Comment by flyinglizard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by flyinglizard | Hacker News Reader

No word on low light performance? That's for me is one of the two primary reasons to have a dedicated camera (Olympus PEN-F) and not just use my iPhone 7+ camera whenever I go (the other is the degree of control over the creative process that you can only achieve with buttons and dials). If you do lots of indoor shooting (which I do), low light becomes a primary limiting factor in taking good photos.

Another factor is focal range. With a bigger sensor it's easier to have a wide field of view, again an advantage dedicated cameras have.

I disagree about APS-C and FF being the winners. I think FF has peaked, the traditional advantages of FF are compensated for in smaller formats by better sensor silicon (getting to better low light sensitivity for a given pixel size) and optics (F1.8, F1.4 and even F1.2 lenses). FF still has its place with pro photographers but for amateurs the cost, size and weight (not just the camera - that primary factor here are the lenses, which become very big and very expensive as you climb up the sensor size) make it impractical.

I think FF will rule for pro photographers and MFT, which is smaller than APS-C, will rule the amateur market. MFT cameras are pushing the definition of pocketable already, but they can be carried along with a small lens and be with you everywhere. I can probably fit my PEN-F with a 14mm Lumix pancake lens in my jacket pocket without too much hassle - and as the old saying goes, "the best camera is the one you have with you".

I know it's a small niche market but low-light performance is a huge factor for underwater photographers. Water molecules filter out most of the red light just a few meters down, and depending on water clarity the sunlight can be almost completely gone at 30m deep.

Low light performance is also critical for nature and landscape photographers who mostly shoot pre dawn and during sunset. In such situations you still cannot hand hold the camera, and will need a tripod. So the weight of the camera is less of an issue as you are already lugging a tripod. You probably can get away with those selfie sticks though I doubt the stability.

> Low light performance is also critical for nature and landscape photographers who mostly shoot pre dawn and during sunset.

Actually, landscape photographers care more about resolution and dynamic range than low light performance since most of the time they're shooting at base ISO on a tripod. Which is why cameras like the Sony A7R II (42 MP) and Nikon D810 (36 MP) are popular with landscape photographers.

Photographers who care about low light performance are typically shooting video or sports/wildlife so they shoot with cameras like the Sony A7S or Nikon D500.

landscapE photographers still shoot film, with large format. This completely obliterates the resolution of existing digital sensors.

While "performance" is undoubtedly top of the interest list for the HN crowd and many others, there's more to talk about.

The size of a sensor defines the fundamental "look" of the format, which is simplistically stated as the DoF for a given focal length, and not just the general field of view. That "look" is also made up of the lens characteristics, and in general, those lenses most popular or available for said format, i.e. 35/50mm for FF/35mm, 75/80mm for 645 or 6x6.

Creative decision making takes place outside of the moment of shooting, too, and having those options is a key reason my kit cupboard hosts everything from half-frame to 6x6, as well as mirrorless and FF digital cameras. In the past, fewer options have meant that amateurs and professionals alike operating on the same or similar platforms. In modern times, few amateurs that I know run digital medium format cameras. Actually, none.

While it's marvellous that my iPhone's performance is so good, but once past the pixel pushing, the tiny sensor is mercilessly exposed by my geriatric Leica M9 despite its "rubbish" sensor, because the look of FF combined with Zeiss glass is just fantastic. And it's always ready to do its job.

I think the best camera is the one that gets out of your way. iPhones are ponderous to get ready for shooting if locked, and when I need to take a picture, I need to take that picture.

(edit: apologies for any incoherence, just gotten home after 7.5 hour drive)

I'm very confused, how does sensor size have anything to do with DoF (depth of field)? Depth of field means how much is in focus and it's a function of the aperture of the lens.

I think what you mean is the sensor changes the effective focal length: a 50mm lens on FF is 50mm, on a Canon crop factor it gets a 1.6x multiplier, on Nikon I think it is 1.5x (sorry, haven't shot Nikon since film).

A FF Sony camera such as the Sony A7II with a lens like a 35mm f2.8 or 28mm f2 can be smaller and cheaper than an equivalent Fuji system, or even Olympus (although if you want f1.4 lenses, it's definitively going to be bigger).

My understanding was that the Sony lenses were so big due to the high quality required for the high resolutions (e.g. 42MP A7Rii). If you were happy with less resolution or a centre crop you could build a far smaller lens...

The size is more or less a physics limitation. If you want a fast lens then your lens elements must be larger in diameter. Then you have to add more elements for correcting aberrations that are more prominent at wide aperture, thus making the lens heavier. The resolution is less of a factor, and is more dependent on things like the glasses used and manufacturing tolerances. Most of the Sony lenses are merely comparable with Canon/Nikon lenses, and behind the Sigma Art lenses unless you are comparing the G-Master series, which are more comparable with high end Zeiss glass.

My personal fave lens ever is the Fuji 35mm F1.4, which somehow manages to be really modest in size, despite being fast and razor sharp. So, it can be done.

On the other end of the spectrum, my personal fave is the Canon 200mm f2 which is a big honking chunk of glass. The portraits that that thing can do are stunning.

I'm a subscriber to things being eventually optimized to their limit. Screen are still getting slightly bigger, but there's plenty of theoretical space for cameras to grow.

As long as bigger cameras perform better (and there's a demand for better performance) they will keep growing until they take up the entire back of the phone.

My bet is on micro lenses so small that the camera becomes a flat rectangle taking up most of one side of the phone, along with some crazy insane software processing.

I think you're basically describing the new Light camera. Expect to see the that technology integrated into smartphones in a few years.

https://light.co/camera

I've been following Light closely, and I'm curious to see how it plays out. Their early released images really aren't comparable to a DSLR (especially considering a $1700 retail price), but it seems obvious the long play is to figure out the technology and license it to smartphone manufacturers.

The problem I see with that though is

1) it's still too big 2) it's still too expensive and 3) I bet it adds an enormous amount of complexity to manufacturing

Lytro had really awesome technology something like 10 years ago for a camera that could focus on anything in the image (it didn't take pictures exactly, which was one of the problems, how do you manage the files which also happen to be gigantic). Awesome idea, but it just didn't work in the consumer market.

I would LOVE to see Light succeed and have a substantially better camera integrated into smartphones, and would even pay a few hundred dollars premium for it, but if that happens at all it's going to take years and I doubt many people will be happy to pay that much more when they just want to use Instagram.

Lytro had another more serious problem: the images were soft. Sure you could change focus in post processing but everything was still slightly fuzzier than with a regular camera.

The early images released by Light aren't that great, and those are curated. You're paying 10x the cost for a modest improvement which is probably undetectable after going through an Instagram filter.

I hope the technology is awesome, but based on what I've seen (and heard from employees) it's not going to live up to the hype.

AFAIK Lytro's new play is into the cinematic VR space.

They're working on a light field camera and stack that they advertise will allow the viewer to don a VR headset and view a live-action scene with 6 DOF, so long as the viewer doesn't move their head terribly far.

https://www.lytro.com/immerge

I sold my old dslr and have been on the preorder list for light. Wish them the best but am on the fence for these reasons:

- the demo photos, like you mentioned have either a softness like you mentioned or colors that seem a bit too vibrant. Would like to see more examples of action photos, up close macros, and night shots.

- no stabilization - in their talk they mentioned this isn't practical and they'll sell a stick gimbal, though it seems odd when a smartphone has this.

- the delays, it took about a year longer than I initially expected (preorders are shipping this July)

- My own needs - I'm realizing I'm not that nuts of a photography enthusiast lately for the price of the camera.

There's also some hesitance when reading the founders mit technology review article where he hints that the end user will do more things in post with their first product until they leverage an fpga/asic for processing (I think they're currently using a snapdragon 820 with an fpga for triggering)

Still rooting for them though since I hated carrying even a micro 4:3 camera

> My bet is on micro lenses so small that the camera becomes a flat rectangle taking up most of one side of the phone, along with some crazy insane software processing.

As someone who does research on inverse signal recovery, what can be recovered nowadays is absolutely mindblowing. I work on the group synchronization problem, which aims to extract an underlying ground truth signal from noisy, shifted copies of that signal. In my case, I am extracting atomic environments from noisy rotated and permuted copies of an "archetypal" atomic environment, but I imagine the same technique applied to photography would produce stunning results. You would be surprised with the amount of noise for which you can still recover the true signal.

See https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.03464 for an idea of what's become possible recently.

I have been peeking at the code behind SETI's detection of repeating signals, you might find it interesting.

the second paragraph under "so what really matters" covers low-light performance.

I'm not talking about "shooting in the dark", but rather getting high shutter speed, low noise images indoors where you'd swear there's enough light but you camera would stumble.

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