Tag: om malik

• Spatial videos

  If you have an iPhone 15 Pro (and iOS 17.2), you can go into Settings -> Camera -> Formats and turn on a setting called “spatial video.” It will then enable this (excerpt from Om Malik):

  Spatial video is a mixed-reality video format that allows videos to record the depth and spatial information of the scene, and when you play it back, you get a more immersive, three-dimensional (3D) experience. The iPhone 15 Pro utilizes its main lens and the ultra-wide lens to capture the depth and spatial information of the videos. The spatial videos are captured at 1080p, 30 frames per second, and use the HEIC format.

  What you can then do is watch your videos on something like an Apple Vision Pro. It’s not going to be exactly perfect right now — given that the Vision Pro display is over 8k and the above is 1080p — but it will give you an indication of what’s to come for photography, video, and many other use cases.

  Some examples.

  As a regular consumer, this might allow you to capture videos from a trip and then more fully relive the moments once you’re at home. And as Om argues in his post, this will inevitably change photography/video. Because how we consume media, impacts how and what we capture.

  If you’re in the business of selling real estate to people, you can also imagine this set up having a profound impact on virtual tours. Because now you have something that’s pretty damn close to reality, if not eventually indistinguishable. Why even go in person until you have to?

  Of course, all of this will depend on whether Vision Pro actually sees widespread adoption. But if the technology is as good as everyone who has tested it seems to think, then surely there will be at least some initial users who find immediate value.

  And if that is the case, it opens the door for the masses. To once again quote Om: “It is not hard to be excited about the possibilities.”

  2023.12.19

• Death of the standalone camera

  

  I took the above photo on my Fujifilm X-T3 at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Toronto. Obviously, it is a cast of David Bowie’s head. I’ve been using Fujifilm’s X cameras for exactly 3 years now and have already gone through 2 different models. I love them. But Om Malik’s recent post on why the future belongs to computational photography is, in my opinion, entirely accurate.

  For most people, taking photos on a standalone camera and dropping them into Lightroom is not only far too much work, but also unnecessary. Here is a chart from Om’s post showing total worldwide digital camera unit sales (in millions). Sales have fallen off a cliff from about 10 years ago and now look to be on the verge of dying.

  

  What is obvious is that we are all now just taking photos on our phones. Thanks to better chips, sensors, and software, the future of photography looks, again, destined to be computational. Apple is set to announce its new iPhone 11 (or whatever it will be called) this week and already the rumors point to a dramatically improved camera.

  This change in hardware has also changed our relationship to the photograph. We now take photos for the purpose of real-time sharing, which is another point that Om makes. When I post photos of things that have happened in the past — as I often do — people are commonly confused: “Where are you? When are you back in Toronto? Wait, is this a #latergram?”

  This has made photographic memories feel ephemeral. Once the moment has passed, we forget about them. They get drowned out in new real-time images and shares. As a society we are taking more photos than ever before. Not surprisingly, this lowers the gravitas of each individual one.

  2019.09.08