A sad anniversary.

Steve Jobs died ten years ago today.

Here’s the tribute from his chief designer, Jony Ive:

The power of curiosity, the desire to learn rather than to be right, the willingness to take risk. All the dictates for a successful life are there.

You can see my picture taken on the last day of the life of a great man here.

The future approaches.

This year or next will probably see the addition of an optical zoom lens to high end iPhones. I wrote “high end” as the change in Apple’s marketing strategy with the iPhone 12Pro and Pro Max is clear. They are distinguished from lower models by adding a longish lens (65mm on the Max) and, in the case of the Max, bigger sensors. And bigger margins, of course.

Rotating turret lenses in cine cameras have been around for decades:

Compared with zooms the lenses were lighter and faster. And mostly sharper, to boot.

Never one to resist an opportunity to make yet another gadget, Leica went all out with a turret attachment for its 35mm film cameras, coming up with this monstrosity

The Leica turret attachment from the 1940s..

While you might argue that simply changing lenses would be easier, Leitz persisted with this nuttiness into the Leica M era which saw the old, slow screw mount give way to a fast bayonet variant, yet the turret remained available, now with bayonet mounts. The pocketable aspect of the small and elegant Leica body was rather lost in the process.

But zooms were the way of the future and while they came with limitations, they were a lot more appealing to the average consumer. 2002 saw the introduction of Minolta’s Dimage film camera with a periscope zoom, and it was a knockout.

The elegant Minolta Dimage of 2002.

The periscope optical zoom, vertically oriented inside the case, saw light rays deflected through the associated right angle using a mirrored prism. This allowed the incorporation of an otherwise lengthy optical path within the tight confines of the body, a small 3.3″ x 2.8″ x 0.8″. For comparison, my iPhone 12Pro Max in its ‘bumper‘ measures 6.5″ x 3.1″ x 0.3″. You can read DPR’s 2002 review of this 2 megapixel digital masterpiece here.

This cutaway view shows how it worked:

Illustration of the ‘folded’ optical path.

While the Dimage sported a 37-111mm (3:1) zoom with modest aperture of f/2.8-3.6, I think we can expect a lot more from the iPhone 13 or 14. For this user a 28-200 (7:1) f/2 optic would be perfect, and leave the UWA lens as a separate choice. That makes the optical designer’s job easier and, let’s face it, you really do not need a zoom starting at 12mm given the relatively infrequent use of something so wide. Nor do you need a turret.

Once that iPhone Zoom hits the market the sole remaining users of traditional DSLRs or their mirrorless brothers will be press photographers and the fashion set, because both would be laughed off the set were they to be seen using an iPhone. And, of course, the few remaining nuts taking nature photographs because, you know, of the trillions of images already out there, all available for pennies from stock vendors, there must be something yet undiscovered. As for the camera divisions of Canon, Nikon, Sony et al, say goodbye.

The technology is out there. A 2019 Huawei cell phone uses it and you get free Chinese spying software as part of the deal. Wait for the real thing.

Protecting the lens assembly.

Click the image to go to Amazon.

It’s not that easy to find a pure bumper for the iPhone 12Pro Max. Most cases come with a variety of front and rear covers, neither wanted by this user as I use a belt holster.

I did not want to get a case for the iPhone 12, to keep bulk down and to retain the better grip afforded by the square sides. However I did find the sides rather slippery but, more importantly, noticed that the protruding lens assembly meant that the iPhone would not rest flat on a desk or table, but would rest that corner on the lenses themselves. Not good.

So I caved and got one of the above. It’s slightly less slippery than the native edge, the square profile of the sides is retained, the touch of the buttons remains good (though the mute switch is a bit tough to access) and it has corner protrusions which protect the lenses when the iPhone is placed lens-down on a flat surface. While the package included a screen protector I consider that a waste of time as I have never known an iPhone screen to scratch unless something truly thoughtless is done to it, like putting it in a pocket with unprotected keys. As for covering the lovely Pacific Blue back, why on earth would you want to do that?