A day in the life of a F1 photographer

Update 2 June, 2022 -

It appears that Sony knows the power of merging imaging, processing, and sharing.  The CEO is claiming that in two years we should see equivalent performace between stand-alone and cell-phones.  

I just looked at images I took at the Vintage Revival Montlhery 2022 event.  Comparing my Sony APS-C images to Motorola G8 Power I can see an enormous difference in quality.  The Moto images look synthetic and "water colory."  This reminds me of the early days of stand alone Point and Shoot small sensor'd camera output.  There's no comparison, really.  The Moto images are still a very long way behind the Sony NEX output.

However, if the IQ gap can be closed, really, honestly closed as Sony's CEO suggests, things could get really interesting, right? 

Update 27 May, 2022:

Having come from a time when there was an entire "eco-system" needed to make, process, and distribute a single image, the fact we can now do it all on our own is worth noting, no matter how much "gear" we need to do it all ourselves.  

Imagine how many people are no longer required to make it all work.  Film manufacturers.  Chemical engineers.  Print paper manufacturers. Materials procurement. Lab technicians.  Secretaries to manage/facilite communications.  Distributors.  Truck drivers to receive/deliver all these materials.  Plus all the overhead needed to keep the wheels on the track - first level, mid-level, upper level mangers. 

It's really quite remarkable, isn't it?  Maybe it's only remarkable to us old folk who "remember how it once was."  The whole system optimization is stunning, no matter one's perspective. 

 

Original Post - 

Some years back I had a lot to say with my friends about "wouldn't it be nice to have a Linux/Android OS-based camera where you could do everything on one device from image capture, through image processing, and then to image sharing?"

Canon and Nikon are not really "electronics" companies.  They don't have the expertise to pull off such a move.  But Sony does.  Yet Sony cameras remain pretty much standalone devices.  Perhaps they don't yet see the demand?

The cameras that offered Android "connectivity" back then were terribly slow on startup and slow in use.  These products understandably never really caught on.  

Yet, I still feel there is a strong place for such devices where the image capture is much better and much more flexible than current mobile phone tech.  The original problem of slowness had nothing to do with the Android OS and everything to do with the severely under-powered hardware it ran on.

Yes, everyone has WiFi, NFC, Bluetooth connectivity.  As you'll see in the following video this only leads to the need for more equipment.  It seems like the poor fellow is managing his technologies as much or perhaps more than he is making actual images.  Just look at the pile of computer "stuff" he needs to get his job done.  Quel bordel!

Moving the image capture device itself to a standardized Operating System would enable image processing, management, and distribution applications from a single, common location.  In short, everything could be done in camera, as it will have simply become a centralized compute device that happens to specialize in image capture.

Think of it this way - Say you're a working Formula One photographer and you're trackside shooting a few images.  What if you could snap a sequence of photos, select the one(s) you want,  pass it(them) through a color grader, and then post it with your comments to a website all in moment or two?

It could be an interesting solution, right?

Here is a hybrid solution that I use when wanting to avoid carrying the big laptop.  With my old Sony NEX and Ax000 cameras I WiFi or NFC connect to  a large screen mobile phone, select desired images, transfer them to the phone in just a few gestures, open them in something like Snapseed, process them, and send the results on.  This is a nearly manageable solution. 

In any event, have a look at all the support gear this guy uses.