
Photography is dead, long live photos - nreece
http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/10/switched-on-photography-is-dead-long-live-photos/?
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gprisament
There are a number of serious problems with this vision:

1) Of course the digital components of cameras (storage size, sensor
resolution, processing power) will continue to improve at Moore's law pace,
but optics is quickly becoming the limiting factor. In particular, diffraction
limits sharpness as you increase depth-of-field (a result of the small
aperture size) and the limited number of photons in dark scenes limits our
high-ISO potential and resolution on small sensors.

2) "...the ability to keep everything viewable in focus at the same time".

Even if you could do this you wouldn't want to. Depth-of-field and focus point
are some of the most important creative decisions a photographer makes per
photo, and since they are "3D" phenomenon the effects cannot be accurately
simulated during post-processing. (maybe stereoscopic cameras would be able to
but then you need two lenses, which would add cost & weight in comparison to a
"single" lens model)

3) "But perhaps the most radical thing about this camera is that it's really a
camcorder. Rather than take individual stills, Wonder Camera owners would
simply have their pick of perfectly crisp photos as frames grabbed from
video."

Maybe, but there would have to be a way to have it integrate over several
frames to get long-shutter-speed effects, and there would have to be a way to
"tag" points in time so you're not sifting through hours of footage later to
get the stills you wanted. Much of what this article proposes sounds like it
just defers work (choosing aperture, choosing shutter speed, choosing point in
time) to a later point, something I would NOT think photographers would want
to do, since they already complain about how long post takes!

4) Finally, even this concept turns out to be 100% correct, I don't see it
changing the art of photography all that much. As other people here mention,
good photography is about good subject matter, framing the shot, clever use of
lighting (whether artificial or available), post-processing to get the desired
artistic effect, and being in the right place at the right time. Technology
can certainly assist us with these things, but fundamentally it is these human
element, not the technology, that makes photography what it is, and that won't
change. As technology improves the photographer's decision process focuses
less on making technical trade-offs (like shutter-speed vs aperture, high-ISO
vs noise), but the creative aspects remain as important as ever.

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ugh
It’s a boring concept. Get on with it, Canon, don’t waste our time with
concepts. Don’t tell, just do. You are the biggest maker of cameras in the
world. Leave publishing concepts to those who can’t actually make the future
happen.

Aside: I don’t think photography will ever die. Video is not just improved
photography, it’s something different. Stopping the action and making it
possible to look at details are unique to photography. Photography is not just
a wax cylinder [+] that will be cast aside as progress marches on. (Shooting
halfway decent videos is also much harder than shooting halfway decent photos.
But, arguably, people might not care about that and shoot their pathetic
videos anyway.)

[+] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonograph_cylinder>

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jberryman
Exactly. And personally I think digital photography is a completely different
animal from film and becoming more so everyday.

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lukev
When I've seen professional photographers at work, they seem to operate by
taking a LOT of photos, often manipulating the shutter as fast as it can go,
in the hopes that one of the pictures will be just right.

Isn't this the logical extension of that practice?

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yardie
That's the new way of doing it. The art of photography is about framing,
subject, lighting, and a range of other factors. When film cost money it was
about squeezing good shots out of a roll of 24 or 36. The cost of film,
development, and blackrooms had a real $ value attached to it. You hired a
photographer because he/she knew what they were doing and knew what you
wanted.

Now, digital cameras are cheap and everyone has one. You can basically post a
project online, and get 1000 photographers to respond. Instead of hiring 1
photographer to hopefully get "the" shoot. You can browse through flickr and
other photo sites chances are they will have what you need.

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varjag
Just like motion pictures killed photography, right? After all it was just the
same as still photography, only 24 times per second?

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Corrado
I think you guys are being a bit too short sighted. This shows some pretty
neat "out-of-the-box" thinking about photography. In the past you were
restricted to taking lots and lots of photos to possibly get one that worked.
With video streams you can capture all you want and then go back and find the
gems; probably stuff that you didn't even see the first time through.

Think about a play at your child's school; while your concentrating on your
kid some other kid on the other end of the stage does something funny. Now you
can go back "in time" and grab both shots and even a short section of video
for context.

The whole thing makes me think of Blade Runner and the ability to shoot such
high definition "streams" that you can "zoom - enhance" them all day long.
Pretty cool if you ask me.

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slantyyz

      *Think about a play at your child's school; while your concentrating on your kid some other kid on the other end of the stage does something funny. Now you can go back "in time" and grab both shots and even a short section of video for context.*
    
    

I'm not sure that is the case. The weakest link in photography and videography
is the human holding the camera. No amount of technology can fix that.

What does that mean? People with camcorders tend to zoom and pan like there's
no tomorrow (classic case of "just because you can doesn't mean you should").
So assuming that a normal person is shooting their kid's play, they probably
don't know to shoot it wide, meaning that the funny moment will be still
offscreen, since the camera's zoomed in on their kid. And I haven't even
mentioned any depth-of-field settings yet.

Some of the ideas in the concept are neat and make sense in theory, but in
practice, you're just going to end up with way more video that none of your
friends and family want to watch and are too polite to tell you so.

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bittersweet
To me, photography is all about thinking about the shot you are going to take.
Things that people have mentioned before me, framing, lighting etc, this just
takes the heart out of it in my opinion.

Also, I wonder if this is going to take users a lot longer to pick out photos.
Even now with digital camera's and people shooting at will there is a whole
lot of material to browse through to pick a few photos that are good.

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yoshiks
photography won't be dead. I heard same opinion when digital camera emerged.
One day you see that beautiful liquid "photo"stream, but at same time you can
still feel the beauty of gelatin silver print as great "photography".

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migpwr
I know this article's focus is more on the technology but this specific camera
is going to look incredibly old in a year or two.

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lurkinggrue
I'll stick to my 7D for now.

