Upcoming deaths

All change.

Here are some of the activities and businesses which will die with the oncoming tsunami of change powered by computational photography:

  • Professional wedding photographers – anyone can take a good wedding snap, and it only has a shelf life through the divorce date
  • Micro Four-Thirds cameras and lenses – they add nothing to iPhone 11 Pro quality at 4x the bulk and weight
  • Olympus – all their eggs in one basket …. and a handful of microscope sales and accounting fraud
  • Nikon – no diversification
  • Canon’s big gear division
  • Panasonic’s camera division – they managed to deliver a great FF body just as the format died. They should stick to TVs and washing machines
  • Pentax – no distinguishing product
  • APS-C – a ridiculous format which delivers the quality of MFT in the bulk of FF
  • All those silly-priced Zeiss lenses for full frame
  • The third rate garbage that goes by the moniker ‘Sigma lens’, an oxymoron if there ever was one
  • Most large format digital – silly priced, no quality advantage over big sensor digital bodies
  • Sony’s camera division. On the other hand their cell phone lens and sensor division will bloom
  • The last handful of reportage pros – everyone has a camera and the pro will never be in the right place at the right time
  • The mystique associated with ‘pro’ gear. It’s inferior in most practical aspects to the best cell phone cameras
  • DP Review – how many cell phone reviews can you do in a year?
  • All the other hardware sites for pixel peekers

Leica, however, will survive as there are always antiquarians with china cabinets to fill.

And it’s all because of this little part with 8.5 billion transistors in the area of two postage stamps, plus a team of very smart programmers:

And by the time Samsung has managed to steal all this proprietary technology, Apple will be on the A20. I provided an early peek inside Samsung’s design lab almost a decade ago.


iPhone 11 Pro fully loaded with case, credit card, DL, health insurance card and ATM card. Nikon? Not so much.

For the yearbook

Studio lighting mode.

After the test run the other day my son opted for the Studio Light portrait mode in the iPhone 11 Pro, donned a favorite shirt, combed his hair and voila! The shade of the orange tree makes for soft, diffuse lighting on what was a very sunny day. We only get 350 of those a year in Scottsdale.

iPhone 11 Pro snap, SOOC. The Portrait mode automatically blurs the background and the degree of blur can be changed in post processing.

Portrait modes in the iPhone 11

Stellar.

I have to submit a snap of my son for his senior yearbook, so we took five test shots using the iPhone 11 Pro using the various Portrait modes built into the camera:





Regular, Studio light, Contour light, Stage light Mono, High-key light Mono.

Amazing.

Post processing in Lightroom? Zilch.

Rainbow – and a warning

Double, no less.




From my patio.

Before you get carried away with the beauty of Scottsdale, Arizona, a few words of warning from this resident are in order:

  • The crime rate is extremely high
  • It rains constantly
  • The public schools are amongst the worst in the nation
  • The freeways make the 10 and 405 in Los Angeles seem empty
  • There is no International Airport
  • Both of our senators will be Democrats after the next election
  • Open carry of guns is encouraged
  • If you don’t drive a truck, watch out
  • Reflecting our shot infrastructure, taxes are extremely low
  • The cops are on the take
  • We have lots of universities for student scum
  • Your vegetables will die in the heat, and so will you
  • There are fifty cigar lounges but not one jazz club

iPhone 11Pro snap.