Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture • Hacker News Board

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#141

Post by vidarh » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 8:05 AM UTC

zokier wrote: post #101

jbtbfkkfmfne wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wear them all the time That's kind of what fashionable means. Oxford dict: Fashionable - characteristic of, influenced by, or representing a current popular style

fashionable, popular, trendy, and common all mean different things even if they are somewhat interlinked concepts. High fashion then stands even more apart from the rest. I kinda like this Cambridges definition[1] of fashionable more (even if isn't perfect) > wearing clothes, doing things, and going to places that are considered stylish There is clear difference of what is considered stylish and what is popular . Mac…

The important aspect of what.you describe is that fashion is more aspirational than popular.

A lot of what is "popular" is still recognized by the wearer themselves as not fashionable, and is worn despite that (and sometimes because of that) for various reasons.

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#142

Post by strogonoff » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 8:20 AM UTC

Jensson wrote: post #99

wavefunction wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For you, perhaps. I don't think there is an objective truth of "this is art, this is not art." I shared my experience of the pictures with you. Art is the experience of Art imo.

A large part of how you experience something is the context though. If people tell you something is great before showing then you are more likely to find something great about it, etc. So with that reasoning a large part of art is just telling people that it is art, it isn't the work itself but the belief that it is art that creates the art.

Context matters immensely. That’s why I can’t imagine posting an thought-provoking non-ironic short on, e.g., YouTube, knowing that it will be immediately accompanied by calls to watch 100 funniest fails and (with all my love for these creatures) wild foxes being pet or cockatoos mimicking cat meowing, and that a significant number of viewers will watch it while sitting in a toilet.

Contrasting with galleries, museums, private exhibitions surviving off subsidies or entrance fees—and I don’t think it’s as simple as “it’s just a new way of viewing that you don’t like because it’s new”—what we have settled for are “free” ad-supported platforms that are in effect much closer to casinos and malls, and to which convincing a visitor to not leave directly equals revenue.

There is, of course, this flip side, where presenting any visually unoriginal, self-gratifying, etc. work in context of an exhibition gives it not-necessarily-deserved value; and it could be that the ability to make the viewer feel something you want them to feel despite all that widely varying context is a valid skill.

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#143

Post by jablan » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 8:21 AM UTC

nsxwolf wrote: post #48

twic wrote: post #11

Talking about what good and bad means in photography always reminds me of Miroslav Tichý, who said "if you want to be famous, you must do something more badly than anybody in the entire world", and took terrible but strangely brilliant photos with homemade cameras: https://flashbak.com/photographs-by-the-perverted-flaneur-mi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miroslav_Tich%C3%BD

Curious, is "more badly" here an intentional joke? Or did he mean "want it badly" in the sense of really wanting something?

Just a rough translation of "Když chcete být slavní, musíte něco dělat tak blbě, že tak blbě to nikdo ve světě neudělá". "...you have to do something in such a silly manner, that nobody in the world did it so silly" or such.

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#144

Post by jjeaff » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 8:23 AM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #139

psychomugs wrote: post #114

Wim Wenders had some pretty strong words about phone photography, claiming it's no longer photography but a new medium itself [1]. "The less you have, the more creative you have to become." In On Photography , Susan Sontag argued that photography, which itself took a while to become considered an art form, gradually began to absolve painting of its duty to represent 'reality.' I can see 'phonetography' doing the same…

> I can see it doing the equivalent of buying a vintage roadster as a senior citizen Funny you should put it this way, because it’s the same crowd buying both: wealthy old guys. Some time around the 1990s, Canon and Nikon made the fateful decision that photography would become stupid expensive and accessible only to those with money to burn. Don’t get me wrong, modern DSLRs and AF lenses are amazing feats of engineer…

I think anyone, even millennials and gen z, that gets serious about photography will quickly start to find the deficiencies of their phone camera. Sure, there is a lot you can do with a phone. Even some stuff you can't do well with a dedicated camera. But everyone who really gets into the craft starts to see that they can't quite get the shot they want I'm the lighting they want with a single, one size fits all device.

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#145

Post by nbzso » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 8:24 AM UTC

prox wrote: post #138

nbzso wrote: post #80

Photography as art was slightly popular in the age when regular people had crappy cameras and had to learn how to create a picture. In the process people learned to appreciate good composition and artistic interpretation of true professionals. With advancements in digital photography and recently computational exposure all of this is gone. Over-saturation, Hyper contrast, HDRI corrections are the norm. People like th…

The hobby / professional camera field has to my knowledge always been divided between technologists and artists. One group who doubled down on the technical side, and one group coming from an artistic background. The Venn Diagram of where the two meet is not that big.

May be I cannot express my thoughts clearly. Sorry, my English is not fluent and I don't always have enough time to polish my expose.

For me "Technographers" are not people who are on the technical side of photography. Real technical side is important from craftsmanship perspective, but only as a tool with photography goal.

"Tecnographers" are people who care only for cameras and photographic gear in general. They follow marketing gurus and camera reviews and participate in brand defined groups. They are obsessed with "latest tech" and "showing off" in "Photography competitions" or "Group Meetings". They are the most effective customers for manufacturers and in general are miles away from photography as an artistic expression or even craftsmanship.

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#146

Post by greggman3 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 8:50 AM UTC

jjeaff wrote: post #144

hyperbovine wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can see it doing the equivalent of buying a vintage roadster as a senior citizen Funny you should put it this way, because it’s the same crowd buying both: wealthy old guys. Some time around the 1990s, Canon and Nikon made the fateful decision that photography would become stupid expensive and accessible only to those with money to burn. Don’t get me wrong, modern DSLRs and AF lenses are amazing feats of engineer…

I think anyone, even millennials and gen z, that gets serious about photography will quickly start to find the deficiencies of their phone camera. Sure, there is a lot you can do with a phone. Even some stuff you can't do well with a dedicated camera. But everyone who really gets into the craft starts to see that they can't quite get the shot they want I'm the lighting they want with a single, one size fits all devic…

It's not clear to me how long that will hold. Maybe it will hold forever. But, I can certainly imagine my iPhone45 or Pixel53 will take say 100k frames per second so in 1/250th of a second they could take 400 images in a wide angle or multiple angles and then through computational photography reproduce almost any image that a current high DSLR could take at almost any lighting with almost any focus, after the fact.

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#147

Post by throwaway2037 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 8:54 AM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #122

nbzso wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HDRI-High-dynamic-range imaging. GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome. :)

To be honest gas is an ancient disease

The same is true for hiking and camping!

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#148

Post by dale_glass » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

greggman3 wrote: post #146

jjeaff wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think anyone, even millennials and gen z, that gets serious about photography will quickly start to find the deficiencies of their phone camera. Sure, there is a lot you can do with a phone. Even some stuff you can't do well with a dedicated camera. But everyone who really gets into the craft starts to see that they can't quite get the shot they want I'm the lighting they want with a single, one size fits all devic…

It's not clear to me how long that will hold. Maybe it will hold forever. But, I can certainly imagine my iPhone45 or Pixel53 will take say 100k frames per second so in 1/250th of a second they could take 400 images in a wide angle or multiple angles and then through computational photography reproduce almost any image that a current high DSLR could take at almost any lighting with almost any focus, after the fact.

I don't think that's possible.

There are physical limitations we're already bumping into. A lens can only have a limited resolution. It's pointless to make a sensor that's got more pixels than the lens can produce. The amount of light coming in is limited, and the sensor can't gather more than 100% the light.

A sensor has a quantum efficiency stat, which tells you how likely is it that a photon will turn into an electron and be measured, and IIRC it already hovers at around 50% for most cameras, which means at the very best you can gather twice the amount of light before running into a wall. In photographic terms that means a maximum improvement of one f-stop.

An improvement that still could be had is a good Sigma Foveon-style sensor with stacked sensors. This in the ideal case would give you two extra f-stops (due to the lack of a bayer filter), and improve color accuracy. Foveon still doesn't perform well enough on ISO to compete well though.

So at this point we can make near perfect glass and near perfect sensors. What's left is basically playing around with the tradeoffs -- do you want to sacrifice resolution for bit depth, or bit depth for resolution? How about medium and large format? This by the way means that a big dedicated camera will always be better than a phone because it will have a bigger lens and a bigger sensor, and can do the same software tricks the phone can.

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#149

Post by kebman » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 10:00 AM UTC

stavros wrote: post #98

short_sells_poo wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm almost certain the parent is not an AI. Perhaps it's just that I have no idea what they are talking about.

I don't think even Alan Turing himself ever envisioned this.

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I already passed the Voight-Kampff test. Didn't even need to fire my gun! :) As for GPT-3, well, it needs real input—like the above—to generate its contents. Here's a crude fore-runner taking postmodern discourse to the extreme: https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

Re: Photography technology has influenced what people consider a good picture

#150

Post by prox » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 11:41 AM UTC

nbzso wrote: post #145

prox wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hobby / professional camera field has to my knowledge always been divided between technologists and artists. One group who doubled down on the technical side, and one group coming from an artistic background. The Venn Diagram of where the two meet is not that big.

May be I cannot express my thoughts clearly. Sorry, my English is not fluent and I don't always have enough time to polish my expose. For me "Technographers" are not people who are on the technical side of photography. Real technical side is important from craftsmanship perspective, but only as a tool with photography goal. "Tecnographers" are people who care only for cameras and photographic gear in general. They fo…

Ah I think I know the type and what you mean! Doubling down on the sharpness of a pixel in a lens/sensor and having endless debates about it if you don’t buy the right brand.