"Automatic computational photography"? the camera manufacturers have nothing. But I'd argue it doesn't really matter. If you're going out of your way to carry a big-ass camera (and even the micro 4/3 models are huge compared to an iphone - they don't fit in any jeans' pockets), you probably don't care for "software enhancements on the go", and you'll put your pictures through some kind of non-automatic processing on a computer at home anyway.
Now, I haven't tested the iphone 15 pro, but the 14 pro can't hold a candle to a 2016 Olympus Pen-F (micro 4/3 format) when it comes to gradients, details, etc. And when that camera came out, it wasn't even state of the art, it's just what I have lying around to compare.
The iPhones look great at night when you compare them to other phones, but they're absolute garbage when compared to an actual camera, even many years old. Even the "software revolution" can't help them.
But, they absolutely wipe the floor with actual cameras when you need something that fits in your pocket. A camera in your hand is infinitely better than a camera at home you didn't bother to drag around town with you. And it's the reason why, as a tripod carrying-dude, I love my iphone: I have it with me all the time, and it allows me to take pictures the pen-f sitting in a drawer at home can only dream about.
But when I like what I've shot with the phone, I'll haul the pen-f the next day if possible and take a picture of the same spot that will actually get printed.
How were they realistically ever going to compete with a 600lb Gorilla like Apple when it comes to Software?
The best they could always do is make the lithographic equipment used to make iPhones, the lenses used to make iPhones, and cameras that could take an excellent raw image that you could process on your MacBook. Which is exactly what they sell.
Using their decades' head start! Did they even try to develop software? Support open firmware and file formats to support computational photography? (That is what the Android project set out to do before pivoting into cell phones.) They did not.
Meanwhile Apple built a new category from scratch.
What for? When using a high-end camera, there is zero need to try to process the image on the camera. The camera hardware is about capturing the best possible RAW image which you then process on a desktop computer which has way more CPU and RAM than any camera could possibly have along with unlimited electricity (not running off a tiny battery).
You're thinking conservatively. The camera could capture information that could be used to refocus, denoise, infer depth, and more. They could have attached more sensors, like cell phones have, to power some of these things.
More sensors isn't software, that's hardware. What should these sensors do?
What do you mean by refocus and infer depth?
Denoise is done in post processing and can (depending on quality) take a lot of CPU. Not something to do on camera.
I use DxO for processing RAW images. It'll peg all the cores on my desktop to 100%, haven't measured the watts consumption during that but it's not something a little battery can deliver. The idea of running something DxO-equivalent on camera is unreasonable. And why would I want something inferior? I don't see a use case for trying to do post-processing on-camera.
The issue is that computational photography is mostly useful in the consumer market yet the point and shoot was always doomed.
Maybe Sony specifically deserves criticism for not pivoting hard into cellphones with computational photography chops. I’m not sure who else could have realistically succeeded in the new mainstream photography market.
Well they do. Apple licenses the ProRes codec to Sony.
I don’t think the idea or licensing computational photography software to them is that unthinkable either. I just don’t think such a deal makes sense with Sony’s pro-centric business strategy and Apple’s narrow focus.
