inconsequence

Salient features of the new Sony pellicle cameras

So, as the rumor mills asserted, Sony has released four new interchangeable lens cameras with DX sensors, two of them DSLRs and the other two pellicle cameras designed to look like DSLRs. The new DSLRs are essentially very similar to Sony’s previous generation DSLRs (with the weird hybrid focusing trick for live view) while the pellicle cameras are actually very interesting. The new SLTA55 is already reviewed in depth at dpreview, so check that out. (The reviewers were unable to process the RAW images as of writing this so we won’t know just how good the low light/high ISO performance is with RAW, but just based on the JPEGs it looks like Sony has finally shaken off its IQ issues (i.e. the excellent performance of the NEX cameras was not a fluke).

Sony’s new pellicle cameras offer continuous live view (because the sensor is always getting 70% of the incoming light) and continuous phase-shift autofocus (i.e. DSLR-quality/speed autofocus) because the autofocus sensors are always getting 30% of the incoming light. It also means you don’t get an optical viewfinder, but instead get a 1.4MP EVF (which is better in some ways than an optical finder, and worse in others). If the new cameras have one significant weakness, it is that their continuous shooting seems somewhat compromised (essentially the live view — which is the only view — seizes up during 6fps or 10fps continuous shooting, and in 10fps mode you have no control over exposure).

And I should add that Sony has managed to seriously reduce the new cameras’ dimensions without significantly impacting usability. (Indeed, the Sony bodies are barely larger and heavier than the Panasonic G2, which is remarkable given the design constraints.)

So, to summarize, these cameras clean the Panasonic G/GH series clocks (especially since they have sensor-shift image stabilization), and give conventional DSLRs a run for their money as still cameras. If it weren’t for the new cameras’ continuous shooting compromises I would find them almost irresistible.

And the Nikon D3100‘s reign as the only DSLR-class camera capable of shooting 1080p video while continuing to autofocus was not only very short-lived (i.e. about two days) but pretty much thoroughly outclassed (given how much better phase-shift autofocus tends to be than contrast-detect).

Addendum

The a33 (pellicle) and a560 (relatively conventional DSLR) side-by-side size comparison

I took two photos from dpreview and scaled them so their lens mounts matched and here’s the result. The a33 is markedly smaller than the a560, despite sharing the same sensor and image-processing pipeline (and being announced on the same day) so this is the immediate size-saving Sony obtained by ditching the conventional SLR mirror. That’s pretty amazing.

Note that the new “conventional” DSLRs from Sony offer better continuous shooting (7fps with an optical viewfinder) but lack the focus-while-filming video (they still offer 1080p). If you recall, Sony’s “conventional” DSLRs are already pretty radical, having a bunch of wacky design tradeoffs (a smaller, dimmer optical viewfinder) in exchange for faster phase-change autofocus in live view. I’d have liked to see more differentiation between the new pellicle cameras (which I see as compromising still shooting in favor of video) and the “conventional” DSLRs, but perhaps we’ll be seeing a refresh of the a850 along those lines (and, after all, at $1950 the existing a850 is a serious bargain, assuming you’re willing to hunt for second-hand lenses or wait and hope for Sony to release more).

Even More

Interesting criticism of the a55 (et al) here, mostly along the lines that video capabilities (1080i, low bitrate, and no manual controls) in the new cameras is seriously (and intentionally) crippled. Steadishot makes the camera overheat after 9 minutes. The AF only works when the aperture is wide-open, video bitrates are no better than compacts. I have to say I find interlaced HD video to be actively offensive (it’s a holdover from analog and has no place in a modern pipeline).

And more technical criticisms here, along the lines that marketing futzed with the specs, the onboard computer hardware is laggy in general and specifically the way the camera seizes up after shooting (if image review is switched on) is a major bummer. These are finicky, but not minor criticisms, since one of the two main reasons for using DSLRs over compacts is handling.

There’s also some discussion as to “ghosting” caused by internal reflections in the mirror (which are unavoidable). This kind of thing could be post-processed out of the image (in-camera) since the effect is very consistent but it’s another drawback of the fundamental design. (And it’s quite noticeable in some of the examples in the thread.)

Manta screenshot from Unity dev environment

I’m finally getting close to releasing Manta and one thing that has somewhat surprised me is what a fabulous gaming device the iPad is. For example, while I’ve never been happy with any “glass joystick” games on the iPhone, I’ve found several on the iPad work just fine — including Manta.

One of the things I was determined to do with Manta’s touch controls was make them “relative”, and this is something the games I’ve liked have in common. In other words, the point you start touching the screen becomes your origin. Most “glass joystick” games on the iPhone combine (a) absolute controls and (b) no central visual feedback. The first means (a) it’s critically important that you put down your thumb in exactly the right spot or you’ll do something weird and (b) you can’t immediately tell by looking at what’s going on in the game where you’ve actually put your finger down — this proves a fatal combination, even for otherwise very polished games such as Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

With Manta, your “ship” quickly (not instantly) snaps to a heading based on your thumb position, and your initial point of contact is always the origin. It certainly works well for me (and no complaints from my testers) but we’ll see what the reviews are like when and if it appears in the App Store.

I was stuck in traffic the other day (a rarity in Alabama) and got to thinking about the prospect of automatic cars. It’s always struck me that if we could just do something in a car besides drive it wouldn’t be important to get to our destination fast, which would mean bad traffic wouldn’t be so bad, and cars could operate at slower speeds and greater safety and efficiency. Even if this weren’t a legislative nightmare (consider the fact that Segway failed in large part because of sidewalk right-of-way issues in its largest potential markets) it turns out that automatically controlling cars is a Difficult Problem.

In his novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson (rather insightfully, I think) suggests that synthetic speech will prove intractably difficult even when otherwise very capable VR technology is commonplace. (We still can’t do a great job of synthesizing monotone speech, forget singing and acting.) The solution in the book is a worldwide system of real-time arbitrage (very similar to the system by which ads are placed on web pages, for example) which selects voice actors for parts based on fee charged, past performance, customer satisfaction, and so on.

Imagine if cars were remote-piloted and drivers were allocated to vehicles in much the same manner. Now combine that idea with the zip car.

An iPhone can do things with its pictures no dedicated camera can hope to compete with

A really interesting article on the future of photography from a pro photographer with a very analytical mind (Thom Hogan). I’ve added his site to my permanent links, I like it so much.

Hogan raises many interesting issues, notably that tech-obsessed early adopters have ceased to dominate demand for digital cameras (because cameras are “good enough”), that cell phones are eating out the point-and-shoot market from below (certainly our iPhone 4s have made our Panasonic TZ5 redundant), that mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras (i.e. Micro 4/3 et al) are eating out the DSLR market from below (I’d like to see some actual figures on that), and many of today’s camera buyers value convenience over absolute technical quality. Today’s DSLR is an image capture device without a lens which needs to dock to a computer to be really useful. To jump to the ultimate conclusion, Hogan argued earlier that serious cameras need to be computing platforms capable of running third party software.

While I very much appreciate his take, I’m not sure I agree with his conclusions. I think what a camera needs to be is an image capture device without a lens or a computer (or with a simple computer that can be ignored or bypassed or swapped out). In the short term this means becoming an iPhone (or similar device) accessory, while in the longer term this means being a cloud device.

Now, Nikon (et al) could essentially build a proper touch-based computer with a real operating system (Android, say) into their cameras and then allow third parties to provide extra software for their “platform”, but I think it’s pretty optimistic to expect that Nikon (or Canon or Sony) would able to produce as good an Android device as, say, a phone handset maker. Heck, most of the camera companies seem to have quite a bit of trouble creating decent menu systems for their cameras. Even if Nikon could manage this feat, how can they expect to attract third-party developers to such a niche market? The iPad, which has no built-in camera and no convenient mechanism for docking with cameras has a positive embarrassment of riches in terms of photo editing tools (e.g. Filterstorm is currently $2.99).

Imagine, on the other hand, that Nikon (or some other DSLR maker) were the first to offer a DLSR which could simply dock an iPhone 4 (say) and use it as its back-end (including live view, image editing, and so forth). They could include their own “back” for the camera (and in fact they could simply make different “docks” accessories). They could provide (free or otherwise) their own software to go with it. Such a camera would instantly gain caché just for being iPhone/Android friendly, gain immediate access to an existing, vibrant third-party software market, and immediately gain access to the “digital hub” and “the cloud”, social networking, and all the other buzzwords.

Let’s suppose two big camera companies decide to take differing approaches: one decides to turn its DSLRs into iPhone accessories (they probably would phrase it slightly differently) while the other decides to build some kind of proper OS into its high end cameras and try to build up a third-party developer community around them. Which one do you think has a non-zero chance of shipping something in less than a year? How is the other one going to look when its product comes out second? It seems clear to me that the “iPhone accessory approach” is not only more likely to get to market first, it would succeed even if it got to market second.

Back in 2001 there were quite a few companies making their money as hi-fi vendors. Most of these are now extinct, much smaller, or glorified iPod dock vendors. OK, it’s pretty ignominious to become a glorifed iPod dock vendor, but it’s worse to go out of business.

I just finished reading Superfreakonomics. Bad title, and really not as good as the first book (essentially because it spends more time dealing with fewer, less novel ideas), but the final chapter (Why is Al Gore like Mount Pinotubo?) — which discusses Climate Change — basically underlines the fact that we know how to solve Climate Change and the question simply is how long before we feel compelled to employ a (real) solution?

The solution put forward in the book (which is the same as that described in the Atlantic article, linked above) is to increase the Earth’s albedo by injecting sulfur dioxide (using a hose suspended by balloons) into the stratosphere. This is what Mount Pinotubo did when it exploded, lowering the Earth’s temperature by about 1°F. The amount of sulfur dioxide involved is quite small, the negative effects are understood, and if we really find the idea of deliberately polluting the atmosphere repugnant, we can simply divert pollution we’re going to create anyway (e.g. from existing coal-fired power plants).

There’s a reason that most environmentalists don’t like this solution, and the core of it is that it doesn’t involve becoming more virtuous in other ways. In fact, it enables us to keep on doing the bad things we’re doing that got us in this problem in the first place — i.e. eating beef, burning fossil fuels, clearing rainforests, and covering huge areas in concrete. I imagine that if, say, the sun were mysteriously increasing its radiation output and we were all going to die unless we did something, injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere would obviously OK. The big problem here is that we’re fixing the outcome of one kind of bad behavior with, in essence, a new form of bad behavior. When might it all end?

The “correct” way to fix the impact of human beings on the earth is depopulation. Anything less than this — recycling, driving a Prius, eating locally grown alfalfa, is just tinkering at the margin. Unfortunately, very few people would like to be part of this solution, so we need to figure out something that works. Yes, the sulfur dioxide solution is “bad”, but the question is do we do something bad now, while we still have most of our biodiversity, coastal real estate, and so forth, or wait until our “less bad” solutions, like trying to convince China and India that they don’t get to have air conditioning or nice cars, fail abjectly and then do it anyway?

The environmental movement is going to have to go back to trying to persuade people to do Good Things, like recycle, because they’re The Right Thing To Do, and not because it will solve climate change.

The big question for me now is what would we do if we needed to raise Earth’s temperature? An ice age would be far more catastrophic than global warming; is there a similar hack we could employ if the sun starts to cool or we go overboard with the sulfur dioxide?

Post Script

Ars Technica looks at five geoengineering options we have as alternatives to actually cutting carbon emissions, of which one is pumping Sulfur Dioxide into the stratosphere, which is dismissed thus:

They also evaluate a frequently referenced scenario, pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Based on current estimates, a doubling of CO₂ would add four Watts per square meter to the climate system. Canceling it, the authors calculate, would require the equivalent of a Pinatubo-sized volcanic eruption every other year. We could do it, but it “would lead to several undesirable consequences such as disruption in precipitation patterns and stratospheric ozone, and do nothing to avert the continued absorption of CO2 by the global ocean leading to rising acidity and ecosystem damage.”

The other options aren’t especially convincing either (collecting all our cars’ carbon emissions for example). I’d suggest that changing precipitation patterns is a given whether we do something or not, so it’s probably not a compelling argument on its own. Arguing that it doesn’t solve other problems (because it doesn’t actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere) is also almost beside the point (the same argument applies against the giant space mirrors, but I suppose that wasn’t worth mentioning since the idea is impractical to begin with).

The bottom line is, we’re not going to melt our icecaps and drown because before we get that far we’ll start pumping Sulfur Dioxide into the stratosphere (unless we find a better option). In the mean time, we still need to cut CO2 for its own sake.