This article mystified me until I realized it was Computational Photography not Philosophy .
Sounds like an application for one of those new chatbots.
The limits of "computational photography"
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Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#12I always shoot in Raw (using the Lightroom iPhone App) to make sure that this kind of defects never occur. Noise is generally preferable and acceptable that the disaster trail left by denoising et al. At least you can do it yourself in a way that pleases you instead of having a ruined photograph.
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#13Interesting article. I think the real question however is whether imposing complex priors (say driven by a neural net) makes images better _on average_ even if has some failure modes. My guess would be that a fairly weak prior trained on a diverse enough dataset would lead to better average image quality(as judged by everyday people in diverse scenarios) and that's why they are used.
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#14The iPhone definitely does some extra processing on text. I’m 99% sure that it recognizes letters and fills in “creatively.” I noticed this while taking some photos of text in low-light. Could barely see it with my eyeballs but the phone worked it out.
To be fair, sensors have the luxury of time that our eyes don’t have. See astrophotography for an example of “could barely see it but the sensor worked it out.”
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#15The iPhone definitely does some extra processing on text. I’m 99% sure that it recognizes letters and fills in “creatively.” I noticed this while taking some photos of text in low-light. Could barely see it with my eyeballs but the phone worked it out.
To be fair, sensors have the luxury of time that our eyes don’t have. See astrophotography for an example of “could barely see it but the sensor worked it out.”
Sensors may have the time, but our hands do not; they are unsteady in subtle ways.
When making photos in low light, I always try to lean my phone against something (a bench, a lamppost, a tree, a building) to let the longer exposure be sharper.
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#16I would like to see computational photography applied to raw images from DSLRs and MILCs with APS-C and larger sensors. Perhaps Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Fujifilm could have built-in options in their cameras for ‘social media mode’, with a modicum of noise reduction (honestly unnecessary at ISOs lower than about 1600 for modern cameras), but drastically improved HDR and white balance.
Many of these cameras are able to take bracketed[1] exposures, and the SNR in even just one image from such sensors is immense compared to the tiny sensors in phones. Surely with this much more data to work with, HDR is much nicer and without the edge brightening typically seen in phone HDR images.
[1]: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-tec...
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, sensors have the luxury of time that our eyes don’t have. See astrophotography for an example of “could barely see it but the sensor worked it out.”
Sensors may have the time, but our hands do not; they are unsteady in subtle ways. When making photos in low light, I always try to lean my phone against something (a bench, a lamppost, a tree, a building) to let the longer exposure be sharper.
as long as there is anything to key onto it's possible to remove the shake algorithmically
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#18The smartphone cameras have improved a lot in the recent years, but they cannot compete or match a full frame sensor provided the limitations. The size of the sensor and the optics play a major role in the final image quality and one can only do so much with the computational photography or whatever method.
Especially the iPhone photography and videography is always overrated by the fanbois and some of the "professionals". While it might look good on "some" pictures with the heavy post processing, it just doesn't have any details. It might just appeal fine for a 100% view of the picture as is and even the slightest post processing or editing done on the output pictures ruins them a lot.
One has to depend upon what the developer of the application or the manufacturer thinks is the right picture (and who the hell are they to decide what my photo should look like?) and most of the time they are terribly wrong.
Apple is just overrated and for that matter, even some of the Android's as well.
Raw pics from a full frame sensors hold the fort and will continue to hold for a longtime to come unless the phones match DSLR in terms of sensor size and optics size. Until then "computational photography" will make the pictures look terrible and dictate how it has to look like.
I see a lot of comments where folks talk about RAW. But seriously, how does it matter for any normal user who tends to click a pic using the phone instead of a DSLR? If one is photographer, it makes sense, else it is additional workflow to get it in RAW and do the post processing on a computer... I'm just saying...
Thoughts welcome...
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#19I would like to see computational photography applied to raw images from DSLRs and MILCs with APS-C and larger sensors. Perhaps Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Fujifilm could have built-in options in their cameras for ‘social media mode’, with a modicum of noise reduction (honestly unnecessary at ISOs lower than about 1600 for modern cameras), but drastically improved HDR and white balance. Many of these cameras are able to…
I’d love to see this on “adventures” cameras like the Olympus OM-D line.
This would also pair well with Fujifilm’s lineup which already includes camera features focused on in-camera processing.
Re: The limits of "computational photography"
#20I love my big, heavy Nikon DSLR, and there's really no comparing the images it takes with the ones from my iPhone. Especially in "tricky" lighting situations they're not even in the same ballpark.
That said, there can be just as much (or more) "computational photography" going on with a digital camera as there is with a modern phone, the difference is that cameras and processing software give control to the user, and phones typically do not.