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I think Sony could realistically do both in one product. They already make flagship smartphones that are hardware-competitive with everyone else's flagships. They supply the camera sensors for everyone's flagship product. They have the best DSLM and reasonably competitive lenses.

Just take their current flagship smartphone, double the thickness to fit a halfway-between-smartphone-and-full-frame sensor, an SD card slot, ability to export RAWs, and a compact zoom lens, and sell it for like $2000. For extra credit, make a standard lens mount and make it swappable and now you have the manufacturer lock-in that keeping Nikon alive. The margins on the camera business plus the refresh cycle of the phone business might actually save both those divisions.

Instead Sony's camera division and smartphone division are too busy trying to not step on each other's feet and both are suffering for it.

The Sony smartphone I used to have put its low-light noise reduction behind DRM keys and if you unlocked the bootloader it irreversibly turned the camera into a piece of shit. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I buy another smartphone from them, especially for anything camera related.

Plus the built-in camera app was awful to use, but 3rd party camera apps had awful image quality. I don’t know if that was Sony’s fault or related to general Android fragmentation. Either way, I got the impression they weren’t trying very hard.

After the rootkit debacle I'm surprised that anybody on the tech side would still buy Sony gear. As a brand they're burned for me and I used to be quite the fan.

Same here. Never bought anything Sony again.

I also remember the poor kid who had a portable CD player almost red hot trying to play the Columbia/Sony music CD he had bought - riddled with purposeful errors to avoid PC copies.

Making war on customers, indeed ...

I should add that I do own a pair of Sony headphones that I like quite well. But there's an app for configuring some settings, meaning they're starting to border on "smart" gadget enough that Sony could find a way to screw it up if they tried hard enough. Definitely wouldn't have bought them without thoroughly checking reviews for anything dumb.

> Just take their current flagship smartphone, double the thickness to fit a halfway-between-smartphone-and-full-frame sensor, an SD card slot, ability to export RAWs, and a compact zoom lens, and sell it for like $2000.

And no one will buy it. It has been tried before, by Nokia.

Yeah just like nobody would want a social network because MySpace and Friendster tried it. And nobody would want a tablet, Apple already tried that with the Newton.

Not saying you are wrong but “Nokia tried it” is not any kind of marker.

I was under the impression the Nokia that did this failed because it ran Windows Phone and not Android.

I'd sooner get a pocket-sized camera like a Canon PowerShot G5 X Mark II or Sony RX100 VII for half the price (although like the iPhone, still out of my price range).

As a semi-enthusiast I really really like the photos my Canon takes. It would be beyond amazing if I could get them on my phone immediately without having to faff around with a weird wifi tether or waiting until I'm at a computer to mess about with SD Card transfers.

edit: Yes even when I just post to instagram you can immediately tell the difference between a DSLR photo and a phone photo. Even with all the computational power of an iPhone X, the DSLR's optics and bigger sensor win hands down despite being a 2015 model. (Rebel T6i)

Well, I can transfer images from my A7ii to my phone in a few seconds. It's been done.

The camera makers would be wise to just implement an API over Bluetooth or adhoc WiFi to pair with phones/tablets/laptops and offload RAWs and JPEGs.

Lightroom mobile, etc., could then have the images swiftly processed and uploaded, and could probably be implemented with minimal changes to the newest models of camera.

Canon and Nikon and I'm sure others already have a WiFi adapter you can plug into the SD card slot that does exactly this.

You don't even need an adapter anymore, it's been native for years on many bodies.

But the software and connection process are terrible, and have been for years.

I have a Nikon D1000 and the process is fairly painless - I use an app on my iPad to review the pictures and select the ones I want to download from the camera and once I do that they are treated like any other picture and uploaded to iCloud etc.

Indeed, getting them to connect is always a few minutes of frustration that sometimes makes them connect.

Pretty seamless on Sony. Just select "upload to smartphone", enter the password that's displayed on the camera into the Android app, done.

At least on my Sony RX10 IV, the authentication was only necessary the first time (by NFS or QR code scan).

Since then, I

- Open the Sony app, press "receive"

- View the picture I want to transfer, press "transfer" (physical button), select "confirm" (or select further pictures).

The UI could perhaps be slightly nicer, but it's not really a barrier here.

But you can only get JPEGs that way. No way to grab RAWs from the camera. But most android apps I use to finalize images do support RAW now. Google Photos supports RAW etc., etc.

Also, I almost always seem have to restart the app once or twice until my camera shows up. This is on three different android phones that I've gone through since I bought my a7II.

The only DSLR with WiFi hardware I've tried was the Nikon D750. Yeah, it was bad to the point where I think I'd rather have an EyeFi.

That’s already too complicated. My phone uploads photos to the cloud (which my computer is hooked up to) automatically. Needing to attach a piece of hardware to my camera to achieve the same thing is arcane and absurd.

Canon cameras implemented cloud functions a while back, and I guess it's the same for others. Unfortunately, being just another small feature and not the main function, works like crap (and it seems to be related to the server's bandwidth). Combine a low upload speed with a 30-40MB photo and the capability of getting 10 of these photos per second and you realize it's faster to get the card out and read it on a PC.

That’s already too complicated. My phone uploads photos to the cloud (which my computer is hooked up to) automatically. Needing to attach a piece of hardware to my camera to achieve the same thing is arcane and absurd.

While current DSLRs typically have baked-in WiFi functionality, the idea of having them auto upload "to the cloud" seems a bit absurd to me. You're looking at ~50 MB per image if you're shooting raw. While you may want to auto backup the images to a nearby device it's unlikely you'd want to wait for that much data to be sent out over the internet.

Canon and Nikon and I'm sure others already have a WiFi adapter you can plug into the SD card slot that does exactly this.

You're probably thinking of an EyeFi, which is a third party product. First party WiFi support is typically either baked into the body itself or a dongle you'd clip to the side of the camera or flash shoe.

They all have some form of Wifi-to-phone, but I don't think anyone has made it reality enjoyable yet. I only know the Sony side of things which is probably the worst of the bunch, but it's so full of the arbitrary limitations and unpleasantries that others can be twice as good and still suck. It all seems to be merely an afterthought feature that is just there to get a feature checkbox checked.

The only reasonable implementation however would be something like a permanent BTLE connection that wakes up wifi whenever there are unsynced files on the camera. Just push that while I'm shooting, keep it alive until synced (or until permanent connection loss) when the power button is pressed, leave the phone side UI of what to do with all that data to the phone. (OTOH I'm not even sure if phone OS still allowed an app to do that, idle on background BTLE, then fire up the WiFi without user interaction. OYAH this would be the perfect crossover feature for Sony, because a hardware manufacturer could definitely include it in their Android - but even then, if they did it they'd certainly botch it with sticking to their proprietary raw format instead of opening up to Snapseed by going .DNG)

I don’t need my images so bad that I want to process them on my phone. I’ll get to them in my laptop when I have the time.

When my phone is involved, I don’t want to do any processing, except maaaaybe Instagram-like filters. Those photos are not for print or anything like that. When I want good photos not meant to be consumed just on 5” screens I want control.

I would much rather have a reliable rugged camera with manual only mode, weather sealing, huge battery, huge sensor, and cheap glass, than a smart camera.

Agreed, I know that personally I would like a camera that offered me both paradigms depending on the scenario. Not having used or looked into it much at all, something like the Hasselblad X1D seems to tread that line between dial control and a touchscreen interface in a way that is much closer to what I'm thinking.

What I would really like to see from a camera is the ability to take a photo, say when travelling, and having it automatically end up on your phone with computational imaging already applied. Then with a tap, be able to pull the RAW for more in depth processing if required. I know that I do most of my processing in DxO Photolab precisely because it takes a guess at the editing for a photo before I even touch it, and therefore I spend less time post processing.

>This user wants all the control, all of the time: they've invested time and effort into nailing exposure, mastering autofocus, all while composing beautiful shots. A smartphone interface is not what you want: the best images are often captured in difficult environments where a touchscreen just gets in the way and you must have hard control points.

You'd be surprised.

Enthusiast users clamor for good autofocus, want automatic HDR and bracketing, and lots of other things...

I've got some complaints when it comes to my a7r 3s interface, and I assume the 4 hasn't changed much, so I'm probably in the group you're talking about, but...

Having better autofocus, automatic HDR and bracketing, etc., to me, has nothing to do with having a smartphone like interface or computational photography.

I do want those things (or, kind of - I want better autofocus across the board, and I want the option of automatic hdr and bracketing) but I don't want an iPhone or Android style camera interface. That's damn near the opposite of what I want.

>I've got some complaints when it comes to my a7r 3s interface, and I assume the 4 hasn't changed much, so I'm probably in the group you're talking about, but...

A7R III is already another crowd, there are tons of people like simpler DSLR (e.g. Nikon D3500), simpler mirroless (e.g. Olympus PEN) and compacts (tons of models). Those could all use a "smartphone like interface" and "computational photography".

Now, for more hardcore enthusiasts:

>I do want those things (or, kind of - I want better autofocus across the board, and I want the option of automatic hdr and bracketing) but I don't want an iPhone or Android style camera interface.

Well, I'm a pro photographer (or have been, more into dev now, with a side of video), but I absolutely could use all that things.

Though by iPhone or Android camera interface I don't mean seeing the same thing in your mirrorless screen.

I mean more like the ability to download/write apps, advanced functionality made simple, things to automatically update/sync/post images, etc.

Think more like Magic Lantern -- and the ability to write or download stuff like that with an official API.

>I mean more like the ability to download/write apps, advanced functionality made simple, things to automatically update/sync/post images, etc.

I guess? I dunno. Perhaps it's my lack of ability, but it's only a small fraction of my shots that I want to do anything with, and I usually do at least some post processing on them before I do anything with them. I can't imagine wanting to do much of anything with any photo I take without doing at least some basic work in lightroom first.

Tyranny of the Minimum Viable User.

My treatment largely focuses on software, but if you consider SW a mechanism for delivering interface and output, it applies to a physical + controls system such as cameras. Previous iterations of this phenomenon include audio equipment and bicycles.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/69wk8y/the_tyr...