Yea. You can't beat the physics of big optics... but there ARE ways to get around some of the limitations of smaller optics.
You can fake depth of field, use image stabilization and image stacking to gather more light with a smaller aperture, utilize "super resolution" and/or neural network techniques to get or fake more detail, etc.
I'd love to see some of the awesome work being put into phones carry over into full-frame cameras before the whole pro-sumer market and a bunch of the pro market dissolve.
Image stabilization and stacking both started in SLR's before phone cameras were doing it. The best image stabilization is still opto-mechanical, of course.
Nobody fakes depth of field that well, and super resolution (the algorithmic kind, not the real kind) doesn't work that well either. We've been doing research in those areas for 25+ years now, and while some real progress has been made it's not magic.
Phone cameras are doing a lot of heroic stuff to get around the limitations of their optics, and it results in "hey, that's not bad". Nothing wrong with that!
But I don't see why you would want to see that stuff in a digital SLR, say, though - if you take your photography seriously enough to lug that thing around, you're doing post processing on a computer anyway, and you can do all that stuff better there (at least in theory). Now if you were asking why photo processing software on your desktop wasn't absorbing or improving on everything in the phones, that would make more sense to me.
Well first of all, there are things that can be done in camera better than they can be done in post in any reasonable amount of time. Image stacking is one of those, since alignment even with the best software is spotty, and cameras could include fairly robust accelerometers to do a bunch of the work in the background. There's also currently no depth info in DSLR images, so image processing involving depth of field isn't going to work unless you do the work by hand, which is quite laborious. In addition, it would be very nice if HDR pictures could be taken by my full-frame camera. I don't necessarily want or need to deal with bracketing in lightroom just to get an extra couple stops of dynamic range.
You're right that the best image stabilization is opto-mechanical, but it would be very nice to have access to digital image stabilization as well as in-body and in-lens stabilization. Again, a decent accelerometer can go a long way.
Honestly, most of what I'd like to see has involved image stacking in one form or another. Digital ND filters are the same idea.
And don't get me started on ergonomics and usability. I definitely picked the worst camera brand in terms of user interface (sony), but all the DSLRs and mirrorless cameras I've touched are noticably lacking in that department. I don't necessarily need a giant phone screen like my S9+, but I would expect a device costing $2000+ to at least have a fairly high resolution OLED panel on the back of it with solid touch controls. Meanwhile touch controls are distinctly lacking in any camera I've tried.
> Well first of all, there are things that can be done in camera better than they can be done in post in any reasonable amount of time. Image stacking is one of those, since alignment even with the best software is spotty, and cameras could include fairly robust accelerometers to do a bunch of the work in the background. There's also currently no depth info in DSLR images, so image processing involving depth of field isn't going to work unless you do the work by hand, which is quite laborious. In addition, it would be very nice if HDR pictures could be taken by my full-frame camera. I don't necessarily want or need to deal with bracketing in lightroom just to get an extra couple stops of dynamic range.
> You're right that the best image stabilization is opto-mechanical, but it would be very nice to have access to digital image stabilization as well as in-body and in-lens stabilization. Again, a decent accelerometer can go a long way.
> Honestly, most of what I'd like to see has involved image stacking in one form or another. Digital ND filters are the same idea.
> And don't get me started on ergonomics and usability. I definitely picked the worst camera brand in terms of user interface (sony), but all the DSLRs and mirrorless cameras I've touched are noticably lacking in that department. I don't necessarily need a giant phone screen like my S9+, but I would expect a device costing $2000+ to at least have a fairly high resolution OLED panel on the back of it with solid touch controls. Meanwhile touch controls are distinctly lacking in any camera I've tried.
> Software is important too!
I would like to see a panorama mode also vs firing up stitcher applications. All these should be basic firmware upgrades tbh even on the older models. Features available on a CoolPix entry level camera should not be missing from prosumer DSLRs.
Panoramas are one of the things I wish I hadn't left out of that comment. It blows my mind that a phone can do this so much better than a camera unless you invest in special mounts and such.
I got a Canon Rebel SL3 recently (APS-C, not full-frame, but still...) and it can do HDR on-camera. I wish it would save each individual exposure too instead of just the composite though. It also has touch controls on the display and a REST API for remote control via wifi. And this is not that expensive a camera.
Sounds like another direction to expand RAW formats. Accelerometer data is small, burst shots wouldn’t be that hard to take diff and store along. Then you could hypothetically feed it to Photoshop 2022 and run a 3D reconstruction.
You can fake depth of field, use image stabilization and image stacking to gather more light with a smaller aperture, utilize "super resolution" and/or neural network techniques to get or fake more detail, etc.
I'd love to see some of the awesome work being put into phones carry over into full-frame cameras before the whole pro-sumer market and a bunch of the pro market dissolve.