Digital compact cameras are on the way out. Smartphones have taken over that segment for good. But Zeiss is looking at the segment with a fresh approach. Their announced ZX1 camera ( introduction video ) is a full-frame mirrorless camera with a fixed 35mm f/2.0 lens. But what's even more interesting is that it ditched the card slots in favor of an internal 512MB SSD and comes with built-in Lightroom Mobile....
TFOP is 1 year old!! Also: 5 years ago, spotting a classic camera was easy - it was film. Ade has a podcast about that and so does Chris . But now, how do we tell? Cameras now 15 years old are digital and digital technology is now mature enough that older cameras are not simply disappointing. Can you spot a future classic? Ade thinks he has one . So what exactly is the future of classic cameras? What will we look for? What will seem laughably lame?...
This week we look at an interesting and somewhat concerning trend. Geo-tagged photos are one of the culprits for some amazing landscapes to be literally run over by tourists. Chris talks about his experience at Murderhole Beach, Ireland and on the Lofoten Archipelago in Norway. An article on geotagging photos . Death at Taft Point . Video: Vox on how digital poularity is physically changing landscapes ....
Most of our cameras now have microphones. Ade has a travel camera that allows you to add 4 seconds of audio to a photograph. Then of course there is video. Many in camera mics - maybe all of them - are not delivering the audio quality we like but there are some great products that can enhance our camera capabilities with audio. Rode Video Micro | Sennheiser MKE 400 | But what should our cameras really have as functionality? Audio built in perhaps? Or Lightroom built in - actually now really a th...
Autonomous cars utilize an array of sensors: radar, lidar, ultrasonic and of course cameras. Leica, Light and Tesla are betting on a future where cameras can handle almost all of those sensing tasks. Leica Funds Camera-Guided Automotive System | Fstoppers | Leica Invests in Light as Part of Massive $121M Funding Round | Watch a Tesla drive in Paris through the eyes of Autopilot - Electrek | The Future of Photography episode 043: Cameras and Cars...
Do you ever see people walking along and making video calls? Often without headphones so lots of shouting going on. Did you ever see anyone walk straight into a lamp post or fall over a kerb? Is that something you do? But in some situations video calling is a crucial part of communications because it can provide a far more nuanced view of how messages are received - it's a richer picture. Military forces, emergency services and even surgeons depend on these technologies. So as our written langua...
Way back in Show 14 , Ade talked about how tools, toys and cloud services are integrating our workflow. But where, how, when and why do you want to use these? How do you build the Ultimate TFOP Workspace? How big is your monitor? How many RAID systems? Are you standing, sitting or lounging? How do you compose the score for a 360 spherical movie? Ade is embarking on all this just now and is learning a lot he wants to share... And maybe Adam Savage can help with First-Order-Retrievability ....
New manufacturing methods and old ones that are becoming accessible to the masses change how cameras are made. CNC routers, laser cutters and of course 3D printers are a part of this story. Chris picks four large format camera projects to illustrate this: Intrepid , Standard 4x5 (monorail) , Chroma , Cameradactyl ("my first 4x5") . Sunny 16 Podcast, ep 111, a discussion with the Intrepid founder...
In Show 018 , way back in July, we discussed the impact of on-body cameras and their impact on law enforcement. We now return to that with real-world input from listener Jon who is a police officer in the USA. Jon provides a view of the positive and negative impacts of these cameras. They don't make criminals or police officers suddenly behave well but they do provide evidence. In fact, maybe the biggest problem is how to deal with the increasing public expectation that there should be video......
Cameras make sounds. From mechanical shutters to cameras that play those sounds digitally. What are those sounds good for? Chris and Ade discuss how camera sounds give them personality and recognizability and how the shutter sound changes the dynamics in a portrait session. Jacobson Sound Blimps closing after 52 years , Photography Tips from the Top Floor, ep 414: DIY camera blimp (interview starts 10 minutes into the show), YouTube: The iPhone shutter sound is a Canon AE-1 . TFOP is in the top ...
This week Chris is travelling so Ade has taken over the show and used it to promote The Future of Film Photography (TFOFP). With Sunny16 podcast co-host Graeme and special guest Sandra Coan , Ade discusses the positive impact of using film in a commercial photography business, how to expose and light portraits with film and the role film will play in the future.
The last 10 years have seen a big change in how cameras are being used in cars. From the backup camera when reversing to the dash cam. From cameras as rear view mirrors ( Audio E-Tron ) to lane assist and obstacle recognition. From 360-degree parking helpers to autonomous logging trucks and obviously in self-driving cars, from Tesla to the more open-source approach of Comma's Openpilot . Also LIDAR is in the process of being turned into a solid-state system and prices are expected to come down....
An organisation of street events is asking photographers to gain verbal permission before shooting in a public place. The organisation , The Petapixel article that got us thinking . These are events that are about personal expression of sub-culture but how do we judge or decide between rights of photography in a public place versus respect of individuals? Is this a slippery slope? Is there a difference today from how digital natives will view the rights and risks tomorrow? Are we going to see a ...
Huawei wants to use an AI to help judge a photo contest . The Kirin 970 CPU with its NPU (neural processing unit). Pictures too grainy? Nvidia developed a new AI-based method to de-noise photos without prior knowledge of clean image data. ( The research paper , PDF). This has the potential to get us to grain-free low-light photography with small image sensors....
Ade has been away on a UK vacation. This included being underground in a tine mine, sea kayaking, an outdoor theatre production and more. So what cameras do all that? And more importantly ;-) how did Ade build a wish list for future cameras - whilst also celebrating the cameras we already have! Links: Geevor Tin Mine , Koru Kayaking , Minack Theatre , Olympus TG-4 , Some other tough cameras...
The number of lenses in smartphones has increased from zero to now three in some phones over the years. An article in the Washington Post mentions a prototype of a smartphone by Light that features nine lenses. This might become the next version of their L16 camera that we discussed in ep09 ....
I guess most of us have a mental image of movie or TV locations where big trucks carry enormous lights around the place. They have to be big so they can be far away from the actors. They have to be far away so the light doesn't fall off across the scene in shot. Inverse square law can be nasty. But maybe the world is changing. Cameras are better in low light than ever before. What if you could make a whole TV series with just ambient light? Sharp Objects on HBO is doing just that!...
Gimbals have had use in compasses, aircraft, rocket engines, astrology, still photography and film/video. We already talked about it in ep021 . The dji Ronin-S is a handheld gimbal for cameras up to 3.6kg that is in a price range that makes it attractive even to ambitious amateurs. (Follow-up from ep025 : Lightform Projection Mapping )...
A while back, Hasselblad announced a new camera with 400 MegaPixels. More recently, Fujifilm announced the Instax SQ6 . What happens when you pit them against each other? Can one of these systems claim to be more The Future of Photography than the other? How should we judge? What do you think?
Cardboard as a visual maker tool. Video: Adam Savage on discovering cardboard . Make Magazine cardboard projects . Cardboard furniture . Cardboard teleprompter . Google Cardboard . Nintendo Labo . Google AIY ( Vision Kit ). Jollylook cardboard camera for Fuji Instax....
It’s the marmite of sensors - you either love it or hate it. We are of course talking about the Fujifilm X-Trans sensor . Some say it delivers mushy detail and others say it has beautiful rendering. Occasionally there is common ground where most people think Lightroom does a not-great job on the raw files. But what’s this? Another new Fuji camera with a Bayer sensor you say? Yes, the Fujifilm X-T100 may be badged as entry-level but it has a lot going for it when it comes to sensor technology and...
For the last decade, smart phones have constantly improved their cameras in terms of megapixels and features, but it seems to get harder and harder to wow us with new photo-related features. At their developer conference, Apple introduced a deeper photographic feature set with a strong emphasis on machine learning. They are also working hard to catch up on some of Google's features. Chris and Ade talk about upcoming organization, grouping and sharing features in iOS 12, about a new depth-related...
We’ve seen Magic Lantern hack a bunch of Canon cameras to up-spec them. That’s great stuff and very powerful. But what if your camera manufacturer handed you the keys to their castle and invited you to muck about a bit? Ricoh/Pentax have just done exactly that, publishing an API for their DSLRs so you can write your own apps to control the cameras. Article on the Pentax SDK / Ricoh API Developer Connection . What would YOU make?...
How a tuning fork enabled an entire new industry. Over the history of photography, the location of the camera has usually been close the ground plane. Getting the camera up into the air historically required hot air balloons, airplanes, helicopters or pigeons . The invention of MEMS gyroscopes , combined with advances in battery technology ushered in a revolution that spread from smartphones to drones to camera gimbals , all available to us in small and relatively affordable packages called cons...
Do you use LUTS? They are becoming all the rage and gaining far more technical support in photo editing where they used to be more just for video. So Ade has been trying a new tool called Image 2 LUT that can help you capture and refine looks from images that inspire you and can speed up workflow. What is a LUT? / LUTS in Affinity Photo. / Get some LUTs here. / A.I. update. Skylum buys Photolemur and invests in AI....
1) EarthNow (among others backed by Airbus, Softbank and Bill Gates) are planning to bring us (or rather big businesses and governments) real-time video of the earth from above. Is this beneficial or are we talking about Enemy Of The State territory? We discuss the benefits and the dangers. 2) Flickr was acquired by Smugmug . After Yahoo (and with it Flickr) were bought by Verizon last year, photographers were getting worried about the focus of their platform. We think this current development i...
Have you ever tried to find stock photography that really works? It's hard. A lot of stock images are so cheesy that this Hollywood movie made spoof images for promotion . How could it be made easier? Step in Pond5 . Imagine you see a perfect shot for your commercial photo shoot or film but you know the subject is licensed - maybe the Empire State Building or something. Just take a photo with your phone, send it to Pond5 and they will send you back a whole list of of licensed images or video to ...
Out of sync sensory inputs can cause sickness. Car sickness and sea sickness for example. It happens when our vestibular system doesn't agree with our other senses. VR and AR will have the same issue, but for an additional reason: the vergence (angle) and accommodation (focus) of our eyes don't agree in those environments. Wired wrote about this ....
What if Instagram and Twitter paid you for your photos? Never happen? Well check out Steepshot and Zappl Credit to Lightstalking.com for the article that prompted this show.
Projection mapping is nothing new, but today's computers enable amazingly creative ways to project images onto anything from irregular screens to buildings to moving faces. Videos: Music video: Pomplamoose (Happy), Getting started in projection mapping (tutorial), VPT (projection mapping software), building mapping primer , augmented reality sandbox , projection mapping on a moving face , Omote , Box (advanced illusion) ( behind the scenes )....
