Author Topic: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1  (Read 4207 times)

Jan Anne

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #15 on: October 05, 2018, 08:00:36 »
As an avid smartphone photographer whom edits and publishes images on open or closed social media shortly after the images where taken I’ve always been a little amazed that my “serious” cameras couldnt do this....

We live in the now, when I post last weeks images from home my friends think I’m still abroad  ;D
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Jan Anne

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #16 on: October 07, 2018, 18:20:17 »
As an avid smartphone photographer whom edits and publishes images on open or closed social media shortly after the images where taken I’ve always been a little amazed that my “serious” cameras couldnt do this....

We live in the now, when I post last weeks images from home my friends think I’m still abroad  ;D

yep. and the experience doing so with snapBridge is so miserable, i never do it. i've more often taken a carefully framed and cropped picture of my camera LCD than use that garbage.

the latest smartphones (using an iphone XS max) and their computational photography make me seriously wonder if i really still want a large sensor pocket point and shoot...

John Geerts

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #17 on: October 08, 2018, 07:06:22 »
Can be interesting, but looking at the specs it will not be 'cheap'.  I presume it's much larger than the Nikon Coolpix A?

Ilkka Nissilä

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #18 on: October 08, 2018, 10:52:08 »
As an avid smartphone photographer whom edits and publishes images on open or closed social media shortly after the images where taken I’ve always been a little amazed that my “serious” cameras couldnt do this....

Well the smartphone market is much larger than the ILC market, and thus there can be much more resources put into software development. Also people don't seem to demand that a smartphone boots in a split second (it takes tens of seconds or even a minute), or that it often becomes unresponsive and doesn't do anything until a mysterious pause of 10-30s is over, or that it crashes periodically. I get that both with my iPhone and with my Android-based TV, but not with my Nikon cameras. Nikon likely write all the firmware code in house and have complete understanding of it (whereas if you make a camera around Android many people will have contributed to such complex software and thus no one has complete control over it in practice).   I would not want that kind of lack of responsiveness, frequent crashing etc. to be present also in my camera that I see in my Android and iOS based devices.

Running a mobile phone operating system on a camera would no doubt allow it to be used like a mobile phone in terms of direct access to social media, email, and other applications etc. Obviously it would need a SIM card and contract if you want to send images from anywhere. I prefer the camera to run a software which is responsive, doesn't crash etc. and gives the user full control of the timing of shots, even if the functions are limited in terms of how the images may be used without a computer or mobile device.

Quote
We live in the now, when I post last weeks images from home my friends think I’m still abroad  ;D

Sometimes I send a few images to friends via Snapbridge and my phone, or via a laptop and phone, on the same day that I captured the shots when traveling. I don't see this as an issue.

Snapbridge has worked fine on my D850 though it is slow. I have read initial comments from Z7 users that it is now fast in those cameras, so we can expect the improvements to trickle to newer DSLRs, I should think.

In fact I think a little inconvenience is a good thing because having to work for it reduces the likelihood of sending too many images in the excitement of things. But, without doubt these inconveniences will eventually be solved and then there is no stopping people from being drowned in images from friends.

Back to the topic of the Zeiss camera, I think it is quite large and heavy for a fixed lens fixed focal length camera.

Ilkka Nissilä

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #19 on: October 08, 2018, 10:56:34 »
Can be interesting, but looking at the specs it will not be 'cheap'.  I presume it's much larger than the Nikon Coolpix A?

Yes. 142 x 93 x 46mm + 20mm lens. And heavy - 800 grams.

Danulon

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #20 on: October 09, 2018, 01:13:47 »
Competitor cameras would be Sony RX1 and Leica Q.

Actually I feel similarly to Jan Anne: Of course I edit my photos on a computer.
But during vacation my family "expects" me to send some pictures on WhatsApp.
This works with my (pre Snapbridge) D750. But it still feels clunky. Actually I transfer the pictures in question to my iPhone. Then I import them to Lightroom CC, do some editing, and afterwards export them to Apple Photos. Finally I can send them by WhatsApp.

Editing the pictures in cam and transfering them afterwards sounds considerably easier to me.
And no: I am not that young, but today postcards are replaced by WhatsApp messages as a matter of fact.
It's a different purpose than "serious photography" and I still prefer cam pictures over iPhone pictures. But it's the old song of picture work flow from cam to picture recipient.
A cam like this is overdue for a very long time.
Otherwise we can expect to see more and more higher value camera segments succumb to smartphones.
Guenther Something

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #21 on: October 09, 2018, 04:49:17 »
...
This works with my (pre Snapbridge) D750. But it still feels clunky. Actually I transfer the pictures in question to my iPhone. Then I import them to Lightroom CC, do some editing, and afterwards export them to Apple Photos. Finally I can send them by WhatsApp.

Editing the pictures in cam and transfering them afterwards sounds considerably easier to me.
And no: I am not that young, but today postcards are replaced by WhatsApp messages as a matter of fact. ...

snapbridge is in fact improved on the Z, with simpler and faster options for connecting only via wifi, and fast transfers. i just edit the transferred 2MB jpg in the native photo app directly, and send straight from there. fewer steps with generally enough tools for basic stuff - crop, rotate, color, exposure. i also like the app skrwt for very fast perspective correction.

the zx1 would be much more interesting to me if it had LTE or some other ubiquitous cellular standard built in. i assume the intended use case is to use your phone as a mobile hotspot with the zx1 connected to that? as bad as snapbridge is, it has a mode which automatically transfers images to the phone, so you could just as easily shoot, edit on the phone, and post. not sure how much different that is than shooting, editing on the back of the camera, and posting.

Ilkka Nissilä

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Re: Zeiss enters point and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #22 on: October 09, 2018, 15:01:59 »
Editing the pictures in cam and transfering them afterwards sounds considerably easier to me.

In-camera editing functions exist in Nikons already, you can apply profiles, crop, adjust exposure and such things before executing the raw conversion and then you can send the edited image to the smartphone. I suppose the Lightroom user interface is more sophisticated but with it comes the necessity to run a general-purpose operating system which makes it unlikely that the camera is bug-free and responsive to user commands in real time. Also the battery life would likely be poor.

Nikon made Android-base compacts at some point:

https://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikon-coolpix-s800c/10

"Camera performance is good in most respects, with two notable exceptions. First, startup times. The camera takes 1.8 seconds to extend its lens and prepare for shooting. If the camera's been off for a while, then you'll have to wait for an additional 30 seconds for Android to boot up before the S800c is fully functional. "

"The playback app seemed to be quite buggy, often display photos out of order, or not showing them at all."

That sounds like so much fun. You never know if you can see the pics or not. With my Sony Android-based TV, I never know whether it will obey a command made on the remove control in one second, in 30 seconds, or never. You just have to keep pushing buttons and hope that eventually it will do what you ask.

I have no doubt the Zeiss ZX1 so many years after the Coolpix's Android OS debut is much better, but I think it's a miracle if it is bug free and always responds immediately to user commands.

Steven Paulsen

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Re: Zeiss enters po.int and shoot market with ZX1
« Reply #23 on: October 10, 2018, 00:12:42 »
Without any thought, these cameras will most likely beat he pants off anything I'll ever use.

My experience with Zeiss Cameras, (yes old mechanical marvels,) they almost always broke down. I have one working Contax, two others broken of fogged. I have a highly collectible, (at least it used to be) Zeis TLR that I need to have a part made. Most of the innards were cast with pot metal. (yes, it was in war era.)

They charged really high dollars for film cameras that I've found were a piece of crap compared to anything Nikon produced, post WW2.

Don't take me seriously, I only have to chime in a jab. I still want a Zeiss Hologon