Jeez......what do you make of this?

I wonder if it's as good as he makes it look?

Well from automatic eye autofocus to one click replacement of the sky etc., AI is invading our hobby/profession.

The night sky one looks interesting.

For £200 approx. I suspect many will be tempted to try.
 
If it is that good i would have expected camera manufactures with the expertese and finances to have already built that into their cameras, or bought out the product for some vast some to save on research and developement and then incorporated it into they products.
Promo videos always look good anyway so I reserve judgement on this item, although taking a photo is not just pressing the shutter button as we all know
 
Not for me. I've been in manual mode for years now and intend staying there. This tool, whilst an appealing concept I think is a bit of a step backwards, not forwards, as it takes control away from the photographer.

I'd rather make those decisions myself, stay in full control and live with, but more importantly, learn from my mistakes, go back and try again

The only thing that might interest me is the time lapse feature, if I ever were to try one. That said, cameras have been doing that for a while now anyways.
 
I saw an advert for this the other day and straight away wanted to sarcastically ask if it would also choose the composition for you as well.
The first example milkyway "in camera colours" they use must have been set specifically to make it look worse to begin with as I've never had such washed out colours straight out of camera.
The only thing that looks good to me is the on the fly pano stitching.
 
It's a very fancy camera auto mode combined with auto settings in software. It may give you very usable results but there is actually no reason to go there if you have any clue. If you can't change 5 or 6 variables you probably won't get a location, light, timing or composition either. And this will never light your models. But it will be somewhat popular idea like mobiles or preset based software (luminar junk) are
 
Northern Photography UK said:
I saw an advert for this the other day and straight away wanted to sarcastically ask if it would also choose the composition for you as well.
The first example milkyway "in camera colours" they use must have been set specifically to make it look worse to begin with as I've never had such washed out colours straight out of camera.
The only thing that looks good to me is the on the fly pano stitching.
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It will be fun when some numpty with f4.5 lens tries to do milky way using this. Or will this tell now order your f1.4 lens from our store. Your camera is s*** at high iso. Order a new one. That will be so fun
 
They say it can do HDR merge and focus stacking. Now is it as bad as lr / Photoshop where anything moving or overlapping respectively creates horrific artifacts. Or worse? I'm kind of surprised Adobe did nothing about it for last 10+ years
 
Awfers said:
Well, I can see where this is going.. It's essentially a device that lets you take photos, without really have to know how to take photos. So, I guess what he is trying to do is to sell a trinket that cuts out the years of learning, trial and error by allowing even a complete novice with £1000 + $219 to take a photo better than someone who dedicated many years of their life to learning how to do so with their camera and lens combos.. That is, if it actually works.

I guess this was bound to happen.

At the same time, as Popsys said in the video I linked in my thread about Peak Camera, now the camera / golf clubs will do all of the work for you, so what's the fun in shooting / playing ? Part of the fun of photography is learning how to use your kit (at least to me). But this is like playing a video game on invincible, it gets boring really fast..
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And once you've done that, chasing the compositions, the light, the perfect sunrise, hiking places in the dark to witness said sunrise and then having to go back to get better another time and at a different time of year, and cooking your breakfast outside, and enjoying time with partners, kids and friends, and meeting new friends, and ....... All of that, is even more fun again :)

Obviously imo of course ;)
 
LeeRatters said:
And once you've done that, chasing the compositions, the light, the perfect sunrise, hiking places in the dark to witness said sunrise and then having to go back to get better another time and at a different time of year, and cooking your breakfast outside, and enjoying time with partners, kids and friends, and meeting new friends, and ....... All of that, is even more fun again :)

Obviously imo of course ;)
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nailed it. Learning the camera basics is relatively simple. All of this is much harder.

And a bit of controller won't be a substitute for buying a sharp lens over what I'm guessing a typical setup with that addon including 18-55 3.5-5.6 kit lens. I mentioned that specifically because it is in a promo video as a major selling point.
 
So much has happened in recent years (?decades) to make photography "easier", that I wonder if this is just the next step for many people? My knowledge of photography pre 1980 is a bit sketchy, but the SLR, auto exposure, autofocus, many aspects of digital eg in-camera processing, processing software, sky replacement, etc, etc... Many people lap it all up. I agree that if this "thing" is successful the major camera manufacturers will either buy it up or produce their own.
 
jerry12953 said:
So much has happened in recent years (?decades) to make photography "easier", that I wonder if this is just the next step for many people? My knowledge of photography pre 1980 is a bit sketchy, but the SLR, auto exposure, autofocus, many aspects of digital eg in-camera processing, processing software, sky replacement, etc, etc... Many people lap it all up. I agree that if this "thing" is successful the major camera manufacturers will either buy it up or produce their own.
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The Arsenal has been around since around 2017 and it hasn't taken over the world yet so I doubt very much it will now.

They say, they've shipped over 100,000 units which over a 5 year period isn't really that much. I remember looking into the early units a few years back and when you really started to dig down the reviews weren't that great.
 
Awfers said:
100'000 units at $200 a pop is $20 million... Even if it cost him $100 to have each made and deliver, it is still 10 million in profit, meaning 2 million a year over those 5 years... and it was all financed by a GoFundMe (or whatever system he uses), so no outlay on his end. Not a bad business, imo...
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My point had nothing to do with how profitable the business is.

100,000 units in the grand scheme of things isn’t a lot considering the number of photographers out there. Clearly it’s not something that’s of interest to the vast majority of us.
 
I've never seen one out in the field.

How someone struggles with "settings" is quite beyond me.

3 steps to a picture.

Compose
Focus
Expose.

Repeat.

With modern roads, travel, tripods with a huge array of different heads to suit different methods/styles/genres composing etc has never been easier. Focus, so easy either manually or automatically and with live view screens, focus peaking viewfinders again either will get it done and get it done right first time.

Expose, again, it's two knobs and if the shutter speed doesn't work, up the ISO. You even get a preview histogram to give you a rough idea of the lay of the land.

This isn't landing a Boeing 747 in a cross wind difficult stuff.

In short this is a device for people who have absolutely no substance or ability within them.
 
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ecoleman said:
My point had nothing to do with how profitable the business is.

100,000 units in the grand scheme of things isn’t a lot considering the number of photographers out there. Clearly it’s not something that’s of interest to the vast majority of us.
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Because

1. Basic camera craft isn't hard.
2. Most quite like learning and experimenting themselves
3. You cannot really polish a turd. Most, including myself, find the reward of getting it right through good forecast studying and good old luck, a big part of the joy.

Invent a device that will tell me the light will be epic, the sky will be epic and the water still and it gets it right every time and I would buy it. Pouring over weather apps, forecasts, cloud maps etc is really the hardest part of all this - and you are really relying on them being accurate.
 
ecoleman said:
The Arsenal has been around since around 2017 and it hasn't taken over the world yet so I doubt very much it will now.

They say, they've shipped over 100,000 units which over a 5 year period isn't really that much. I remember looking into the early units a few years back and when you really started to dig down the reviews weren't that great.
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I hadn't heard of it until this morning! If it is as good as he makes out, and he gets enough publicity, I could see it catching on.
 
SFTPhotography said:
You cannot really polish a turd.
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But apparently you can roll it glitter and some may eventually stick. That seems to be the whole idea of all this.
 
Arsenal how to list -

1) go to incredible locations in incredible light......
2) use Arsenal.

Or do what you have always done. That introductory video is full of great locations in great light which most photographers would die for - arsenal or no arsenal.
 
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LongLensPhotography said:
They say it can do HDR merge and focus stacking. Now is it as bad as lr / Photoshop where anything moving or overlapping respectively creates horrific artifacts. Or worse? I'm kind of surprised Adobe did nothing about it for last 10+ years
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I wonder how that works on cameras without a built in hdr option? I'd love to see it work a hdr on my canon 30d ;)
 
swanseamale47 said:
I wonder how that works on cameras without a built in hdr option? I'd love to see it work a hdr on my canon 30d ;)
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All it does it adjust the exposure values automatically so the arsenal with take a photo, change the exposure, take another photo and so on for 3,5,7 shots or whatever. The original raw files are saved to the cameras card as normal.

From what I understand of Arsenal 2 is that it has it's own SD card. The arsenal will merge those shots and create a HDR image and save it on it's own card in a jpg format.

Your essentially giving up control of the taking of the brackets and the editing of the image.
Probably fine for for the instagram brigade but not something you or I would be interested in.
 
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ecoleman said:
All it does it adjust the exposure values automatically so the arsenal with take a photo, change the exposure, take another photo and so on for 3,5,7 shots or whatever. The original raw files are saved to the cameras card as normal.

From what I understand of Arsenal 2 is that it has it's own SD card. The arsenal will merge those shots and create a HDR image and save it on it's own card in a jpg format.

Your essentially giving up control of the taking of the brackets and the editing of the image.
Probably fine for for the instagram brigade but not something you or I would be interested in.
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I could see the appeal in this if it did exactly what magic lantern does for 5d iii. You get all the Raw files. You set it to start at proper frame and go down every 1.5 or 2 stops until there is so more blown out anything. At most 1 wasted frame. Then you do whatever you do on your PC. All today's cameras are still behaving like film era throwbacks, so in a way they are all step back while on tripod. now I'm Not willing to pay 200 for a flimsy add-on that proper firmware is supposed to do.
 
Well I watched all the videos I could find last night (too many) and from what I saw it seems hit and miss. Not for me anyway but if it works for you good. It might lead to better things in the future.
 
great ad, and the panorama builder feature looks good. not convinced by it though... I sense you probably need to know what you're doing anyway to use it properly....so why would you bother? in terms of profitability we have no idea about the number of returns, discounts offered, refunds for the early delays or what they had to pay for the data on which the AI is based (or is calling it AI just a marketing gimmick?)...looking ahead I would expect the best features to be built into camera bodies. with all that said, a fun project for the owner and maybe a good earner too!
 
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