[HN Gopher] Insta360's Ace Pro combines Leica engineering with c...
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Insta360's Ace Pro combines Leica engineering with computational
photography
Author : mikece
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-11-21 13:39 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (petapixel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (petapixel.com)
| gehwartzen wrote:
| I have only experience with one of Insta360's product, the Link
| tracking webcam, but was left extremely impressed. The image
| quality was absolutely phenomenal. I imagine this action cam
| could only be even better working with Leica.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| They've had a Leica partnership for a while in the form of the
| Insta360 One R (and RS) 1-inch lenses, plus with their 1-inch
| 360 module. There's still some fundamental physics limitations
| with gathering light on a small sensor, but I enjoy using the
| 1-inch lens on my One RS when I can over the "normal" action
| lens.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| It's worth bearing in mind that the so-called "1 inch"
| sensors are approximately half an inch in size.
|
| https://www.trustedreviews.com/explainer/what-is-1-inch-
| came....
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| I have a Link and one of their 360 cameras. I am impressed by
| birth the hardware and the software.
| amelius wrote:
| > ... Combines Leica Engineering with AI
|
| So it makes photos showing people with six fingers per hand?
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Sarcasm aside, this is mostly about their custom ML denoiser
| for the video:
|
| _> Using an onboard 5nm AI chip, the Ace and Ace Pro cameras
| use a custom-trained AI neural network to denoise the footage
| for a clearer image in real time, Insta360 claims._
|
| ML denoisers are pretty useful in high-quality photography if
| done right. Photographers were initially skeptical at large,
| but quickly accepted it, as products from Topaz, DxO, and alike
| were giving excellent results. You are extremely unlikely to
| stumble upon any invented detail in a denoiser like this.
| foldr wrote:
| Also, any denoiser is 'inventing' details. You can't know for
| sure what the value of the pixel would have been absent
| noise. It's always a probabilistic guess. Guessing based on
| higher level details just produces different kinds of
| artifact (and possibly more noticeable ones in some cases).
| hyperbovine wrote:
| This quibble is just going to completely cease being a
| thing in 5-10 years.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| When I ride my motorcycle with my insta360, the difference
| between one gray pixel and a slightly different gray pixel
| for the asphalt is really not something I care about. What
| I care about is that I can't notice it. If the denoising
| model does a better job of making up convincing pixels,
| that's a win. The outcome I'm looking for is a video with
| fewer visible artifacts caused by the limitations of the
| hardware.
| lambdasquirrel wrote:
| I have to quibble on this one for technical correctness.
| These denoisers remove detail, not add them. The assumption
| is that you should have flat and even areas, not finely
| pixelated areas.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| DxO DeepPRIME XD (their newest and greatest AI denoiser)
| seems to actually invent details. If I take a picture
| with my mirrorless of a bookshelf from across the room at
| ISO 32000 and let XD go crazy at it (slider to the
| right), it reconstructs gibberish letters on the book
| covers.
|
| If I don't let it go crazy and keep it subtle, the
| results are incredible. Tbh for my camera (EOS R10) and
| DxO, low dynamic range, not noise, is now the limiting
| factor for high ISO photos.
| gillesjacobs wrote:
| Does this pivot from 360 cameras towards traditional action cams
| means that 360 cameras are too niche a market?
|
| Too bad, even for traditional action camera use cases 360 cameras
| have several advantages, but I guess the higher cost limits the
| market.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| No, Insta360 has a ton of both traditional action cams and 360
| cameras. The fact that they have "360" in the brand name hasn't
| stopped them from releasing a bunch of successful non-360
| cameras.
|
| I love my One RS 1" (the non-360 Leica lens). The only caveats
| are that it's really hard to search for the accessories, and
| doesn't have a dive case.
| reedf1 wrote:
| I went travelling recently and maybe I'm becoming grumpy and old,
| but it was barely possible to move for people ambling around with
| their phone/camera/selfie stick. It felt much much worse than I
| ever remembered it being.
| m463 wrote:
| Just wait. In a few years these things will have 360 degree
| lenses embedded in people's forehead (or both shoulders) and
| things will settle down.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| 30w fast charge (on the Pro), good to 33ft, and a flip screen...
| insta360 is killing it. Having a 5nm chip on a consumer device
| like this, imo, shows a passion for excellence that you won't see
| in most competitors.
|
| I hope these class of devices can start integrating better with
| phones. The screens on these things aren't big enough for
| comfortably complex & advanced photo-nerdery, but even my old
| Zcam E1 (Kickstarter 4/3" (aka MFT) 4k action camera from 2p25)
| has a pretty ok wifi app where I can compose shots well &
| relatively quickly change settings. It's also great for composing
| group photos. These are amazing sensor packages, and are held
| back by how they are marketed & targetted, but eventually those
| designations are going to start crumbling some, and that should
| be _amazing_.
|
| If these devices did expose some kind of more prosumer interface
| I could easily see them migrating from action cams to something
| like camera replacements. Insta360 has already done great with
| cameras & optics. Their One RS platform allowing the lens +
| sensor to swap out, and it's easy for me to imagine expanding the
| lineup from mostly wide angle ish prime lenses to also incclude
| some optical zoom or long focal length primes.
|
| Ideally phones would also integrate themselves well too. I can
| plug a USB camera (I've had much more hit & miss situation with
| microphones weirdly) into most Android phones and have it work
| (alas notably Chrome often doesn't pick up the device
| frustratingly!!); handy for conference rooms or desks with good
| fixed infrastructure. But so far we still don't good standards
| based ways to do this kind of thing over wifi. It'd be fun to
| swing for the fences & see someone bake Media-over-QUIC or
| something bleeding Edge into a device, but even an rtsp streamer
| & Android support as a sink would enable fun weird interesting
| advanced uses galore.
| Grazester wrote:
| Nice. GoPro's seem to always overheat and shutoff. Hopefully
| these manage heat better!
| ctennis1 wrote:
| My Insta360 X3 shuts down quite a bit for heat too. Maybe these
| Ace Pros are better.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| DC Rainmaker's review of the GoPro Hero 12 had a section on
| overheating. Overheating typically occurs when there no
| airflow around the camera. For the Hero 12, GoPro removed the
| GPS chip, which has reduced the amount of overheating -
| recording time more than doubled compared to the Hero 11.
|
| see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgT-ZNTaRCA&t=687s
|
| One Insta360 Ace Pro review on YouTube compared the Ace Pro
| and GoPro Hero 12 and the Ace Pro kept going for at least
| 1h15mins while the Hero 12 shutdown after less than 30mins.
|
| see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBJCNUF4sHo&t=603s
| konraditurbe wrote:
| I'll stick with GoPro even though Insta360 has provided me with
| their cameras. GoPro's official APIs are just too good to switch.
| eurekin wrote:
| What the API is allowing to do?
| justinator wrote:
| I could use an Insta360 if you're looking to unload. I keep
| scratching the lenses of the GoPro Max and I can't afford to
| keep replacing these things.
| joshu wrote:
| really? what do they let you do? as a user i feel like insta360
| is everything gopro hopes it could be
| pdntspa wrote:
| Computational photography = an excuse to skimp on optics and
| traditional processing
| justinator wrote:
| Also what my iPhone does.
| hexo wrote:
| And thats exactly why we buy cameras to do actual photos, not
| some random computational imagery.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I feel like "an excuse to skimp" has negative connotations but
| another way of phrasing it is "getting every bit of performance
| possible out of the package".
|
| I just listened to a few reviews of the Panasonic G9ii and it
| has computational photography features too, but that's not to
| skimp on optics (very good lenses are available) it is again to
| get the maximum performance out of the system.
|
| Why would you not spend some compute power to make your camera
| hardware more versatile?
| pdntspa wrote:
| I don't want that versatility if it's going to compromise the
| integrity of the image just because some AI was trained on
| what the average yokel considers a "good picture"
|
| I want the optics and processing to produce the most
| detailed, widest-gamut, highest-dynamic-range image that is
| possible, give it to me in a raw form, and then allow me to
| shape the image to whatever I need it to be
|
| AI R&D takes away from optics/processing R&D, and those are
| what should be getting 100% of the R&D effort
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Right so maybe you aren't the target customer.
|
| > AI R&D takes away from optics/processing R&D
|
| Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I don't know what the
| engineering structure of the company is like.
|
| I just disagree that the goal or purpose of computational
| photography is to skimp in other areas. The G9ii has a 25
| megapixel micro four thirds image sensor but it can take
| 100 megapixel photos using an automated process where the
| image sensor is physically shifted around (thanks to in-
| body image stabilization capability) while multiple
| exposures are taken and then combined using computational
| techniques.
|
| But that is certainly not as an alternative to producing a
| 100 megapixel micro four thirds sensor, which would have
| very small pixels and thus poor noise performance among
| other things. On the G9ii, the computational features
| purely extend the function of the system. You could argue
| maybe they would have gone to 30 megapixels or 35 if they
| did not have this alternative, I don't know.
|
| If you want the absolute best possibly image quality, you
| simply will not want a pocket action camera. But all
| cameras will adopt more computational techniques and I
| don't think it's correct to say they are doing so because
| they wanted to skimp in other areas. Action cameras already
| skimp on lens quality to get a pocket form factor, not
| because they are adding AI. Additionally on cell phones,
| the form factor has always been the reason for low quality
| lenses and small sensor size. AI clearly has a place in
| extending the capability of a camera system with other
| physical constraints. Perhaps some companies will use that
| as an excuse to use cheaper optics than what is possible,
| but I would argue we cannot infer they have done that
| simply because computational photography is used. Computers
| are simply cheap and these techniques will get added
| because they have zero or very low BOM cost impact.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| I'm not sure how to understand this, surely doing
| "computational photography" (combining exposures, AI denoising
| and sharpening, smart postprocessing) is in every way more
| complex than "traditional processing" (camera eyeballing the
| white balance, applying a tonal curve and calling it a day).
| JshWright wrote:
| What advantage would traditional processing have over this
| approach?
| aeturnum wrote:
| I don't think you're wrong exactly, but I would say that
| computational photography is an explanation for why you might
| pick this camera over similarly spec'ed ones. Most people never
| approach the fundamental physical limits of their cameras
| because they are quite hard to use optimally - I think there's
| a lot of space for better software ("ai" or otherwise) to help
| out.
| kriz9 wrote:
| I love my Gopro but the app/software experience is complete ad-
| ridden trash. Only reason I am looking for an alternative.
| Hopefully this is it.
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