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Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

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Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#141

Post by diggan »

bluesroo wrote: post #137
diggan wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I learned a few weeks ago (after many years of using USB) is that usually cables have the USB logo or marking on the "right side" up. So if you don't know which one is the right side up, the one with the logo should win. Might help some other lost souls here :)

This works until you need to plug something into the back of a computer with vertical ports.

Same with my monitor! I've found that what would be the natural axis towards you usually work, at least both on my TV, desktop computer (because of course you have the chassi on the right) and monitor.

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#142

Post by tambourine_man »

LesZedCB wrote: post #127
jastanton wrote: post #123

I once plugged my usb cable in on the first try. Goes to show you anything is possible!! Edit: upon further inspection it turns out it was USB-C. Nevermind, all is right with the world :)

i know it's a joke, but the usb logo on the plug is always on top, so you can just orient it 'up' according to the underlying board (up for laptops, and facing left for desktops)

Apple cables have their logo and USB, if I recall correctly, and they always get me confused.

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#143

Post by elijahparker »

logfromblammo wrote: post #125
brudgers wrote: post #97

[I felt like I was playing "Find 8 differences between these pictures" on the comics page] I looked at the large images. Gendon's appears to have been shot slightly earlier based on two differences. 1. The crest of the background wave at the left is horizontal in Gendon's photo and turning down from photo left to right in Risman's. 2. The trough in front of the breaking wave has reached the front of the light house i…

I looked at the two photos as a stereogram--focus through the plane instead of crossing your eyes. If they were identical, there would be no 3d effect. My eyes can't figure out how to resolve the foreground waves, because the photographers were too far apart, but the spray wraps around the lighthouse as you would expect.

This is a great effect! The resulting image is quite stereoscopic (in an exaggerated way) and you can see the stone structure as clearly in front of the lighthouse as well

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#145

Post by cooper12 »

mrfusion wrote: post #98

This would make an interesting copyright case.

I found some discussion of copyright infringement by imitation here: https://dc.law.utah.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&con.... [0] In general it seems to be fine to photograph the same object as an earlier copyrighted work, as long as "original aspects" are not copied such as lighting or placement of the subject. The lighting is different here, though the placement barely differs. There's also not a clear "first" since the photographs were taken almost simultaneously. I think at the end of the day, a judge would chock up any alleged infringement as de minimis. [1]

This also brings to mind the image of paparazzi or sports photographers all in a narrow press area rapidly shooting off pictures. I don't think any of them have had trouble selling their photographs to agencies despite being in the same location and capturing the same subject simultaneously.

[0]: Kogan, Terry S., "How Photographs Infringe" (2017). Utah Law Faculty Scholarship. 20. https://dc.law.utah.edu/scholarship/20

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis#Copyright

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#146

Post by JepZ »

ghaff wrote: post #135
JepZ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, but I am not sure that you would indeed require it to be the same millisecond. I mean I don't know how long the exposure was, but I guess its longer than a millisecond (just took a look at some of my own photos and they were at 4-5ms exposure in very bright sunlight, the blog image exposure is probably more like 10ms). The heading says that the pictures were taken in the same millisecond, but as far as I unders…

Shorter than a millisecond. One shot at 1/1000th, the other at 1/1600th.

Yes, you are right, didn't see that. So one is exactly 1ms and the other just 0.625ms.

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#147

Post by setzer22 »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #91
skrebbel wrote: post #36

This is typical birthday paradox stuff right? The chance that these two photographers would ever snap the same thing at the same time is small, but the chance that any two photographers, anywhere, would do so is, I bet, pretty big (even if you factor in millisecond precision). With photographers being photographers and the internet being the internet, there's also a pretty decent change that they'd find out about it…

I don't think the birthday paradox applies here. The birthday paradox requires a discrete set of pigeon holes, days of year, etc. If that set is infinite, then the countability [1] problem collapses. While technically the world is discrete in space and time (planck length), for all intents and purposes it is infinite in practice. [1] yes, there is countably infinite, but that doesn't work with the pigeon hole problem…

Reality may or may not be discrete, but what is a discrete value is the output from a digital camera, so in case of photographs your argument does not hold.

In other words, two photographs off by a planck length will generate the same set of pixels.

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#148

Post by Retric »

notatoad wrote: post #132
Retric wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably well over 10 trillion photos taken. Less by professionals, but they are more likely to take the same photo. Anyway, that low probability applies to every other photo. So, the first photo is compared to every other photo and by the end your talking ~50,000,000,000,000,000,000 comparisons. The odds would have to be mind boggling tiny for this not to happen all the time.

You're missing the other dimension to this: it's not that two photographers took pictures at the exact same time, I'm sure that happens frequently. It's that they took the exact same picture. There were definitely not 10 trillion photos take of this lighthouse in new england.

They don't have to be photos of this lighthouse. Two photos of Old faithful showing the same spray and cloud patterns could be mistaken for copy's of each other.

Another way of thinking about it, what are the odds that out of the ~1,000 photos taken of the same moment they are of the same subject? Now repeat that question 10 million times and the odds don't seem as low.

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#149

Post by cecilpl2 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #125
brudgers wrote: post #97

[I felt like I was playing "Find 8 differences between these pictures" on the comics page] I looked at the large images. Gendon's appears to have been shot slightly earlier based on two differences. 1. The crest of the background wave at the left is horizontal in Gendon's photo and turning down from photo left to right in Risman's. 2. The trough in front of the breaking wave has reached the front of the light house i…

I looked at the two photos as a stereogram--focus through the plane instead of crossing your eyes. If they were identical, there would be no 3d effect. My eyes can't figure out how to resolve the foreground waves, because the photographers were too far apart, but the spray wraps around the lighthouse as you would expect.

As a side note, it is possible to train yourself to stereogram your eyes at will (I've done it).

This makes "spot the difference" puzzles a triviality.

Which is, in itself a triviality, but an entertaining one.

Re: Two Photographers Unknowingly Shot the Same Millisecond in Time

#150

Post by maxerickson »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #91
skrebbel wrote: post #36

This is typical birthday paradox stuff right? The chance that these two photographers would ever snap the same thing at the same time is small, but the chance that any two photographers, anywhere, would do so is, I bet, pretty big (even if you factor in millisecond precision). With photographers being photographers and the internet being the internet, there's also a pretty decent change that they'd find out about it…

I don't think the birthday paradox applies here. The birthday paradox requires a discrete set of pigeon holes, days of year, etc. If that set is infinite, then the countability [1] problem collapses. While technically the world is discrete in space and time (planck length), for all intents and purposes it is infinite in practice. [1] yes, there is countably infinite, but that doesn't work with the pigeon hole problem…

Isn't the birthday paradox just the dissonance between typical intuition and mathematical reality?

How does that not apply to this situation? The number of comparisons between photos is much much larger than the number of photos.

It might not apply in a way that is interesting mathematically, but I don't think that is what the other poster was getting at.

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