APS-C sensors are still significantly more expensive than common sensors like the IMX477. Demand would be much lower due to the high price for the sensor and additional cost for lenses and mounting hardware.
RPi foundation isn't really targeted at the niche, high-end, low-volume markets that demand the best of the best. They're great at delivering an excellent compromise of cost and quality. The IMX477 is just right for most use cases.
The sensor alone doesn't deliver 100% of the result of a modern SLR. The image processing code does a lot of heavy lifting that is mostly proprietary. The open source options are improving, but connecting an APS-C sensor to an R-Pi wouldn't automatically give you a DIY SLR competitor.
You'd spend a lot more in the process and get worse results than just buying a commercial SLR camera and running open-source scriptable firmware like Magic Lantern: https://magiclantern.fm/
I would love to have a nice APS-C or full frame board-level camera that can be easily integrated into something like a Raspberry Pi. At present it is nearly impossible to get something like that --- dev kits for large sensors from Sony Semicon, Canon, and ams are profoundly expensive, only sold to companies, and go through a lengthy quoting process.
> The sensor alone doesn't deliver 100% of the result of a modern SLR. The image processing code does a lot of heavy lifting that is mostly proprietary.
This is HN, hackers like us love to be able to tinker with the heavy lifting. That's the whole point of the Raspberry Pi cameras. Even with the current HQ camera, a used point-and-shoot camera with a similarly-sized sensor (or even bigger sensor) would tend to produce better images and videos while being more compact, robust, convenient, and cheaper than the DIY camera.
APS-C might be a tough ask, but something like this[1] or this[2] might work - smaller sensor but at least you won’t get a ridiculous crop factor on APS-C lenses. The second one says it’s format is APS-like.
But I’d say an RPi alone would be a bit tough to handle something like this. You’d need at least an FPGA to control the sensor and maybe something like RPi for UI and further processing.
But it’ll be expensive. These components are anything between $500 and $3000, and that’s _without_ the FPGA and other things that would be required. An equivalent crop frame camera might be only $1000(?). If the aim is to have a DIY hackable camera, sure. If you want a cheap camera, no...
uses an IMX455 full frame sensor, gives you a reasonably hackable full frame camera (not that well supported, but there are grassroots libraries around) but it's $4000 because it's also a cooled camera.
If they had a version of it that's not cooled and just for normal photography for $1000 that'd be awesome.
> APS-C sensors are maybe only a few hundred bucks.
Where are you sourcing APS-C sized MIPI CSI sensors for a few hundred bucks in low quantities?
Larger sensors tend to use SLVS-EC interfaces rather than MIPI CSI used in the Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi doesn't even support full 4-lane MIPI-CSI (except on the CM4). It's limited to 2-lane MIPI-CSI.
Lenses for full frame cameras are super cheap -- you can find tons of old Russian, Japanese, and East German lenses that will work really well. Many of those lenses are built like tanks and can be had for <$100, some <$50. Most of them produce very nice images and aesthetically have much better look than what I see out of these CCTV lenses for the Pi HQ camera. CCTV lenses were never designed for art, and among other things produce horrible out-of-focus highlights.
> The image processing code
Well yes, that's also the point, by having an open source APS-C or full frame camera you can tinker to your heart's content with changing the image processing code.
I use Magic Lantern extensively and there's only so much you can do with it, and it's a pain in the ass to recompile code for it. Having a full-fledged Linux system with gcc, opencv, python, and pytorch at my disposal on camera, and with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB, and running an SSH server, and the ability to connect arbitrary I2C and SPI sensors, would be freaking amazing, to say the least.
Wildlife camera with thermal camera trigger and a neural net that recognizes mountain lions? You got it.
LIDAR-based insanely accurate servo-driven autofocus? You got it.
Microphone array that figures out who in the picture is talking and refocuses the camera to that person? You got it.
Home-made Alt-Az tracker with built-in autoguider and remote Wi-Fi progress monitoring? You got it.
And if it can be made to work with the Pi, someone will hopefully also make it work with a Jetson Nano or Xavier NX and then voila I could do some neural net processing in real-time on-board. I've been able to blow Canon's in-camera denoising out of the water with state-of-the-art neural nets by postprocessing RAW images, and if I had a Xavier or Nano on-board I could easily put those neural nets in-camera for convenience.
The possibilities are endless, which is why I really want this hardware so much.
Everything you described can be built out with this existing sensor and hardware.
You don't need an APS-C or larger sensor to get decent images. Most APS-C sensors use a different high-speed interface that won't work with the Raspberry Pi anyway.
Really, this solution from the Raspberry Pi foundation is a great start for any of the projects you mentioned. It's also cheap and highly available.
> You don't need an APS-C or larger sensor to get decent images.
I don't have the space and time to debate the merits here but there is a reason they exist, there are lots of things you can get by having a large sensor (including a different aesthetic and better SNR for low light images) and I want those things with a hackable interface and programmatic control of whatever the sensor is capable of.
I've been doing photography with full frame sensors for a a decade after upgrading from APS-C and telling me "you don't need an APS-C camera" without understanding why I use a full frame camera or the work I produce with them isn't really helpful.
The thing is, if you want to use existing older camera lenses a large sensor is a hard requirement unless you want an ultra-zoom. Which is why people are having success with the rpi sensor for astrophotography, but this article is about making a portable, everyday camera; I'd quite like to be able to use my old Nikon 20mm as a 20mm, not a... um, 112mm or thereabouts.
RPi foundation isn't really targeted at the niche, high-end, low-volume markets that demand the best of the best. They're great at delivering an excellent compromise of cost and quality. The IMX477 is just right for most use cases.
The sensor alone doesn't deliver 100% of the result of a modern SLR. The image processing code does a lot of heavy lifting that is mostly proprietary. The open source options are improving, but connecting an APS-C sensor to an R-Pi wouldn't automatically give you a DIY SLR competitor.
You'd spend a lot more in the process and get worse results than just buying a commercial SLR camera and running open-source scriptable firmware like Magic Lantern: https://magiclantern.fm/