FULL STEAM AHEAD, LUMIX

Pete_W wrote:

What Panasonic, Olympus and every other camer brand need to do is improve the technology inside their cameras.

The smartphone industry has been eating their lunch for many years by moving into the camera space yet the camera makers have not responded by introducing better technology in cameras to match what can be done in smartphones.

The existing Panasonic wifi and bluetooth connectivity is difficult to use and poor by comparison and their companion smartphone app is only just ok, nothing special. The latest cameras should be way better at connecting to networks, to camera websites, and in processing with computational features.

Camera companies need to start fighting back!

Actually I think one of the strengths of both Panasonic and Olympus has been in advancing the technology. The reason some computational photography features are easier to enable in smartphones is because you're dealing with tiny sensors with output that requires far less on the hardware resource side of things, but you also have expensive and fast hardware in the flagship smartphones. The processors in a camera like the E-M1/X series are amazing, but more specialized than the cpu's in a smartphone. Think about what it takes, as you scale up the data processing needs, to provide continuous autofocus on a larger sensor, or features like focus stacking and ProCapture. My iPhone 11 Pro has some amazing computational photography features, but it just can't keep up with my E-M1 Mark II when it comes to many picture taking tasks. Then there is also the question of how far is too far? Do features like fake bokeh belong on dedicated cameras that can achieve real bokeh using wide apertures?

WiFi and bluetooth connectivity can certainly be improved. I haven't used a Panasonic with this tech. On the Olympus side it works fine for importing photos from the camera to a smartphone, and it works fine for remotely controlling the camera from the smartphone, but could be better and faster. It requires sticking pretty close to the camera. Personally I would rather avoid trying to make cameras more social network friendly. The more complicated and connected you make the software in a camera, the more updates are required, and the more potential vulnerabilities and bugs you introduce. One thing I can say about all of my Nikon, Panasonic, and Olympus cameras that I've had from 2004 to present is that they have been 99% reliable when it comes to the core mission of taking photos. There have been a few minor issues like cameras freezing up until you pulled the battery, but fortunately for me those instances were few and far between. Much more reliable than any computer or smartphone I've ever owned, and that's the way I want my camera's to stay. I want what is going on in my cameras to stay focused entirely on the process of capturing images and video as responsively as possible. As long as I can import the photos and videos using a cable, card reader, or WiFi... my smartphone and computers are better for viewing, editing, and sharing photos.

I'm all for advancing the technology, but I would never want my dedicated camera to start resembling a smartphone. These cameras are complicated enough as they are.