If Apple decided to make a DSLR

danahn17 said:

On a side note, if Apple were to make an "easy" camera with a viewfinder, it'd be cool for them to use Canon's Eye-Controlled Focusing that was available on some of their film SLRs. Pretty much, the camera senses what you are looking at and focuses automatically! No pushing buttons or dials or what not. And supposedly it worked pretty well. I wonder why Canon doesn't use that tech in their newer cameras... i'd bet they'd sell a lot of cameras from the coolness factor alone.

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It's something like this, along with some innovations in lenses that fit into products like the iPhone/iPad - rather than starting a product line that their existing ones are really just starting to exploit.

Making the user experience as simple as possible, and perhaps something with siri that sets it up - all being aimed at the majority of people who take photos (those that own point and shoot, and just leave in Auto for everything and anything).

User: "I want to take a picture of this flower, but I want the background blurred".
Siri: "Okay. Ready when you are"

Or maps knows where you are (say at a gig), it knows it late, and can check online so it knows that there is an act on - so it sets up the camera without you doing anything.

Something like this anyway.... lol. And I'm sure there will be something we don't think of.

DNA930 said:

Apple is all about the integrated package. A hardware camera is nothing without the companion software. What direction is Apple headed with Aperture? Where is Apple going with digital imaging with iOS?

Regardless of what Apple will or won't do, I would think might actually have enough cash to buy Nikon or Canon?

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Apple certainly has the cash to buy Nikon. But does Mitsubishi want to sell it? I think not.

MisterMe said:

Apple certainly has the cash to buy Nikon. But does Mitsubishi want to sell it? I think not.

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Fact of the Day: Nikon is owned by Mitsubishi, interesting fact!

I don't know about Apple

but if MS made the camera then you will have to reboot after every 10 photos and you will get security upgrade every week and while doing the upgrade it will corrupt your stored photos...

If google made the camera it will be free and sponsored by ads and it will be uploaded directly to to picasa site....

If IBM made the camera then ....

Rethinking my early post...if Apple was forced to make a camera, it would be a chunky little thing, like one of those slick little P&S cameras sold now. Except that it would be able to make a phone call and would have enough of a screen to use for photos, texts, etc.

A thicker body would allow for a better lens than what could be used on a thin iPhone. Still, the Apple philosophy, as described by many of us here, would prevail. It would be exceedingly simple and quite automatically make every photo and video technically good in terms of focus and exposure, along with some sort of anti-shake technology.

It would be mirror-less either micro 4/3rds (Olympus / Panasonic) or APS-C (Sony NEX) running iOS

MagicWok said:

Making the user experience as simple as possible, and perhaps something with siri that sets it up - all being aimed at the majority of people who take photos (those that own point and shoot, and just leave in Auto for everything and anything).

User: "I want to take a picture of this flower, but I want the background blurred".
Siri: "Okay. Ready when you are"

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LOL I can see it now.

At your daughter's piano recital... beautiful music playing...
"HEY SIRI, IT'S TOO DARK IN HERE, CAN YOU FIX THAT?"

Or, at someone's wedding. Priest says "you may now kiss the bride"..
"HEY SIRI, ZOOM IN SO I CAN GET THE KISS IN CLOSEUP"

In the forest, about to capture a shot of the long lost ivory-billed woodpecker...
"HEY SIRI, WHY ARE MY SHOTS ALL BLURRY? PLEASE FIX IT"
...bird flies away, and you lose your chance at making history.

cr2 said:

but if MS made the camera then you will have to reboot after every 10 photos and you will get security upgrade every week and while doing the upgrade it will corrupt your stored photos...

If google made the camera it will be free and sponsored by ads and it will be uploaded directly to to picasa site....

If IBM made the camera then ....

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If Apple made the camera, all the pictures you took could only be viewed on an iPhone, iMac, or MacBook. Copying the photos would not be allowed, and storing them on the iCloud would be mandatory, where you would have to pay $5 a month to keep access to the pictures. When the iCamera 2 comes out, you would no longer be able to edit your iCamera 1 pictures.

Ha! In January of 2012, I made the following prediction about Apple using an array of lenses. I was wrong... it was Nokia/Pelican that has introduced the concept. Nokia Announcement Link

snberk103 said:

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If Apple made a DSLR, it wouldn't be a DSLR.... well, it would be 'D' at least

It would be slightly bigger than an iPod touch, perhaps as big as the rumoured mini-iPad.

It will have an array of 8MP cameras on the front. In the same way that an array of Radio-Telescopes (Link to photo) increases the resolution far beyond what any one RT [radio telescope] can achieve, Apple will do with digital photo sensors. By combining an array of relatively cheap 8MP sensors they will be able to mimic much much much larger sensors.

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This quote is from a thread on what would a DSLR made by Apple look like. However, I will still claim "I called it first" rights since the core idea was an 'array of lenses'. Nokia is calling it computational photography.

snberk103 said:

This quote is from a thread on what would a DSLR made by Apple look like. However, I will still claim "I called it first" rights since the core idea was an 'array of lenses'. Nokia is calling it computational photography.

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However, it’s not being used to increase the resolution but instead the low light capabilities of the camera. Resolution isn’t hugely important anymore as it seems that no one really seems to print anything off anymore and if they do it’s seldom bigger than 6x4.

Doylem said:

My response was to get them to put their camera on a tripod, switch to manual metering, set ISO 100 and f11, and leave the shutter speed as the only variable.

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The Program Auto mode on my expensive DSLR gives reasonably good results when I don't have time to do any thinking. That's the mode I'd recommend to a complete novice. It would also be quite important to get across the message that f11 is not what you want if you want to have nice blurry backgrounds, which is very often.

As to the kind of DSLR that Apple might produce, I really can't see them getting into that market... at least not until there's some magical revolution in the way that lenses are designed. With today's technology you need a whole range of lenses to get the best results. And would Apple really be interested in making something that was not the best? I think not. So, they'd need high quality lenses almost certainly sourced from one of the big boys, with a wealth of design experience. If I were them, I suppose I'd knock on Zeiss's door. To compete with the likes of Nikon or Canon, they would need a lot of lens options.

acearchie said:

However, it’s not being used to increase the resolution but instead the low light capabilities of the camera. Resolution isn’t hugely important anymore as it seems that no one really seems to print anything off anymore and if they do it’s seldom bigger than 6x4.

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I agree that resolution in cell phone cameras is not the problem it used to be. But I'm still claiming "I said it here first" rights. Nokia may be using the new design to solve a different problem, but they are using an array. An array of lenses is a paradigm shift (oy, I usually hate that word) in how photography works. Using an array this way changes how the camera fundamentally works, whereas digital cameras only changed how the image was recorded. Until now it was perfectly feasible (in theory) to swap out the digital sensor and replace it with a piece of film to record an image. An array of lenses makes that impossible.

A camera maker may yet use an array of lenses to increase resolution, since that factor is more important in the 'big' cameras.

LV426 said:

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As to the kind of DSLR that Apple might produce, I really can't see them getting into that market... at least not until there's some magical revolution in the way that lenses are designed. ...

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[emphasis added]

That's my point. The Nokia announcement is a revolutionary design.... maybe not of the lenses, but by using lenses.

snberk103 said:

That's my point. The Nokia announcement is a revolutionary design.... maybe not of the lenses, but by using lenses.

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Not much use on a DSLR, though. There are similar ideas around like replicating the functionality of a fly's compound eye. But nothing fancy like this particular approach is going to give the light-gathering power or precision of one of my prime lenses.