ilkka_nissila
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
| p.3 #1 · p.3 #1 · Will Canon engineers ever "shrink the lens"? | |
technic wrote:
Obviously one of the reasons we are seeing this technology in smartphones is that (besides far more computing power available) the users are less critical and the small display screens etc. mask much of the PP problems.
Yes, and this is my point. People are photographing for the purpose of posting photos on instagram which allows ... max 1080 pixel-wide images. The images are displayed in small size and low resolution so artifacts that occur from crude processing are harder to see. ILCs by contrast are approaching 100 megapixels and lens design has to take this into account.
in microscopy and astronomy we are seeing HUGE improvements
But these systems are neither compact (like a smartphone) nor inexpensive.
Look how far high end smartphones have come for capturing "tele" images with their tiny lenses, all in just a few years.
This is because the starting point was so poor, it was relatively easy to get from positively lousy to something usable but still not good outside of the display framework of the smartphone and instagram and other such apps. Further advances in quality will be progressively more difficult.
In some cases the quality will be good enough
Only because standards are really low. People spend time taking their self-portraits using a too short focal length and they get distorted features in the image and soon no one cares about the quality of an image.
I look forward to the day when I can spot/document (and automatically recognize) birds, dragonflies etc. at a distance with just a smartphone; probably a realistic option within 5 years.
Why would you want that? The way I understand it, a part of the fun of birding is doing the work yourself and trying to identify the birds - with whatever capabilities of eyes, brain and field craft you have. If you buy the identification capability from a shop, why go out there at all?
For photography contest quality pictures or real action photography, it will take much longer (if ever) to get there with much smaller cameras but how often is that needed?
Static images of wildlife are inherently boring and because we are inundated with them from every site, to pick the public's interest, the image has to have something special. Special light, special subject, special behavior or moment in time. Birds fly - that's their special thing, and so in-flight images are more interesting than static ones. Trying to catch food is interesting. Courtship and fighting with rivals is interesting. Trying to catch a moment where one bird grabs food from another's beak in the light of a golden sunset is interesting.
I have seen some very convincing examples for e.g. removing motion blur, camera shake
You can do these things on a computer as well, and arguably use much better algorithms and because computers are equipped with much larger screens, you can see when the approach works and when it fails due to algorithms.
But real improvement isn't going to happen until we have FAR more computing power available in-camera
I don't see why this has to happen in the camera. I'd much rather work on the images using a computer and monitor the results on a large screen to ensure quality.
I'm not dissing the weight loss in Canon superteles in any way, it's great engineering. But it is really sad that they apply that only to lenses that are big and heavy to begin with due to spec, no effort to make much smaller/lighter lenses which really isn't technically challenging. Look at the results of the 5.6/500PF lens, there are very few great images that would have required a more traditional (much heavier and costlier) 4/500 lens. If Nikon can do it, why not Canon?
Well, for every 500/5.6 user there is one who desires Nikon would make their version of Canon's 400/4 DO II, and vice versa. It is human to always desire the thing that one can't have.
Large-aperture lenses have both practical utility but also they seem to grab the public's and "influencers'" attention and their existence may lead to additional sales of lesser gear. Canon's approach to full-frame mirrorless seems to be to make exotic large-aperture lenses that no one else is making. They seem to be doing well in the marketplace, for what it's worth. People go and look at the Tokyo Olympics and notice all those Canon lenses and then they go and buy something from Canon. Or at least that's the plan. ;-) People will look at competitions of nature photographs and notice the results from the big teles.
I do agree that lesser aperture lenses are needed and because of mobility, hand-holdability and price concerns they may be a better fit for many people and situations than the ultra-exotics. But for what it's worth, Canon's approach seems to be working for Canon.
As a 500/5.6 PF user, I can say that a 500/5.6 isn't a do-all and be-all of wildlife photography. I was just the other day trying to get some photos of birds flying around a feeder so that their wings would be open and lit in amazing colors by the low settling sun through the trees in the background. I was at f/5.6, 1/500s, and needed an ISO of 14400 to get correctly exposed photos. I didn't get my shot but one of these days I will. The low light was due to the requirement for the sun to be in such position that it creates these colorful blobs in the forest as well as lights the wings in a certain way. Perhaps towards spring I will have better luck and get my image. But it is often the case that with an f/5.6 supertelephoto lens, one just doesn't get enough light to quite get the image one is looking for, in high quality. I'm not saying these lenses shouldn't exist - they should, and do, even if not from Canon. But the large aperture superteles were made for a purpose and they yield quite striking results, which their users may need to differentiate from the floods of images online.
|
