Get Ready for Change

LEDE ONThis week I write about new products, existing (Adobe), announced-but-not-imminent (Ricoh), and upcoming (additional new cameras coming in September). So it seems only appropriate to also say something about Apple, as they have called the press to the big circle for a launch-a-thon soon (on the 9th). The big anticipated camera news from the fruit company is that they’ll finally introduce variable apertures on an iPhone. Probably not more than two settable apertures, but a lot of us are scratching our heads about this, as the math of small-sensor-size has us already deep in the diffraction zone, so it’s unclear to me that there’s all that much real visible impact. Unless, of course, Apple is doing something on the computational side. For instance, many smart phones already use a stream of images taken around the the chosen one to help reduce noise. What if they did the same with aperture? That would help them build a better depth map and computationally adjust subject and…