[crazygringo]

I don't really see the point.

Things like low-light photography has always been available on DSLR's, like SLR's long before it, since you've always been able to control shutter speed, aperture, and ISO.

And all the extra software magic can already be done on your laptop on RAW files, where you've got enough space on your screen for all the sliders -- and a large enough screen to see the difference it makes in the details.

These days, pretty much the only people shooting with DSLR's are the people who want/need that fine-grained manual control anyways.

[sudosysgen]

The big issue that's missing are stacked exposure RAW files with gyroscope and accelerometer data.

When that becomes available, then yes the possible processing on a computer will match and exceed what can be done on a phone.

If any camera would be able to do it, I'd bet on the Sony A9iii or A7iv.

[crazygringo]

Ah, that's a great point.

It does seem like it's high time for there to be some kind of RAW-over-time standard, e.g. a single file with 2 hours of exposure that Photoshop would have built-in tools to manage -- and even the ability to handle matrix transformation movement over time, e.g. to photograph stars over 5 minutes.

I wonder how useful it would be to embed gyroscope/accelerometer data with it though? Everything I imagine having to do with long/stacked exposures involves a tripod.

Motion data actually seems like it would be more useful to embed in regular-exposure RAWs, since it could help build a deconvolution kernel to undo motion blur.

[sudosysgen]

The idea would be that all stills, instead of being just a single still, are actually multiple stills that can be stacked on top of one another in order to reduce noise and reduce motion blur, as well as increase dynamic range.

Of course, this would need a camera with much faster sensor readouts, which should be possible with Sony's next generation of stacked sensors.

[crazygringo]

I would love that. I'm incredibly curious to see where things are headed, because it feels like this has to be the way forwards.

Of course, storing 100 or 10,000 stills would up storage requirements dramatically -- but then lossless compression should bring that back down to entirely reasonable levels.

Because all you really have to do is compute the "average" image across the entire exposure (or at various "keyframes" if there's significant motion) and then encode the differences from those, which is trivial to compress.

I really hope this is something we see in the next 5 years, as opposed to 20 years.

[numpad0]

What about multi focal aspects of smartphone triple/quad cameras? Aren’t they supposed to add some sort of data points?

[traceroute66]

> These days, pretty much the only people shooting with DSLR's are the people who want/need that fine-grained manual control anyways.

Or people who shoot journalism, sports, conferences or other live events.

I don't care how damn good smartphones are (or will become). DSLRs will forever rule the roost in fast paced environments, smartphones are just too fiddly and there's nothing the manufacturers can do, the hinderance is not software, its form-factor.

[crazygringo]

But what computational photography aspects that only Apple/Google provide are going to be useful for journalists or sports photographers?

That was the original question, and I'm not seeing it.

Obviously they're using DSLR's for the manual controls and lenses. But my point stands: if they need advanced image processing for something they're going to publish... they need to adjust it on a large screen. Not on-camera.

[ValentineC]

> And all the extra software magic can already be done on your laptop on RAW files, where you've got enough space on your screen for all the sliders -- and a large enough screen to see the difference it makes in the details.

Not entirely true: DSLRs wouldn't be able to capture depth data like the dual/triple-camera phones can, for "computational photography" magic (or simple masking).

[ponker]

The point is, the sensor size, lens variety, and ergonomics of a full size camera with the astonishingly good computational photography software of Apple or Google. You can’t do it with a standard camera because the software needs sensor data (gyro, accelerometer) and fast control (video frames, changing exposure) of the camera unit.