Photography won't be the same after the iPhone 7

[Craig Good]

The New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/with-the-iphone-7-apple-changed-the-camera-industry-forever

NB: I assume that where the article refers to the startup, Light, they mean Lytro. A friend of mine used to work there, and they've been into light field photography for a while.

[Brian Howell]

No, the article refers to this company and product: https://www.light.co

I disagree with the concluding statement of the article, by the way. Yes, low-end point-and-shoot cameras are probably doomed. But mid-tier ICL (interchangeable lens) cameras will be around for a long time. So will upper end, like my Nikon D810: it has about 2.8 times the resolution of the 12MP iPhone 7 camera(s), but the sensor is also several times larger, which means that so are the photosites (the proper term for the imaging individual areas used to capture photo and generate pixel data). As a result, more photons can be gathered faster per photosite, resulting in several binary orders of magnitude higher quantization levels, and at higher signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). Given my understanding of the quantum mechanics involved, I don't think any phone camera will be outputting16- to 14-bits per channel, ISO 12,800 images anytime soon.

And then there is the issue of lenses: I'll pit my full frame f/4 35mm to 16mm extreme wide-angle and my f3.5 to f5.6 28mm to 300mm wide-angle/extreme telephoto lenses (with active vibration reduction) against any phone any day, for years to come.

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Brian Howell
www.linkedin.com/in/bdhowell

[Craig Good]

> On Sep 11, 2016, at 21:32 PM, Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No, the article refers to this company and product: https://www.light.co

Ah. Yet another light field sort of camera. That does seem to be the coming thing.
>
>

High end cameras will probably survive as a niche. But when light field photography has all the pixels it needs to play with, it’s going to replace a lot of what are now “prosumer” cameras. Of course, those same sensors may mean that the few high-end cameras being made will be pretty awesome.



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--Craig WWSJD?
clg...@me.com http://www.craig-good.com
Nobody ever went broke with money in the bank.