The Online Photographer

For a second there I thought it can actually alter the lighting on the photo, as in actually altering the lights and shadows position and strength, which would be beyond mindblowing. But no, it's just some filters with cool name. Alright then, nothing to see here, moving along...

If I were running a camera company I'd be pretty damn worried right now. Apple especially, and to a lesser extent Google, keeps doing cooler and cooler things. The sensor size might be small, but it may be that software is eating the camera world: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.

If I were a camera maker, I'd be laser focused on making Android the default camera OS and exposing APIs to the world's software developers. Yet none of them seem to care, even remotely. It's like none have learned Nokia's lesson. I wrote this: https://jakeseliger.com/2014/03/25/photography-and-tyler-cowens-average-is-over/ in 2014 and it's still true today.

"Not learning Nokia's lesson" is a very dangerous place to be. And I like the Panasonic G85 I have! But I find myself looking at phones like the iPhone X and thinking, "Maybe my next camera won't be a camera."

LOL, like cameras, I will wait for my smartphone to break before I replace it nowadays. The ideal time for a smartphone to break, if you're an Apple guy, is around September-October. For me, my 5s crapped out in July and I had to replace it right away (those things are indispensable, right?). I went with the 7.

I was hoping my 5s was going to make it through the fall, but no luck. I could have gotten a temporary "bridge" phone, but swapping things out takes time. I'm happy with the 7.

As I remarked a post or two back, I have decided to update my iPhone 4 from 2010 for an iPhone X. My wife thinks this is an absurd amount to spend on a phone. I have of course, countered by pointing out to her that my ability to do great phone calls is bring held back by restricting myself to what I currently have. I will expect to be able to talk to people in the future without so much background noise to contend with, and have larger, deeper and more meaningful conversations; people will call up to say they love me, the tax people will call to say that there is an error in my favour. And if that doesn't happen, I can always use it as a camera.

Mike - you do realise the Huawei P10 (and Plus variant) has a dedicated filterless monochrome sensor, right? It sits behind one of the two identical lenses and can be used for depth of field shenanigans, or as the sole producer of a really rather nice 20MP B&W image. Apple's computation-based approach will no doubt prove successful, but for this one brief iteration, there is a nice sweet spot using a 'traditional' approach.

Off topic but with all the video features of today’s cameras I wonder what and how people choose to display their videos at home.

marcin wuu is wrong. It's not a simple global filter (or even just a vignette and contrast changes). It's more interesting than that.

These effects use depth info (from the depth map that the camera's two imagers generate) to modify the lighting in the image in a selective and realistic manner.

I suspect they're (amongst other things) generating gradient info from the depth map (is the slope positive, pointing upwards e.g. on the nose or negative, pointing downwards e.g. under the chin) and then using the gradient info to change the brightness selective in portion of the image.

They could even do something similar to ray tracing using the depth map to determine which parts of the face occlude other parts of the body and get "illuminated" by the lights.

Just the way portrait or stage lighting does with real lights. Or computer animation does with virtual lights.

That's also how they "drop out the background" in the stage lighting portrait style looking for parts of the image that are behind the subject and dropping them to black.

So it's not a "simple filter". It's both computational photography and (a static version of ) augmented reality (and probably uses the same ideas and code provided by ARkit).

It's not perfect. There are already examples of how it can fail. The problems mostly lies in figuring out where the subject ends and the background begins: the universal problem of making masks with fuzzy or indistinct edges.

Here is a review of the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus as a phone, but most of the illustrations include a pair of Leica cameras as eye candy! One's a IIIa with a nice-looking Summar, the other is an M6 with a well-worn 35mm Summicron. It would have been nice if someone had extended the Summar in some of the shots.

Collecting an iPhone 8 at 8:30 Friday an upgrade from the 4 I have had since launch day. Paying £50 more for this new phone, than I paid for my first phone in 1989. That first phone was a second hand Mobira Cityman. The size of a brick and needed two batteries to last a day.
Also from the past calls cost different amounts at different times of the day. Full minute billing so if a call lasted 20 seconds it cost a minute. also calls cost more in London than the rest of the country. That was if you could get reception in the rest of the country.

How do you load the film? I'm experimenting with Bergger Pancro 400 lately, and am quite taken with Rollei RPX 100. I am under the impression that the latter is an Ilford/Kentmere derived emulsion.

OK, I've read a couple of articles about the iPhone 8; they all mention that the back of the phone is glass. One says that makes the 8 heavier than the previous phone. None say why the back is glass. It's not transparent, as far as I can tell. Why is it glass?

Also, what Tim Bradshaw said. I can't use cameras without viewfinders. I don't use "live view" for anything except macro because I can't see the screen and what I'm shooting at the same time. Not to mention the glare on the screen. I use my phone camera for taking notes, remembering addresses, showing the hardware store guy what's broken. Never for taking pictures.
Everyone gets old, if they're lucky. Everyone will eventually have the heartbreak of presbyopia, and have to stop using their phone as a camera.

I know we're not supposed to have discussions here, but:

Presbyopia means you have to put the glasses on to see the screen and take them off to look at the subject. (If you're wearing reading glasses, you can't see at any other distance.)
Clumsy and inconvenient.
Yes, there are bifocals, but they're pretty annoying too.

Additionally, if you didn't grow up with point and shoots, the ergonomics of cell phones-as-cameras are pretty awful. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to brace against.
I'll stay with my viewfinders, thanks.

But seriously, thanks for the answer about the glass back.