The Future of Digital Photography

[fruitcake]

Another good photo demo. Thanks Lee.

...though you could have waited til Mr Monkey had finished doing his business...

[LEE]

Another good photo demo. Thanks Lee.

...though you could have waited til Mr Monkey had finished doing his business...

... it goes some way to explain his expression.

[Ivo]

It's not only for indoors, some outdoors shots with a Samyang 1.4/85:



Samyang 1.4/85 at 2.8



Samyang 1.4/85 at 2.2



Takumar 2.5/135 at 2.5



Pentax 2.4/35 at 2.4

[LEE]

Ivo, what are you saying about the future of digital photography here?

I think we all know that good glass can give us shallow depth of field.

[Ivo]

Ivo, what are you saying about the future of digital photography here?

I think we all know that good glass can give us shallow depth of field.

Exactly, and that we can do things with good glass and serious camera's which can't be done with the cameraphones.
Postprocessing is to assist the photographer and not to replace equipment. I'd rather like to be an hour outdoors shooting as to sit an hour behind my desk postprocessing a cameraphone pic.

[LEE]

The 2016 CES tech show reveals new Nikons with amazingly high native ISO capability:

The company claims the D5 will offer "astounding low-light performance" with a native ISO range between 100 and 102,400, and the option to expand from ISO 50 (Lo-1) to ISO 3,280,000 (Hi-5). Yes, ISO has reached the millions.

Normally I treat the higher end (102,400 in this case) with a pinch of salt but I have to assume that knocking it back a stop to 51,200 ISO will provide good quality images. (I still remember "pushing" Ilford FP4 to 1600 ISO).

OK, it's a £5,000 camera but Moore's Law affects camera sensors so it will be very affordable in a few years. 

Not entirely sure what 3million ISO would look like in an image.  Noisy I imagine. Interested to see though.

[perpetual dan]

Not entirely sure what 3million ISO would look like in an image. 

The inside of the proverbial coal mine maybe?

[Kim]

Not entirely sure what 3million ISO would look like in an image.  Noisy I imagine. Interested to see though.

Sounds like a question for an astronomer.  They're generally ahead of the curve sensor-wise, though tend not to use them to take *pictures*

[sojournermike]

Not entirely sure what 3million ISO would look like in an image.  Noisy I imagine. Interested to see though.

Sounds like a question for an astronomer.  They're generally ahead of the curve sensor-wise, though tend not to use them to take *pictures*

And they have a pesky habit of cooling them with liquid helium.

I have a sort of fantastical fascination with the progress of digital photography, but (for a variety of reasons) I'm happier having simplified my life making pictures with film in the obsolete rangefinder camera format. It's good to watch though.

Almost certainly I'll aquire another digital one day, but the phone suffices for eBay.

Mike

[T42]

Panasonic have just announced that their next smartphone will concentrate on being a camera and will not have any telephone functions. Yay.

[LEE]

Rumours that iPhone 7 will have 2 cameras, mounted very closely together, to enable shallow Depth of Field effect with one button-press.

Also a 3x optical zoom.

That would be very handy.  If you could get the true optical equivalent of a, say, 50-80mm focal length lens, with DoF effect, then it elevates a camera phone to a different level for portraits (rather than the typical wide-angle selfies we see a million times a week).

Of course an iPhone 7 will probably cost twice as much as an entry level DSLR and 6x more than a fairly basic compact camera capable of better results, but, if you are going to buy one anyway, then why not have a decent camera on board as well?

I have to keep reminding myself that the iPhone 6S retails for significantly more than a Canon 700D DSLR with 18-55 STM lens

[Exit Stage Left]

Two lenses close together would essentially be a rangefinder. There's room for an app for Estate agents to measure room dimensions then.

[fruitcake]

Also a 3x optical zoom.

That sounds useful, but surely the optical zoom will add bulk, making the phone less easy to carry in a trouser or shirt pocket. Getting the optical zoom mechanism thin must be the main challenge for the designers.

Camera development is how Apple has maintained market share in recent years. IIRC, the first few generations of iphone made poor photos. They sold on their intuitive OS, easy user experience, and lovely build quality, but they made poor photos. Apple raised its game after the iphone 4. I suspect that was in response to the photographic capabilites of Samsung's phones which were (and still are) impressive in low light.

[geraldc]

My new version of Android, Marshmallow, now has a strange feature where it uses the front facing and rear facing camera at the same time, and then crops me into whatever photo I'm taking.

[LEE]

Canon just announced their Pro-level DSLR The 1DX Mk2.

It implies that they think one future is blindingly fast frame rate (up to 16PFS) and huge buffers (177 full frame RAW files before slowing down).
It also ships with 4K video at 120FPS.
Incredible, that is really shifting some data.

I'm waiting to hear about the new 5D Full-frame but, more likely, the new 80D APS-C.  Frame rates are fast enough for me, I really just want less noise at high ISO, that's what ultimately separates the men from the boys.  Obviously I wouldn't grumble if 4K was included, but mainly because that may give me 1080p at 120FPS.

[frankly frankie]

Some very interesting images in this thread in the DPR forum which are all the result of in-camera focus stacking.  In the first one, the camera has stacked 8 images while compensating for subject movement along the way.
Although these are mostly very close or macro shots, the same technique is applicable in landscapes, though I haven't yet seen an outstanding example.

[tonycollinet]

Some panasonic cameras have had a firmware upgrade to use 4K video mode to do post focusing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAhOC9ta36Q

The later models (GH4, G7 and GX8) also use "depth from defocus" focussing to improve the performance of contrast detect focus. They have mapped the characteristics of all their lenses so that the camera can work out the distance of an object from how blurred it is. The camera needs to process two frames at slightly different focus distances, so they can tell if the object is in front of, or behind the plane of focus - and can then focus in one step rather than checking for contrast peak during a continuous movement of the focus plane. Future lenses will have this data built in to send to the camera.

Although I don't think they do it at the moment, it seems to me that the camera could also use this data to easily apply post shot blur to simulate a wider aperture shallow depth of field effect. It will be interesting to see how realistic this becomes in future.

[thing1]

A timely announcement from Huawei for their new dual-lens smartphone
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/6/11377202/huawei-p9-dual-camera-system-how-it-works

"""
The two cameras capture a photo simultaneously, and then the P9 uses the strengths from both to create a single image that's better than either could make on its own. The color camera is critical for producing the standard color photo that everyone wants. But by combining its color information with the richer detail and sharpness of the monochrome image, you get a result that, theoretically, looks a lot better than a single camera of its size and quality should be able to produce
...
Huawei isn't just relying on what the P9's camera captures — it's also improving it in software by simulating bokeh, the out-of-focus blooms of light you often see in the back of photographs. The goal is to give the P9's photos a look closer to what you'd get out of a larger, nicer camera. The effect is adjustable, so you aren't stuck with whatever the software decides on. In fact, the entire camera can be operated in manual mode.
"""

[LEE]

The dual lens approach addresses most of the issues with the current "computational photography" implementations (moving the camera slightly for the 2nd image).

I see that they are looking at a similar approach to HDR by using dual pixels (that record at different sensitivities simultaneously).

Since Camera Phones are typically quite wide angle it could be that they end up giving a better shallow-depth of field effect than a DSLR with a wide angle lens.

It's worth remembering though that the phones offering these features are typically the same price as an "enthusiast" DSLR with kit zoom and twice the price of a superb compact camera.

Also I can't help feeling that there aren't that many people out there who will use this tech beyond taking slightly better selfies and photos of their meal.  That makes them incredibly expensive party cameras.

It's nice to have a decent "emergency" camera on my phone but I can't yet see a time when I wouldn't rather have my compact camera instead.

[fruitcake]

These innovative technologies will be impressive when we first see them, and in the short term that will help the maker gain an advantage over their competitors.
The same tech will be cheap when it becomes standard, in, say, five years.

Of course for many consumers, the smartphone is the only camera they own, so they will use it for every photo they take (be those snapshots or something else). So I expect the makers of smartphones-with-really-good-cameras consider their market to be 'people who don't carry a camera'.

Oh, and at some point, we'll stop calling them smartphones. The telephone has already become a subsidiary function. Mobile devices are really wireless web browsers that can take photos, and send texts. I don't know what their new name will be, but we've started referring to 'Ziggy' in our house (as in 'I'll ask Ziggy') so I'd like to propose that.

[Woofage]

Smartphones will, of course, kill the most basic entry-level compact camera market. Although a cheap compact may still have better IQ than a phone I can't imagine this end of the market being sustainable. However, there's a physical limit to what can be fitted into a "phone" (if indeed this is still the correct term). Apple's latest iPhone is apparently too thin for its cameras - they have a "power bulge". It's also apparently also too thin for a proper headphone jack. Although I may not have understood this correctly, it does demonstrate that in the quest for the thinnest possible device the camera module suppliers are basically up against it and the device as a whole will only have the in-built PP to fix things. It will be interesting to see how this develops and what PP techniques, if any, are fed up to "proper" cameras.

[Kim]

Of course for many consumers, the smartphone is the only camera they own, so they will use it for every photo they take (i.e. be those photos snapshots or something else). So I expect the makers of smartphones-with-really-good-cameras consider their market to be 'people who don't carry a camera'.

Quite.  It's not so much that you buy a smartphone instead of a camera, as the tricorder being able to take photographs.

The best camera is the one you have with you, and all that.

[LEE]

I suppose that the 6x4" photo in an album has been replaced by a similar sized image on a OLED display or on a Facebook/Instagram post.
In that respect even my £100 Motorola does a more than adequate job, certainly better than any 110 Instamatic ever did.
It may be that, for 99% of all "mobile cameras", their amazing (marketing blurb driven) capabilities will be underused on Selfies.

My Wife, like all her friends, seems to use her amazing Camera-Phone to take amazingly shit photographs (just like they always did with their 110 cameras in fact).

I wonder whether the photography capabilities of these devices is actually being (over)developed by photographers, subconsciously for photographers, who appreciate "bokeh" and HDR images.  The shitty nature of my Wife's photos doesn't seem to concern any of her friends, despite them all boasting about how many megapixels their new iPhone is.
Are they actually in danger of over-developing camera-phones, for people who really don't care that much?

Are they actually they just giving people the ability to create perfectly exposed shit images? ("Hold it in Landscape format for f**k's sake why don't you?") There's no harm in that of course, it beats poorly exposed shit images.

It's more than likely that Phones will soon have a "shit-photo-avoidance" App.  It would be fairly easy to do based on "content awareness" and a few classical rules (rule of thirds, leading lines..GPS awareness of local landmarks...etc). They already let you know if someone had their eyes closed. 

I think the ultimate test will be when the Wedding Photographer turns up with just a Phone and nobody worries about the implications of that.

FYI - I took this using my Wife's Samsung Galaxy 5S >>>CLICKY<<<

[Kim]

I suppose that the 6x4" photo in an album has been replaced by a similar sized image on a OLED display or on a Facebook/Instagram post.

Yes.  A typical photo is viewed on someone else's screen.  I don't think there's anything bad about that, other than not being able to make assumptions.

It's more than likely that Phones will soon have a "shit-photo-avoidance" App.  It would be fairly easy to do based on "content awareness" and a few classical rules (rule of thirds, leading lines..GPS awareness of local landmarks...etc). They already let you know if someone had their eyes closed.

We can but hope.  Perhaps a higher priority should be eliminating portrait video, which ought to be trivial to do (simply present the user with a letterboxed view until they think to rotate the device to landscape, or just show them a central crop and let them get on with it).

Any technology that improves a typical portrait centred on the subject's face in low light without making an effort to hold the camera still is a significant bonus...

[fruitcake]

Photos have become bookmarks to our memories. If you've always got a camera with you, you can document anything that you think you might want to look at later (or anything you might want to show someone else). It applies specifically to phone photos. They're not photographs though. Photographs are something different. Phone photos serve a different purpose. Sometimes they're visual aids to help people in recounting their experiences later, either communally or alone.

Pixel inflation used to be the way of selling the latest camera. Perhaps now it's that the camera-phone is capable of producing beautiful photographs. Certainly seems to be Apple's marketing strategy with its bus shelter billboard ads.