes (especially the integrated GPS one). But you can probably go to a camera store and try out a few models. My camera with many dials and buttons ignores all of them when in "full auto" mode. It also ignores "picture settings" or whatever they're called (things like custom tone curve, white balance tweaking, etc.). It even has a physical lock on the mode dial, so this should prevent you from unwillingly bumping the mode dial and ending up in some weird under/over-exposed situation because you've also unwittingly bumped 9 times a separate dial. Sure, the camera may have a zillion options for you to configure, but if it ignores them in full-auto mode, it's basically what you're asking for.
My specific camera is an 8+ years old model, so you probably don't want this (olympus pen-f), but there should be newer models with a similar behavior. I'd look at the Panasonic S9, which I wanted to like but dismissed because of the lack of dials. It's a "full-frame" model, so be prepared to carry big and heavy lenses for it, though.
Viewfinder shows all that information in real time already, but after a certain point, you know what your camera gonna do with these settings:
This is how you instinctively think while taking a photo. It's automatic. I don't know what my metering says me for most of the time, because I already know from experience. Metering is always there though. If it says something contrary to you, it's worth paying attention (again a split second).If I can take this [0] with a single frame, why should I bother about multiple frames? Or, if I can take this [1] with a simple 7-shot bracket (which is overkill, 3 will already do, but why not) and simple compositing, why should I bother? Lastly, if I can take this [2] again with a single shot, with a bog standard lens and with a good tripod, why should I bother with tracked shots, etc. (You can always take better astros, but this is a great shot for a single frame and some post processing).
In photography, sensor size is still the king. A mirrorless camera is much crisper than a phone camera, the comparison is still moot. Esp. when you compare full frame sensors to phone camera sensors, even the best ones (like Sony's 48/12 Quad-Bayer systems) fall way short of even an APS-C sensor. It's physics. A RAW image from a big sensor is 90% there. When taking a photo with a phone, you're adding much much more to make it look good.
The joy of photography comes from capturing that fleeting moment and framing it to create something worth looking and remembering that moment. Not synthesizing artificial looking colors with extreme post processing which bends the truth in that moment.
[0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/33984196648/
[1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/47965142511/
[2]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/46092337964/
> Hmm... It's a bit too bright and this thing gonna overexpose a bit so, let's compensate it with -0.7EV...
Why should _I_ do that instead of the camera?
> If I can take this [0] with a single frame, why should I bother about multiple frames?
You shouldn't. The camera should. It already knows the illumination level, and it can take multiple measurements from its CCD, until the total amount of transferred charge per pixel is enough to build a good picture. And while at it, just take a couple more pictures with intentionally over-exposed sensor to automatically offer the HDR version.
You know, the thing that phone cameras have been doing for a decade or so.
> In photography, sensor size is still the king.
Yes, and that's why I want a mirrorless camera with changeable lenses. There's only so much software can do with a phone's optical system.
However, the same software can do so much more when coupled with a big sensor and a good optical system.
> Why should _I_ do that instead of the camera?
First, every machine has its limits, second every photographer has a style.
> You shouldn't. The camera should.
No. The camera should do exactly as I say. It's an instrument, which shall allow footguns. Because one person's footgun is other person's style. Camera should be a blunt instrument, and should completely get out of the photographer's way, shall become transparent.
It's not the camera's interpretation of the scene. It's the photographer's interpretation through the camera.
> ...offer the HDR version.
If you feel lazy, many mirrorless cameras do that, but the results are may not fit your taste. Sony A7III's Auto-HDR is nice, but it's not exactly what I want, so I merge mine manually.
> You know, the thing that phone cameras have been doing for a decade or so.
I have quite a few cameras: A Canonette 28, a Pentax MZ50, a Nikon D70s and a Sony A7-III. I also used Canon AE-1, etc. All of these cameras have metering, and all of them are excellent for their era. They are not infallible or perfect.
For example, D70s freaks out in CFL and LED environments, because these indoor lighting was non-existent when it was designed. So a custom WB is a must in this case. A7-III sometimes struggles in colored LED (sodium yellow-ish) environments, so you again set custom WB. That machine was the most accurate camera in terms of color when it came out.
As I said, every machine has its limits.
> However, the same software can do so much more when coupled with a big sensor and a good optical system.
The thing is, photographer's don't want the software. They want what they exactly see recorded in a file, and that's more of a dynamic range thing more than a color thing, and it's directly related to sensor hardware (regardless of its size), not software.
From my understanding, you want a mirrorless (or full frame) point and shoot, and that's OK. What I want is total control over the camera hardware, regardless of its form factor.
> First, every machine has its limits, second every photographer has a style.
This is such a bullshit statement...
> No. The camera should do exactly as I say.
Well, time to throw your camera away, I guess. Unless you have a very old DSLR camera, of course.
> It's not the camera's interpretation of the scene. It's the photographer's interpretation through the camera.
The thing is, the camera can take multiple exposures at no cost, and then you can just discard the ones that you don't need. So you basically want to artificially limit the software and hardware to simulate the old-timey workflows.
> For example, D70s freaks out in CFL and LED environments, because these indoor lighting was non-existent when it was designed.
See: smartphones.
> The thing is, photographer's don't want the software.
This photographer wants it. And the market has clearly spoken in agreement with me.
> From my understanding, you want a mirrorless (or full frame) point and shoot, and that's OK.
Pretty much.
> This is such a bullshit statement...
The only thing I can say is, what we think about photography is very different.
> Well, time to throw your camera away, I guess...
I have film SLRs, a DSLR and a mirrorless. None of them are trash. They still work the way they should.
> See: smartphones.
If you think smartphones are impeccable in white balance, I'd tell you otherwise, because I have seen them fail the same way. It's physics. Even an iron skillet can take good photos in ample light. The difference starts to show itself when light goes down (starting sunsets and going from there + indoors at night). I take (sometimes) grainy photos with my camera, and smartphones just emit line noise from their sensors.
> The thing is, the camera can take multiple exposures at no cost, and then you can just discard the ones that you don't need.
Who says I don't shoot consecutive photos when required? A7III can track an object and keep focus on it at 30FPS, and shoot at 10FPS. Higher end cameras like A9 can go up to 120 AF corrections per second.
However, if you don't know what you're doing, spray and pray is no magic bullet. Also, taking shots is not free. If you can't press the shutter in the correct moment, that action and frame is gone forever. So, your burst shoot is for nothing.
Generally, when you're doing something like Tango nights, a 3-4 frame burst gets what you want. If you're tracking a dog, it's generally ~10 frames. Street is again ~3-4 shots (traffic, walking people, etc.), but I challenge myself to a single shot if I feel good, because why not.
There's no "old time" workflows. There are workflows for different scenarios. Sometimes I shoot and share from camera directly. Sometimes I process on my phone. Sometimes I let the photo sit and process post-trip. Sometimes it's one shot, sometimes it's burst. I have no frames. I just do what feels right at that moment.
These cameras have dedicated DSPs to handle these tasks. They are not bound to their processors, so a camera doesn't lose tracking because it also has to do AF corrections at the same time. Phase detecting AF cameras can scan whole AF surface (not all image pixels are AF pixels) without bogging down even while shooting 4K/8K videos at their max frame rates, because they're designed to do that.
> This photographer wants it. And the market has clearly spoken in agreement with me.
Smartphones are in your service. If you want heavy duty post processing for RAWs on the go, any iPhone later than X can post-process 24-32MP RAWs on board. I know, because I do.
However, the image quality of modern smartphones are not there by a great margin. Esp. in the Dynamic Range and Noise department. My A7-III can shoot in pitch black and create noiseless images. Google Pixel 9 Pro? Can't [0]. Even "portrait mode" creates washed out colors in bright daylight. Compare that to Fuji's XT-50, a mid range APS-C camera [1]. The difference is night and day.
> Pretty much.
I think you can seriously consider XT-50. It's not a full-frame machine, but it's a great APS-C camera with great ergonomics, which can handle 99% of your needs, without even needing post processing.
BTW, you say that "the viewfinders are electronic, anyway". They are calibrated OLED screens which shows the resulting image (after cameras processing) in real time. They are not less capable just because camera viewfinders don't draw yellow ractangles around faces, they track them just fine, incl their eyes. Sony not only focuses to faces. It focuses to eyes, even when they're behind sunglasses (you can tell A7III to show real time tracking markers).
I guess you never used a mirrorless, or any enthusiast camera for any matter. The possibilities they open beyond a single shutter button is immense.
This photo [2] is taken 15 years ago, and post processed in Darktable IIRC. It's taken as a JPEG, and processed from there. This is what good hardware and software can do.
If you don't have the data in the image to begin with, you can't go there even with the best software, sans you hallucinate and make details up, which is more generative AI and less photography.
[0]: https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/7614427312/google-...
[1]: https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/1737607092/fujifil...
[2]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/41901384135/
> They are calibrated OLED screens which shows the resulting image
No they don't. For example, in low-light conditions the sensor doesn't get enough light to faithfully show the long-exposure result.
And my phone also has a calibrated OLED screen, so it's not like it's something exotic.
> I guess you never used a mirrorless, or any enthusiast camera for any matter. The possibilities they open beyond a single shutter button is immense.
I have worked professionally with optical systems and lasers, and for a time I had astrophotography as my hobby. I did plate stacking, and all other kinds of post-processing.
> No they don't.
Sorry, yes they use a long shutter, and you get a blurry photo with the noise combined. It's a double whammy.
> And my phone also has a calibrated OLED screen, so it's not like it's something exotic.
Yes, but is the whole pipeline calibrated to each other? IOW, does what you see equals what you save? It's not always true on a smartphone, but it's "What you see is what you get" on a mirrorless.
> I have worked professionally with optical systems and lasers, and for a time I had astrophotography as my hobby.
Nice, but you might have done the same astrophotography with a CCD module designed for astro or with a wet plate, and both are very different from using a mirrorless camera, esp with one of the latest generation of sensors, which you can just point and shoot and get a more than decent photo of the sky above you. So, my point still stands.
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors, and get my camera and leave for some greener pastures before the rains start.
Have a nice day.
At this point this guy must be trolling. Or needs to be urgently administered a SIGMA dp2 Quattro. Possibly both. The latter is definitely the case.
Or a Zeiss-ZX1. I'd prefer a Quattro, or a Leica though.
> You're looking at the screen to track the target anyway.
What? No. You present the camera to where it shall be, pin it where the image aligns with the framing you had in mind, and press the shutter. Almost the exact the same as guns minus violence(unless you consider artistic expression a form of violence). This applies to phones too.
> And with the computational photography, you can just take multiple pictures and synthesize various "exposure times" later.
The technology isn't there. Yes, it's 2024, there has to be half a dozen competing models of multispectral LIDAR slaved mirrorless cameras with Gaussian splats features, I agree, but it's easier and cheaper to just load couple AA batteries to a regular clip-on flash and physically stop down the aperture for portraits, or just be where you want to be with a flask of hot coffee for scenery photos.
very early on with my garmin watch, I disabled the touchscreen at all times.
Indeed, buttons and dials can be learnt to operate blindly so that you can focus on what really matters: scene and composition. There is a reason why Fujifilm have become the darlings of the semi-pro scene over the last decade. Look at anything in the X-T series and every single parameter that you need to change in a second or lose the shot has a button or dial for it; without them being as bulky as full-fledged SLRs.
Phones with touch screens are great for shots where you have a high degree of control over the subject (yourself, food, etc.) and your physical relationship to it. But one must realise that there is a great deal of photography where this will not be the case.
> You really, really do. This may sound contradictory at first, but cameras are operated blind. Even when you’re looking at the camera, you’re not seeing the camera, you’re seeing the subject.
I completely agree.
Touchscreen interface and touch button are terrible UI in a car for the very same reason: you're looking at the subject/the road, not at your camera/your dashboard.
> terrible UI in a car
I hate that tesla is removing stalks from all cars.
Just to add to this, I don't think we even need a physical button to trigger a photo. There should just be one big touchpad and screen like the tesla car. Speaking of, why does the tesla car have a steering wheel and gas pedal at all? these would be better served with the humble touchscreen. programmatic interfaces and such, a software update can completely revamp your gas peda.. i mean gasscreen
This way, with limited input, as I fumble with my camera my hamfists won't randomly press buttons, just as I fumble with my car hamfoot won't randomly press pedals. It's like all those little buttons and bobs were put there just to annoy me, it's awful.
Oh, and all these things needs to be "smart" everything "smart". Internet of things, wi-fi, bluetooth, redtooth, cloud connectivity. For the camera, the car, the dishwasher, the spoon, all of it. The internet of spoons. Touchscreen spoons.
Weight is also due to the cameras being built like tanks - they need to be absolutely dependable in any weather and survive drops bangs and falls. Most pro bodies are made with a rigid metal frame and are waterproofed with seals. They also have to hold lenses on the front bigger and heavier than 6lbs in a lot of cases.
I agree with both sides. if you want to experience a manual camera lacking controls visit the Nikon 1 series which has mostly a horrible user interface. The flip side is something like the Z9 which has touch, buttons and knobs everywhere.
The only questionable thing is 5G since cameras usually are built for 5 to 10 year working lives and live on for many more past that. Tethering to a phone seems like a fair compromise that also gives great battery life.
IMO the way black magic does it with their cinema cameras is a great middle ground. Big bright touchscreen that can do all + some physical buttons and dials for often used things.
In their early series I had one of those touchsrcreens die on set, but those reliability issues seem to have gone since.
Do you use glide typing on your Android?
There have been a few different attempts that look like this. Samsung Nx, Samsung Galaxy Camera, Sony has tried phone add on accessories. Basically they all sort of flop in the market.
People that don’t want to think about their photos use a smartphone. People that want to think about their photos still want a camera that they can control. I use a mirrorless Nikon camera and to take a single picture I normally want physical controls that can handle exposure, focus, zoom level and shutter release independently, but simultaneously without having to remove my attention from the image. The ability to do all that with physical, not menu controls, is a tremendous asset for most people that want to spend the money on a camera. If you slapped the latest technology inside a camera that didn’t have all the physical controls, photographers wouldn’t want anything to do with it.
I wouldn’t say that camera design is stuck in the 80s, either. The form factor is necessarily constrained by needing a tubular lens projecting in front of a flat imaging plane. The photographer is going to want to view the image from the opposite side as the lens. There’s only so much you can change the form factor with those constraints. Camera companies do have a few retro models, but even stodgy old Leica is making modern designs these days.
If you take tens of thousands of photos per year, you sort of realize that all cameras have more or less the same interface and form factor as they have for a while because it is what works best.
I agree. Maybe the breakdown is between:
1) taking a picture
2) doing something with the picture
People coming to photography from smartphones want the priorities reversed.
But the deeper you get into it, the more you want #1 and the more control you want over #1. The worst is #2 getting in the way of the shot.
And actually, lots of people into photography think it is about the camera, but it is really about the lenses.
You buy lenses, then buy/upgrade bodies around them.
I want my camera to just take a photo at whatever the sensor can do, and give me that file.
Too many photo-taking devices are now like "lemme just AI that for you, and give it to you at a quarter of the resolution of the sensor." I don't think Samsung phones even let third-party apps access the full sensor any longer, all are crippled, IIRC.
> There have been a few different attempts that look like this. Samsung Nx, Samsung Galaxy Camera, Sony has tried phone add on accessories. Basically they all sort of flop in the market.
There was exactly ONE attempt. One. And it was pretty successful, at that: Samsung NX1. I had it, it was pretty good, but with a first-gen teething issues.
Phone add-on accessories don't work because they're clumsy and connectivity just sucks. And ultra-professional $6k cameras from Zeiss miss the mark entirely, you need to target a prosumer market (i.e. me).
> I wouldn’t say that camera design is stuck in the 80s, either. The form factor is necessarily constrained by needing a tubular lens projecting in front of a flat imaging plane.
But why do you need a large protrusion on the right? You don't have a film canister anymore. I already wrote about a myriad of physical controls. Just make it large enough to hold the camera.
There was one interchangeable lens attempt, and multiple non interchangeable ones. As mentioned, the Samsung galaxy camera, as well as Polaroid branded android cameras.
You need the large protrusion on the right because you have to hold the thing. It’s a handle. It needs to be somewhere, most people are right eye, right hand dominant. It makes a lot of sense to have it that way. The primary hand holds the camera, the other hand holds and supports the lens.
In the olden days, the film canister was physically stored on the left in almost all cameras (and certainly in all SLRs), so the protrusion on the right isn’t really a remnant of film designs.
Older film cameras actually have smaller less ergonomic protrusions on the right (look at a Nikon F2 vs. the modern Z8). The big ergonomic protrusion on the right has been an evolution of newer modern technology and expectations.
You can get a camera with gps, wifi, Bluetooth etc. do they have you screens that don’t have multitouch? It’s pretty hard not to get all that TBH. I can do crops and color treatments on my Nikon if I don’t want to just transfer directly to my phone and do the editing there. Yeah, the camera doesn’t automatically put it all in my iPhoto, but that is literally just a few taps.
There are MILC cameras that have minimal physical controls and touchscreens so I’m not really sure what you’re looking for? The sigma FP is pretty minimal, and you just strap on what you need.
> You can get a camera with gps, wifi, Bluetooth etc.
No, I can not. There are no cameras cheaper than around $7k with GPS. I checked.
You must not have checked very thoroughly, because these cameras absolutely exist, they're just not popular because of the limited utility of GPS in a camera compared to the battery drain and time it can take to resync an outdated almanac if your camera's been turned off for a few days.
I'll note that that's a limitation not of how powerful cameras are or aren't, but one of most GNSS systems architecturally; the almanac in these situations communicates to client devices information about any updates the satellite constellation, broadly speaking, and because this is a low-bitrate system in GEO, there isn't much client devices can do to speed this up.
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cameras_which_provide_...
Of the top 10 most recent entries on that list, only one (the Hasselblad) weighs in at over USD$7k, though others like the D6, Z9, and EOS-1D are high-end cameras that clock in around $5-6k new on B&H.
Olympus's offerings all fall under about $2500 with most of those options available under $1000.
Sony DSC-HX9V had GPS built-in.
Others are connecting their cameras to their phones over Bluetooth which gets all the images tagged with GPS location too. Eg. a sub-$1000 Sony ZV-E10 with an iPhone according to a user on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SonyAlpha/comments/17sco5v/comment/...
> Sony DSC-HX9V had GPS built-in.
Not a full-frame changeable lens camera.
> Others are connecting their cameras to their phones over Bluetooth which gets all the images tagged with GPS location too
It requires Sony's crapp running on your phone when taking a picture. Right now, it has 1.8 stars in the Play Store, which should tell you how well it works.
> There are no cameras cheaper than around $7k with GPS
false. E-M1X, K-I, K-1II, 6DII, 5DIV, SLT-A55V, SLT-A65V, SLT-A77V all has/had it well under $7k. There are also few compact models intended for construction and/or field research purposes that has Wi-Fi && GPS.
> SLT-A55V, SLT-A65V, SLT-A77V
2010-2011
> 5DIV
2016, etc.
I tried this site: https://cameradecision.com/features/Best-Mirrorless-cameras-... - and it's a bit cheaper than $7k for new cameras, only around $5k.
Are you aware of any recent-ish cameras with reasonable price and GPS?
You can get a Ricoh G900 II, which was released earlier this year, for sub-$800.
It's also fully automatic and doesn't require you to do much with knobs and dials. And it's waterproof!
I suspect you'll complain about it though.
No changeable lenses and not a full-frame sensor, does not support RAW.
I'm seriously interested in buying a reasonably-priced modern mirrorless camera with GPS. I'm not joking, I've been looking for a while to replace my old Sony Alpha.
I recommend Olympus for that. They're reasonably priced, generally more technologically progressive than bigger brands like Nikon, Canon, or Sony, have a small form factor owing to their Micro Four Thirds sensor, have GPS, and still have a decent set of modern and legacy lenses (which are also commensurately lighter and smaller than similar lenses on APS-C or full-frame systems).
I tried to check and it looks like the only model that fits is Olympus E-M1X ($2k on clearance sales). And it's 6 years old by now :(
Anything newer is $5k+. Or does not have replaceable lenses.
Is the 6 years old point relevant to you?
Kinda? I want to replace my 7-year old Sony Alpha with something out of this decade.
Well over a decade ago, compact cameras like the Lumix DMC-ZS7 for a few hundred $ added GPS.
That large protrusion on the right makes it easy to hold the camera. It's a convenient place to put a battery and a bunch of controls, too.
As a matter of fact, there are accessories for smartphones providing that protrusion and a physical trigger.
> And ultra-professional $6k cameras from Zeiss miss the mark entirely, you need to target a prosumer market (i.e. me).
Zeiss is generally not a camera maker, at least not these days; the ZX1 is more of a halo product than anything. They're much better-known for their optics, which are often niche, but usually worth the money if it's your niche.
In any case, a better example of a professional camera would be something like Nikon's Z8 and Z9, Sony's A7/9/1 models, or Canon's newer EOSes. They're also a good amount cheaper than USD$6k, in most cases.
Because that's where your right hand goes. Most people are right-handed, and having a comfortable grip is nice. Your left hand will usually go under the lens (or at the base of the lens for short or light lenses).I would add that Zeiss (ZX1) and Leica (T typ 701, TL2) tried this modern touch-first approach at a premium and both products weren't exactly hits. The Zeiss was even running Android with Lightroom preinstalled.
I mean... It's a camera that was retailing for $6k without lenses. It's already a niche market, and a pretty conservative one.
Ehhh, I feel like I have to mention that optics like a Schmidt–Väisälä camera exist, and notably have their focal plane right in the middle of the tube.
They readily go as fast as e.g. 400mm f/2.0 with 2 tame (iirc literally just spherical) optical surfaces (mirror and near-sensor plano-convex lens) and 1 more elaborate wavy surface (back side of front glass), naturally achromatic for a 20~30 MP large image circle.
Modern technology (ability to manufacture of array waveguides that act like a bundle of fiber optics, to de-flatten the sensor's focal plane) also allows making better use of objective designs that perform well in every way but field flatness.
I've been using a professional camera (Sony A7C) for a bit over two years now, and my wishlist looks very different than yours.
- Modern computational photography: Imagine having access to a high-end sensor combined modern computational photography tooling. Smartphones do incredible things with computational photography, including HDR, low light stacking, noise reduction, upscaling, and picking out smiling faces from multiple photos. Most of these things can be done in post on a professional camera with tools like Photoshop, but often they are inferior, using a single image to worse affect, requiring a lot of manual work, or just having less mature tooling. I'd love to have access to the raw data and computational pipelines to selectively apply different processing and tweak computational settings in post.
- Better UI: Sony notoriously has a terrible UI in their camera menu systems. Working with it feels like something I would've used on a flip-phone from 20 years ago, with things buried multiple levels down in obscure menus and vague, sometimes poorly translated descriptions. The hardware is great, but the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users.
Exactly, the modern mirrorless camera should be providing options to use the latest technology as well as the full manual control for when you need it. Imagine what you could do with the stacking capabilities of modern smartphones with a stacked image sensor like on the Sony A9 series that can essentially take full resolution photos at video speed.
Relying solely on image processing isn't be a feasible product. Artists want full control to create the image that they visualized, not just what some ML algorithm determined was best, but at the same time there are many situations where you can gain improved image quality that these features can accomplish. Additionally, cameras have to support unedited images as a large customer base is journalism that requires minimal to no editing be done on images.
The UI thing is massive. I'm surprised nobody has created a UI more similar to the Hasselblad one that looks good and shows your settings very clearly. It would be great if the interface you interacted with was clear and looked like a modern UI, but still had the plethora of options available under the hood in an organized and quick to access manner. You don't often need to change many options, but when you do they need to be easy to find.
Most computational photography inherently breaks giving the photographer direct manual control over how a picture is taken (shutter speed, aperture, ISO).
For example, HDR or low light staking means taking multiple photos. This requires a fast shutter speed to minimise change in the scene or subject. However, photographers sometimes intentionally want a slower shutter speed for motion blur, or to shoot at lower ISO for less noise and more resolution.
Actions like noise reduction, upscaling, etc are post-processing actions. They are best done on a large, high-resolution, color-calibrated screen; instead of a portable device with a small battery where you want to maximise the number of shots you can take before swapping or recharging batteries.
Bear in mind that modern cameras easily shoot in 40, 60+ MP. To truly perform noise reduction, or upscaling on those images require a lot more processing power, even with fixed-function hardware. Your "48MP" quad-bayer smartphone is generally processing a "pixel-binned" 12MP image straight out of the sensor, that might be resampled to 24MP (iOS) after post-processing; but was never anything more than 12MP. The hardware was never more than 12MP, except they sub-divided each bayer pixel into 4 quad (or 12 for some Samsung chips) to claim 4x/12x the spec sheet w/o real world benefits.
Your smartphone's SoC, is usually manufactured on the latest, bleeding edge 3nm or 4nm processes. They are also the most expensive; made practical because tens of millions of each chip are shipped each year. There are ~1m dedicated cameras shipped each year; from many different manufactures using different chips; usually built on N16, N12, or N7 for the bleeding edge ones.
No, they cannot just use a smartphone SoC. Smartphone image signal processors simply can't process 61MP at 20FPS or 30FPS or whatever the burst rate sports photographers demand.
Your smartphone uses an electronic shutter. Your proper camera probably has a mechanical shutter, which is generally superior but also requires more force to move.
The battery in your smartphone is probably ~2x bigger than a professional mirrorless or DSLR. Pro photographers buy cameras, in a significant part based on how many shots they can take.
> the GUI feels like something built by engineers rather than for end-users.
Think of the GUI as being built for professional photographers who's been using an UI for the past 20 years of their livelihood. You would probably be really upset if your OS decided to change established keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+C or Ctrl+V. You probably wouldn't choose that OS, and if professional photographers won't buy a camera because the UI is "weird to them", you've wasted your R&D costs because the dedicated camera market for the past decade is essentially only professionals; with some amateurs and hobbyists.
Everything you say is pretty much on target, except the UI. I know my Sony camera, and every time I need to do a change in a setting, it's plainly horrible. Confusing naming, no feedback, sometimes you're thrown back to the main UI without explanation... and the bugs. For the longuest time the auto off was not working properly, which, on an hybrid camera leads to a very short battery life.
From what I've seen, it's not better on Canon and Nikon hardware.
They spent a lot of time refining the manual control, so it's very good and intuitive but then fails so bad at the electronic UI...
Sony is the manufacturer who had me search for the battery release camrra for a solid minute - it was on the opposite side of the camera.
If I didn't have to use those cameras they would be engineering marbels, but their professional video segment really could use a new generation of designers.
I’ve been doing a lot of extreme low temp (-70C ambient) photography with a Sigma FP. It’s basically a full-frame box hybrid movie camera. The addon EVF works well long after the LCD freezes. I really don’t want multi touch. I do want at least two physical dials with chunky detents. I don’t want auto-everything. USB charging is nice but I use a cabled external battery most of the time. The battery will die in minutes outside and for whatever reason Sigma decided not to add USB power pass through in the EVF. A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts.
The power solution I came up with is a modified battery charger with a removable base (Wasabi Power). I added teflon coated cables and a connector to go to the (also butchered) dummy battery. Real battery gets stuffed into a pocket or up a sleeve. The camera doesn’t care how cold it gets, from experimenting.
It’s also small and the display is most of the back. If you make the display bigger, the camera gets bigger. At some point you aren’t serving pro photgraphers or people who would just use an iPad. Really you want a good OLED display or a high-res viewfinder. The FP has a weird loupe accessory back.
An on device editor? I don’t understand the need, if you can sync to a phone or computer. The same goes for wifi - a lot of new cameras have 2.4Ghz in them (my OM-D EM5ii from almost a decade ago can sync to an app).
This project looks super cool though.
> A week outside in the cold on AC power? No problem because there are no moving parts.
Yeah, cameras also need to be vacuum-proof with a passive heat spreader (1 square meter should be enough), support depths up to 3 kilometers (what if you want to visit Titanic?), and be rad-hardened (everybody loves taking photos inside the Fukushima reactor). These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.
You can ignore the Antarctica side of things, but the features that are useful here are useful everywhere.
More cameras are moving to OLED rear displays (sunlight visible), full-frame mirrorless with electronic shutter (mechanical reliability), USB-C charging (took ages for this to become widespread), out-of-the-box UVC support for webcam mode, etc. These sorts of features have led to cameras that are not skeuomorphic representations of cameras from the 80s. They don't need a hump for a penta-prism and they can drop bulky mirror and shutter assemblies. I can fit my fp and the kit lens into a coat pocket.
> These are really must-have features that 99% of the population needs during their vacations.
> Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups.
I think having WiFi+GPS alone is sufficient for this (irritatingly few pro cameras have GPS receivers). Then you can do the editing on a device which is actually suitable for it, and you reduce the risk of obsolescence in the camera. TV manufacturers have shown they're unwilling to support changing APIs long-term.
The interim solution is probably a smartphone with an add-on lens system like Moment's, and better RAW support.
For the sake of every professional (and semi-professional such as myself) photographer out there, I wish, to use your terminology, that the manufacturer's heads remain firmly up their asses. The only thing touching the LCD on my camera is my nose while I look through the viewfinder and when I am looking at the screen it's because I'm holding the camera in a strange position that doesn't allow me to use a touchscreen either.
Give me an open API so I can offload all the smarts to my infinitely more capable phone that already has a SIM card with a huge data plan and keep the camera a camera.
I'm not sure I want any of that in my camera. Maybe fast wifi for photo sync at home but still faster to plug in the cable/card.
You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down.
> I'm not sure I want any of that in my camera. Maybe fast wifi for photo sync at home but still faster to plug in the cable/card.
Well, that's a reason why camera makers are struggling. You don't want these features, but a lot of people do. So they vote with their smartphones instead: https://petapixel.com/2024/08/22/the-rise-and-crash-of-the-c...
> You know what I want and have? A sub half second power on time. Probably sub one second from turning on to first photo. I don't want any "smart" crap slowing that down.
You can do that while still retaining smart features. For example, use a small OS to control the camera while the full OS boots up. Or use suspend-to-disk to speed up loading, with suspend-to-RAM for instant startup.
This is a solvable problem.
> Well, that's a reason why camera makers are struggling. You don't want these features, but a lot of people do. So they vote with their smartphones instead.
You’re not capturing any of the traditional photography market by throwing all of _their_ priorities straight out the window.
So the market for the device under discussion here would be the people who want to spend a substantial amount of money on a dedicated device that is essentially equivalent to their cell phone except bulkier and without the ability to send and receive texts and phone calls.
Camera makers are struggling because a substantial portion of the market doesn’t really care about photography, they care about capturing memories. You’re proposing to make a device that’s mediocre at all the things traditionally important in photography and mediocre at capturing memories (a separate dedicated device will never be as close at hand as the phone in your pocket that you take everywhere).
I really don’t see a big market for this.
> You’re not capturing any of the traditional photography market by throwing all of _their_ priorities straight out the window.
You mean, the market that is crumbling fast because most people are not professional photographers?
> Camera makers are struggling because a substantial portion of the market doesn’t really care about photography, they care about capturing memories.
Exactly. And this market has a really unfulfilled niche: cameras with a decent optical system and changeable lenses. I have a Sony Alpha camera and it's plenty enough for me in image quality, but I now leave it home most of the time because I just don't want to fiddle with it.
>You mean, the market that is crumbling fast because most people are not professional photographers?
That's the whole point though. The market is crumbling because it no longer exists. Professional photographer are few and far between and they are the only ones that need the features provided by a professional camera.
Compare pictures take on an iPhone to those take on a top of the line F4 from thirty years ago, the iPhone pictures are _much_ better.
The only reason to have a professional camera is to be in full control of all settings, which would make your proposed DSLR without those controls purely a vanity device/big heavy smartphone minus the phone for people who want to show off how much money they have.
While they's always a market for people to show off their wealth, it won't be a useful camera.
That's an incredible over-generalization. My wife and I use professional photographers to capture lots of moments with my family. I've never seen so many professional photographers available to hire than now. I probably know of at least 15-20 off the top of my head that I have used in the past or know of personally.
They are definitely willing to purchase dedicated high-end equipment. iPhone cameras are absolutely not on par or better than a professional dedicated camera. They are actually known to be the worst camera in terms of clarity and accuracy than any other smart phone camera. Just check out any camera review comparing it to other smartphone cameras. There are a lot of AI enhancement models that alter the image in ways that are unrealistic and strange.
I personally purchased a nice Canon mirrorless because I want more control over my picture. I want to be able to set the mood of an image and capture the features I want to be visible on my own. It's also nice to have a separate camera that doesn't bother me with unimportant notifications and baggage that a connected device offers.
As for no business, I don't think that having a business that caters to a smaller demographic means that there is no money in it. There are few reasons why companies like Nikon, Canon, and Sony don't diversify into other markets with other products... which they absolutely do.
> The only reason to have a professional camera is to be in full control of all settings
I don't _want_ a "professional" camera. I'm not getting paid for pictures (and btw, the "professional photographer" market is saturated now).
I want a camera with good changeable lenses that can provide reasonable optical zoom, so I can take a picture of that curious bird on a tree branch. Or to take a macro picture of a really nice flower. And maybe a beautiful picture of the moon hanging just near that waterfall.
Ok, then you can get a good DSLR/mirrorless camera with exchangeable lenses, set it to auto and ignore all the buttons?
Anyway we're beating a dead horse, you're longing for something I don't fully understand, I hope some company steps in to fill your niche!
> Exactly. And this market has a really unfulfilled niche: cameras with a decent optical system and changeable lenses. I have a Sony Alpha camera and it's plenty enough for me in image quality, but I now leave it home most of the time because I just don't want to fiddle with it.
When I leave my MILC at home, it's because the optics are large and heavy, not because the body is. When I do take my camera, I usually opt for the Sony Zeiss 35 mm Sonnar T*, because it's so small. From an optical point of view, it's a good lens, but it's not the best 35 mm lens I have.
For capturing memories, the best camera really is the one you have with you at all times. For creating photographs, the bulk of the camera body really doesn't matter that much.
Case in point: My phone can go from "off" (sleep) to taking pictures in less than a second with basically no effort. Why not do the same on a dedicated camera? You'll get better battery from sleep if it has zero wakeups or radios on in sleep, which is fine for this use.
Dedicated cameras that can do this are widely available.
My (cheap, 15 year old) DSLR goes from “off” to capturing a photo in under 300ms. The battery essentially lasts indefinitely if you’re not actively fiddling with it. It will take about a thousand photos per charge, and changing the battery takes about 5 seconds.
> My phone can go from "off" (sleep) to taking pictures in less than a second with basically no effort
My Fujifilm X-E4 does the same? Flip the power switch, click the shutter. It's honestly identical in time to my smartphone - power on for these devices is crazy fast today IME
Right, no, obviously a dedicated device can power up faster than a general purpose computer. My point was that a general purpose computer can come out of sleep fast enough to be used in a camera, while maintaining acceptable tradeoffs in the process.
Ah right apologies, I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah absolutely, though it does require the SoC for the "phone camera" to not be under-powered, which unfortunately for the attempts so far, they usually have been
Digital camera SoCs are actually multi-core ARM with a DSP on bus and tons of RAM, and actually do what GP proposes(boots up and goes to sleep when battery is inserted). Some runs Linux, some really obscure RTOS. Lots of SoCs are OEM'd, but no one talks who supplies who. All those cheap plastic looking body shells are paper thin cast magnesium in black paint, not even aluminum. Some has Peltier based active cooling for years.
The bunches of hackers behind those... they don't like talking to anyone on anything unless you're asking about marketed features on finished products, or you show a badge or a business card they recognize. So the Internet never knows.
That I'm actually aware of; I was talking about the Samsung Galaxy NX and the Yongnou YN455, both of which have kind of underpowered SoCs driving the android side of it, sadly. The YN455 less so, but still.
https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android...
A few have tried, and they all fail. Most people are just going to use their phone, and the ones that won't _want_ the old-timey looks and hardware dials.
https://newatlas.com/photography/switchlens-m43-smartphone-c...
This one I think has promise though
I don't think Switchlens is going to work. It needs to be a separate integrated device. Unless they glue a phone permanently to it.
I disagree; I think your overall point is correct, that people want high quality photos beyond what phone sensors and lenses can achieve, and they want the power of their phones software.
Thing is though, most camera makers are kind of crap at software in general, and their UX teams are nonexistent. So being able to delegate to your phone makes a fair bit of sense to the people who'd like that, even if you're not one of them.
It makes so much sense that there's even a second team taking a crack at it that I wasn't aware of: https://www.alice.camera/
That said, this is still a niche within a niche: I don't think either will be some mass market product. But being able to take my phone and a Alice or a SwitchLens to a concert in both pockets is pretty neat.
These will more replace the things like the Fujifilm X70, or a lot of what people use the X100(roman numeral) for, while getting the workflow benefits you're rightfully after.
I don't trust a camera manufacturer to keep their Android deployment up to date, or even to really fix that many bugs in it, and a whole Android OS is a lot more complex for them to manage than SwitchLens/Alice's apps and internal RTOS + comms layers.
Other alternative would be for one of the big players in the mirrorless space to open up their operating systems, but Fujifilm's X series communication app is bad that I simply don't see it as feasible: they really are terrible at software.
> It makes so much sense that there's even a second team taking a crack at it that I wasn't aware of: https://www.alice.camera/
It's a good idea, but I just don't think it's going to work. The mechanical connection between the phone and camera is awkward, and connectivity through Bluetooth/WiFi can not be seamless enough. Especially in challenging radio environments (like a concert).
> I don't trust a camera manufacturer to keep their Android deployment up to date, or even to really fix that many bugs in it, and a whole Android OS is a lot more complex for them to manage than SwitchLens/Alice's apps and internal RTOS + comms layers.
Android can allow third-party software, much easier than hacking into the proprietary OS.
Android allows, sure, but these systems have a chicken-and-egg problem where their sensors aren't exposed in a way that third party apps actually access to the ability they can. The YN455 has this problem today. Plus, it doesn't change the fact that you want that phone-camera to get android updates for security purposes, and now you're back to the fact that most camera makers are pretty crap at user facing operating systems. I think it's an impedance mismatch, really
Samsung did make a camera with most of those features (it was before 5G, so 3G I think). I had it, it sucked a lot.
Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment. Whenever I tried using that camera I lost so many shots due to the delay of fiddling with menus or the startup time.
> Turns out physical buttons for most things is very important if you want to be able to rapidly change settings as required for capturing a moment.
Yeah, this really feels like the “cars should have physical controls not giant tablets” argument argued from the opposite stance.
If your focus is elsewhere (driving, trying to capture a photo) the last thing you want is a giant touchscreen that’s modal and has no tactile feedback. The only way you can operate it is to take your attention away from what you’re actually trying to do to fiddle with the touchscreen.
Personally, I prefer being able to turn on my defroster or blinker from muscle memory and without taking my focus off the road just as I prefer being able to adjust the aperture or ISO from muscle memory without taking my focus off the scene I’m trying to capture.
Why not both? Touchscreen to select focus position, view images. A touchscreen doesn't mean you have to remove buttons.
That does exist in most modern interchangeable lens cameras. You can adjust almost all settings through the touchscreen that are available. Hell, on a lot of cameras you can control most settings remotely via Wifi using your smarthpone. The only function I can think of that isn't available is zoom, since photography lenses almost never include a zoom motor.
The GP is asking for touchscreen ONLY, with no buttons for some reason.
The only thing that I wish that camera-makers would finally agree on is a common mount. I'd love to try out camera bodies from different manufacturers, but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well. No, thanks.
I agree on built-in GPS (currently need to pair with a smartphone - which I'd rather love to leave at home), but everything else seems like a non-feature to me. I have zero interest for that on my Camera, because the experience would just be insanely annoying. Touchscreens are awful for camera operation - the feature is turned off permanently on my camera. Camera needs to be operatable blind, touchscreens are awful for this. Please give me more buttons and dials.
> but that almost always means switching your entire lens collection as well
Sadly, this is entirely by design. Like other industries, camera manufacturers want to ensure lock-in. At least we can usually keep lenses across body changes within the same brand.
There are some more or less standard mounts from early days of film: LTM, 42mm, even Pentax K has been shared by numerous manufacturers. There is the m4/3 mount for digital which is shared across several manufacturers.
The problem is that the mount is always a design constraint. The LTM mount means your lenses cannot have AF. The M4/3 mount means that your sensor size is maxed out at 1/4 the size of a full frame camera. Using the Pentax K mount means that you can't ever have a piece of glass closer than 45mm to the imaging surface.
The most interesting manuever might be Nikon's new Z mount which has the closest flange distance of any full frame mount as well as the widest diameter. This makes it so that it is compatible with the largest amount of lenses of any mount when using adapters. Bizarrely, I can use old Canon EF mount lenses with new Nikon cameras with more features than I can using old Nikon lenses from the same era!
So in summary:
- Power draining giant screen - Touchscreen and minimal physical controls - Multiple radios, including cellular - Cloud integration - Apps for photo editing - Slim form factor
You want a smartphone with a better lens.
Yep, this is me. I like just capturing memories with my smartphone, and only wish it had a better lens. It's convenient that I can just carry it in my pocket and not have to carry a separate device.
If someone made this smartphone-like camera, I wouldn't buy one. What purpose would it serve? I already have a phone, and if I want to spend more money to get better-quality photos than it can provide, I can just go buy a higher-end phone that's aimed at people like me, with a bigger and better lens. Why would I want to carry a separate camera around and then worry about stuff like syncing photos?
If, however, I got back into doing more serious amateur photography, like I was into 15+ years ago, the last thing I would want is a smartphone-like camera with an annoying touchscreen. I'd want a "prosumer" DSLR, with lots of physical switches. And these already exist.
Yes, exactly. A smartphone with a good optical system.
Half of the point of having a dedicated camera is better ergonomics. I'm finding current smartphones good enough for most uses, but they are simply awkward to use and very slow to control without an external grip.
Then use an external grip? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Which defies the point of a smartphone. Might as well carry a camera, which I occasionally do.
Depends of the context. Might use the smartphone as it is on a day to day basis but decide to mount the grip when visiting a specific place, travelling, taking picture in a specific event.
You need physical buttons. It is about communicating with the machine what you really want and control it. If you want auto just have an option for auto.
A good example is auto focus. Many has a button on the back to activate on an area with focus size and point control by a joystick. And if it is good, fix it so the machine does not decide to autofocus another area, subject, …
This is called a smartphone.
Yes, exactly. But with a better sensor and optics.
Have you actually put money where your mouth is by purchasing one of the 1" sensor phones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_camera_ph...
Obviously, we are seeing movement in that direction, but it's still being balanced with size — you can't fill in the entire large sensor with a "short" lens easily, yet avoid all the problems cameras experience.
It would be great if any of the phones came with an interchangeable lens mount for an existing system, but that alone would add 4-5mm of thickness (30-50% of a modern phone).
It appears that availability in some parts of the world may be difficult for many of those phones: many seem to be sold only to Chinese, Japanese, or Asian markets, and others seems specifically unavailable in the US.
It's also worth noting that, from a camera rather than phone perspective, "1-inch type" sensors, which have no dimension approaching 1", are very small, half the image area of micro 4/3, and less than a seventh of 35mm; they are around 16mm by 13mm.
"1-inch" is "1-inch vacuum tube equivalent". Micro Four Thirds is likewise 4/3 inch equivalent. Both are smaller than the nameplate size because tubes had rims.
Most of those phone are available online through grey imports at around MSRP(...of ~$2.5k). The reality is that there are no real demands to capture in phones with ginormous cameras, cameras without inherent obnoxiousness, and possibly cars without turn signal stalks, too, for that matter.
Oh, certainly: but if people do spend money on phones with "1-inch" sensors, manufacturers will see it as a signal that people are willing to pay for ever larger sensors. How does one fit optics to illuminate the sensor is a different topic though.
And without all the things that make it useful as a regular smartphone. So why bother with it? Just use a real smartphone.
You just described a camera from hell (minus the connectivity part). Muscle memory is very important in photography, half presses, AEL/AFL lock buttons, exposure compensation. There's so many things that have to have physical buttons, you will not be looking at the screen to do these things.
This is exactly the same problem Tesla created with the touch buttons for turn signals, not everyone is a BMW driver, we use turn signals.
I am a photographer with decades of experience, the vast majority of which is studio works.
My wishlist is the exact opposite of your's. I don't need multitouch, couldn't care less for anything wireless, much less automatic uploads and on-device editing. I need physical buttons for everything. The more the better. And I need a manual AF/MF switch badly.
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway.
No thank you. The whole point of a good camera is to have manual controls IF you want them. Nope that you can already use DSLRs and mirrorless cameras as fully automatic point and shoot cameras of you want to use them this way.
Something like this? There is one that was very recently released, but could not find it, but this is the idea: https://petapixel.com/2021/07/10/yongnuo-yn455-a-new-android...
> Also, ditch the old-timey film-camera look. I don't need 15 physical switches, most of which should be automatic anyway.
Yeah, you do. For the reasons others have given (adjusting the exposure compensation on my iPhone is a PITA. On my Olympus I just spin a dial).
But also: if you're "out shooting", this may happen when it's freezing outside. If you've found a pair of warm gloves that allows you to comfortably use an iPhone, I'd love to hear about them. My Olympus' dials are usable with my winter motorcycle gloves. My iPhone's screen is also a pain to use if it's wet. Sure, it won't brick the phone, but dragging things around the screen? Good luck.
> Yeah, you do. For the reasons others have given (adjusting the exposure compensation on my iPhone is a PITA. On my Olympus I just spin a dial).
No, I don't. I haven't touched most of controls on my camera, and I don't have a desire to do that.
> But also: if you're "out shooting", this may happen when it's freezing outside.
Yeah, so every feature must be designed to work under water, at night, at -60C, on Jupiter.
Here's a newsflash: people typically don't take pictures when it's super-cold.
Indeed. It's almost as if there were multiple uses for a given piece of technology.
> Here's a newsflash: people typically don't take pictures when it's super-cold.
Here's a newsflash: most of these people don't care for "real cameras" and are buying phones instead. The no-dial fully-automatic cameras are pretty much extinct because people find phones good enough for their needs.
I don't follow the camera news that closely, but I'm pretty sure at least Olympus and Panasonic have some models with few buttons. I don't know if they have integrated GPS (probably not), but apart from that, they sound like what you want. Those are smaller sensor cameras (but still big enough to be in a totally different league than phones). I think Panasonic recently came out with a "full-frame" compact with close to no dials. Sony has a compact full-frame, but it does have dials and buttons.
Either way, if you're willing to put up with lugging around a big-ass camera and a heavy lens, it's not clear to me what's the issue of there being 2-3 more buttons and dials. Just don't use them. Aside from the on-off button on my camera which is a braindead design, I never unintentionally bump dials or switches and there are a bunch of them on a tiny camera.
Hasselblad x2d meets some of these wants.
This does look excellent indeed, as you'd expect from Hasselblad.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1725356-REG/hasselbla...
What you're describing is basically a modern phone. Just get an iPhone pro, done.
I just need something that can feed RAW data to various ML tasks.
How about buying a smartphone then?! ; )
You are not a photographer are you.
It sounds like what you want is a smartphone.
> Give me a large sunlight-readable touchscreen, with multitouch. Also GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 5G/LTE for connectivity and geotagging. Add automatic uploads to Google Photos, iPhoto, WebDAV, etc. Put in a small editor for on-device photo touchups.
Most newer cameras have _many_ of these, minus integration with Google Photos, iPhoto, or WebDAV, and cellular connectivity since many areas of photography just wouldn't benefit from it enough to justify the extra cost, complexity, and battery life hit.
Many newer cameras also have smartphone control, with varying levels of actual usability, but that's a separate issue.
An editor with any amount of value-add for the kind of person who still buys a standalone camera would be pretty big in storage and would likely be painfully slow; for me, on a 2019 Macbook Pro, Lightroom is consistently a pretty heavy app to run (to say nothing of Photoshop proper). As others have said: a good haptic interface is essential for most shooting styles, and many of the settings do have automatic modes, but a big selling point of standalone cameras is that they allow you to express yourself creatively by exposing these manual controls to you.Wanna take a picture of a waterfall at dawn? Throw your master mode and ISO into auto and you'll probably get a really nice shot of a waterfall. But what if you want to blur the water so it looks like white streaks? There's not an auto setting that can just infer that for you. With a good haptic interface you'll be able to set that up in the dark, or in the cold while wearing gloves, or in the wind or on rough terrain where it might be tricky to keep your hands steady over a touchscreen.
If you're shooting at an airshow, what balance do you want between shutter speed and ISO to balance crispness with the appearance of motion? With a good haptic interface you'll be able to configure that while following a jet through a long lens.
Fortunately, there's a class of devices where these needs and gripes are served well: smartphones. The default camera apps and even some higher-end camera apps loaded onto modern smartphones are immensely powerful at making good shots with minimal effort.Having said all that: smartphones are usually excellent cameras, and arguably _much more than enough_ for the average person, but if you want to break out of using the bog-standard auto settings, interfaces get tricky, annoying, and even in the best case can be difficult to work with. Halide, for example, is great in general, but struggles with short focus (much more than the stock iOS camera app) for some reason; it provides a manual focus slider to work around that, but for nearby scenes with a shallow FOV, you'd usually want a hold-to-keep-in-focus or even an AF-C setting.
Dedicated cameras -- and especially ILCs -- target a different audience with different goals. What you get is, relatively speaking, uncompromising flexibility and an ability to support a wide range of artistic visions, though often with a learning curve tied to it.
So, I'll ask you a followup: what do you want out of a camera that a phone can't get you?
I think this is an incredibly cool project. I think it'd be neat if they did something like MNT do and ran a crowdfunding campaign to try get these some what more mass produced, though I dont get the impression the author is looking to run a business like that and mostly developed it for their own enjoyment.
Regardless though, it does feel like open hardware is getting a lot more attainable than it used to be and that is surely a good thing
Video showing the making of it: https://youtu.be/OkfzjmY9cF8
Hey OP, if you ever plan to turn this into a kit for sale for <$2000-ish I'd be highly interested.
I'm sick and tired of microscopic cameras like the RPi "HQ" camera being called HQ. I come from photography land and a full 35mm-ish sensor is the minimum of what I'd call HQ.
I’ve thought for years that there had been dearth of open source cameras. It’s nice to see them picking up steam, with a few recent posts of them.
The design is pretty modern. But what is with the choice of the Kodak CCD sensor? CCD cameras got a resurgence in Chinese communities with second-hand camera prices increased like tenfold.
Also see Apertus Axiom where they also used the Zynq but used one hell of a CMOS sensor that can do 4K 300FPS.
He explained it in this Video at 13:02 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkfzjmY9cF8&t=13m02s
> Why use CCD instead of CMOS?
> Well let's say I started this project before the recent CCD camera hype so that's not the reason. Part of me just wanted to be special and fullframe CCD is kind of special.
Being a small manufacture means you go to the bottom of the list for the vendors of the sensors. I'm sure the best sensors are pretty much already spoken for, and the lower quality ones are what's available to any one not the likes of Sony, Canon, Nikon, etc. Any other reason is pretty much an excuse.
We could just go back to full sized cameras with 3 CCDs. j/k
CCD sensors render differently than CMOS sensors and, if their strengths are what you are looking for they could still make sense. Compared to CMOS they require more light, but when you are capturing an image properly they do a really good job of rendering colors and details. CCD sensors also introduce less noise as part of their pipeline (though again, the ceiling on how sensitive they can be is much lower than CMOS).
Basically there has always been a community of photographers who like the "CCD look" and it's not surprising to me that someone who's geeky enough to make his own camera went with one.
That sounds like the stuff you read on audiophile websites where they are trying to sell you a special "audio-tuned" ethernet cable for thousands of dollar. The sensor simply converts photons into electrons binned into colors based on the bayer pattern, how can they "render" colors differently? That's a function of the digital processing pipline.
Also I don't understand how a CCD can introduce less noise than a CMOS, but is less sensitive at the same time? Light sensitivity is largely governed by the noise floor of the sensor I would say.
I don't really know either. My understanding is that the process of increasing ISO (i.e. boosting signal) works a lot better in CMOS, but also that because of how CMOS works read noise is higher overall. So a CCD will give you a cleaner record at base sensitivity (generally iso 100) or slightly elevated iso, but as soon as you get away from that CMOS sensors will do better. Whatever read noise they introduce is less impactful than the fact that they are much better at amplifying the light you did detect in a clean(er) way.
You are also welcome to dismiss me as a goofy photophile. I am not trying to sell you anything, just reporting what I understand people think. Maybe this article seems less snake oil-y[1]?
[1] https://petapixel.com/what-is-ccd-cmos-sensor/
Sorry if it came across like it, I didn't mean to accuse you of snake oil pandering. I just read the article and I think you misremembered, the article states CMOS has in fact a significantly lower noise floor (I wondered about this, because I remember when the next gen CMOS sensors came out in the pentax K5 and the Nikon D400(?) it was possible to push the shadows so strongly that you could essentially take a completely black photo and push it up to the same as if you would have taken with higher ISO). CCDs have a "more pleasing/film-like" nonlinearity, but I believe if you shoot raw a linear response is always better, because it gives you more flexibility for post processing.
IIRC the author scored a few trays on local equivalent of eBay. Obsoleted Kodak/OnSemi KAF line of sensors are rare kind of large film-sized sensors with public full datasheets; most manufacturers don't even confirm or deny existences of sensors in public.
I have interest in assembling this, but I'd love to buy it.
I wasted about 1k on trying to design a small backup phone before realizing I couldn't get it down to the dimensions I wanted. I'd need like half a million to actually build this thing.
However, I really want to see more hardware with open software. On the other hand you have open firmware for some cannon cameras if you want to do that route.
Why is there so much vignetting?
A lot of modern (DSLR or mirrorless era) lens intentionally accept a lot of optical flaws that are easy to correct with software (e.g. vignetting; sometimes even mechanical/hard vignetting where the lens does not fully cover the sensor); to prioritise addressing flaws that are difficult to correct with software (i.e. resolution, sharpness).
The software in the camera automatically correct these things before you see it; and when it's particularly bad, usually this correction cannot be disabled. On most brands, RAW will tell you something closer to what the sensor is really seeing.
Probably the author is not using digital optimized "telecentric" lenses. It's known that digital sensors are less tolerant with respect to incident angles compared to films.
Nah, this is E-mount so all the lenses are modern. It is just that modern mirrorless lenses rely heavily on image correction.
Maybe he was simply using an APS-C lens?
Only some of the sample images are vignetted; so it appears to be related to post-processing.
It's artistic.
I thought this was about open source outdoor / surveillance camera... Do we have anything on that topic?
Great project, I get excited about tools that I didn't expect to get the Open Source treatment pop up on the list.
Why o why did "Cheep Android phone with a lenses mount" fail.
Because the lens mount alone is as thick as the phone, lenses are heavy so the phone's.frame must become stronger and this heavier, and the result becomes a pretty silly phone, heavy and weird-shaped without a lens, and even more weird-shaped with an attached lens.
Not as a primary phone. I mean a purpose made mirrorless but reusing the screen, motherboard and battery from some ultra cost-optimised phone. Easy to use SDK, loads of third party photo sharing and camera control apps.
Smartphone SoC ISPs are simply not capable enough of processing say 24MP (lest 45MP, 61mp) at 30FPS (for burst/sports shooting in RAW).
At best, they could probably do 24MP RAW at like... 0.3 FPS?
With your latest iPhone, enable ProRAW and hold the camera shutter down, and let me know fast it takes.
Then, grab a Canon R5 (or Sony A7 IV, A7R V, etc), hold the shutter down...
Sure, I can't aford an R5.
Where do I get the parts to make one?
At least for the sensor, you're going to have to go scrounging around on eBay.
Nice!
Goodness, why gitlab?
I want a camera that works digitally, but all is through physical controls and only the photometer is digital as well. Not a single "auto" feature. All manual, but saves to an SD.
Not cheap, but you can get a Leica that doesn't even have a screen, it's all manual and just treats the sensor as though it were film stock. One of the things I like about the Leica digitals is that they are still rangefinder cameras so your experience of using them is still through the viewfinder and much more akin to an analog experience because of the manual focus / exposure / speed control. Now I just need to save up :-)
As others have said, the Nikon Zf is a nice manual feeling digital option too.
Thanks, I'll check it out and probably start saving.
fujifim tx cameras and nikon's zf might make you happy. they are digital cameras with a throwback "retro" manual control scheme.
I'll take a look. Thanks!
Good news is that Leica M11D has just launched last month, bad news is it costs $9.3k for just the body.
I wonder why there isn't anything more affordable...