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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

#81

Post by orbital-decay »

katbyte wrote: post #77
ALittleLight wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

and for those who don't there are a bunch of photo apps that allow far more control & iphones can shoot raw now

RAW in modern phones and apps is often stacked/processed as well. However, it always tries to stay as photometrically correct as possible (at least I'm not aware of any exceptions). All "dubious" types of processing happen after that.

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

#82

Post by willseth »

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…

Try to photograph a toddler without this feature. Good luck. Does the fact that the iPhone allows me to do this pretty reliably without any fuss mean I have more or less control?

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

#83

Post by leephillips »

willseth wrote: post #82
autoexec wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Try to photograph a toddler without this feature. Good luck. Does the fact that the iPhone allows me to do this pretty reliably without any fuss mean I have more or less control?

Odd. I have hundreds of great shots of my toddlers, none taken with these “features”.

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

#84

Post by graypegg »

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…

To play devils advocate here: the best camera is the one you have with you, and computational photography does mean you can just push a button without thinking and get a clear picture that captures a memory.

It’s obviously an argument to say that Apple shouldn’t get to choose how your memories are recorded, but I know I’ve captured a lot more moments I would’ve otherwise missed because of just how automatic phone cameras are.

There’s a place for both kinds of cameras IMO.

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

#85

Post by threeseed »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #73
threeseed wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised you were downvoted because this doesn't sound right at all. The poses would be at least a few seconds apart which rules out anything in Apple's computational photography pipeline e.g. focus and dynamic range stacking. At least based on what they have communicated to date. We know Google demonstrated an AI model that was capable of selecting human parts from multiple photos but that was a showcase feature no…

It takes 250 ms for something to fall 1 foot under the weight of gravity, which is also approximately how long it takes to go from arms crossed to arms at side. Which is well under the 2 seconds computational photography clip.

There is no computational photography "clip".

Live Photos was not enabled and even still doesn't work like this.

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

#86

Post by autoexec »

drtgh wrote: post #70
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".

It's impossible to enforce, but it'd be a more honest if people called them something else. iPictures maybe? As in "Hey, check out this iPicture™ of my kid taking his first steps!"

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

#87

Post by orbital-decay »

willseth wrote: post #82
autoexec wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Try to photograph a toddler without this feature. Good luck. Does the fact that the iPhone allows me to do this pretty reliably without any fuss mean I have more or less control?

It's solved with constantly taking pictures into a ring buffer, either compensating for the touchscreen lag automatically or letting you select the best frame manually with a slider after the shot. Most cameras can do that (if you disable the best frame auto-selection).

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

#88

Post by w-ll »

threeseed wrote: post #66
w-ll wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

maybe? you can also turn your iphone off, but it still broadcast btle and cell signals. who knows what any feature toggle does anymore, let alone on/off. lol do-not-track is tracked.

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

#89

Post by threeseed »

hnburnsy wrote: post #79
threeseed wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tim…

Couldn't it be using frames from before the shutter was pressed? Could the processing take longer when people\animals are in the frame?

Absolutely. But only about less than like 100ms worth at best.

The total latency of shutter + computational photography + save to disk is not greater than the time between her moving from one pose to another.

So the artefacts you would expect to see if this whole pipeline was out of sync was both poses stitched on top of each other in the mirror. Not multiple ones in different mirrors. And definitely not with the whole image as clean as this.

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

#90

Post by WWLink »

graypegg wrote: post #84
autoexec wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

To play devils advocate here: the best camera is the one you have with you, and computational photography does mean you can just push a button without thinking and get a clear picture that captures a memory. It’s obviously an argument to say that Apple shouldn’t get to choose how your memories are recorded, but I know I’ve captured a lot more moments I would’ve otherwise missed because of just how automatic phone cam…

I used to keep a powershot digital elph in my pocket whenever I left the house. TBH I took way more pictures with it. I could blindly turn it on and snap a picture while driving, without ever taking my eyes off the road. There's no way in the world I could do that with an iphone lol. I mean, I suppose if I happened to hit the bottom right corner button and then used the volume button maybe? Maybe. It's way more likely I'd cock it up lol.
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