Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksml | Hacker News Reader

I agree that the smartphone killed the point and shoot industry, but I think it's pretty far overboard to say that Apple is revolutionizing the camera industry with the iPhone 7. They added another lens, which is certainly nice but not revolutionary, and they added some depth of field effects, which are nice but look pretty bad compared to actual shallow depth of field.

Edit: Also, you definitely don't need to fire up Lightroom to share photos from your DSLR; I think practically any DSLR can shoot JPG. Many DSLRs can also share photos to phones via wifi or Bluetooth these days. Mine didn't come with such a feature, but Nikon sells a $20-30 adapter that adds that capability.

View on HN

It's not going to kill professional photography, but the folks who buy a DSLR for the bokeh might not have a reason to buy that camera. Might shrink the market for DSLRs.

I'm curious to know how well the bokeh/shallow depth works on the 7+. By the looks of it they use facial recognition and machine learning to determine what not to blur.

This means objects and figures that aren't faces might not be tuned too well.

I don't think it's that complicated; more of a diff between two focus points from the lenses.

did you see the presentation?

I don't doubt that the iPhone will shrink the market for DSLRs eventually, but I don't think it's going to do it to a significant extent just yet (not much more than it already has been). I'm skeptical that people buy DSLRs just for the bokeh, and anyways the samples that they showed look nowhere near as good as real bokeh from a nice lens. I think non-photographers buy DSLRs because they still take better pictures than smartphones in certain situations, particularly when an optical zoom would be desired (e.g. A kid's performance or graduation). The new iPhone comes a step closer to potentially addressing some of those situations, but it's still limited; 56mm full-frame equivalent is not really all that zoomed in, and AFAIK there isn't yet any way to zoom between the 28mm lens and 56mm lens any better than traditional digital zoom (i.e. cropping and rescaling).

Google's camera app has had the ability to generate a depth-map to add bokeh for a couple of years now: https://research.googleblog.com/2014/04/lens-blur-in-new-goo...

It actually works surprisingly well, but I've not traded in my SLR. Being able to do something similar with a second lens -- or even using Project Tango sensors -- to avoid the post-exposure motion would make it more useful, but I suspect still not as versatile (and even with my SLR, the difference between my relatively cheap lenses and borrowing someone's more expensive lenses, on the same body, is quite obvious).

Like this adapter?

https://www.amazon.com/Nikon-Wireless-Mobile-Adapter-Digital...

Many of the reviews say it is not very good, but I have not tried it personally.

Then there is Geo tagging.

https://www.amazon.com/Nikon-GP-1A-Unit-Cameras-27034/dp/B00...

Again, reviews are pretty poor.

Like I said, I love my DSLR, but the phone workflow is just so much easier/nicer.

Even if you are shooting JPG, you still have to move the SD card to the computer, find the file, then share it.

With a phone, you just tap the share button on the picture you just took, tap the icon for whatever you want to share it to and you're done.

Do you keep all your pictures that you ever took on your phone?

I surely don't and do exactly the same workflow with my phones as I do with my cameras.

Pretty much. https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ngl1l6mr8u218w/File%2010-09-2016%... Doesn't everyone?

Not people that care about privacy.

We don't all have the same priorities.

Yeah, my pictures will only be seen by me and my circle of trust.

Other priorities might be ok to have their pictures known to the world.

Funny you mention that.

I am moving all my photos from the last few decades into Photos/iCloud which will then appear on my phone.

While being available to the whole world to see, the next time an hacker attack success happens or any bored Apple employee decides to search for "interesting" pictures.

Please don't imply random employees have access to an iCloud users data. There is ample proof in security architecture documents posted by Apple that would indicate your comment is ridiculous.

My comment is based on real life experience on how companies of comparable size handle their security, specially in outsourced projects.

A growing number of cameras have wifi and/or bluetooth so you can just tap to share a picture.

iPhone isn't a competitor for DSLR.

It's a competitor for high end P&S e.g. Sony RX100 and mirrorless e.g. Fuji X100.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com