One of the big announcements from Adobe at NAB 2023 is the addition of photography to their Frame.io cloud collaboration platform. While Frame.io has been used for collaborating on video products for a while now, photography is a new genre for the system. We stopped by the booth while were at the show to chat with Michael Cioni, Senior Director of Global Innovation at Adobe to learn more about it.
While still in its early days, it already looks quite impressive and it’s even supported natively by Fujifilm X series cameras. Adobe’s goal with this new photography workflow is to essentially eliminate memory cards, and allow direct remote storage straight from your camera to the cloud.
The benefits of camera to cloud for photographers are numerous. For a start, it adds safeguards to your workflow. You don’t have to worry about losing your memory cards on the way home. Or, worse, being robbed. Sure, in the case of the latter, you’d still have all of the other things to worry about, like dealing with the police, insurance companies, etc. but the one concern you wouldn’t have is your client’s images.
Of course, there are practical uses for camera to cloud, too. If you’re doing commercial shoots, you can have the images beamed directly to Frame.io’s cloud for immediate review and feedback by a remote art director. Or, perhaps you’re shooting on a super tight deadline and you want your retoucher – who potentially lives hundreds or thousands of miles away – to start working on the images while you’re still in the process of shooting.
It can be a massive time saver when it comes to collaboration.
At the moment, the photography camera to cloud process is only available on Fujifilm X cameras. And so far, it’s only certain Fujifilm X cameras. Specifically, that means the Fuji X-H2 (buy here) and the Fuji X-H2S (buy here), but Fujifilm says that native support for Frame.io is coming to more of the Fuji X lineup in the future. Exactly which camers will see this integration, though, is unknown at this time.
The Fuji X-H2 and X-H2S are able to transfer RAW, JPEG, and HEIF image files directly to Frame.io, with the process starting as soon as you hit the shutter button. These cameras are also able to upload 8K ProRes video clips directly to Frame.io as well, negating the need for manual transfers via a computer or dealing with devices from companies such as Atomos or Teradek.
There’s no native support for cameras from other companies, such as Sony, Canon, Nikon and Panasonic. Adobe’s suggestion to photographers using cameras from those manufacturers is to bug those companies to add support for Frame.io in a future firmware update and future camera releases.
You can read more about the new photography camera to cloud features on the Frame.io website and the Fuji camera integration on the Fujifilm X website.
DIYP’s coverage of NAB 2023 is sponsored by Sennheiser, Zhiyun, B&H, and SmallRig
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