[BeetleB]

Completely agree. Why don't they provide APIs so people can customize the behavior and processing? Take a look at this:

https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/04/experimental-nighttime-pho...

Using a relatively crappy camera on a phone, they were able to get great results merely because they can program it.

As a simple example: I want to reduce high ISO noise by taking N photos and taking the median. This is an established technique in photo editing. Why do I have to manually tell the camera to take those N photos (and make sure autofocus and autoexposure is not enabled), and then transfer N images, and then load a program to do the median calculation for me? Why can't I create a plugin/app for my camera where I just input the number of photos and it does it all for me?

I think any camera manufacturer that makes an API available for their cameras could see a serious boost. People no longer have to rely on the company deciding what cool features to add.

There's really not been any serious innovation in DSLRs in over a decade. Pentax occasionally comes up with something neat, but that's about it.

[jdietrich]

You can already customise the behaviour of a Canon DSLR, because there's an open-source third-party firmware option with a Lua API.

https://magiclantern.fm/

[brokenmachine]

Casio had some cool features on their "High Speed" cameras. eg the EX-100 and before it the FH-100. It can buffer photos at 40fps while you half-hold the shutter, and then when you fully press the shutter, it will save a certain number of those frames from even before you fully depressed it. Great for catching, eg a bird taking off, or a sporting event.

It was an amazing feature but Casio has sadly exited the camera market now, and I haven't seen another camera with the same kind of feature.

[throwanem]

You can't do that because no one is building general-purpose computers into DSLRs - or, for that matter, MILCs - because no one cares about that use case, and the resources wasted on making it possible are better spent on supporting the things that photographers expect cameras to do.

That said, you probably could do something like that with sufficient effort invested in CHDK or Magic Lantern or whatever the current homebrew Canon firmware project is lately. I'll be fascinated to see what you come up with!

[BeetleB]

>because no one cares about that use case, and the resources wasted on making it possible are better spent on supporting the things that photographers expect cameras to do.

No one except all the people who are using smartphones instead of DSLR's, causing a decline in sales?

And what do you mean "no one cares"? The use case I've provided are precisely ones that "real" photographers care about. The amateur non-hobbyist photographer isn't going to want to do stacking on photos. The serious hobbyist/professional is.

CHDK and Magic Lantern are great. My problem is that I don't use a Canon :-) But even if I did, I assume these are all unofficial? The idea is for the manufacturer to have official APIs. Now of course, it does make it more likely one will reduce the lifetime of a camera with a poorly written plugin (e.g. one that wildly keeps using the focusing motors), but they can simply say the warranty is voided if you install custom firmware/plugins.

[throwanem]

Yeah, I mean, I do exposure stacking sometimes too, when I'm goofing around trying and failing to get good at landscape photography, for example. Sure, it's a bit of extra work to produce a finished shot. But it's not so much extra work that I've ever wanted to write code against an API built into my camera to do it for me, especially not when software tools already exist that let you load a set of images and then more or less automatically stack them for you. The same is true of macro focus stacking, which is a lot more work when done by hand. And I'm a lot happier with the idea of paying $50 or $100 for an application I run on the general-purpose computer I already own to do this kind of work, than I am with the idea of cramming a general-purpose computer into a camera that will not be a better camera, and may well be a worse one, for the addition.

(I don't shoot Canon either, and yes, the homebrew firmwares are homebrew and thus not officially supported. I don't really know what effect they have on the warranty, but based on things I've heard, I think people just reflash bodies with stock firmware before shipping to the service center and it's basically fine.)

It's also worth noting that smartphones and ILCs don't compete directly any more. They never really did; once smartphones with good enough cameras to take casual snapshots and family photos started happening, ILCs were done in that market. Since then, they've been specializing toward those markets where they don't have to compete against smartphones. You're more or less suggesting that they do the opposite, and I don't know if you realize that the reason they're not already doing that is because they got murdered the last time they tried it and they're not in a hurry to get murdered again.