4K 120fps is now on iPhone...

[gt3rs]

On 9/14/2024 at 5:01 AM, SRV1981 said:

I’d be curious for you to watch the clip I shared and have you comment what about the pocket image you liked better.  
 

Ha - not sure what you mean exactly but I do think the iPhone log images are good enough for many situations as an A cam (holiday, non paid work) and a B or C cam in other scenarios.  
 

I don’t get paid to record video so it’s an easy solution for me and I’m interested in a pocket 3 but it feels redundant when I have log in my phone - turn on airplane mode if messages annoy you is my take. 
 

the tracking of the pocket makes it a good pairing on the other hand.  We are so close to a point that photo and video will be good enjoying for the vast majority of situations. 

Yes I did watch it, and a studio-controlled example with no info on what he did to the image is for me is not super useful comparison. Btw I tent to not look at YT comparisons anymore... most they never represent my usage and mostly are optimized to make something looks better.
In my usage (never studio or static setup) Osmo is better. I find that has soon as the light is not perfect iPhone footage breaks a part very quickly, I did a rely nice shoot in Alaska and it took me 1h of tweaking to kind of get something usable out:

Is great that on the 16 they improved the wide angle as in my 15 is not really good:



iPhone is impressive for what it is but all this BS that compares it to mirrorless, RED, etc....  in my usage it does not even compare favorably with the Osmo Pocket 3 other than in perfect condition. 

I have R5 II, R5c, Osmo Pocket 3, Insta GO 3s and X4 and the iPhone is the one that I like the least (of course quality is better than the GO3s and the X4), do I use it a lot? Yes, due to connivence and also the 5x tele (even worst quality but great backup solution when mounted on top of my main camera). 

 

 

 

[SRV1981]

26 minutes ago, gt3rs said:

Yes I did watch it, and a studio-controlled example with no info on what he did to the image is for me is not super useful comparison. Btw I tent to not look at YT comparisons anymore... most they never represent my usage and mostly are optimized to make something looks better.
In my usage (never studio or static setup) Osmo is better. I find that has soon as the light is not perfect iPhone footage breaks a part very quickly, I did a rely nice shoot in Alaska and it took me 1h of tweaking to kind of get something usable out:

Is great that on the 16 they improved the wide angle as in my 15 is not really good:



iPhone is impressive for what it is but all this BS that compares it to mirrorless, RED, etc....  in my usage it does not even compare favorably with the Osmo Pocket 3 other than in perfect condition. 

I have R5 II, R5c, Osmo Pocket 3, Insta GO 3s and X4 and the iPhone is the one that I like the least (of course quality is better than the GO3s and the X4), do I use it a lot? Yes, due to connivence and also the 5x tele (even worst quality but great backup solution when mounted on top of my main camera). 

 

 

 

Fair points - I guess I’m liking the iPhone log over osmo in YT videos because that’s where I watch all videos that aren’t TV shows. Are there other platforms you’re posting videos on? If so, send a link and I’ll check it out. 

I love the pocket 3 as well and may invest in one but I have to say I do think comparing these images to a mirrorless body is certainly valuable and closer than what you’re saying in most conditions.  

All cameras sucked in lowlight prior to the a7S line and nobody seemed to think it an issue until then.  I’d never argue, currently, that you folks who do this for a living should be using iPhones and osmos for work - but for your daily driver? Your family camera, your travel camera, your YouTube channel - yes the pocket 3 and iPhone log solutions are very good quality and desirable due to ease of use and ergonomics.  

At some point a 3rd party vendor or manufacturer of these products will be able to use larger sensors in these small products and combine it with attachments and software to rival mirrorless. Physics always wins so maybe it won’t eclipse mirrorless body sensors but man it’s getting so close to the human brain not being able to tell the difference to most observers and if you can be happy with it then that’s what matters most to me. 

[Davide DB]

On 9/10/2024 at 3:49 PM, eatstoomuchjam said:

When I saw yesterday that you will now be able do do 4k120p ProRes on a phone, I imagined the shame being felt by any number of camera companies who claim they can't do it on their dedicated cameras.  Not sure yet how long the iPhone can roll 4k120 without overheating, but Canon should be making a face like the meme awkward puppet monkey right about now...

It's increasingly obvious that camera vendors should stop trying to build their own special magic chips (Bionz! Digic!  X-Processor Pro!) and figure out how to adopt current-generation smartphone processors.  Why build a dedicated chip on a 14nm process when you could build your system on a much more powerful chip that was built with 2nm that uses less power and runs so much cooler?

A lot of vendors should feel relief that the companies who have (so far) tried to blend phone and camera have done such a tremendously terrible job of integration.  Eventually somebody's gonna get it right.

It all sounds beautiful but it is not. The devil is in the details.

Making an 2 nm chip that allows you to do what an iPhone or an A7SIII, a Z9 or an R1 does costs bazillions of euros to design and build. And who pays for it? Us! And where are the profit margins? In the number of gadgets sold.

And here perhaps we are missing something:

Number of iPhones sold worldwide in 2023: 231 million units

https://www.statista.com/statistics/276306/global-apple-iphone-sales-since-fiscal-year-2007/

Number of cameras sold worldwide in 2023:

https://www.43rumors.com/nikkei-published-the-worldwide-market-share-2023-panasonic-and-om-digital-on-5th-and-6th-spot

So the magic 2nm chip shipped in 231 million iPhones (€1500) must be divided between the 3 million lucky Canon camera owners and 800,000 poor Panasonic users.

[Emanuel]

Speaking of devil and that 5x miserable tele? In the meantime, Toneh has offered his vision and criticism:

 

[SRV1981]

1 hour ago, Emanuel said:

Speaking of devil and that 5x miserable tele? In the meantime, Toneh has offered his vision and criticism:

 

Do you really enjoy his Channel and analysis or is it confirmation bias 

[Emanuel]

45 minutes ago, SRV1981 said:

Do you really enjoy his Channel and analysis or is it confirmation bias 

I don't follow any channel and trust me, Toneh is not coming from those who follow those insights ; ) However, he is not the only one who sees it as mere marketing.

iPhone goes on its 16th version and I never bought one. Waiting for overheating reports once more. I have purchased ASUS and OnePlus instead and mobile phone camera system hasn't bought me for sure.

Buy the Osmo or/and Ace Pro and you won't look back : P

 

A dedicated camera is not a Swiss army knife.

 

EAG :- )

[eatstoomuchjam]

9 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Making an 2 nm chip that allows you to do what an iPhone or an A7SIII, a Z9 or an R1 does costs bazillions of euros to design and build. And who pays for it? Us! And where are the profit margins? In the number of gadgets sold.

Yes, you seem to be arguing with a point that is the opposite of what I said.  I said that camera makers should stop making their own dedicated chips.

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-8-gen-3-mobile-platform

A google search tells me that this is a chip used in many of the most recent Android smartphones.  Some of these phones can be purchased brand new in the US.  Looking up some of the phones that use it, some cost about $700 for the entire phone including processor, memory, screen, battery, etc.  Some estimates that I saw online say that the chip itself costs about $200 - that's a small fraction of a $5,000 camera.

I am suggesting that instead of investing bazillions of dollars to design a chip as powerful as a Smartphone from 5 years ago, camera vendors could go buy an off-the-shelf processor similar to what is used in a modern smartphone.  Then they are sharing the bazillions of dollars of R&D expense with OnePlus, Samsung, Xiaomi, and every other integrator who puts that chip in their phone.  Why be powered by Digic X when you could be powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3?  If dedicated silicon is needed for some encoder or similar, build it as a coprocessor and connect it to the commodity chip.

[Davide DB]

6 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Yes, you seem to be arguing with a point that is the opposite of what I said.  I said that camera makers should stop making their own dedicated chips.

https://www.qualcomm.com/products/mobile/snapdragon/smartphones/snapdragon-8-series-mobile-platforms/snapdragon-8-gen-3-mobile-platform

A google search tells me that this is a chip used in many of the most recent Android smartphones.  Some of these phones can be purchased brand new in the US.  Looking up some of the phones that use it, some cost about $700 for the entire phone including processor, memory, screen, battery, etc.  Some estimates that I saw online say that the chip itself costs about $200 - that's a small fraction of a $5,000 camera.

I am suggesting that instead of investing bazillions of dollars to design a chip as powerful as a Smartphone from 5 years ago, camera vendors could go buy an off-the-shelf processor similar to what is used in a modern smartphone.  Then they are sharing the bazillions of dollars of R&D expense with OnePlus, Samsung, Xiaomi, and every other integrator who puts that chip in their phone.  Why be powered by Digic X when you could be powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3?  If dedicated silicon is needed for some encoder or similar, build it as a coprocessor and connect it to the commodity chip.

 

Yes you are right,

I misread but still the data I posted confirms mine and also your thesis 😇
The idea seems straightforward, we should understand in detail how many of the features of a modern mirrorless camera would be implementable in a chip like the Snapdragon and which ones, again, in an external chip.
I'm afraid if no one has done that yet, it's not so straightforward. It would take the opinion of a techie insider on this technology. I don't think it's a licensing issue but there must be some detail we're missing.
The fact remains that the numbers in the mobile market allow for investments unthinkable for the photographic market.
It is worth noting that Sony is present in both markets. Although on the mobile sector it is practically unheard of. Yet even its latest Experia has 4K@120p 😉

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

The closest I know to it is Z Cam.  From what I read, their first camera, the E1 came from the founder working either for GoPro or for one of the GoPro clones.  He thought about taking an action camera chipset and pairing it with a better sensor and a lens mount - and that's exactly what the E1 is.  It has some sort of Ambarella chipset (A9?) (and that's also why some of the problems with it could never be fixed).

The E2 line moved away from that, but not too far.  Instead of designing their own chip, they still chose an off-the-shelf part from HiSilicon (which ended up causing some drama, as it seemed uncertain that more would get made when the US put restrictions on Huawei stuff).   It uses Arm cores and has some dedicated silicon for things like H265 encoding.  The Arm bits, at least, are 12nm - and that chip (and the E2 line) came out like 6 or 7 years ago.  It's also one of the reasons that Z cam were known for great battery life at release time - the entire package uses like 3w of power.

https://www.silicondevice.com/file.upload/images/Gid1549Pdf_Hi3559AV100.pdf

Judging by the few released specs of the new flagship V2 series, it seems like they are still using that chipset and still have features comparable to the rest of the cameras being released now.  So at least it seems to be possible to build successful cinema cameras using off-the-shelf parts, but you're right that there may be some big barriers for the established companies (though some of those barriers may be in their own heads, believing that they need to design their own)

[Davide DB]

Interesting. I didn't know that story.

 

39 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Judging by the few released specs of the new flagship V2 series, it seems like they are still using that chipset and still have features comparable to the rest of the cameras being released now.  So at least it seems to be possible to build successful cinema cameras using off-the-shelf parts, but you're right that there may be some big barriers for the established companies (though some of those barriers may be in their own heads, believing that they need to design their own)

Getting into the heads of Japanese executives is a feat of its own.

In theory Sony being in both markets would be the perfect candidate. I was looking at the specs of its latest flagship smartphone and it uses the Snapdragon 8 platform. Sony borrows the names of its “famous” technologies from other areas: “Bravia” display and S-Cinetone for video. 

[Davide DB]

Upon a quick search, it seems that the question has been asked by just about everyone over the years. Although with answers that are not always in focus or even wrong. Many users confuse the processor with the operating system.
The most comprehensive is in a PetaPixel editorial.

https://petapixel.com/2022/11/16/nothing-is-stopping-camera-makers-from-using-a-snapdragon-chip/

 

 

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

Some of the comments on the PetaPixel story made my head hurt.  You're right that a lot of people seemed to think that moving to a smartphone processor would necessarily entail moving to a smartphone OS.  I don't actually have any feelings on the OS (though I would find using a standard smartphone UI to navigate my phone annoying so I'd hope they would put their own GUI on top of things).  I didn't realize Toneh actually commented in forums before seeing that (partly because I rarely, at best, read comments on anything).

Some of the comments in the Reddit thread were interesting, though.  I didn't realize that Canon was already using Arm in Digic.  If so, it seems like adopting a modern mass market chipset shouldn't be an enormous project (not minimizing, it'd still be a lot of work).  It really seems like using a general purpose smartphone chipset and bolting on some asic coprocessor for any of the heavy lifting that doesn't already have silicon in the smartphone chip would work out pretty great.  I can say from personal experience that I never saw any signs of overheating when rolling 6kp24 for a long time on a fairly small fanless Z Cam body - not even on hot days.

Anyway.  Armchair pontification aside, it'll just be a distant hope for the time being.  🙂

[Eric Calabros]

Excuse me, why we need Snapdragon for our mirrorless camera again? If you're suggesting it should have mini Instagram app built in, I should say that's a terrible idea brother. A dedicated camera is a professional tool. You can't tell the NFL players wait a moment guys, I need to reboot my camera!

Maybe you're asking "why my camera can't automatically stitch my pano images together to give me a single file?". Well, if you want all things "auto" why you use a dedicated camera in the first place? That tool is called professional camera because its supposed to give you control; and now you want less control? The funny thing is that Apple is decreasing the auto things, like adding log profile, and increasing controls, like the new shutter button. The funnier thing is younger generation don't ask for a iOS camera with a full frame sensor, they like the Nikon Zf/Fuji X100 ideas, cause these cameras have more direct controls on them (a retro styled camera is slower than the modern ones, but thats another matter). 

What we need is better implementation of wireless connections, between the professional tool and the consumer devices. I can't use my Bluetooth headphone as monitor headphone of my camera, as one example (BT6.0 will solve the latency problem. Lets see what they do). Things like this move very slowly. USB4 can deliver power and uncompressed 8k60 data, but nobody dares to replace SDI with that. 

[Davide DB]

2 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

Excuse me, why we need Snapdragon for our mirrorless camera again? If you're suggesting it should have mini Instagram app built in, I should say that's a terrible idea brother. A dedicated camera is a professional tool. You can't tell the NFL players wait a moment guys, I need to reboot my camera!

Maybe you're asking "why my camera can't automatically stitch my pano images together to give me a single file?". Well, if you want all things "auto" why you use a dedicated camera in the first place? That tool is called professional camera because its supposed to give you control; and now you want less control? The funny thing is that Apple is decreasing the auto things, like adding log profile, and increasing controls, like the new shutter button. The funnier thing is younger generation don't ask for a iOS camera with a full frame sensor, they like the Nikon Zf/Fuji X100 ideas, cause these cameras have more direct controls on them (a retro styled camera is slower than the modern ones, but thats another matter). 

What we need is better implementation of wireless connections, between the professional tool and the consumer devices. I can't use my Bluetooth headphone as monitor headphone of my camera, as one example (BT6.0 will solve the latency problem. Lets see what they do). Things like this move very slowly. USB4 can deliver power and uncompressed 8k60 data, but nobody dares to replace SDI with that. 

Eric you are falling into the same mistake as many users in the comments quoted just above. 
Using a Snapdragon processor has nothing to do with the operating system used, which in the case of smartphones can be Android or IOS or other Chinese devilry. Canon is already using the same architecture for his camera processor.
Just as it has nothing to do with discussing classic sharing apps or anything else. Those are two completely different topics. 

Then we all agree that all camera manufacturers are light years behind in integrating their devices with the outside world. Until recently we only had the memory card and nothing else.

Perhaps the action camera manufacturers are a tad ahead. Gopro over all.
I still can't get my head around how in 2024 with my GH5MII I can't view videos on my phone without pulling out the card while with an ancient GoPro 5 I can. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

Exactly.  We aren't talking about putting Instagram on cameras.  I don't know what OS runs on Canon now, but it used to be DryOS and Sony used to use BusyBox which is a form of embedded Linux (also not sure if that's still the case).  They could certainly adapt those systems to run on an off-the-shelf processor.  If they do, they would save a bunch of money designing their own chips and most likely end up with cameras that run faster and cooler since modern Snapdragons (as an example) are produced on a 3-5nm or so process.

Last I heard, the custom chips that are made for a lot of other cameras are still on older processes - I'm not sure if it's still like 20nm, but even if it's 11-14nm, that was the cutting edge on smartphone chips 8 years ago.

Plus, as the PetaPixel article mentions, using the latest Smartphone chips would make it trivial for the vendors to have good support for the latest wifi and bluetooth standards as well.

[Eric Calabros]

9 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Using a Snapdragon processor has nothing to do with the operating system used, which in the case of smartphones can be Android or IOS or other Chinese devilry

Sorry, it has a lot of to do with the way the OS works. Its designed to handle a heavy and complicated OS system. The whole architecture is overkill for a dedicated camera in some areas, and underperforming in other areas. And remember all these 3nm ISPs are working with 10 bit images. Not 14 or 16 bit that your mirrorless chip is handling at fraction of a second. 

 

8 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

If they do, they would save a bunch of money designing their own chips and most likely end up with cameras that run faster and cooler since modern Snapdragons (as an example) are produced on a 3-5nm or so process.

They don't design their own chips. They tell a ASICS/FPGA vendor what they need, and that vendor offer them one of their products. Nikon buys from Socionext. This giant company has TSMC as its 2nm partner. But doesn't make anything in its portfolio at cutting edge node. Because they don't need to, and will be expensive.

And iPhone 15 pro overheats shooting 4k, remember? 

[eatstoomuchjam]

7 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

Sorry, it has a lot of to do with the way the OS works. Its designed to handle a heavy and complicated OS system. The whole architecture is overkill for a dedicated camera in some areas, and underperforming in other areas. And remember all these 3nm ISPs are working with 10 bit images. Not 14 or 16 bit that your mirrorless chip is handling at fraction of a second. 

The way you speak about "the way the OS works" sounds like you absolutely have no idea what you're talking about.  Do you know the first thing about OS design?  And so what if a chip is designed to support a heavier OS and it's overkill for some tasks?  If it costs less to buy them in bulk vs designing your own weaker chip - and if the camera has better power consumption, etc...  great.
Also, I'm not sure about the state of the art on Android, but it's usually close enough to Apple - and Apple ProRaw is 12 bit. So phones are capable of handling at least 12-bit images in fractions of a second also.  If the chips don't support 14 or 16-bit, that's specifically what I referred to with "If dedicated silicon is needed for some encoder or similar, build it as a coprocessor and connect it to the commodity chip."

8 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

They don't design their own chips. They tell a ASICS/FPGA vendor what they need, and that vendor offer them one of their products. Nikon buys from Socionext. This giant company has TSMC as its 2nm partner. But doesn't make anything in its portfolio at cutting edge node. Because they don't need to, and will be expensive.

Current Snapdragon chips built on 4nm cost about $200.  This is the very basis of suggesting the use of commodity chips over bespoke or boutique.

8 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

And iPhone 15 pro overheats shooting 4k, remember? 

Do I need to point out to you the massive size difference (and increased cooling challenges) for a device that's about 1/3 the volume of even the smallest dedicated camera and also needs to stick the image sensor just a few mm from a heat-generating screen that's about 2-3x the size of the screen on every dedicated camera except for BlackMagic?

[Eric Calabros]

3 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

If it costs less to buy them in bulk vs designing your own weaker chip - and if the camera has better power consumption, etc...  great.

With that logic Ericsson should use Snapdragon for its 5g infrastructure products, because its cheaper! 

 

3 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Apple ProRaw is 12 bit. So phones are capable of handling at least 12-bit

Not yet. Sensor output is 10 bit. ADC is 10 bit. They put 10 bit data in a 12 bit file. 

 

3 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Do I need to point out to you the massive size difference

5W is 5W, whether you're able to cool it down or not doesn't change the fact that its not insignificant. Another issue is movement of the data. 6k60 raw is about 14Gb/s. No matter how state of the art is your CPU, 14Gb/s is 14Gb/s. Its too much to not generate heat. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

2 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

With that logic Ericsson should use Snapdragon for its 5g infrastructure products, because its cheaper! 

If the smartphone chips are powerful enough to run their infrastructure products, they should.  Without knowing which ones you mean, that would be a difficult statement to evaluate.  I suspect, though, that you're just making a statement based on not understanding what you're talking about.  Keep that up.  Maybe you can become the next president of the US.

2 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

Not yet. Sensor output is 10 bit. ADC is 10 bit. They put 10 bit data in a 12 bit file. 

 

OK.

2 hours ago, Eric Calabros said:

5W is 5W, whether you're able to cool it down or not doesn't change the fact that its not insignificant. Another issue is movement of the data. 6k60 raw is about 14Gb/s. No matter how state of the art is your CPU, 14Gb/s is 14Gb/s. Its too much to not generate heat. 

This is a really dumb argument, sorry.  The amount of space is extremely relevant to cooling.  How long can you heat up a 100 cubic meter room using a constant 5w draw of electricity?  How quickly can you heat up a space the size of a smartphone with the same?  I promise you that the second answer is a much smaller number than the first.  Beside that, one of the reasons to use a smaller process node is that it uses less electricity to perform the same amount of work.  So if all other things are equal, if performing the same amount of work, a smartphone with a 14nm chip would almost certainly overheat before a smartphone with a 3nm chip.

 

[Eric Calabros]

13 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

I suspect, though, that you're just making a statement based on not understanding what you're talking about. 

What I'm talking about is very clear and there is an expression for that in english language: Horses for courses. Just because two different devices do a similar work in some situations doesn't mean the CPU inside device A is suitable for the device B. GoPro isn't a Japanese conservative company, and yet they didn't use Snapdragon. 

 

13 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

one of the reasons to use a smaller process node is that it uses less electricity to perform the same amount of work. 

Nobody said smaller node is bad! Points are:

1. Snapdragon, fabbed 12nm or 3nm, has an architecture designed to do a lot of things that are not related to professional dedicated camera, like gaming, playing music, video editing, web browsing, online money transfer, controlling diverse set of peripherals. Look at the M4. Nearly a quarter of the chip is occupied by the GPU: 

Ray tracing while you half press the shutter, huh? See those big rectangles at the left? Those massive CPU cores are there to run Genshin Impact, not calculating Zone Exposure. 

2. While smaller node for dedicated camera chip is always good news, the big portion of the heat is generated by moving electrons from point A to point B (Sensor to RAM, RAM to CPU, CPU to CFe card). So as long as resolution/frame rate war continues, we'll have heat issue no matter what. So a slim active cooling system should have higher priority than an expensive jump to smaller node.