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Smartphone cameras struggle to capture San Francisco's orange sky

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Re: Smartphone cameras struggle to capture San Francisco's orange sky

#32
post #26
post #12

One thing that I had to get through my head when I was learning photography was that there's no such thing as "no filter". Every image you take is an interpretation of the scene, either through digital signal processing or film chemistry or retouching. When I spend time editing photos my dad would claim I was "lying" by editing them, he thought any modification to digital photos was wrong because the jpeg the camera…

I draw the line at object recognition. If the processing involves semantic meaning (e.g. this is sky, this is a face) instead of geometric meaning (e.g. this is an edge, this is a Bayer filter artifact) then it's lying. It doesn't matter if the object recognition is done by AI (e.g. faking depth of field by blurring background) or by humans applying selective processing (e.g. painting out red-eye effect, or using a g…

I don't really agree with this. I'm not sure what my definition of lying is but of course it entirely depends on the purpose of the photo. A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying.

If I'm editing photos and someone has a temporary blemish or a pimple, I'm more than likely to edit it out. We don't remember faces to the same level of detail as a camera can, so it feels more correct to touch up such blemishes.

Re: Smartphone cameras struggle to capture San Francisco's orange sky

#34
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement is also naive. White balance set in camera does not affect the raw capture. Only how it’s represented.

But also some cellphones can capture in RAW mode and some cameras can't.

Sure, and when they do capture in RAW format the quality is horribly bad and quite soft because no tricks are applied there, and the softness of the lens as well as the low dynamic range of the small pixels really hurt.

Re: Smartphone cameras struggle to capture San Francisco's orange sky

#36
post #28
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones have tiny lenses. As great as they are, a tiny lens has more distortion than the bigger lens of a dedicated camera. (FWIW: My "dumb" camera is collecting dust. I rarely take it out, and never bring it on vacation.)

They also have a much lower dynamic range, less colour depth and let in less light. If you want the best of both worlds you can get a mirrorless which is less bulky, but still have a big sensor.

And also lower sharpness, even big camera lenses (for phones) are limited to around 8MP of resolution due to diffraction, which is why cellphone cameras tend not to have much of a benefit beyond 8-12MP.

Whereas a very sharp lens for a DSLR might have a maximum sharpness of 90+MP.

Re: Smartphone cameras struggle to capture San Francisco's orange sky

#37

This article is awful. It's about smartphone cameras not being able to capture, but the three photos included are all ones that at least somewhat worked. Seems like it would be better to include one that failed?

IKR, went in expecting a natural derivative off based on the title. Not to witness three "perfect" shots which came out okay. Wonder why it's here. It isn't thorough, doesn't provide examples either.

It does link to them though.

Re: Smartphone cameras struggle to capture San Francisco's orange sky

#39
post #32
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I draw the line at object recognition. If the processing involves semantic meaning (e.g. this is sky, this is a face) instead of geometric meaning (e.g. this is an edge, this is a Bayer filter artifact) then it's lying. It doesn't matter if the object recognition is done by AI (e.g. faking depth of field by blurring background) or by humans applying selective processing (e.g. painting out red-eye effect, or using a g…

I don't really agree with this. I'm not sure what my definition of lying is but of course it entirely depends on the purpose of the photo. A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying. If I'm editing photos and someone has a temporary blemish or a pimple, I'm more than likely to edit it out. We don't rememb…

>A photojournalist cropping out an important piece of context is definitely lying. Me cropping out another tourist of a photo I took of a friend is not lying.

Rules are even stricter than that for photojournalists. Photographers have lost jobs just for editing out extraneous objects (like a telephone pole "growing out" of someone's head) to make a photo look better. The thinking is likely along the lines of it's a slippery slope once you start editing out things.

Re: Smartphone cameras struggle to capture San Francisco's orange sky

#40
post #12

One thing that I had to get through my head when I was learning photography was that there's no such thing as "no filter". Every image you take is an interpretation of the scene, either through digital signal processing or film chemistry or retouching. When I spend time editing photos my dad would claim I was "lying" by editing them, he thought any modification to digital photos was wrong because the jpeg the camera…

It's actually pretty interesting how much processing goes on in the brain for images. We do a sort of equivalent to the phone in compensating for the colour to make it 'right'. The orange car in the article image acted as kind of an 'anchor' for the colour compensation. The blue/white-black/gold dress [1] controversy kinda illustrates that 'anchoring'. The 'Checker Shadow Illusion' [2] is another instance where our brains 'adjust colours'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

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