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A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

appleinsider.com

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Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#61

Post by ALittleLight »

autoexec wrote: post #55
Aurornis wrote: post #12

Purists will always hate the idea of computational photography, but I love how well my iPhone captures handheld nighttime, low-light, and motion images. I’ve captured some photos at night that I never would have thought possible from a physically small sensor due to the laws of physics. Is it 100% pixel perfect to what was happening at the time? No, but I also don’t care. I’ve used HDR exposure stacking in the past.…

> Is it 100% pixel perfect to what was happening at the time? No, but I also don’t care. No photographer thinks images the they get on film are perfect reflections of reality. The lens itself introduces flaws/changes as does film and developing. You don't have to be a purist to want the ability to decide what gets captured or to have control over how it looks though. Those kinds of choices are part of what make photo…

I think you have that backwards. The vast majority of people will prefer Apple's computational enhancements. A small number of photography enthusiasts will prefer manual control (and a smaller number will benefit from it).

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#62

Post by threeseed »

Filligree wrote: post #45
khazhoux wrote: post #24

I’m gonna call bullshit here. The difference in arm pose couldn’t be covered in any reasonable burst period.

The “burst” is actually a two second video. Plenty of time for that.

She said she never used live photo.

And the latency for taking a standard photo is not 2 seconds.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#63

Post by easygenes »

afavour wrote: post #32
Aurornis wrote: post #12

Purists will always hate the idea of computational photography, but I love how well my iPhone captures handheld nighttime, low-light, and motion images. I’ve captured some photos at night that I never would have thought possible from a physically small sensor due to the laws of physics. Is it 100% pixel perfect to what was happening at the time? No, but I also don’t care. I’ve used HDR exposure stacking in the past.…

I have no objection with what we have today either but it does feel slippery slope-y, especially in the AI era. Before we know it our cameras won’t just be picking the best frame for each person, it’ll be picking the best eye, tweaking their symmetry, making the skin tone as aesthetically pleasing as possible, etc etc etc. It was always this way to an extent but now that we’ve given up the pretence of photos being “r…

Phones over-beautifying faces by default already happened with the iPhone XS, and it wasn't received well. See #beautygate: https://www.imore.com/beautygate

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#64

Post by j16sdiz »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #60

With how much manipulation happens to photos by default it seems like it would be easier to get them thrown out of court as evidence

Without better evidence, the court will keep accepting them.

Just look at how bad fingerprints are accepted

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#65

Post by dylan604 »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #34
dylan604 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

images like this would easily be torn apart by experts brought in to testify against it. then again, for something this obvious, it probably wouldn't need an expert.

If this phenomenon is so obvious, why is this story the top post on HN? And why did it take a picture of the mirror scenario to make people aware of this issue? Hell, the article even implies that this an issue only with images of mirrors when that is of course completely false.

You seem to think that all lawyers are dumb, and unable to defend against photographic evidence. If you think a lawyer would not be able to find a witness that fully understands how the modern mobile device camera systems alter images, you're just not being honest with yourself. The Apple propaganda videos tout the fact their cameras are doing something with "AI" even if they don't tell you exactly what. To assume that people are so unawares that it took this picture is just not being honest with the conversation

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#66

Post by threeseed »

w-ll wrote: post #27
xyztimm wrote: post #22

So the mirror with the hands clasped?… is just completely made up? Because she’s clearly not doing that irl.

2 mirrors, 3 differnt arm poses. "Photos" are not really any more, the seem to be few second clips, and yea the processing merged 3 differnt poses.

You are conflating two different aspects.

Live Photo is a feature where it captures a couple of seconds of video before/after the photo is taken. From the article that feature was not enabled.

The computational pipeline is where you press the shutter and it blends a few frames together in order to do focus stacking, HDR etc. Based on what I have tried with my iPhone it is doing this in < 100ms which is not enough time to produce these sort of artefacts.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#67

Post by autoexec »

dylan604 wrote: post #54
autoexec wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Choice. If I'm using a digital camera I can take 20+ shots of any subject, but then I get to choose which to keep. If cameras don't give you the option for "reality" you're just left with whatever they choose for you no matter how many pictures you take.

So use a non-mobile device with this feature. Nobody is forcing you to use the camera. You know what the camera does, but then continue to use it, and then complain about it doing exactly what you knew it would do. Doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result has a name

I think the issue is that people don't know what the camera does. The woman who tried to take a picture of herself in her wedding dress had no idea she'd end up looking like three different people.

I expect that as more and more people come to learn that their iphone photos are all fakes we will see more people reaching for cameras instead of cell phones for the important things when they can.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#68

Post by frogblast »

autoexec wrote: post #55
Aurornis wrote: post #12

Purists will always hate the idea of computational photography, but I love how well my iPhone captures handheld nighttime, low-light, and motion images. I’ve captured some photos at night that I never would have thought possible from a physically small sensor due to the laws of physics. Is it 100% pixel perfect to what was happening at the time? No, but I also don’t care. I’ve used HDR exposure stacking in the past.…

> Is it 100% pixel perfect to what was happening at the time? No, but I also don’t care. No photographer thinks images the they get on film are perfect reflections of reality. The lens itself introduces flaws/changes as does film and developing. You don't have to be a purist to want the ability to decide what gets captured or to have control over how it looks though. Those kinds of choices are part of what make photo…

> In the end, this tech just takes control from you.

In these difficult scenarios, the alternative photo I'd get using such a small camera without this kind processing would be entirely unusable. I couldn't rescue those photos with hours of manual edits. That may be "in control", but it isn't useful.

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#69

Post by hnburnsy »

How long is this burst (feels longer than 'short' in this case)? Does it start before you press the shutter button? Does this post processing apply to RAW? Does Apple document how this post processing works? More importantly, how does one turn it off or is there another camera app that allows one to turn it off?

Re: A reality bending mistake in Apple's computational photography

#70

Post by drtgh »

leephillips wrote: post #2

The article says that “The final composite image should be the best, most realistic interpretation of that moment.” But that doesn’t make any sense. If the there were three real people, rather than one person and two reflections, the algorithm would have created an image of a moment that never existed, stitching together different images taken at different times. The only difference is that we might not notice and mi…

"interpretation of that moment" from a camera it is not a photograph, it's a fake image kidnapping the word "photograph".
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