The FINAL DEATH of DSLR cameras with moving mirrors!

DSLR Cameras are NOW DEAD --- PERIOD !!!!!!!

As per other users who have espoused that DSLR will bounce back (i.e. see Ricoh's suggestion that Mirrorless will bounce back!),I say they TRULY are a dying breed.

Article Link:
https://petapixel.com/2019/05/20/ri...oters-will-switch-back-to-dslrs-in-1-2-years/

I think Ricoh and others have forgotten about OLD TECHNOLOGIES being used in NEW WAYS to completely and utterly eliminate mirrors in DSLR systems! For this new(ish) and COMPLETE REPLACEMENT of mirrors in digital cameras, what needs to be done is the use of CHROMOGENIC MATERIALS coated onto the micro-lenses which are placed over each photosite in all modern CMOS image sensors. It's called Smart-Glass!

A Smart-Glass coating that can switch from FULLY OPAQUE to fully transparent within two milliseconds to mere microseconds is the ULTIMATE in electronic shutter technology! Titanium Trioxide and Zirconium Dioxide coatings a good starting point and even Pyrenes with Organic Sulphur compounds poly(2-acylamido 2-methyl propane sulfonic acid) (PAMPS) will work for this:

See these links for more information:

Photochromism:

Electrochromism:

Chromogenic Polymers:

Smart Glass:

The FASTEST CHEAP-TO-MANUFACTURE smartglass i've heard of so far, is less than one-half-millisecond in change-over time from clear to opaque which is about 1/2000th of a second shutter speed which will be PERFECT for most MILC and Smartphone cameras!

AND if you're REALLY into super-speed shutters, then I suggest Polarized Lead Lanthanum Zirconate Titanate (PLZT) which is currently used on the U.S.'s B2 Bomber fleet's windows which can turn FULLY OPAQUE in mere MICROSECONDS after a "Nuclear Flash" to protect the eyes of its pilots from blinding light. This gives us about 1/100,000th of a second shutter speeds which SHOULD BE more than enough for sports/action/wildlife photographers!

DSLRs like the Canon 1DxMk2 or Nikon D5 are DEAD DEAD DEAD !!!

We can now make a FULLY GLOBAL SHUTTER CAMERA using Electrochromic Smart Glass which switches to BRIGHT WHITE or DARK BLACK in microseconds. This means the CURRENT line-by-line CMOS scanning techniques can be used but with a GLOBALLY ACTIVATED electrochromic shutter that will reduce and even fully ELIMINATE the temporal artifacts (rolling shutter) of modern mirrorless cameras!

By coating the above surface or underneath of the microlenses usually put on top of each image sensor's photosites, and sending an electric charge of a specific polarity and/or voltage level, the colour change effect can be controlled easily enough that such a system is now PRACTICAL for widespread adoption. In fact, we can put this on the LENSES themselves instead of onto the sensor so we can create fancy neutral density filters, colour filters, cookie cutouts, etc. without limitations of ANY camera body. This means the LENSES themselves can have electronic shutters and built-in neutral density filters of ANY number of desired stops!

Since photo-site-based electrohromic coatings can get electrically charged from each photosite individually, you can address each pixel individually to allow for CUSTOM shutter speeds and shutter transparency levels on ANY separate area of an image sensor which means you can make neutral density filters of ANY desired grade or transparency level, make cookie cutouts (for cinema use!), variable colour graduated filters, and even user-defineable REAL WORLD star and lens flare filters embedded onto a sensor OR into the lens body itself!

And cost-wise, it could be NOW DONE for between $25 to $100 dollars U.S. PER LENS or PER CAMERA SENSOR!

Long live ELECTROCHROMIC SHUTTERS !!!

DSLR IS NOW DEAD !!! Mirrorless Forever !!!!!


P.S. The ideas and products described above are NOW fully and freely open source to distribute and manufacture under the licence terms of the GNU GPL-3 2019 terms for hardware and software systems and all their designs and source code!
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Maximilian

The dark side - I've been there
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Nov 7, 2013
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Dear HarryFilm, please take your mirrorless camera - or what else you have at hand - , go out - or into a studio - and use your energy and creativity to produce outstanding pictures and share them here with us.

On topic: time will tell, if and how the market is changing.
Personally I don't care about any theory and possible technology as long as I can't buy it in products and as long as I don't see major benefits.
So ceep calm ;)
 
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beforeEos Camaras

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DSLR Cameras are NOW DEAD --- PERIOD !!!!!!!

As per other users who have espoused that DSLR will bounce back (i.e. see Ricoh's suggestion that Mirrorless will bounce back!),I say they TRULY are a dying breed.

Article Link:
https://petapixel.com/2019/05/20/ri...oters-will-switch-back-to-dslrs-in-1-2-years/

I think Ricoh and others have forgotten about OLD TECHNOLOGIES being used in NEW WAYS to completely and utterly eliminate mirrors in DSLR systems! For this new(ish) and COMPLETE REPLACEMENT of mirrors in digital cameras, what needs to be done is the use of CHROMOGENIC MATERIALS coated onto the micro-lenses which are placed over each photosite in all modern CMOS image sensors. It's called Smart-Glass!

A Smart-Glass coating that can switch from FULLY OPAQUE to fully transparent within two milliseconds to mere microseconds is the ULTIMATE in electronic shutter technology! Titanium Trioxide and Zirconium Dioxide coatings a good starting point and even Pyrenes with Organic Sulphur compounds poly(2-acylamido 2-methyl propane sulfonic acid) (PAMPS) will work for this:

See these links for more information:

Photochromism:

Electrochromism:

Chromogenic Polymers:

Smart Glass:

The FASTEST CHEAP-TO-MANUFACTURE smartglass i've heard of so far, is less than one-half-millisecond in change-over time from clear to opaque which is about 1/2000th of a second shutter speed which will be PERFECT for most MILC and Smartphone cameras!

AND if you're REALLY into super-speed shutters, then I suggest Polarized Lead Lanthanum Zirconate Titanate (PLZT) which is currently used on the U.S.'s B2 Bomber fleet's windows which can turn FULLY OPAQUE in mere MICROSECONDS after a "Nuclear Flash" to protect the eyes of its pilots from blinding light. This gives us about 1/100,000th of a second shutter speeds which SHOULD BE more than enough for sports/action/wildlife photographers!

DSLRs like the Canon 1DxMk2 or Nikon D5 are DEAD DEAD DEAD !!!

We can now make a FULLY GLOBAL SHUTTER CAMERA using Electrochromic Smart Glass which switches to BRIGHT WHITE or DARK BLACK in microseconds. This means the CURRENT line-by-line CMOS scanning techniques can be used but with a GLOBALLY ACTIVATED electrochromic shutter that will reduce and even fully ELIMINATE the temporal artifacts (rolling shutter) of modern mirrorless cameras!

By coating the above surface or underneath of the microlenses usually put on top of each image sensor's photosites, and sending an electric charge of a specific polarity and/or voltage level, the colour change effect can be controlled easily enough that such a system is now PRACTICAL for widespread adoption. In fact, we can put this on the LENSES themselves instead of onto the sensor so we can create fancy neutral density filters, colour filters, cookie cutouts, etc. without limitations of ANY camera body. This means the LENSES themselves can have electronic shutters and built-in neutral density filters of ANY number of desired stops!

Since photo-site-based electrohromic coatings can get electrically charged from each photosite individually, you can address each pixel individually to allow for CUSTOM shutter speeds and shutter transparency levels on ANY separate area of an image sensor which means you can make neutral density filters of ANY desired grade or transparency level, make cookie cutouts (for cinema use!), variable colour graduated filters, and even user-defineable REAL WORLD star and lens flare filters embedded onto a sensor OR into the lens body itself!

And cost-wise, it could be NOW DONE for between $25 to $100 dollars U.S. PER LENS or PER CAMERA SENSOR!

Long live ELECTROCHROMIC SHUTTERS !!!

DSLR IS NOW DEAD !!! Mirrorless Forever !!!!!


P.S. The ideas and products described above are NOW fully and freely open source to distribute and manufacture under the licence terms of the GNU GPL-3 2019 terms for hardware and software systems and all their designs and source code!
.
why fix something that's not broken?
 
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why fix something that's not broken?


Lens and sensor complexity is reduced when you are able to control the optics of ANY image sensing system! When a simple photosite micro-lens coating can completely REMOVE THE NEED for analog mirror-based shutters AND current electronic-shutter circuitry AND is individual-pixel addressable, it's kinda more than just a big deal! It's a HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE deal !!!!!!

The extra $25 to $100 spent on Electrochromic shutter system can allow for lenses that HAVE NO ANALOG IRIS !!! The voltage, polarity and/or the amplitude of electrical signal to the Electrochromic shutter causes repeatable and definable gradations in light transmission. This means it performs EXACTLY like a COMBINED Iris and Neutral Density Filter so the CURRENT EXPENSIVE iris blade system can be REMOVED saving $50 to $200 of manufacturing costs right there on the higher end lenses!

Since electrochromic shutter optical pass-through characteristics can ALSO be made frequency-specific, it means real-time analog-style RGB-CMY colour FILTERS, cookie cutouts, grad and star filters and OTHER types of image processing can be done WITHOUT the need for actual circuitry and low-level pixel manipulation software. Just use a pre-defined set of 2D-XY lookup tables to set the Electrochromic shutter settings for individual image sensor photosites!

AND on a technical note, some of our parent company optical and circuit engineers pointed out that when used on ACTUAL glass lens surfaces, electrochromic coatings can actually PERFORM SOME of the refraction and diffraction tasks normally done within the optical elements (i.e. the Glass part!) of a typical lens assembly. You can then computationally MODEL and then REDUCE the number of pathways needed to get a specific zoom factor or focal plane. This means you can REMOVE a number of lens elements, saving 25% to 50% of the TOTAL NUMBER and COST of the glass elements used in many of today's lenses! So a 50mm f/1.2 lens that normally is $1700 can now be sold at $850 and STILL make a decent profit simply because an ACTIVE optical coating removes the need for a nmber of individual glass lens elements !!!

And just for mere SHARPNESS reasons, it means you can get the SAME PERFECT corner-to-corner sharpness of a Zeiss Otus 55mm lens at $850 rather than it's current $4000 U.S. price.

What's not to like about that?
.
P.S. The ideas and products described above are NOW fully and freely open source to distribute and manufacture under the licence terms of the GNU GPL-3 2019 terms for hardware and software systems and all their designs and source code!
.
 
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pLeAsE ReMiNd HaRrY ItS mAy 21sT nOt aPrIL 1St

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Electrochromism is quite real and is ALREADY BEING USED in various products such as auto-shading windows, jet fighter/bomber nuclear flash protecting cockpit windows, laser assemblies, higher end camera systems and a few other tasks. Modern chemistry and computational modelling now allows the likes of Sony, Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Zeiss, Leica, etc. to put high-resolution electrochromic shutters/irises/neutral density into the image sensors themselves AND/OR add it into the lens bodies! This means LOTS of flexibility for end users!
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DSLR Cameras are NOW DEAD --- PERIOD
...
I think Ricoh and others have forgotten about OLD TECHNOLOGIES being used in NEW WAYS to completely and utterly eliminate mirrors in DSLR systems!
...
A Smart-Glass coating that can switch from FULLY OPAQUE to fully transparent within two milliseconds to mere microseconds is the ULTIMATE in electronic shutter technology!

When a simple photosite micro-lens coating can completely REMOVE THE NEED for analog mirror-based shutters

...

Do you think the mirror starts and stops exposure in a DSLR?
 
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Do you think the mirror starts and stops exposure in a DSLR?
I see the word "shutter" There is a difference.

Canon has patents for photochromic shutters and if / when the technology is ready, and its less expensive than other methods, we will see it.

However, mirrorless technology is happening by customer demand. If it reaches a point where few customers want DSLR's, they will no longer be made. The customer decides. Their were cries that digital cameras are impractical, and too expensive when those first ones hit the market with 200K sensors. The demand turned out to be so high that almost all manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon or got left behind. Some did not and almost went out of business. Olympus did not enter the DSLR market and struggled to get in later. Canon and Nikon read the tea leaves and produced DSLR's that looked like SLR's and they were instantly successful.

The fact that Canon and Nikon have jumped into the mirrorless market for FF mirrorless is a big hint. They are going all-in on mirrorless, like it or not.
 
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No doubt, but harry’s posts suggest he things a sensor-based exposure control will obsolete the mirror in an SLR. It might obsolete the shutter, but the mirror is there for a purpose independent from exposure.

---

Again, for shutter purposes MIRRORS are obsolete! For live optical viewing, THAT TOO can be removed due to the ability of electrochromism being able to MODIFY the optical path such that the sensor itself can be the base substrate used for mirror-like reflection of photons to a diffracting lens assembly in the upper part of a camera used as a TRUE optical viewfinder. No more fluttering, shakey mirror assembly needed AND you still get a true optical viewfinder!

When you can change the path of light, ANYTHING is possible in photography! Layers of electrochromic coatings that bend (refract), expand (Diffract) and compress (focus) cones of photons to specific areas on a surface can create MILLIONS of "Virtual Micro-lenses" that can perform ALL the functions of a normal 5 to 20 element zoom lens.

This means, with a mere 2 to 4 lens elements and layered electrochromic coatings, we can make lenses that are BOTH 20x-to-80x super zooms AND 12 mm super-wides IN A SINGLE LENS system consisting of VERY FEW glass elements. That allows for combining the abilities and characteristics of the world's BEST prime 16mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 135mm, 200mm, 400mm and 600mm lenses into a SINGLE lens body that will costs less than $1500 !!!

AND for you optical techies out there, a electrochromic-controlled light path system allows one to put a 8192 by 6144 pixel (50.3 megapixel) MEDIUM FORMAT SENSOR (56mm by 42mm) into a space the size of a Canon Powershot series like below:


Since the optical pathways can be artificially guided by the "Virtual Lensing" created by the layered electrochromic coatings, specific light waves coming from specific directions can be waveguided to specific areas of photosites on an image sensor at even oblique and right angles, so you could create the same Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM ($1249) fisheye lens quality in the space of a small pancake lens assembly for barely $300!

THIS ALSO MEANS in that SAME pancake-lens small form factor, we could put the equivalent of an 16mm to 300mm zoom lens because we can refract and diffract light however we wish towards the image plane of ANY SIZE of image sensor. AND THIS MEANS that sensor focal plane distance is irrelevant, because the largest image sensors can be put into the thinnest cameras now that we can SHAPE the pathways of light so they fall on the desired portions/photosites of a sensor at any desired angle!

Add in the ability of CMOS sensor manufacturers to ALTER the current formula of making individual photosites that are always oriented at a right angle (i.e. up-down) when they can be made at a SPECIFIED INDIVIDUAL ANGLE for each photosite well (i.e. outer pixels are at 75 degrees while close-to-centre photosites have their wells as between 76 to 90 degrees. The refraction/diffraction of an electrochromic surface can be modelled so expertly that INDIVIDUAL AREAS of a lens element can now direct light rays to SPECIFIC image sensor photosites. This allows for super-lenses to made that literally CAN do everything from Fisheye to Macro to Wide, Medium, to Long shots in a very small form factor SINGLE LENS BODY!

AND how about THIS? Imagine having a SUPER-STABLE IMAGE for an equivalent 100 to 25000 mm super-zoom lens (i.e. a 250x zoom) in a body barely the size of a typical Canon 70 to 200mm zoom lens. The electrohromic coatings can ALSO PERFORM as in-body or on-lens image stabilization systems to keep your shoots super-smooth and steady at a cost of barely a few hundred dollars! SInce the individual electrochromic layers in specific parts of a lens can refract/diffract light rays at the will of the controlling software, a virtual Steadicam can be put inside of the camera itself!

Can You Dig the What Will Happen to Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc when THAT happens?

.
P.S. The ideas and products described above are NOW fully and freely open source to distribute and manufacture under the licence terms of the GNU GPL-3 2019 terms for hardware and software systems and all their designs and source code!
.
 
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Ozarker

Love, joy, and peace to all of good will.
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Dear HarryFilm, please take your mirrorless camera - or what else you have at hand - , go out - or into a studio - and use your energy and creativity to produce outstanding pictures and share them here with us.

On topic: time will tell, if and how the market is changing.
Personally I don't care about any theory and possible technology as long as I can't buy it in products and as long as I don't see major benefits.
So ceep calm ;)
He's busy trying to figure out how to hot shoe a speedlite trigger to his Jitterbug flip phone. ;)
 
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SecureGSM

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Ozarker

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That’s a bit like saying ‘for shifting gears, steering wheels are obsolete.’


For optical viewfinding, mirrors are ALSO obsolete! Electrochromic Layers-based waveguiding can REPLACE mirrors in every way! You can STILL get true OPTICALLY-based viewfinding by reflecting, refracting/diffracting from the sensor itself AND/OR from an external lens. This technology is actually from the 1970s! so it definitely NOT NEW!
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It's been the SPEED of the transparent/opaque changeover that has been the issue but with modern Plasmonics and Organic Chemistry, microseconds-fast switching is now possible. It's a technology ALSO USED in PURE optical networking for switching the light-paths between fibre-optic based computer network node-points. It lowers latency so super-fast realtime response times in TCP/UDP/IP computer networking infrastructure is now possible. So from milliseconds-based return path times for IPV4/IPV6 packets, you can now goto a few millionths of a seconds based return path times even for nodes points separated by many thousands of KM !!!

Now we can apply this same technology to photography lens-oriented light-path management and suddenly you can have a super-steady-shot 100 mm-to-25000 mm superzoom in the same size as a typical Canon 70-to-200 zoom lens for less than $1500. What's not to like about that?

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Technology Baby! It's just the mere advancement of Modern Technology to an industry that basically STILL lives in the year 1925 lens-functionality-wise!
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