Today's smartphones have remarkably good cameras, in part because they compensate for their small image sensors with artificial intelligence programs that can understand a scene and correct for variables like low-light. But the larger sensors found in DSLRs still provide better low-light shooting, and so a new startup called Photogram has decided to blend the two concepts to create the best of both worlds.
Called the Alice Camera, the Micro Four Thirds shooter takes the convenience of shooting on a smartphone — it's easy, because the software does a lot of the work — with the quality of a DSLR and interchangeable lenses. The camera features an 11-megapixel sensor from Sony, which may seem low, but Photograms says the individual pixels are large and therefore capture more light and less grain than what you'd get in a smartphone.
Mass appeal — The London-based company says it spent the last 18 months refining a prototype with the help of over a thousand creators, optimizing the experience for super fast sharing across social media. The camera itself relies on a smartphone as the controller and viewfinder. It connects via WiFi, and the company says footage can be transferred instantly, even with the ability to live stream in real-time to services like YouTube or Twitch.
The real market for the Alice is clearly the casual photographer who likes to post nice pictures from their adventures to Instagram, but doesn't necessarily want to deal with the learning curve of a full-size camera. That's really what the professional market is up against in 2021: smartphones today produce very good pictures, and don't ask much of the person taking the photo. With DSLRs, the optics might be good, but unless you know how to adjust the complicated settings, you'll have a hard time actually taking advantage of all that power.
Seeing as the professional market has been struggling as a consequence of these trends, a camera like the Alice could be an interesting way to bring people back — the influencer market is huge — even if it may not appeal to professionals who believe in their own skill more than an intelligent chip.
Ease of use — In order to give the Alice the same image enhancement techniques as a smartphone, it features a built-in Google AI Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) and a reprogrammable chip optimized for high-resolution video processing, which can improve with regular updates. Photogram says the camera uses deep learning techniques to automate focus, exposure, and color balance. The algorithms have been trained on a vast number of images and continue to learn over time.
The Alice isn't the first camera to offer wireless connectivity to a smartphone, but other solutions are often clunky and don't feature the same type of AI smarts that enhance pictures in real-time. Photogram really wants to deliver post-processed shots straight out of the camera. It says that the algorithms are conservative by default, so they won't give users some crazy artificial-looking pictures. But users are also given a high level of control over the creative process through intuitive controls.
The sample shots from the Alice are promising enough, but at this stage its production is being crowdfunded on Indiegogo and the camera hasn't yet been released. Deliveries are anticipated to begin in summer 2021. The retail price is £750 (~$955), but early backers can pre-order a base model for £550 (~$758).
As this is a crowdfunding campaign, buyer beware: the camera may turn out not as great as promised. And there's always the risk that the project could dissolve and backers lose their money. Photogram is backed by the United Kingdom Government’s Innovation Agency, however.
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February 10, 2021 at 05:08AM
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The Alice Camera brings smartphone-like AI smarts to a full-sized camera - Input
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