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Comment by jurassic | Hacker News Reader

I'm a prosumer hobbyist with a Nikon D850 and a handful of expensive lenses that I enjoy, but I'm not sure I would buy them again. I love the experience of shooting with them and loath the experience of getting my images off the device and onto a computer or phone. It creates a film-like experience where by the time I get around to processing images I've often forgotten what I've shot.

What I really want is an iPhone software experience paired with the physical ergonomics of a specialized device like a DSLR/mirrorless camera. Whoever can deliver that will get a lot of money from me. I want real connectivity built into the device made an integral part of the experience, not what you have today which is usually some half-baked thing where you have to attempt numerous times to pair over bluetooth with the unpolished companion iPhone app.

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Preach it. Shooting on an interchangeable lens camera is still effectively like shooting a film camera.

They do have software to pair to your phone. I am most familiar with Fuji’s solution for that, which is, to put it charitably, execrable. It is painfully slow and glitchy. (I’ve heard better things about Nikon’s latest, but I haven’t used it.)

Thing is: I think that would require a partnership with Apple or Google, or perhaps Samsung. I think you’d need a lower-level API for very quick pairing and a smart handoff to a low-power mode that doesn’t suck your camera battery dry over the course of about 4 hours.

I recently bought a sony a7r IV, expecting the phone integration to be much better than my 5 year old Fuji X-T2, and both are unbelievably slow and painful to connect and download photos. It's such an outdated and bad experience, and the apps are glitchy and connections fail the first 2-3 times.

what I do is have an SD card reader for my phone and ipad. It's miles better (of course) than all the different connectivity apps that the camera brands offer.

>I want real connectivity built into the device

Cellular networks don't seem fast/cheap enough to upload thirty 100MP images from anywhere you happen to be (or 4K video). 5G is not going to be there all the time when you are out in the woods. Pro photographers often carry a hard drive that you can plug an SD card into to backup your photos immediately in the field. When they get home they plug the drive into a computer and run ingest software (there are a variety of these available) and automatically all their photos are then in a known place ready to be reviewed, edited, etc. It's not wireless, and it takes a little discipline and takes some time to research and set up, but once you have a system it would seem to be fairly painless (haven't tried it yet myself) and would make your photos and video available quickly without having to think about it much.

I haven't tried one and don't know if it actually works in practice, but it sounds like you want the Zeiss ZX1[0]. It has Lightroom on the camera.

[0] https://www.zeiss.com/consumer-products/int/photography/zx1....

For a little while, Samsung was making an Android DSLR, which they called the Galaxy NX. It didn't make a big splash in the market, which I think is a shame.

I don't know how it holds up against newer DSLRs sensor-wise, but frankly I think those have long since surpassed my needs anyway. I might try to get my hands on one just to play with the software experience.

The software, and integration with my other devices, feels twenty years in the past (I have a Sony) and the quality of still photography is better, but with phone cameras steadily closing the gap.

The quality of video is massively better, however. Just no comparison.

My ideal would be for Apple to buy Blackmagic. Probably wouldn't, but... can you imagine if they did?

I like the work they did together on the eGPUs.

It would be much more interesting to me than the Beats acquisition.

I've not had a standalone camera* in years, but contemplating the cheapest way to get back in so I can shoot some of the kids' sports.

All I want, like I think you're alluding to here, is a micro 4/3rds interchangeable lens camera that has good integration with my phone. Apple would absolutely kill it if they had one with their camera ISP (even with an older CPU*), and just instantly dumped the photos into your library on the phone.

* except for a few action/waterproof ones

* say the A12, it's being used in the new AppleTV, so why not.

I shoot mostly around the house (kids), and the Sony FTP transfer feature is a godsend. Images get uploaded to my NAS over my wifi as I’m shooting, and subsequently filed away under dated folders and synced to Photostructure and NextCloud by a small shell script using inotifywait.

Neat! Are you using `photostructure sync $DIR` to import the new directories after they're copied over?

Yes, that’s right. I sync any directory which has files moved into it.

"FTP" - very convenient and all. Just one thing: to me looks like when Inet dropped FTP becouse unsecure and too complicated to configure LOL camera industry instanlty picked it up... So, are camera's manufacturers totally dumb or FTP was too good for plain internet users ? And FTPS or FTPTLS idea was too hard to use ? But monstrosity like HTTP+many-many-addons is OK ?

Well, it’s on my own private network so I’m not as concerned. I don’t expose my NAS to the public.

Thanks for that comments, that’s help me a bit in my understanding but bear with me, I haven’t use a camera in 5 or 6 years.

My favorite methods was to remove the SD card from the device and plug it into my computer thought a clunky adaptor. Usually I would do that once a month.

Is that not a option anymore?

It is, and it's still clunky.

Is the Nikon app an acceptable improvement to workflow? I understand it only moves a 2MP copy of the image to your phone or tablet which is a bizarre constraint but likely easily fixed in future updates if enough users demand it.

When shooting JPEG, I just use an Apple Lightning to USB Camera Adapter cable, and import straight to my phone (and iCloud Photo Library).

The cable is in my camera bag, and it takes less than a minute to do the import.

Have you tried wifi SD cards?

https://thedroidguy.com/6-best-wifi-sd-cards-in-2019-1096952

Clunky at best

What is so difficult with removing an SD card and popping it into your PC? If you’re a prosumer, you probably review and edit photos, which is better done on a bigger monitor anyway.

It would be easier if I had more ports on my computer, but the trend from Apple and other computing providers is to reduce, streamline, and eliminate opportunities physical connectivity. Even with a top-end Macbook Pro, you've only got 4 ports. One for power, two for external monitors, and you're down to 1 for everything else. So I have a big nest of dongles and adapters to accommodate my keyboard, mouse, microphone, webcam, printer, yubikey, and camera card readers. It looks like a major fire hazard.

It's not the end of the world, but it's enough friction that I tend to handle review/editing in batch rather than after every shoot. That's a luxury that I have as a hobbyist, since nobody is expecting me to send them my edits right away.

UX is all about small changes that have a big impact to how you use something. And the physical inconvenience of digging through my adapter/dongle nest is a deterrent, as is the clunkiness of Adobe Lightroom.

Oh ok, sorry I just posted a comment and you address my question here.

Yah. With modern laptop I consider a docking station mandatory.

Won't it be enough to shoot a few hundred pictures with a negative and a digital camera, and run some ML with a precomputed heuristic, to make a digital filter?

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