[Klaus]

http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/09/2...trait-mode

 

It may not be the real thing but it's the next death dance for digicams - including the premium ones.

Software kills hardware ...

[southerncross]

Hopefully it will kill the bokeh in photos as a status symbol. Selective focusing is way overused in the last decade. But garbage in garbage out still applies to software, in the end smartphones will still be limited by their sensors and optics. I can't imagine how they will brings us some quality telephoto range in smartphones. A diagonal fisheye for the ultimate selfie? Maybe will see it as a third sensor with software de-fishing for rectalineal ultrawide photos. We are already half way there with LG G5. 

[Rover]

Hopefully it will kill the bokeh in photos as a status symbol. Selective focusing is way overused in the last decade. 

I agree wholeheartedly. This has become a subject of (unhealthy) obsession lately, to the point of becoming a sole measuring stick for the quality of both equipment and sometimes the photographs. I guess it needs to be tuned down a tad.

[JJ_SO]

Hopefully it will kill the bokeh in photos as a status symbol. Selective focusing is way overused in the last decade.

 

I disagree very much   Selective focusing exists since Dr. Erich Salomon used an Ermanox to become the "invisible photographer". He was killed by the Nazis, so a bit more than only a decade. It was not first "bokeh" and then "fast lenses", the bokeh became fashion lately and started it's career around 1990. I think you mean as "status symbols" the Otii from Zeiss?

 

Some say it's worth the price and judging something as "status symbol" only tells me about "one is envy" - otherwise you could stay calm. f/1.4 lenses became "normal", more affordable around 50 years ago.

 

I expect a photographer to do selective focusing. I want him or her to decide what I am supposed to see - we all tell a story very focused, otherwise our audience would go to bed before we elaborated about the exact dressing of the aunt of the main person...

 

When you think about how much pictures are taken daily, how much of them make it to the internet and how few of them are taken with f/1.0...f/2.0 your point becomes quickly irrelevant - but when we look at which pictures get the most clicks ( = drags the most attention; ≠ are the best pictures) things might look different, I suspect.

Ask flickr...

 

This might have to do with thumbail views, when you do a photo search. It also might have to do something with a lot (affordable) lenses coming out with fast apertures and people try to learn how to handle them. I'm sure in your life were also at some age some subjects overly present. Nothing to worry about, it will pass. But complaining? Why not inventing the new big thing? 

[Klaus]

I think the point is that such a function is "good enough" for 80% of the people thus they wouldn't even consider a (premium) digicam anymore. And without a digicam step-stone even less people will become interested in system cameras.

 

Honestly I don't understand why one of the smartphone manufacturers isn't coming up with a lens mount. If Panasonic can do the CM1 they should be able to do more than that.

[toni-a]

P&S digicams are doomed IMHO the development of smartphones will make them obsolete

[Studor13]

But garbage in garbage out still applies to software.

Maybe so but I can see a LR plugin coming that gives you the "Leica glow" if your starting point is say images made with a decent NikCan f1.4 lens.


As is, this first attempt from Apple is quite decent. I think that they even made an effort to tame semi-blown highlights as well as smoothing out straight lines.


Any particular reason why the woman in the link is wearing an Apple Watch?

[Rover]

I have a smartphone. The reason I'm never using it to make pictures - even though nominally it has not one, but two cameras - is not its inability to provide fancy DOF effects, it's its overall inability to make a decent picture. My 2 megapixel Panasonic digicam from 2003 (I still have it somewhere... though the batteries are probably long since dead, and there isn't a suitable flash card in the household) was giving better picture quality, differences in the actual lenses notwithstanding. It has its role in my photography however - I'm using it to send the pictures from the field.

 

I understand that not all smartphones are this bad, especially not the more modern ones (mine is a 2012/13 model). My wife's Nokia 920 is head and shoulders better, but... at the end of the day it's just that: a tiny sensor with no low-light capabilities to speak of, capped by a tiny fixed focal length lens. Can it make publishable pictures (for online and print media)? Yes, with a few caveats. Does it hold a candle to a basic APS-C DSLR (in this case, the 650D) or CSC (in this case, the Sony NEX-3)? Hell no. Probably not a patch on a Âµ4/3 CSC either.

[southerncross]

I disagree very much   Selective focusing exists since Dr. Erich Salomon used an Ermanox to become the "invisible photographer". He was killed by the Nazis, so a bit more than only a decade. It was not first "bokeh" and then "fast lenses", the bokeh became fashion lately and started it's career around 1990. I think you mean as "status symbols" the Otii from Zeiss?

 

Some say it's worth the price and judging something as "status symbol" only tells me about "one is envy" - otherwise you could stay calm. f/1.4 lenses became "normal", more affordable around 50 years ago.

 

I expect a photographer to do selective focusing. I want him or her to decide what I am supposed to see - we all tell a story very focused, otherwise our audience would go to bed before we elaborated about the exact dressing of the aunt of the main person...

 

When you think about how much pictures are taken daily, how much of them make it to the internet and how few of them are taken with f/1.0...f/2.0 your point becomes quickly irrelevant - but when we look at which pictures get the most clicks ( = drags the most attention; ≠ are the best pictures) things might look different, I suspect.

Ask flickr...

 

This might have to do with thumbail views, when you do a photo search. It also might have to do something with a lot (affordable) lenses coming out with fast apertures and people try to learn how to handle them. I'm sure in your life were also at some age some subjects overly present. Nothing to worry about, it will pass. But complaining? Why not inventing the new big thing? 

I have nothing angaist available light photography, but I think selective focus in this case came out of necessity before becoming an artistic statement in itself.

 

But my point was that a lot of people felt the need to differient their selves from the point and shot crowd by using their aperure advantage. A creative clutch. Thus bokeh returned with a vengence in the last decade. 

 

I expect framing and composition to give me the highlights, in other words the enterity of the photo to show me what to look selective focus can be a part of this or maybe not. 

 

As for me having started with manual focus and exposure and f/1.8 and f/2.0 lenses in the film era, in digital I tried to tame another beast, the ultra-wide, fisheye, macro and telephoto range. I think I failed but I became better in wide to short telephoto range. I think I qualify as someone who could walk the 85mm f/1.4 FF route but choose not to do it. 

[southerncross]

Maybe so but I can see a LR plugin coming that gives you the "Leica glow" if your starting point is say images made with a decent NikCan f1.4 lens.


As is, this first attempt from Apple is quite decent. I think that they even made an effort to tame semi-blown highlights as well as smoothing out straight lines.


Any particular reason why the woman in the link is wearing an Apple Watch?

 

It is the way of this world you cannot create information out of nothing. The real question is how good leds can get in smartphones, because without light you can't get far. As for the quality I think in well-lit conditions they actually surpass the current HD monitors. 4K has a long way to make better image quality a necessity for the masses.