Is Video Driving Most of the Innovation in New Cameras?

[drd1135]

Is That All There Is? | Cameras and Photography Explained | Thom Hogan

Vlogging moves forward, stills not so much.

bythom.com

I find Thom Hogan interesting, if a bit curmudgeonly. It's an interesting idea that stills photography might be leveling off for many so that all of the new innovations are aimed at video.

 

[bartjeej]

What kind of improvement is still to be expected?

AF performance: sure, room for improvement

Dynamic range, color acuity, high ISO noise? We've pretty much plateaud for single exposure image quality. Any significant improvements with the current silicon-based technology will come from computational / stacked exposures, which highly benefit from faster readout speeds, so that's a shared interest with video requirements.

Body styles / handling? We're seeing rationalisation rather than experimentation and wide ranging options to suit various preferences (for stills cameras, at least; action cam / vlogging cameras are in a highly experimental phase right now) so this is unfortunately not an area in which I expect much progress; more likely regression unless you're lucky in that your preferences and a manufacturer's chosen direction align.

What else is there? Workflow? It's not improving rapidly, unlike all the supposedly wonderful AI based image improvement software, which the purist in me dislikes but the pragmatist in me admires.

Am I missing any major fields of development? Perhaps one could count weather sealing as a field showing some improvement over recent years, as well as (mostly video aimed) connectivity ports.

 

[JensM]

It probably is.

There are just so many ways to skin a cat, so to speak, and with digital photography reaching maturity over the last 5-8 years, what is left is video and just "incremental" developments in stills. If anything revolutionary do pop up, I will haphazard a guess to it being some sort of side-effect of some video thing.

The swift demise of the P&S segment probably doesnt help, either.

 

[gryphon1911]

I dabbled in video for a while. If you want to do video right, there is a lot more to it than stills, but stills is where my heart lies. Probably why I’m a fan of the Fuji retro dials and Nikon Df and Zfc.

I’m fine with the current state of stills cameras and if they don’t get any better, then that is ok.

The future is video for most of the social media platforms.

Not saying I may not get back into video at some point, but since dissolving the business I had, there is no imminent need to dive into it in a major way for money making reasons. I may look into it for journalism and documentary purposes…but yeah, I can see video pushing a lot of the innovation in the future. I think on this case function will follow form.

 

[drd1135]

What kind of improvement is still to be expected?

AF performance: sure, room for improvement

Dynamic range, color acuity, high ISO noise? We've pretty much plateaud for single exposure image quality. Any significant improvements with the current silicon-based technology will come from computational / stacked exposures, which highly benefit from faster readout speeds, so that's a shared interest with video requirements.

Body styles / handling? We're seeing rationalisation rather than experimentation and wide ranging options to suit various preferences (for stills cameras, at least; action cam / vlogging cameras are in a highly experimental phase right now) so this is unfortunately not an area in which I expect much progress; more likely regression unless you're lucky in that your preferences and a manufacturer's chosen direction align.

What else is there? Workflow? It's not improving rapidly, unlike all the supposedly wonderful AI based image improvement software, which the purist in me dislikes but the pragmatist in me admires.

Am I missing any major fields of development? Perhaps one could count weather sealing as a field showing some improvement over recent years, as well as (mostly video aimed) connectivity ports.

I think there’s still some room at the lower end for “fire and forget” tracking like the higher end bodies, but that’s not that far away. Sony is probably already there, and companies like Fuji are catching up. The problem is that the truly optimized vloggers camera is probably not the best for stills. It’s hard for all the camera makers to go the Leica route, i.e., high price and slow changes.

 

[CountingGx85Gx8G9s]

As someone who does video and will be adding a Gh6 very soon to my 2 G9's, I'd say that hybrid cameras are the future. Why, because its a digital world and video is the medium of choice for those who create for it. However, the real issues are cost of equipment and equipment need. Cell phones are "good enough" for many facebook/vimeo projects for stills or video. The creation of episodic or full length video productions requires a large investment in cost and the knowledge curve is steep. Cells phones will do well what 98% of the population needs, while the remaining 2% will require Hybrid Cameras. Take the Z9 and the Gh6 - not exactly traditional still cameras but examples of where the markets are going. Same with the new APSC Canon and Fuji cameras. It will be interesting in 5 years to see what the manufacturers are supplying to the market. Many forums are so heavily still concentric that members fail to see the depth of change taking place.