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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

#241

Post by saiya-jin »

astrange wrote: post #172
easygenes wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"Over-beautifying" never happened. Noise reduction/smoothing happens in camera processing even if you don't try to do it, because it's trying to preserve signal and that's not signal. If you want that noise, you have to actually put in processing that adds it back.

Sure it did, no wrinkles, no moles unless huge, skin tone like after 2 weeks vacation in Carribean. What previously had to be done in photoshop to make people look younger is now done automatically, for every photo, and you can't turn it off.

They call it 'instagram look' for quite some time, Apple is the worst among all phone manufacturers (in form of furthest from actual ugly reality, but a lot of people got used to it and actually prefer it now), but all of them are making it.

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

#242

Post by ClumsyPilot »

kazinator wrote: post #146
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.…

> Purists will always hate the idea of computational photography A non-purist will hate it too, as soon as the technology re-imagines the positions of his hands such that they are around someone's throat.

exactly, this tech eull send innocent people to prison

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

#243

Post by makeitdouble »

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.…

How many "purists" are there in the wild ? I'd only see police and insurance agents needing pixel perfect depiction of reality as it's out of the sensor.

Photography as an art was never about purity, and I think most of us want photos that reflect what we see and how we see it, and will take the technical steps to get that rendered. If the moon is beautiful and gently lights the landscape, I want a photo with both the bright moon and shadowy background, and will probably need a lot of computation for that.

But the doppelganger brides, or the over-hdred photos, or the landscapes with birds and pilars removed aren't what someone is seeing. They can be nice pictures, but IMO we're entering a different art than photography.

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

#244

Post by Toutouxc »

w-ll wrote: post #127
Toutouxc wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they’re photos, with a bit of video added for effect when you’re scrolling through them.

is that not just a video with a still frame?

No, they're regular photos, with some lower-quality video added for context.

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

#245

Post by sanroot99 »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #220

Of course, this is one in a million chance but it highlights very nicely IMO a much bigger issue: what is reality? Some would say only the classical optical camera would capture faithfully our reality. But does it? The reality of the sunlight is a broad spectrum of radio emissions: UV, infrared and more. Does the optical camera capture these? No. Thus, which reality does it capture? Our perceived reality? Other would…

But computational should be able to atleast reproduce what optical does

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

#246

Post by cesaref »

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.…

It's best to just think of it as a different art form.

B&W film photography + darkroom printing is an art form, as is digital photography + photoshop. These modern AI assisted digital photography methods are another art form, one with less control left to the photographer, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I wouldn't want to say which is better, it's not really an axis that you can use to compare art is it?

At the end of the day, do you generate an image which communicates something that the photographer had in mind at the time? If so, success!

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

#247

Post by pasabagi »

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 figure that digital photography is by its very nature 'computational', both in the obvious sense, and in the sense that the camera from hardware up imposes a set of signal-forming decisions on what is essentially just structured noise.

The problem is more one of what controls the camera exposes to the user. If you can just take one kind of picture: whatever picture the engineers decided was 'good', then it limits your expressive options.

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

#248

Post by andreicap »

Gigachad wrote: post #224
sinuhe69 wrote: post #220

Of course, this is one in a million chance but it highlights very nicely IMO a much bigger issue: what is reality? Some would say only the classical optical camera would capture faithfully our reality. But does it? The reality of the sunlight is a broad spectrum of radio emissions: UV, infrared and more. Does the optical camera capture these? No. Thus, which reality does it capture? Our perceived reality? Other would…

Probably something closest to what your eye sees is ideal for most photos. But dumb optical cameras have all kinds of artefacts that eyes don’t. When I slightly bump the camera, the whole image comes out blurry, my eyes don’t do that. Things like lens flares don’t exist either.

> all kinds of artefacts that eyes don’t.

Eyes do have lots of artefacts, your brain fills in the gaps, like the blind spot [1] It's not much more different than computational photography, really.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)

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

#249

Post by belugacat »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #220

Of course, this is one in a million chance but it highlights very nicely IMO a much bigger issue: what is reality? Some would say only the classical optical camera would capture faithfully our reality. But does it? The reality of the sunlight is a broad spectrum of radio emissions: UV, infrared and more. Does the optical camera capture these? No. Thus, which reality does it capture? Our perceived reality? Other would…

The classical optical camera does not capture anything. It is a light sealed box, with a pinhole for a lens. As an optical system, it interacts with electromagnetic waves that go through it, that's the only 'reality' you can really care about.

What captures an image is an imaging surface; traditionally a chemical emulsion on a piece of film, now a complex array of digital sensors.

This imaging surface is of human design, it therefore images what its designers designed it to image. But don't forget that it is a sampling of reality; by definition always partial, and biased (biased to the 400~700 nm range, for starters).

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