Open Mike: David and Goliath

"Open Mike" is the Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Ed. wanders hither and thither as if in a dream. It normally appears on Wednesdays but sometimes not.

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Speaking of camera dreams...whoa. Last night I dreamt I was taking all sorts of lovely pictures using my iPhone, then set my phone down (at a bar, which is bad—dreams including alcohol are thought to be a signal of stress for those of us in recovery!), neglected to pick it up, and returned for it to find it vanished. Television-inspired sequences involving police and suspected thieves followed. I was so distressed by the loss of all my pictures that eventually I managed to realize, within the dream, that it was only a dream and that my phone had never left the house and was downstairs, safe. An uncomfortably vivid dream, though, with lots of fantastical twists and turns—eventful, emotional, strikingly visual.

Also within the dream, though, I believed I would be forced to get a new iPhone, and wondered (do you dream of yourself thinking?) if I could afford "the good one," and was musing that it would be nice, at least, to have Apple's latest camera. When I woke up it struck my brain, for some reason, how interesting it would be to take the same picture on all the different digital formats and make prints from them. Do normal people think about such things first thing in the morning?!

Back to reality
Such a test would flawed, though, because the test picture would only be one subject taken under one set of conditions. Part of the advantage of larger formats and more sophisticated cameras is that they (presumably) cope better with being stressed in various ways. It's no longer straightforward to determine which is "best," though, because of what can be done to files either manually in Photoshop or automatically in software—we're no longer looking at just the capabilities of the sensor in a single split-second exposure. Things like the "Night Mode" on newer smartphones is radically better than the inherent capability of the small sensor alone, for instance. And of course software bokeh has been available in "Portrait Mode" for several generations of smartphones now. So when you make the prints, do you take the files "out of camera" or do you optimize each one as best you can? I think the latter, because that's what we do in real life. So then is that a test of the camera, or of your Photoshop skills?

One of six winners in Apple's "Night Mode Photo Challenge," this was taken by Konstantin Chalabov of Moscow, Russia, using an iPhone 11 Pro

Any "test" would be only a snapshot, so to speak, of specific implementations in specific circumstances using particular equipment and processing. Comparisons would have to be multivalent, considered over a range of various trials. And then, of course, the usual problem: after all that work, all you'd have would be a snapshot in time of this particular moment, of today's existing equipment. A few years go by, and some new introductions come along, and the work of comparing would need to be started all over again. I did a lot of work comparing some cameras a few years ago—pitting the Canon 5D Mark II vs. the Nikon D700/D3 vs. the Sony A900. That post got more views than any other post I ever wrote on TOP, something like 100,000. But who cares about those cameras now?

And I wonder what effect economic realities are having on our perception of technology. For instance, great emphasis is being placed on computational photography in smartphones, because that's where all the resources are concentrated. Meanwhile, Micro 4/3 is apparently withering even within enthusiast precincts. What would we think, however, if all the advantages of smartphone imaging—and all those resources—were being applied to Micro 4/3 or 1" sensor cameras? I'd rather have "Night Mode" and "Portrait" computational bokeh available in a 1"-sensor camera or an Olympus than in a phone, personally. I think it would be more interesting, and possibly more freeing. Almost surely it would be even more impressive. But that's not the direction the technology happens to be evolving, for business reasons primarily.

Monsterish
After the lost-pictures dream woke me up, at 3:30 in the morning, I impulsively did something I don't often do—took a "selfie," using the iPad I keep on the nightstand. In the dark! (Was I trying to reassure myself that I was not really in that dreamworld, which seemed uncomfortably real?) Groggy with sleepiness, I turned the camera around, turned the flash on, and let the device do its thing. The picture was well-exposed and competent, and preserved a sense of the surrounding darkness. What would once have seemed like magic is now commonplace.

I hope I'm not especially vain, but I'm not going to show you the picture, because it struck me that it's the exact opposite of what portrait photographers try to do—it's the most un-flattering picture of me ever! (That could be a challenge to give a student—take a very flattering picture and a very unflattering picture of the same subject. But maybe the families and friends of shutterbugs are long-suffering enough as it is.) I looked worn, exhausted, almost monstrous. Taking a self-portrait casually in pitch dark is something that I couldn't have done even twenty years ago, much less 40 years ago when I first got into photography. (This is right around the 40th anniversary of when I got into photography in a serious way, incidentally—August 1980.)

But I digress. As I was saying, meaningful comparisons of today's options are sort of, well, a phantasm. Still and all, I'd love to pit something like a Sony RX1R II against an iPhone 11 Pro and let the chips fly. David against Goliath? It wouldn't prove much; but it would be interesting. It's the kind of thing I can consider fun. And after all, I like "snapshots."

Mike

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

psu: "Re 'I was so distressed by the loss of all my pictures that eventually I managed to realize, within the dream, that it was only a dream and that my phone had never left the house and was downstairs, safe.' If your dream self set up the iCloud backup for the phone then your dream self would not have lost any pictures. He would just have to download them again when he set up the replacement phone.  :-)  "

Bahi: "You're going to get lots of links to this concept called Alice, based on Micro 4/3. Like you, I wish that camera companies would develop the processors and imaging engines of their cameras to compete with today's run-of-the-mill smartphones, but would be very surprised if it happened.

"People complain about software from Apple, Microsoft and some of the Android phone makers, but the stuff that camera manufacturers have churned out or supplied with their cameras has been monumentally bad. Excellent on-camera software and some really well designed and integrated hardware is needed to make a dedicated camera that offers something better than the Night Mode shots that come out of a Google Pixel or an Apple iPhone.

"It should have been the other way around: the digital camera is huge compared with a smartphone, sensors are relatively large, cameras were big enough to support powerful CPUs and long-lasting batteries, and many of the camera companies were part of conglomerates with wide-ranging software and hardware expertise.

"I wish it had happened. With the camera market shrinking, it's less likely now but never say never."

psu: "After reading the rest of the piece, I have one further thought.

"It should certainly be possible in principle for 'real' cameras to have some of these fancy computational features that have been shipping in the phones for the last few years. But as you say there are various structural (not just economic) reasons why it never happens.

"IMHO the main one is that camera companies are hardware companies that:

1. Only understand one particular mode of hardware (box, lens, capture device)
2. Do not understand software or software usability at all.

"Part of what makes the Night Mode/Portrait/HDR and even 'straight' capture on the phones so much more useful than attempts at similar features on 'real' cameras is that they are transparently integrated into all the ways you are using the device anyway. You just hit the button and they happen.

"For example, in the iPhone 11 the multi-frame/HDR capture mechanism is no longer an extra knob in the camera app. You hit the button, the camera takes multiple frames and then does the contrast processing if it needs to, but even if it does not do that, it's using the multiple frames for noise reduction and/or sharpening, if the subject stood still and that is possible.

"What's important is that you don't have to think about it. The out of camera frames just look better.

"Of course there are ways (usually in third part apps) to bypass this and control it yourself if you want to...but it turns out to be hard to do better than what the camera is doing.

"Long time photo enthusiasts, of course, are conditioned to be suspicious of this sort of thing. We shoot 'raw' (they aren't really raw) files so we'll have more headroom for custom dynamic range, or white balance, or whatever, and so some canned set of decisions are not baked forever into a JPEG that we are then stuck with.

"The phones challenge the assumption that this is the way to work. But I digress.

"The camera company cameras will never work this way because the camera companies are not competent at building features like this.

"I think Night Mode in my Olympus E-M1 would indeed be a great thing...until I remember that to use it I'll need to navigate through 16 levels of on-camera menus...and then to see the result I'll probably have to put the storage card in my computer and run a special Olympus-only tool with a UI that would have been primitive in 1995 to do the post-processing.

"Meanwhile on my phone I hit two buttons, the phone does a thing, and I have the picture in 10 seconds.

"That's the real power of it. It's just there.

"Another example: compare taking panoramas with a 'real' camera to just just sweeping your phone over the scene and having the stitching happen automatically."

Michel Vos: "Re 'But who cares about those cameras now?' I still use the A900. IMHO it is still a very nice camera."

KeithB: "Which is David and which is Goliath?"

Mike replies: Good question!

Comments

[Egils Zarins]

What about this concept?
https://www.dpreview.com/news/7241299090/mft-alice-concept-camera-promises-smartphone-ai-with-interchangeable-lenses

[Aaron J]

RE realizing its a dream in the dream. I have this sporadically recurring dream motif of witnessing a plane or jet crash. This almost always happens: within the dream I think to myself "You know, I have this dream a lot. Am I dreaming again?" And then in the dream I look around and pay close attention to what's happening and invariably conclude "Nope. This time it's real."

[Bob Casner]

Off topic, I know, but since I’m currently “email impaired” (for SENDING, anyway) I thought your readers would love this, as I do:
Look up twitter babelcolour and find the ASTOUNDING restoration work of Stuart Humphryes, particularly of ancient Autochromes, most before 1920. I found this via someone’s “retweet” and immediately bookmarked it on my iPhone - I check it every day!
Stuart passed 100K followers about a day ago and has since then added over 3,000 more, richly deserved!

[Mike Ferron]

Nice shot from that iPhone. I recently purchased a iPad 11 pro. (Late 2018) Every app and photo from my iPhone XR was easily transferred to the iPad near automatically. I was also impressed with how nice and how detailed iPhoto’s look on that sharp retina screen. I built aluminum cages for both machines to tripod mount and attach mics and led light.

Although the iPad looks a bit silly on a tripod the viewing experience is pure amazing. I am even editing photos from cameras via card reader on the iPad. New learning curve for sure but I see changes in the way I may be shooting in the future.

[Rob de Loe]

I give it 10 years before I'm going to look as anachronistic carrying my camera in a backpack and setting it up on a tripod as Atget did hauling his glass plates around Paris.

[Hank]

I "dream" (sorry...) of having a "real" camera with all of the features packed into my iPhone. Why can't I have those, too? It would be such a useful set of tools to have; instead, we get camera-gadgets and Lightroom-mobile and all sorts of kludges that make everything way more complicated than it needs to be. I don't need to suffer for my art like that.

I guess Leica came close with the T series, but they seem incapable of developing the kind of software that would make such a camera a breeze to use and seamless.

[Louis McCullagh]

Fuji have awesome incamera processing. I still remember my first shots from an X100s. Beautiful. I tried to process a raw image to look like the jpeg and couldn't.

[MikeR]

Of course, normal people do that. (If I'm normal, that is. Some would question that.)

I dreamed last night in monochrome. I woke up upset at the loss of color, and began the day in a funk. Which lifted. Up until now, I don't think I've ever dreamed in monochrome.

And dreaming of the habit/practice/dependence that you've fought hard to overcome, when I quit my 2-3-pack-a-day smoking addiction, for several years afterwards I would have dreams of being able to smoke "just one" and not re-entrap myself. That was in the era when smoking in the workplace was still accepted. Interestingly, after being a non-smoker for a few years, I discovered that I was allergic to tobacco smoke. When someone lit up in a meeting, my eyes immediately began to water, profusely, followed by uncontrolled sneezing.

[hugh crawford]

The main problem is that the camera companies use copyright law to prevent any third parties from developing software for their cameras. Sony freaked out to the extent that they disabled Sony cameras from even running Sony's own apps.

Can you imagine what an imaginative developer could do with the information from the in-body image stabilization system? Using that and a series of short exposures of varying lengths and you could radically reduce image noise and any remaining camera blur to the point where the resolution is greater than the physical sensor. Hasselblad probably has a patent on the ability to refocus based on camera movement and the Pythagorean theorem but I'm pretty sure that has expired by now and it would be easy to implement.

A not very clever developer could even set the camera to take the photo the moment before the shutter is pressed. It's laughably simple to implement in any camera that has an electronic first curtain shutter mode, and even simpler in silent shutter mode. All the phone cameras do it.

How about the raw information from the phase detection ( autofocus ) pixels? You could build a depth map but Sony is too afraid that someone else will put out a feature on a camera that they have already sold. Just stick it in the RAW file and I'd be happy.

Or how about an "I want to focus on the closest thing in the frame no matter where it is, and have x inches DOF behind it". I'd call it SX70 mode, the only autofocus system that worked the way I wanted it to.

A mode where the foreground, someone's head, for instance, has a short exposure, and the background has a long exposure, and each has its own color balance. It's a piece of cake with a film camera with a leaf shutter and a strobe, not much more difficult in photoshop.

Oh, and would allowing me to program the strobe to fire on every other exposure be too much to ask? My Vivitar 283 is getting kind of beat up.

A mode where the camera makes a preliminary exposure and then based on what the user sets as an acceptable number of blown-out pixels, set the exposure for the highlights, and let the shadows fend for themselves. That would be ridiculously simple to program.

Would choosing which color channel to base the exposure on be too much to ask? Yes, it is a limited use case but when you need it you really really need it.

Oh and Sony in particular: That feature which automatically switches between the eye-level finder and the rear screen? I bet it works for a lot of people but when it doesn't do you have any idea what a pain in the ass it is to go two menus deep to move the display when the menus are on the display you can't see? Assigning that to a button would be nice.

BTW, if you really want to hear some colorful language ask some farmers what they think about the abuse of copyright law by tractor companies. Who knew that John Deer's middle initial was F?

[hugh crawford]

"the exact opposite of what portrait photographers try to do—it's the most un-flattering picture of me ever!"

Arnold Newman begs to differ

[JimH]

Long ago on this forum I suggested an "open source" camera, with a basic operating system that controls camera functions and lots of memory for developers to create imaging systems. Developers would have directions for creating apps to run on the phone and a forum to sell them to others. Sound familiar? It's what Apple and Google do with their phone operating systems. I'll bet this would generate some spectacular results. Maybe somebody could convince Oly's new owners to produce OS data on one model (E-M10 MkII?)to see what happens.

I also remember having discussions with somebody (Ctien or Thom Hogan perhaps) about creating a super camera using multiple phone cameras to create an "insect eye" lens that could process all sorts of data - 3D, multi-focus, etc. Those cameras are really cheap and phones now sport a couple of them to gain focal length range but a phone with a dozen lenses would not be mass-market for the usual phone manufacturers.

[I'm afraid "Oly's new owners" is mostly a shibboleth. The purpose of the new ownership is to dismantle the business division in an orderly way according to Japanese law. They might continue producing and selling cameras as a brand label, but it's very unlikely there will be anything like the research and development and the generating of new products that we were used to from Olympus. Disclaimer: I'm just a lowly reporter, not an expert on business. But this is what it looks like to me when I look into it. --Mike]

[John Camp]

"Computational photography" mostly strikes me as a way that technology-obsessed people hope to insert creativity into their photos. Doesn't really work that way.

[louis mccullagh]

The Sony RX100V has the option to meter for the highlights. I use it and adjust the exposure to automatically add a third or 2 thirds exposure. This helps avoid very poor shadow elements and for night shooting maxs your shutter speed which combined with the inbuilt stabiliser is a wonder.
Alternatively bracket the shot with 'over exposure'.

Regarding the setting of a depth of field control Minolta patented that. I lusted after eye following focus (which Canon had on EOS 3) and a facilty to define a shallow/large depth of field.

[John Krumm]

The real power of the phone camera is the internet, not its software tricks. Our major means of sharing photos does not require high quality photos, so a phone photo, a m43 photo, a full frame photo and a medium format photo look the same to most people on Instagram and Facebook. The phone wins three times: by being the only camera most people need and have, by being as good as other cameras given our sharing medium, and by being far and away the most connected to the internet.

[Terry Burnes]

I've long wondered why Olympus, a company that seems to have relied upon innovation to achieve whatever market penetration it has, didn't come up with a "computational photography" version of its cameras. They've done some good things with automation but never really seemed committed to it..

In most industries it is quite common to emulate your most serious competitor, trying to outdo what they do best. But in the camera business it is almost as if the smartphone isn't considered a serious competitor. Yet it is clearly gutting the camera industry.

The Alice, mentioned by someone earlier, is intriguing in this regard as it appears to be a serious attempt to marry the advantages of cameras (large sensors and better optics) with the tech of phones. It will be interesting to watch. But why isn't some major camera company doing this?

[Dave Stewart]

"But who cares about those cameras now?"
Me. I've a special fondness for the big old D700, and that's despite having newer cameras.

[Alex Mercado]

Adobe recently hired Marc Levoy, of Google Pixel fame, and says they are working on a "universal camera app".

I can only imagine this may something of an ACR-styled iOS/Android app that would connect over the air to our camera of choice, on the fly, and supplement the functions with the joys of computational photography.

[Crabby Umbo]

Someone on here said they wondered why Olympus didn't come up with some sort of "computational photography" setting or version? Hell, I have an Olympus Pen F digital I can't even figure out how to set! The most confusing thing ever! Possibly the perfect example of engineers making something without ever taking a panel of professional photographers opinions into account, as well as junking it up with dozens of setting (some which can be confusingly set two different ways), just because they can and it costs not much more to do that building a streamlined professional software platform!

Having said that, I've been saying for years that my sisters iPhone on "auto-everything" makes much better color, hue, and contrast decisions than the last professional digital Nikon I had on "auto". I was amazed that her "snaps" walking around India had the look and feel of something I'd really have to work at with post photograph computer massaging (something I hate about digital, since I used to be perfectly happy with the transparencies I shot pre-digital, with nothing else to do)!