I am an amateur photographer, and I can't understand why the major camera brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc.) aren't open at least to the concept of SDK's to control their cameras (let alone opening the lens mount specifications)...
It would make their cameras much more flexible and useful, thus perhaps gaining some users that currently use smartphones where it seems there is greater control over and integration with the cameras. On the other side, if one can implement in software what the producer doesn't want to implement in firmware, they might miss some future upgrade sales...
I am currently thinking on buying a FujiFilm X-T4, and I was pleased to see there is a SDK, but now, finding out that using the SDK is practically forbidden (until the warranty ends), it makes me stop and think about my decision... What could the SDK do to the camera so that it voids the warranty? (On the other hand, given the quality of camera brand produced software, I can imagine the quality of the code that went into it...) :)
For the bigger players, they miss out on market segmentation. An EOS M with Magic Lantern has a number of features that are featured on Canon's cinema line, for example. The M is perhaps no longer competitive in key ways, but had ML been available with today's level of polish in 2012, it would have eaten into higher-margin products.
Fuji is perhaps best poised to enable open development -- their pricing structure is more around hardware variations on a common sensor/processing than strict differentiation in capability.
The far future of camera development probably does look like open-source (or, at a minimum, common-versioned closed-source) software/firmware riding on commercially-manufactured hardware platforms (just like computers today). We're not there yet, but the technical success of Magic Lantern shows that the door is open.
A dark-horse entrant like Sigma could, in addition to Fuji, be a hardware vendor that could crack open a "commoditize your competition" market.
> I am an amateur photographer, and I can't understand why the major camera brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc.) aren't open at least to the concept of SDK's to control their cameras (let alone opening the lens mount specifications)...
At least Canon and Nikon do.
I use the Canon and Nikon SDKs in a product for work, and there are plenty of third party applications which allow control of their cameras.
They might not officially offer support for them, but they do keep them updated for new cameras and I have had bugs fixed and questions answered.
There are open source projects using these SDKs - See NINA [0] as just one example.
The Sony mirrorless cameras used to have some third party "apps" that were pretty cool but apparently are now all discontinued. And what the Magic Lantern team did for Canon cameras (especially the 5DmkIII) was absolutely amazing. I still miss features to this day.
If you are looking for a new camera also definitely checkout the new Panasonic Lumix line of full frame cameras - they are damn amazing. Extremely intuitive UI, tons of features you do not find in other cameras, amazing video (especially with an external recorder - you can do 6K raw video) and built like a tank. And they all use L-Mount which is shared among multiple camera manufacturers with tons of lenses available from Sigma and others. The Panasonic lenses are pricey but also extremely high quality (probably because they also design super high end cinema glass)
I strongly suspect it's just easier from a customer support point of view, if you develop an application that causes the camera to overheat and fail.
They really don't want to send you a new camera. The dangerous thing with code controlling hardware directly, is absent safe guards you can easily exceed the mechanical limits of the device.
This is why seriously overclocking a CPU will definitely void the warranty, but at the same time CPUs are often marketed based on how well they handle overclocking.
Japanese gov/corporations have a natural aversion to directly dealing with customers at scale.
They’ll want a proxy layer of third party corporations, which can then deal with the minutia of exposing it to end customers. Canon/Nikon/Fuji/Olympus have SDKs and partnerships, they just don’t want to deal with the individual customers.
> I can't understand why the major camera brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc.) aren't open at least to the concept of SDK's to control their cameras
Because why give something out for free when you can offer that stuff only in the most expensive models?
For a while in the late 1990s, there was a nominally-open camera OS called Digita. I had a camera that it ran on, and none of the skills to take advantage of it, but I remember someone built DOOM for it so that was neat.
People were writing Digita programs to do things like eat NMEA0183 GPGLL sentences and stuff them into the EXIF tags, because USB wasn't ubiquitous yet and a lot of cameras still had RS232 ports and cameras certainly didn't have native geotagging yet, but someone figured out it would be useful.
It was pretty wild, and I don't know why it flopped.
In terms of mount spec, I think Four Third and the successor Micro Four Third is open specification, then the Sony E mount later (not at launch time) open the specification.
The later might not be true, may be it is specification available but not open.
And practically any mount has been reversed engineered in their electronic protocols. (Edit: but each company has their own secret sauce here.)
As a digression, there are open source projects for running softwares or at least custom firmware in cameras. Famous examples are 2 projects on Canon compact and DSLR lines. Others includes firmware on Panasonic cameras, and then apps on Sony cameras. Sony may have killed the app capability due to this in recent models (or may be they only killed it because the store isn’t profitable.) If true that proves your point that they hate people tinkering it.
Canon always has been silent about the custom softwares running on their cameras including the famous 5D Mark II for raw videos. But later on as there’s rumors that the ID C cinematic camera ($10,000+ specialized in cine) is not much different than the then current 1D mode (may be 1D X, can’t remember) and it may be possible to hack it and install the 1D C firmware on the 1D camera (which is a relative bargain around $6000 or may be more.) Those rumors call out the open source project for help, and Canon for the first time spoke about the subject and signal that they will sue if anyone tamper with their flagship camera. Then the open source project responded saying they are not interested.
So again it’s another support on how much they hate us to tinker with our camera.
I’m guessing it may be a Japanese culture thing. Nintendo also has similar behavior. But may be not.
> I am an amateur photographer, and I can't understand why the major camera brands (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, etc.) aren't open at least to the concept of SDK's to control their cameras (let alone opening the lens mount specifications)...
I don't know about the other brands but Nikon cameras have implemented PTP in full forever which allows you to set virtually every option remotely, albeit over USB. I'm assuming the other brands are similar, because that's how tethered shooting works. There is no camera-specific SDK or driver needed for this. The bluetooth and Wifi stuff is proprietary ad vendor-specific as far as I know, though.
This is a bit off topic, but I have a Sony a3000 and a6000. I have a non-sony USB camera timer/remote [1], and I'm pretty pleased with it. There seem to be similar products out there.
If there is no USB SDK released by Sony, how are these manufacturers creating this USB control devices? Do they partner with camera vendors behind NDAs? Do they reverse engineer the protocol? Just curious.
Gating features allows them to wait for a future model to release them there and drive sales. There's not much blood left to wring from the digital camera stone.
They don’t want to cannibalize the other product markets. Canon for example was caught up with the video features that they added to the 5d back in the day. it sparked a video revolution, but destroyed their camcorder sector. same thing again when they released “cinema” specd cameras, that really just had different firmware than the photography cameras, but priced much higher.
Most big global brands are getting into rent seeking because the technology allows it, even company's like GE aka General Electric have diversified from making light bulbs to making money from finance activities so there is bound to be a reason for this avoidance to have an industry wide sdk. They may also want to avoid being labelled a cartel like this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel because legislation isnt brilliant either, just look at dieselgate, all the major motor manufacturers were engaged in the activities but because of US and UK national debts and deficits, Obama went after Merkel and Germany to get them to spend some money and they didnt so dieselgate appeared! Things are never what they claim to be in the news either.
However the flip side is, many global brands sponsor directly or indirectly university's around the world, and research is not cheap, if you saw the recent iphone lens exploded diagram a bit like this one https://wccftech.com/apple-working-new-iphone-camera/ you would see there is a lot of work going into all sorts of devices and the low hanging fruit from optics was harvested decades ago.
The sony cameras support a fair amount of external control, I’ve never written code for it directly but third-party apps have no issue other than the requirement that you connect to the camera as a wifi access point, which is a pain but understandable.
> Subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, Fujifilm hereby grants to you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and royalty-free license to;
(a) use, modify and make a limited number of copies of the SDK solely for the purpose of the Development;
Later in the same agreement...
> 3.5 You shall not (and shall not permit others), to reverse engineer, reverse compile, or disassemble the SDK in any way(in whole or in part); and you shall not (and shall not permit others) to use any method to trace, decompile, or disassemble the SDK.
SDKs are normally a bunch of function headers and documentation explaining them. You can do what you want with that, you're not supposed to look under the hood and figure out *how* the functions actually work.
> 5.2 YOU AGREE AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT, ONCE A PRODUCT IS USED OR CONTROLLED BY OR THROUGH THE DIGITAL IMAGING SYSTEM, SUCH PRODUCT SHALL BE OUT OF SUCH MANUFACTURER-WARRANTY WITH RESPECT TO THE PRODUCT AS SEPARATELY SPECIFIED BY FUJIFILM, FUJIFILM’S AFFILIATES, OR THEIR BUSINESS PARTNERS.
Brutal. Consumer protections are lagging badly behind in the software era. It's bad enough that commercial software has broad disclaimers against ensuring any kind of functionality, but this stuff is starting to creep into hardware too. I think right-to-repair is a good start.
Even in consumer places like the US, this is generally illegal.
They would not be able to refuse warranty service without showing that your use of the SDK was the reason the camera failed (and the burden would be on them).
IE they can't say "Yes, the lens popped out because it was defective, but you used the SDK so tough crap"
Is that even legal? It seems similar to the "warranty void" stickers which are nothing more than an illegal scare tactic that many individuals are conned into believing.
I think it's totally valid to void warranty when customers modify product software. If users do things like disable temperature limits and mess up their camera, then I see no reason why the company (and be extension, other customers) should foot the bill.
Giving away the SDK, regardless of warranty revocation, is a step ahead of most camera manufacturers.
Regardless of their written policy or silly warranty void stickers, the law dictates the warranty still covers all components not modified or damaged by the consumer. You might have to fight in court, but thats the law.
This SDK only works on the top end Fuji's, the cheapest one supported starts at £850 (body only)
Fuji has famously terrible app support, its a nightmare to set up and cuts out constantly, transferring images over wifi is slow and unreliable to the point of it being useless, the remote shutter is unreliable and doesnt have any of the extremely simple to program features that intervalometer's have. You can't shoot tethered unless you have one of the above very expensive cameras.
The whole software ecosystem around cameras is awful, I would love to see some open source community initiatives to be able to control these cameras and extend their functionality but I haven't seen much of that in the photography community.
A typical high end camera product would starts at $2000, and nowadays more often than not is $3000+.
A quick search shows the top end of Fuji X mount is $2000+.
And that’s not even the top end of Fuji’s, which goes to the medium format GFX mount.
For your other points, I know you’re talking about app, but Fiji has been famous about their software support in terms of how long they continue to update their firmware. They even market it Kaizen. And it is an objective truth that you can verify by comparing to how often other brands upgrade their firmware (Sony is not bad but still not as good.)
There exists open source softwares on camera, just may be not Fuji (I don’t know.) If you want open source softwares running on camera which significantly increases its capability, try Canon’s. That one is the most mature.
I haven’t tried Magic Lantern yet, but I have been reasonably happy with Canon’s remote app. It has been reliable so far, with the only downside being that it doesn’t offer GPS tagging for my camera (EOS 80D)
The lack of an intervalometer in ANY camera today is an insufferable insult.
Not to mention that the assertion in the title of this post is wrong, at least in the USA. We have a federal law called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act that makes it illegal to void the warranty of a product simply because the user modified it.
Canon cameras have enjoyed some fairly active open-source/hacker support. Check out Magic Lantern and CHDK (I can't tell if that one's still maintained).
Exactly, this part of the agreement may not void the warranty. Just like stickers on the outside of a product that say "Warranty void if broken" don't void the warranty.
For those looking to use something in between some of the horrible official camera apps and implementing something with this SDK, Cascable is really quite nice. I find it well worth the subscription.
Before the official SDK came out, I tried using this project that was working on reverse engineering the protocol for Fuji cameras:
Camera manufacturers really seem to try to shoot themselves in the foot as much as possible. They are putting on something interesting and immediately kill it for braid use. Nobody is going to publish software based on the SDK. At least nobody who doesn’t want the threat of lawsuits hanging over them.
They also make medium format mirrorless cameras, which are a great way to feel superior to all the people who think "DSLR" is what you call a high-end digital camera.
I can't quite bring myself to spend the money to get a GFX 100S though.
It would be great to have on Fuji cameras something like Magic Lantern on Canon's. Technically camera HW is capable of much more than manufacturer allow to do with software.
They usually support cameras with updates for 2 years and and then nothing. I understand that it is more profitable to make new cameras but it is not sustainable and eventually all consumer camera manufacturer will have to change their approach, because this industry slowly dying in consumer area. And it is not necessary because of smartphones but also because cameras since circa 2014 are good enough to keep them until die, not to switch every year.
I'm using Fuji cameras for pro work over 5 years now and I still mostly use X-T2 and x100F. Those are most reliable cameras I have. Very solid construction, "made in Japan". X-T3 feels very plasticky. Same for X-T4.
I have an XE 4 and I also investigated the possibility but they don't even provide headers for all the models. I would have to buy one of the few supported models to be able to play with the SDK.
They are missing a big oportunity and whoever wakes up first may get a nice boost from computational photography afficionados as well as many specialized fields.
I understand that they are trying to save development time by not building the necessary safeguards and I wish they published some less invasive way to communicate with the cameras such as over bluetooth or Wifi which many cameras already support.
An interesting question here is: How would they know that you used the SDK?
Does the camera have non-volatile memory for saving that piece of info? Assuming that it does, how can they make that bit tamper-proof?
Not that tamper-proofing is undoable, but it would require a lot of expensive engineering, just to save them from replacing a few dozens of cameras that presumably may break because of incorrect use of the SDK.
> 5.3 BEFORE SELLING, LICENSING, PROVIDING OR DISTRIBUTING THE DIGITAL IMAGING SYSTEM TO YOUR CUSTOMER (IF ANY), YOU SHALL EXPLAIN AND MAKE SUCH CUSTOMER FULLY UNDERSTAND THE WARRANTY-EXCEPTION SET FORTH IN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH.
this is a b2b2c term -- we need better tech for capturing consent up the chain and for surfacing contract terms to downstream clients
(notwithstanding the fact that in this case, it's 65% bullshit that the warranty is voided and 110% bullshit that fuji expects downstream consent to be captured)
Of course it isn't good that the warranty is being voided, but as a matter of contract this particular clause seems very logical. For the consumer it is good to know when you are being provided a third-party service/app that could void a warranty, and a clause like this makes the third-party provider liable for non-disclosure of the risks.
I have a Fujifilm XPro3. My favorite camera of all time. But I would trade it in for a camera with equivalent specs that runs a proper operating system and supports app development.
Cameras are so far behind smartphones in terms of their software that it has become embarrassing. Paying $2000+ for a camera, only to find out your smartphone does a better job of autofocusing and handling noise is just annoying.
[+] [-] ciprian_craciun|4 years ago|reply
It would make their cameras much more flexible and useful, thus perhaps gaining some users that currently use smartphones where it seems there is greater control over and integration with the cameras. On the other side, if one can implement in software what the producer doesn't want to implement in firmware, they might miss some future upgrade sales...
I am currently thinking on buying a FujiFilm X-T4, and I was pleased to see there is a SDK, but now, finding out that using the SDK is practically forbidden (until the warranty ends), it makes me stop and think about my decision... What could the SDK do to the camera so that it voids the warranty? (On the other hand, given the quality of camera brand produced software, I can imagine the quality of the code that went into it...) :)
[+] [-] ISL|4 years ago|reply
Fuji is perhaps best poised to enable open development -- their pricing structure is more around hardware variations on a common sensor/processing than strict differentiation in capability.
The far future of camera development probably does look like open-source (or, at a minimum, common-versioned closed-source) software/firmware riding on commercially-manufactured hardware platforms (just like computers today). We're not there yet, but the technical success of Magic Lantern shows that the door is open.
A dark-horse entrant like Sigma could, in addition to Fuji, be a hardware vendor that could crack open a "commoditize your competition" market.
[+] [-] carl_dr|4 years ago|reply
At least Canon and Nikon do.
I use the Canon and Nikon SDKs in a product for work, and there are plenty of third party applications which allow control of their cameras.
They might not officially offer support for them, but they do keep them updated for new cameras and I have had bugs fixed and questions answered.
There are open source projects using these SDKs - See NINA [0] as just one example.
[0] https://nighttime-imaging.eu/
[+] [-] Melatonic|4 years ago|reply
If you are looking for a new camera also definitely checkout the new Panasonic Lumix line of full frame cameras - they are damn amazing. Extremely intuitive UI, tons of features you do not find in other cameras, amazing video (especially with an external recorder - you can do 6K raw video) and built like a tank. And they all use L-Mount which is shared among multiple camera manufacturers with tons of lenses available from Sigma and others. The Panasonic lenses are pricey but also extremely high quality (probably because they also design super high end cinema glass)
[+] [-] 999900000999|4 years ago|reply
They really don't want to send you a new camera. The dangerous thing with code controlling hardware directly, is absent safe guards you can easily exceed the mechanical limits of the device.
This is why seriously overclocking a CPU will definitely void the warranty, but at the same time CPUs are often marketed based on how well they handle overclocking.
[+] [-] nerderloo|4 years ago|reply
There is a third-party camera remote app made with it(I think): https://monitorplus.cc/
[+] [-] makeitdouble|4 years ago|reply
They’ll want a proxy layer of third party corporations, which can then deal with the minutia of exposing it to end customers. Canon/Nikon/Fuji/Olympus have SDKs and partnerships, they just don’t want to deal with the individual customers.
[+] [-] rasz|4 years ago|reply
Because why give something out for free when you can offer that stuff only in the most expensive models?
If you look at http://www.gphoto.org/proj/libgphoto2/support.php http://digicamcontrol.com/cameras its almost universally older stuff and hiend models. At some point they stopped exposing control in order to upsell.
[+] [-] ska|4 years ago|reply
How much are you willing to pay for this? I suspect they've all looked at it, and decided the ROI wasn't worth it.
[+] [-] myself248|4 years ago|reply
People were writing Digita programs to do things like eat NMEA0183 GPGLL sentences and stuff them into the EXIF tags, because USB wasn't ubiquitous yet and a lot of cameras still had RS232 ports and cameras certainly didn't have native geotagging yet, but someone figured out it would be useful.
It was pretty wild, and I don't know why it flopped.
[+] [-] KolenCh|4 years ago|reply
The later might not be true, may be it is specification available but not open.
And practically any mount has been reversed engineered in their electronic protocols. (Edit: but each company has their own secret sauce here.)
As a digression, there are open source projects for running softwares or at least custom firmware in cameras. Famous examples are 2 projects on Canon compact and DSLR lines. Others includes firmware on Panasonic cameras, and then apps on Sony cameras. Sony may have killed the app capability due to this in recent models (or may be they only killed it because the store isn’t profitable.) If true that proves your point that they hate people tinkering it.
Canon always has been silent about the custom softwares running on their cameras including the famous 5D Mark II for raw videos. But later on as there’s rumors that the ID C cinematic camera ($10,000+ specialized in cine) is not much different than the then current 1D mode (may be 1D X, can’t remember) and it may be possible to hack it and install the 1D C firmware on the 1D camera (which is a relative bargain around $6000 or may be more.) Those rumors call out the open source project for help, and Canon for the first time spoke about the subject and signal that they will sue if anyone tamper with their flagship camera. Then the open source project responded saying they are not interested.
So again it’s another support on how much they hate us to tinker with our camera.
I’m guessing it may be a Japanese culture thing. Nintendo also has similar behavior. But may be not.
[+] [-] formerly_proven|4 years ago|reply
I don't know about the other brands but Nikon cameras have implemented PTP in full forever which allows you to set virtually every option remotely, albeit over USB. I'm assuming the other brands are similar, because that's how tethered shooting works. There is no camera-specific SDK or driver needed for this. The bluetooth and Wifi stuff is proprietary ad vendor-specific as far as I know, though.
[+] [-] daveslash|4 years ago|reply
This is a bit off topic, but I have a Sony a3000 and a6000. I have a non-sony USB camera timer/remote [1], and I'm pretty pleased with it. There seem to be similar products out there.
If there is no USB SDK released by Sony, how are these manufacturers creating this USB control devices? Do they partner with camera vendors behind NDAs? Do they reverse engineer the protocol? Just curious.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Remote-Control-Wireless-Shutter-Relea...
[+] [-] hadlock|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trainsarebetter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terry_Roll|4 years ago|reply
However the flip side is, many global brands sponsor directly or indirectly university's around the world, and research is not cheap, if you saw the recent iphone lens exploded diagram a bit like this one https://wccftech.com/apple-working-new-iphone-camera/ you would see there is a lot of work going into all sorts of devices and the low hanging fruit from optics was harvested decades ago.
[+] [-] nonsince|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EMIRELADERO|4 years ago|reply
(a) use, modify and make a limited number of copies of the SDK solely for the purpose of the Development;
Later in the same agreement...
> 3.5 You shall not (and shall not permit others), to reverse engineer, reverse compile, or disassemble the SDK in any way(in whole or in part); and you shall not (and shall not permit others) to use any method to trace, decompile, or disassemble the SDK.
So, which one is it?
[+] [-] detaro|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LorenPechtel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] themerone|4 years ago|reply
They can only void the warrenty if they can prove that the damage is the result of the SDK usage.
[+] [-] AlexandrB|4 years ago|reply
Brutal. Consumer protections are lagging badly behind in the software era. It's bad enough that commercial software has broad disclaimers against ensuring any kind of functionality, but this stuff is starting to creep into hardware too. I think right-to-repair is a good start.
[+] [-] DannyBee|4 years ago|reply
They would not be able to refuse warranty service without showing that your use of the SDK was the reason the camera failed (and the burden would be on them).
IE they can't say "Yes, the lens popped out because it was defective, but you used the SDK so tough crap"
[+] [-] e2le|4 years ago|reply
https://www.ifixit.com/News/11748/warranty-stickers-are-ille...
https://www.ifixit.com/News/15464/warranty-voiding-stickers-...
[+] [-] Manuel_D|4 years ago|reply
Giving away the SDK, regardless of warranty revocation, is a step ahead of most camera manufacturers.
[+] [-] cosmotic|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jug|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] daleharvey|4 years ago|reply
Fuji has famously terrible app support, its a nightmare to set up and cuts out constantly, transferring images over wifi is slow and unreliable to the point of it being useless, the remote shutter is unreliable and doesnt have any of the extremely simple to program features that intervalometer's have. You can't shoot tethered unless you have one of the above very expensive cameras.
The whole software ecosystem around cameras is awful, I would love to see some open source community initiatives to be able to control these cameras and extend their functionality but I haven't seen much of that in the photography community.
[+] [-] KolenCh|4 years ago|reply
A typical high end camera product would starts at $2000, and nowadays more often than not is $3000+.
A quick search shows the top end of Fuji X mount is $2000+.
And that’s not even the top end of Fuji’s, which goes to the medium format GFX mount.
For your other points, I know you’re talking about app, but Fiji has been famous about their software support in terms of how long they continue to update their firmware. They even market it Kaizen. And it is an objective truth that you can verify by comparing to how often other brands upgrade their firmware (Sony is not bad but still not as good.)
There exists open source softwares on camera, just may be not Fuji (I don’t know.) If you want open source softwares running on camera which significantly increases its capability, try Canon’s. That one is the most mature.
[+] [-] ashtonkem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HNHatesUsers|4 years ago|reply
Not to mention that the assertion in the title of this post is wrong, at least in the USA. We have a federal law called the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act that makes it illegal to void the warranty of a product simply because the user modified it.
Canon cameras have enjoyed some fairly active open-source/hacker support. Check out Magic Lantern and CHDK (I can't tell if that one's still maintained).
[+] [-] noasaservice|4 years ago|reply
"AS STARTED ABOVE, USING THIS SDK TO CONNECT TO OR CONTROL, ANY COMPATIBLE FUJIFILM CAMERA WILL VOID THE CAMERA’S LIMITED PRODUCT WARRANTY."
I'm sure the FTC would like to have a word, about revoking a warranty by using intended software.
[+] [-] justin_oaks|4 years ago|reply
In fact, those stickers themselves are illegal: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/11/601582169...
[+] [-] kejaed|4 years ago|reply
For those looking to use something in between some of the horrible official camera apps and implementing something with this SDK, Cascable is really quite nice. I find it well worth the subscription.
Before the official SDK came out, I tried using this project that was working on reverse engineering the protocol for Fuji cameras:
https://github.com/hkr/fuji-cam-wifi-tool
Alas, I’m working with an X-T2 and it is not supported by the official SDK.
[+] [-] ISL|4 years ago|reply
On the flip side, it suggests that there are probably some interesting things that are possible with the SDK.
[+] [-] spaetzleesser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Maursault|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrange|4 years ago|reply
I can't quite bring myself to spend the money to get a GFX 100S though.
[+] [-] gmiller123456|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] t0bia_s|4 years ago|reply
They usually support cameras with updates for 2 years and and then nothing. I understand that it is more profitable to make new cameras but it is not sustainable and eventually all consumer camera manufacturer will have to change their approach, because this industry slowly dying in consumer area. And it is not necessary because of smartphones but also because cameras since circa 2014 are good enough to keep them until die, not to switch every year.
I'm using Fuji cameras for pro work over 5 years now and I still mostly use X-T2 and x100F. Those are most reliable cameras I have. Very solid construction, "made in Japan". X-T3 feels very plasticky. Same for X-T4.
[+] [-] cfn|4 years ago|reply
They are missing a big oportunity and whoever wakes up first may get a nice boost from computational photography afficionados as well as many specialized fields.
I understand that they are trying to save development time by not building the necessary safeguards and I wish they published some less invasive way to communicate with the cameras such as over bluetooth or Wifi which many cameras already support.
[+] [-] m000|4 years ago|reply
Does the camera have non-volatile memory for saving that piece of info? Assuming that it does, how can they make that bit tamper-proof?
Not that tamper-proofing is undoable, but it would require a lot of expensive engineering, just to save them from replacing a few dozens of cameras that presumably may break because of incorrect use of the SDK.
[+] [-] awinter-py|4 years ago|reply
> 5.3 BEFORE SELLING, LICENSING, PROVIDING OR DISTRIBUTING THE DIGITAL IMAGING SYSTEM TO YOUR CUSTOMER (IF ANY), YOU SHALL EXPLAIN AND MAKE SUCH CUSTOMER FULLY UNDERSTAND THE WARRANTY-EXCEPTION SET FORTH IN THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH.
this is a b2b2c term -- we need better tech for capturing consent up the chain and for surfacing contract terms to downstream clients
(notwithstanding the fact that in this case, it's 65% bullshit that the warranty is voided and 110% bullshit that fuji expects downstream consent to be captured)
[+] [-] ravel-bar-foo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheMagicHorsey|4 years ago|reply
Cameras are so far behind smartphones in terms of their software that it has become embarrassing. Paying $2000+ for a camera, only to find out your smartphone does a better job of autofocusing and handling noise is just annoying.
[+] [-] Rucadi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] traviszhong|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hexo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Proven|4 years ago|reply
But another camera if you don't like it.