Great result - it would be nice to learn how this could be used..
How would you connect a Tamron lens to a Linux machine? Is this with the external USB port or Bluetooth dongle? Or through the bayonet connector? A linx camera controlling it's lens?
Just for settings and firmware update? Or some imaging workflow? Can you give a practical example of Linux also controlling the camera?
New Tamron lenses have built-in usb-c port close to the lens mount. The utility just replicates what official Windows/Mac software does - not much, configuration of focus-by-wire, corrections, button functions.
Modern DSLR camera lenses are full blown embedded computers controlling mechanical actuators (focus motor, aperture blades, etc.) and communicating lens information to the camera's CPU (aberration corrections, vignetting corrections, etc.). The days of lenses just being collections of mechanical cams for moving glass elements back and forth disappeared a great many years ago.
Modern lenses are complex electronics now. They need to communicate with the camera about correction params, metadata, control algorithm for focusing and stabilization. Having a usbc port is a natural next step.
Lenses have energy budgets, responsiveness concerns and actuator/sensor pairings through embedded processing. Therefore they need firmware. Firmware goes out of date and has bugs and improvements. Having the ability to configure a lens beyond simply selecting firmware is an obvious second use of the required interface.
Firmware doesn't inherently have more bugs than hardware, in general that's a consequence of the ability to update it more than the other way around. Here the need for an update-able firmware comes more from implementation a reverse engineered interface which might need fixes for compatibility with future cameras or updated camera firmware that only care about official vendor approved lenses (which consequently don't have a need for an update interface). However that still doesn't explain who would want things like auto-focus fine tuning or assignable buttons in the lens rather than the camera body where it already exists. Just because the USB interface is there doesn't mean that this use of it is useful.
> However that still doesn't explain who would want things like auto-focus fine tuning or assignable buttons in the lens rather than the camera body where it already exists.
1) not all camera bodies include those fine tuning options in the camera firmware;
2) lenses that include additional buttons beyond that which the camera maker programmed the body to understand can't be tweaked by a body that was never programmed to know the button exists;
3) in the specific case of some Tamron zooms, the Tamron focus fine tuning is at up to five different distance figures, while most camera body focus fine tuning is a single global setting for that one lens;
4) for camera bodies that do include focus tuning in their firmware, they also usually have a limited number of slots for a limited number of lenses. For professionals they very well may own more lenses than the camera has slots, so being able to "tune the lens" via "the lens itself" means each can be fine tuned, even if the camera body cannot store that many different adjustments;
5) an adjustment the camera maker never thought to include (i.e., one example quoted in the repo where the focus ring direction can be reversed) can not be tweaked by the camera body. This is useful to photographers who mix lenses from different makers on the same body as Canon builds their focus rings to rotate one way when focusing towards infinity while Nikon builds their focus rings to rotate in the opposite direction towards infinity.
Great result - it would be nice to learn how this could be used..
How would you connect a Tamron lens to a Linux machine? Is this with the external USB port or Bluetooth dongle? Or through the bayonet connector? A linx camera controlling it's lens?
Just for settings and firmware update? Or some imaging workflow? Can you give a practical example of Linux also controlling the camera?
New Tamron lenses have built-in usb-c port close to the lens mount. The utility just replicates what official Windows/Mac software does - not much, configuration of focus-by-wire, corrections, button functions.
Sounds weird to me to have this functionality on the lens in the first place.
Modern DSLR camera lenses are full blown embedded computers controlling mechanical actuators (focus motor, aperture blades, etc.) and communicating lens information to the camera's CPU (aberration corrections, vignetting corrections, etc.). The days of lenses just being collections of mechanical cams for moving glass elements back and forth disappeared a great many years ago.
Modern lenses are complex electronics now. They need to communicate with the camera about correction params, metadata, control algorithm for focusing and stabilization. Having a usbc port is a natural next step.
Lenses have energy budgets, responsiveness concerns and actuator/sensor pairings through embedded processing. Therefore they need firmware. Firmware goes out of date and has bugs and improvements. Having the ability to configure a lens beyond simply selecting firmware is an obvious second use of the required interface.
Firmware doesn't inherently have more bugs than hardware, in general that's a consequence of the ability to update it more than the other way around. Here the need for an update-able firmware comes more from implementation a reverse engineered interface which might need fixes for compatibility with future cameras or updated camera firmware that only care about official vendor approved lenses (which consequently don't have a need for an update interface). However that still doesn't explain who would want things like auto-focus fine tuning or assignable buttons in the lens rather than the camera body where it already exists. Just because the USB interface is there doesn't mean that this use of it is useful.
> However that still doesn't explain who would want things like auto-focus fine tuning or assignable buttons in the lens rather than the camera body where it already exists.
1) not all camera bodies include those fine tuning options in the camera firmware;
2) lenses that include additional buttons beyond that which the camera maker programmed the body to understand can't be tweaked by a body that was never programmed to know the button exists;
3) in the specific case of some Tamron zooms, the Tamron focus fine tuning is at up to five different distance figures, while most camera body focus fine tuning is a single global setting for that one lens;
4) for camera bodies that do include focus tuning in their firmware, they also usually have a limited number of slots for a limited number of lenses. For professionals they very well may own more lenses than the camera has slots, so being able to "tune the lens" via "the lens itself" means each can be fine tuned, even if the camera body cannot store that many different adjustments;
5) an adjustment the camera maker never thought to include (i.e., one example quoted in the repo where the focus ring direction can be reversed) can not be tweaked by the camera body. This is useful to photographers who mix lenses from different makers on the same body as Canon builds their focus rings to rotate one way when focusing towards infinity while Nikon builds their focus rings to rotate in the opposite direction towards infinity.