Show Notes
Greetings everyone, you’re listening to the Liam Photography Podcast, I’m your host Liam Douglas and this is Episode 427 for Thursday November 7th, 2024. Here are the latest stories from the Photography World.
Just over four years since unveiling its professional drone, the AirPeak S1, Sony discontinued it and all associated products.
The $9,000 drone has had a tough go of it since launch, with PetaPixel describing it as an “utter flop” in its review and characterizing Sony’s drone strategy as “confusing and inconsistent” last year after Sony unveiled a full-frame box camera designed for drones that, somehow, did not work with the AirPeak S1.
Despite impressive technological achievements, the AirPeak S1 struggled to gain a foothold in a drone market dominated by DJI. This inability to carve out a niche was undoubtedly influenced by the AirPeak S1’s huge price tag and slow rollout of essential features. Sony made some strides with the AirPeak, including a lighter gimbal and better navigation features and compelling firmware updates last year, but it was too little, too late.
“Due to recent changes in the business environment, sales of the Airpeak S1 and related products, except for some accessories, will end at the end of March 2025. Please see below for a list of products to be discontinued and details of the end of support, including repair services after the end of sales,” Sony explains in a machine-translated statement on its corporate website.
The affected products include the AirPeak S1, the gimbals, battery charger, transmitter, battery station, RTK kit, battery backs, and propeller. The battery pack and propeller sales will end a year later than the rest in March 2026.
Sony is also ending support for associated applications and services. The company will offer regular inspection and repair services, plus AirPeak software maintenance, until March 31, 2030.
As of now, some Sony AirPeak products remain available to order from B&H and Adorama, although some are listed as closeout or special order.
PetaPixel contacted a Sony representative in the United States about the company’s decision to discontinue the AirPeak but did not hear back before publication. This article will be updated if Sony provides a comment or additional insight.
On Friday, Pixelmator surprised with the announcement that it had signed the paperwork required to be acquired by Apple. If it passes regulatory approval, Apple will suddenly own a set of software that directly competes with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.
Pixelmator operates three photography-focused pieces of software: Pixelmator for iOS, Pixelmator Pro, and Photomator. While arguably less complete, the apps compete with Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, and Lightroom Classic in that order. Many photographers will be quick to point out that there is considerable functionality missing from Photomator to consider it an actual Lightroom competitor and they’re not wrong: there are some serious holes that would need to be addressed. However, if Apple were to choose to put resources into Pixelmator and Photomator (go the Final Cut route — yeah, most folks forget that Final Cut was an acquisition — instead of pulling a Dark Sky), both could challenge Adobe’s market dominance that it has enjoyed for the better part of a decade.
The following is divided into three sections: features that must be added, features that would be nice to have, and areas where Apple’s control of hardware and software would allow for nice bonuses that Adobe has already proven it can’t match.
While photographers could exist in either Lightroom or Photoshop alone, the fact that both exist is a major reason why Adobe has been so successful. Lightroom is an excellent batch editor which allows it to work well for photographers who shoot en masse and also makes it the best application for third-party developers to build plugins for. Photoshop, on the other hand, is a good single-photo editor and excels when it comes to doing something more than just basic digital development. Being able to send files back and forth to Lightroom and Photoshop is important to a lot of photographers but is even more critical to anyone who dabbles in graphic design.
Fluid, seamless interconnectivity is a must and for Apple to play in this space, it will need to maintain both Photomator and Pixelmator.
Speaking of plugins, Photomator and Pixelmator will need to be updated to support them. From what we can tell, Pixelmator doesn’t have the architecture for them and for many photographers, that’s going to be a non-starter. I have relied on third-party plugins for Lightroom multiple times over the last decade, so I’m firmly in the camp that this is a must-add.
Luckily, there is precedent: Apple’s defunct Lightroom competitor, Aperture, added plugin support in its second version.
A couple of months ago, I wrote that Adobe’s rapid support for RAW profiles had spoiled me and that is still the case today. It still boggles my mind that it wasn’t until July that Photomator and Pixelmator got support for the Olympus E-M10 Mark III, OM-System OM-5, Sony a7C II, Sony a7CR, and Sony a6700. When I spoke to Pixelmator, the company told me that while it does have its own RAW profile development team, it relies heavily on Apple’s native support for most of the RAW profiles in its library.
You might try and argue that Apple prioritizes RAW profile support based on camera popularity, but today, Apple still doesn’t support RAW files for the Fujifilm X100VI, probably the most popular camera on the planet. Whatever the case, Apple would need to revisit its priorities with RAW support and update its software to support all new cameras much, much sooner than it does right now.
Part of what makes Lightroom so desirable for photographers is how well it works as a digital asset management platform for photos. In order for Photomator to lure photographers away, it’s going to need catalogs, collections, and folder management — or at least its own version of an answer to the problems these tools solve. Apple will also need to add in support for keywords — which could be enhanced by Apple Intelligence to help generate those as well as filters. Many photographers will also demand a similar situation as Adobe’s Smart Previews.
It would be nice to see some of the robust printing support that Lightroom Classic has baked in. Fans of Aperture may remember its robust and beloved photo book creation tools, too.
Adobe had a rather haphazard approach to Lightroom on mobile (and still does with Premiere Pro and Photoshop) and still separates its Lightroom and Lightroom Classic programs, citing that they are for different users. I can buy that, and Lightroom on smartphones has gotten much better over time, but at this juncture, Apple has the chance to decide to combine its ideal users into a single (mostly) unified interface that can be customized to fit specific needs rather than splintering-off those people into two groups.
Luckily, Pixelmator has already shown the ability to port nearly the same experience over to the mobile environment, since it has Pixelmator for iOS and Pixelmator Pro for desktop. There is not full feature parity — there are some limitations to how layering works — but Photomator should be a lot easier to handle in a mobile environment since edits are comparably simpler. That and Apple is regularly updating the power of its hardware, making an eventual iPad or iPhone Photomator experience capable of being pretty solid.
Lightroom supports tethered shooting but it’s never been any photographer’s favorite platform for it. Unfortunately, shooting tethered is a requirement for a pretty small percentage of total Lightroom users and the same would go for how Pixelmator, and Apple, sees its audience. However, a strong, simple, reliable tethering experience with all major brands and cameras would be a fantastic addition to the platform.
For beginners, Lightroom can be a bit of a bear to come to grips with. It might not be immediately apparent why the Library and Develop modules need to be separate (or what the point of a module is), and much of what the controls do isn’t well described either by their menu option or the name of the tool. Apple could entice a lot of new photo editors into a system that was cleaner and clearer with its language. The company generally does a very good job of this already, so it’s not much of a stretch to ask for it here.
Apple takes a lot of pride in its Secure Enclave and the fact that its editing tasks — including its new AI Clean Up tool and the Immersive Photo tool on the Vision Pro — are performed on device. Keeping the emphasis on on-device when it comes to photo editing will also be appreciated. By removing the cloud from the equation, photographers will feel less like a big company is trying to train AI on their photos and more that the company cares about keeping what is theirs, theirs.
If the cloud is absolutely necessary, like it would be for proper mobile and desktop workflows, then Apple will need to continue its stance on how it handles cloud security. Apple needs to maintain its current focus on privacy no matter where it serves a photographer.
Adobe Photoshop requires photographers to go through steps to maintain matched colors in it and on a user’s display. Apple has a chance to make display matching a thing of the past — at least when it comes to pairing software with hardware.
Because Apple would control the entire pipeline, Photomator, and Pixelmator would be able to seamlessly provide perfect color to editors, provided Apple displays are being used. The Studio Display, Pro Display XDR, and every MacBook screen would be a perfect rendition of whichever color space a photographer needed to edit in, to the best ability of those displays to show that color.
Premiere Pro has a history of bugs and crashes regardless of how fast a computer is and improved Lightroom performance is always at the top of photographer wish lists — so it goes without saying that Adobe doesn’t have the best history when it comes to optimization.
The best possible comparison to what photographers could expect from Photomator and Pixelmator Pro is how Apple manages the same situation on Final Cut Pro. Right now, the app is ridiculously fast and able to play back multiple 8K HDR video streams simultaneously with no lag and no dropped frames. It’s remarkably stable, too.
While critics bemoan Apple’s walled garden approach to hardware and software, it does enable Apple to do something software companies like Adobe can’t, and develop new apps and software advancements exclusively for a limited number of devices, which it also makes and develops in tandem with software. Squashing bugs and optimizing software is challenging but made much easier by being the company that makes the hardware that runs your software.
While Apple may go the safe, boring route and just morph Photomator into its native Photos app on Mac, iPhone, and iPad (Photomator on macOS already looks convincingly like the Photos app as it is now), that would be a big disappointment and fail to capitalize on the opportunity Apple has.
The Pixelmator team has proven itself exceptionally talented and able to develop professional-grade photo and illustration tools with a fraction of the resources Apple can provide. Imagine what Pixelmator could do with Apple’s financial, engineering, and intellectual resources.
Most photographers (and other visual artists) use Mac. Apple has a large piece of the hardware pie, and if it takes full advantage of its pending Pixelmator acquisition, Apple can carve out a big slice of the software pie, too. Heck, even an attempt by a company as powerful as Apple to do so would shake things up a lot, inevitably benefiting photographers no matter what apps they prefer.
Back in July, Venus Optics revealed its Laowa CF 12-24mm f/5.6 Zoom Shift lens for APS-C mirrorless cameras in China, the world’s first shift zoom lens. Months later, the company finally debuted the groundbreaking lens on the global stage, and it is now available for purchase.
While many specifications were available in the summer thanks to Laowa’s Chinese social media posts, it is worth recapping the basics. The Laowa 12-24mm f/5.6 Zoom Shift lens is available for APS-C cameras across a diverse range of lens mounts, including Canon RF, Canon EF-M, L-Mount, Fujifilm X, Nikon Z, and Sony E, covering essentially every camera system out there save for Micro Four Thirds.
The lens can shift up to seven millimeters, allowing photographers to gain precise perspective control and minimize certain distortions. This is especially useful for architectural photography, as the shift capabilities allow photographers to capture straight vertical lines, even with tall buildings. Typically, shift capabilities are reserved for prime lenses, which lack the versatility of a zoom lens. However, the +/- seven millimeters of shift is available across the entire zoom range, a world’s first.
Venus Optics promises consistent exposure and image quality performance throughout the entire zoom range from edge to edge, which is essential for architectural and landscape work. It is worth noting that this new lens is not part of Laowa’s Zero-D (zero distortion) lens series. However, Venus Optics promises that “it still showcases excellent distortion control, allowing users to capture accurate and true-to-life images. This makes it an excellent choice for architectural and interior photographers, where precise image quality is crucial.”
The lens includes 15 elements arranged across 11 groups, and it has a nine-bladed aperture diaphragm. There are two aspherical elements and three extra-low dispersion pieces of glass among the 15 total elements. The lens also includes Laowa’s Frog Eye Coating (FED) on the front glass, akin to a fluorine coating to protect the front element and make it easier to clean.
The manual focus lens can focus as close as 15 centimeters (5.9 inches), resulting in a max magnification of 0.4x. The lens accepts 77mm filters via its front thread and has a maximum diameter of 80 millimeters (3.1 inches). The lens is 99 millimeters (3.9 inches) long and weighs 575 grams (1.3 pounds).
The Laowa 12-24mm f/5.6 Zoom Shift CF lens is in a class of its own in terms of capabilities, so there are no apparent competitors to consider. The lens is available now for E, EF-M, L, RF, X, and Z mount APS-C mirrorless cameras and costs $699.
A photographer has spent ten years on his project Dogs of the World which sees him travel across the globe to capture dog breeds in their ancestral homeland.
Photographer Craig Turner-Bullock who is based in New Zealand has captured a French Bulldog in Paris, Italian Greyhounds in Venice, and an Alaskan Malamute in, well, Alaska.
All-in-all, Turner-Bullock has visited 20 countries and more than 50 cities documenting 60 breeds so far. He tells PetaPixel that in 2017 he photographed a pitbull in New York, a corgi in London, and a French Bulldog in Paris which formed the basis of the project.
“As far as I can tell, this approach to photographing dog breeds has not been done before, usually books about dog breeds feature two things: The dogs are photographed in a studio and they are stacked to show conformation of breed standards,” Turner-Bullock explains.
“In Dogs of the World, I’m not necessarily looking for perfect show standards of any given breed, I’m looking for real-life examples of the breeds in those places.
“It’s funny because I’ve noticed that actually, many of the breeds look quite different in their country of origin to the show standard dogs you see at shows around the world. It’s been a really interesting part of the process of finding these dogs.”
However, determining exactly which breeds come from where is a tricky and argued-about subject. For example, Turner-Bullock photographed a corgi in London even though it is a Welsh working breed.
“But it is so strongly tied to London because of its connection to Queen Elizabeth II and Buckingham Palace, it just seemed right that I photographed them in the city,” adds the photographer.
“There was certainly a debate with myself about how close to their place of origin I would photograph them and how much creative license I could use.
“In the case of dogs like the Australian Shepherd, which was created and first recognised in the USA, they got their name after some of the collies used in their creation were imported from Australia. I photographed them in Australia seeing as that was their namesake country.”
Regardless, Turner-Bolock says he discovered that each breed has a fascinating history. Adding that in “virtually every civilisation and culture” dogs have aided humans and made their lives better in some way.
Turner-Bullock is planning to publish Dogs of the World via a Kickstarter campaign. He previously had three books published by Penguin Random House in New Zealand but decided to go down the self-publishing route.
The book will feature what he calls “Dogoramas”, a panoramic image of dogs in their ancestral land.
“It is the kind of image clients specifically come to me for now and it is a style of shot that has become so important in the making of the book to showcase dogs in the landscapes, while still making them the true hero,” adds Turner-Bullock.
The Kickstarter campaign can be seen here. For more of Turner-Bullock’s work, head to his website and Instagram.
Robert Downey Threatens to Sue
Robert Downey Jr. warned that he will sue filmmakers who use AI to recreate his likeness after he dies — as the actor makes his Broadway debut in a play about the dangers of the technology.
Downey Jr. is currently starring in the Broadway play McNeal which runs through to November 24 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater in New York.
McNeal explores the way AI is disrupting the creative world. In the play, Downey Jr. stars as writer Jacob McNeal who turns to an AI chatbot to produce an autobiographical novel by feeding the program his own books and other classic literary material.
The actor recently appeared on the podcast On With Kara Swisher to discuss the play and his thoughts on the AI age.
In the podcast, Downey Jr. sent a warning to Hollywood studios who intended to create AI replicas of him — declaring that he would take legal action even after his death.
Initially, Downey Jr. tells host Kara Swisher that he was confident that Marvel would not attempt to resurrect his character Tony Stark in Iron Man through AI.
“To go back to the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe], I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me, with or without me,” the actor says.
However, Swisher tells Downey Jr. that future Hollywood executives “certainly will” want to re-create his performances with AI technology. The Oppenheimer actor then made it clear that he would sue any such filmmakers.
“Well, you’re right,” Downey Jr. replies. “I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives just on spec.”
When Swisher points out that the actor might be long dead when this happened, Downey declares that his “law firm will still be very active.”
The ability of filmmakers to bring dead actors back to the screen through AI technology is still relatively new — and highly controversial.
Earlier this year, late Alien actor Ian Holm was brought back to life with AI technology for the new movie Alien: Romulus.
While the filmmakers first contacted Holm’s estate to get approval before embarking on using the late actor’s likeness in the movie, some movie fans were not happy about the use of deepfake technology in Alien: Romulus.
Last year, SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union that represents 160,000 entertainment industry professionals, had a four-month-long strike against Hollywood studios — with AI being a major sticking point. Actors were concerned that Hollywood studios would create AI replicas of them in perpetuity without their consent.
As a result, in September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed two bills into law that will protect actors and performers from unauthorized AI clones.
3D Model of Ancient Stone Sculpture
Scientists have created a 3D model of a buried relief sculpture by using a photo taken in the 1800s and novel AI technology.
The researchers from Ritsumeikan University in Japan developed a neural network capable of looking at a standard 2D photograph of a 3D object and producing a digital reconstruction in 3D.
In this case, the team looked at a photo showing figures carved into stone, known as a relief, that is buried in Borobudur Temple in Indonesia — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the world’s largest Buddhist temple compound.
According to Gizmodo, the black-and-white photo was taken 134 years ago of a relief that was only temporarily exposed because of reconstruction work. Photographs were taken of the relief before they were buried again and have been for the last century.
Other research teams have tried making 3D reconstructions but couldn’t because of the compression of depth values.
“Previously, we proposed a 3D reconstruction method for old reliefs based on monocular depth estimation from photos. Although we achieved 95% reconstruction accuracy, finer details such as human faces and decorations were still missing,” explains Professor Satoshi Tanaka from Ritsumeikan University.
“This was due to the high compression of depth values in 2D relief images, making it difficult to extract depth variations along edges. Our new method tackles this by enhancing depth estimation, particularly along soft edges, using a novel edge-detection approach.”
The team’s multi-modal neural networks perform three tasks: semantic segmentation, depth estimation, and soft-edge detection, which work together to enhance the accuracy of 3D reconstruction.
The core strength of the network lies in its depth estimation, achieved through a novel soft-edge detector and an edge-matching module. Unlike the conventional binary edge classification, the soft-edge detector treats edge detection of relief data as a multi-classification task.
Edges in relief images not only represent changes in brightness but also variations in curvature, known as “soft edges”. The soft-edge detector determines the degree of “softness” of these edges in relief images, enhancing depth estimation.
The edge matching module comprises two soft-edge detectors that extract multi-class soft-edge maps and a depth map, from an input relief photo. By matching and detecting differences between the two maps, the network focuses more on the soft-edge regions, resulting in more detailed depth estimation.
Finally, the network optimizes a dynamic edge-enhanced loss function, which includes loss from all three tasks, and produces clear and detailed 3D images of reliefs.
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