Comment by gnarlynarwhal42 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnarlynarwhal42 | Hacker News Reader

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gnarlynarwhal42

I started with a second-hand Canon 20D back in like 2004 or something, only upgraded when I got a deal on an old 7D and only recently bought a new R6II and the autofocus is NIGHT AND DAY

I started buying the EF mount superfast primes because they're affordable now, but the 7D (more likely it was me) couldn't get the focus just right with such a shallow DOF

The R6 just doesn't miss. Low light/high ISO image quality is also MILES better.

Cameras are not in a death spiral. Artistically speaking, phones can't do what even a low end slr/mirrorless can do, its just that phones are good enough for the low-effort content 95% of people are interested in producing. Standalone cameras are inconvenient, bulky and require some level of artistic intention.

>Does any know how much volume there would be if cameras could be used in manufacturing processes for machine vision, on robots / drones, in self-driving cars, on building for security, as webcams for video conferencing, for remote education, and everywhere else imaging is exploding?

I don't know about the manufacturing or drone stuff, but for video conferencing and remote education, the point of the video really isn't image quality or "art" but just good enough picture to not get in the way of the real purpose of the interaction, so a whole camera kit is just added complexity/annoyance for no benefit.

IMO

> Cameras are not in a death spiral.

Sales numbers tell a different story.

> Artistically speaking, phones can't do what even a low end slr/mirrorless can do, its just that phones are good enough for the low-effort content 95% of people are interested in producing.

This is not correct.

A Pixel Pro has a 50 MP, f/1.7, 1/1.31" sensor. This is equivalent to f/4.6 in u43, f/6.6 in APS, and f/9.5 in FF.

This is slightly slower than a kit lens on paper, but this is more than made up for by more advanced sensor technology, and especially the ability to do things like fast sensor readout, which can read out many frames and combine exposures.

Side-by-side, shooting with a phone and a Panasonic u43 camera with a kit lens, I was getting perfectly good photos with the phone, and useless photos with the u43.

> I don't know about the manufacturing or drone stuff, but for video conferencing and remote education, the point of the video really isn't image quality or "art" but just good enough picture to not get in the way of the real purpose of the interaction, so a whole camera kit is just added complexity/annoyance for no benefit.

It depends on the context. People buy $100k Cisco remote conference rooms for a reason.

I've definitely spent >$10k on equipment in remote presentation / education contexts myself, and know many other people who have done likewise.

You should, at some point, figure out what popular education Youtubers, twitch streamers, etc. spend :) But there are similar contexts in scalable education, various kinds of sales, etc.

One of the core issues -- in context I've worked in -- is that reliability is king. I don't want interruptions. I'm happy to have three cameras feeding into OBS and a set of fixed setups, and I've even done custom plug-ins, but something like a mirrorless adds layers of complexity which can lead to bugs:

- Mirrorless

-> HDMI out

-> Elgato

-> USB

-> OBS

-> Virtual camera

A direct USB connection would remove a cable and an adapter.

> A direct USB connection would remove a cable and an adapter.

Most modern mirrorless cameras can be connected to a computer via USB and used as a video source. Some are nerfed to only run for 30 minutes or some other arbitrary number consistently, but most are not.

f/9.5 in Full Frame is abysmal and generally past the point where scene sharpness suffers from stopping down. Even when doing street photography or landscapes, I rarely stop down past f/8. Running something like my Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 S Z-mount lens at f/4 is sharper edge-to-edge than most other lenses at f/8, and gathers enough light to operate a pleasingly fast shutter speed for handheld work even in low-light. A phone does not compare. My wife has the latest Samsung Galaxy S, I have an iPhone 16 Pro, we both also have cameras (her a Fuji APS-C body, me the Nikon Z8 FF body), and we walk around and take photos composed correctly within each camera. We can see it, even without cropping. A camera body is much better than a phone if you care about the quality of your work, and especially if you ever intend to print.

#confidentlywrong

Most modern cameras can stream video to a computer through a proprietary protocol. These are implemented under Linux in gphoto2, and in other OSes, through some proprietary tool. During the great webcam shortage of covid, many companies made special, flaky Windows utilities to allow those to be used for web conferencing. Very few can natively as a USB Video Class (UVC) device. This is Canon's version:

https://www.dpreview.com/news/4796043082/canon-s-new-softwar...

Now, for Canon, it's a monthly subscription:

https://www.usa.canon.com/cameras/eos-webcam-utility

As a footnote: The general rule-of-thumb is about f/11 is where you start to notice diffraction limiting sharpness on full frame. That's a rule-of-thumb, and you're welcome to not step down below f/8, but calling f/9.5 "abysmal" is more than a little over-the-top. But no, a phone will not compare to a full frame with a $2000 f/1.2 lens. But it's quite competitive with a kit lens.

Video features are manufacturer and model dependent. Nowhere in my comment did I say that they use UVC vs requiring software. My Nikon Z8 as an example can be used with OBS over USB very easily, but you must install a driver and utility.

Regarding Canon, true enough, they gimp their products to be greedy. That's why https://www.magiclantern.fm/ exists.

Your general rule of thumb is irrelevant. There are many optics tests done of available modern cameras, including phones. Phones get nowhere close to the photographic quality of a proper camera, but are totally fine for viewing on another small screen or small prints.

My wife has had prints of photos taken with her phone hanging in galleries, but even she (who prefers a phone as an artistic style preference) would never dream of printing anything larger than a 5x8 from a phone. My photography prints on the small side tend to be 12x18, and I often print as large as 40x60. A photo from a phone is simply unusable for me.

Then you have issue with reading comprehension. The whole point of the discussion was this:

"The time to do this was about a decade ago. Apps, open formats, open USB protocols, open wifi / bluetooth protocols, and semi-open firmware (with a few proprietary blobs for color processing, likely) would have led things down a very different trajectory."

And the rest of your posts also misquote what I said and, ironically, just as often, what you said. There are also minor technical errors: diffraction limits are basic physics. It's a simple relationship between (a) the radius of the circle of confusion (in units of angle); (2) the frequency of light (in linear units, typically nanometers); and (3) the radius of the aperture (in linear units, typically mm). There is no voodoo with "sensor size, pixel pitch, and the lens optics." Most of your post is taking statements like a basic rule-of-thumb of what you need for decent photos and exaggerating to statements like "diffraction doesn't affect sharpness." Of course it's easy to beat up a statement if you misquote it. That's called a strawman.

So I think I'm done here. Give me your downvote, and I'll argue somewhere else.

I had to board an airplane so I couldn't type a full reply earlier. Diffraction limits are different based on the sensor size, pixel pitch, and the lens optics, and diffraction affects sharpness even with a more open aperture, it's just limited in comparison to the impact of increasing depth of field as you stop down. Part of composing a scene is choosing how you want to balance DOF / sharpness, which can go in many different directions depending on what you're trying to achieve.

It's simply not the case to say that diffraction doesn't affect sharpness below f/11, and diffraction is not the only impact that can affect outcomes from stopping down, when you stop down you are letting in less light over the same sensor area which affects almost every aspect of exposure, and has to be compensated for either by increasing ISO which increases noise or by reducing shutter speed which limits motion compensation when shooting handheld, all of which can affect the level of detail that is rendered sharply in a frame, either due to blurring or due to unrecoverable noise.

Generally, my personal preference is to stop down enough to get a sharp frame edge to edge across the center when trying to capture wide scenes, and no more, on many lenses f/4 is enough, generally no more than f/6.3 is required. You begin making serious tradeoffs as you stop down further, especially if, like me, you shoot handheld almost always, and often manually focus (e.g. subtle movements can affect your critical focus distance).

Your rule of thumb is largely irrelevant, you should be making these decisions each time you make an exposure to achieve whatever artistic effect you are going for.

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