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The limits of "computational photography"

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Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#121

Post by astrange »

prmoustache wrote: post #106
xgbi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re missing what makes iPhone photos look so good; they do much more than just ramping up the sliders on sharpness. When you take sunlit panoramas for instance, the iPhone will auto bracket and perform hdr treatment, it’s fantastic : you can see both the ground and the blue sky and the clouds. You can’t do that easily with a dslr, certainly not like a phone is doing right now, which is integrating the last…

Most cameras have an hdr mode nowadays.

It's a lie though; it produces an SDR image.

Cameras have HDR video capability, but not HDR stills except for the very latest models.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#122

Post by astrange »

stephencanon wrote: post #111
jlarocco wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. Which cameras have worse "Auto" settings than a phone? I have two Fujifilms, a Panasonic, and a Nikon, and they all take better photos on "Auto" than my iPhone or any of my friends' Androids. And who buys a camera in this day and age but doesn't want to play with the settings? Point and shoot users stick with their phones now.

Our Fuji’s defaults are pretty good, but iPhone’s exposure and white balance on auto is light-years ahead of our Nikon gear.

Fujifilm is deservedly known for being very good at color.

https://www.thephoblographer.com/2018/01/04/film-emulsion-re...

Although their digital cameras' emulation modes of their old film stock are kinda lame. They also make those weird non-Bayer-format cameras which I'm not sure are worth the price.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#123

Post by astrange »

jsmith99 wrote: post #54
jlarocco wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. Which cameras have worse "Auto" settings than a phone? I have two Fujifilms, a Panasonic, and a Nikon, and they all take better photos on "Auto" than my iPhone or any of my friends' Androids. And who buys a camera in this day and age but doesn't want to play with the settings? Point and shoot users stick with their phones now.

It's not about better or worse, it's about trade offs. At small social media sizes pictures will look better from a phone than from an enthusiast camera. Sharpening is a destructive process and the appropriate amount depends on how and what size you are using the image. It can also be easily applied anytime later. So enthusiast camera apply minimal sharpening and look under sharpened at small sizes, and phone cameras…

> Same with saturation and 'ai' tricks like skin smoothing: users of enthusiast cameras often have different preferences.

Note, phone cameras don't do skin smoothing, people just think they do. (Unless you get a beauty camera app.)

The issue is that almost any processing has the effect of removing noise, which is the same as skin smoothing. If you're taking 2-3 images and merging them, it'll remove the noise even if you do something smarter than averaging the pixels - so you actually have to add steps to measure the noise level and add it back.

The same issue comes up in video compression, where there's dedicated film grain metadata since almost any compression kills the real thing.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#124

Post by astrange »

rimliu wrote: post #84
jlarocco wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy it. Which cameras have worse "Auto" settings than a phone? I have two Fujifilms, a Panasonic, and a Nikon, and they all take better photos on "Auto" than my iPhone or any of my friends' Androids. And who buys a camera in this day and age but doesn't want to play with the settings? Point and shoot users stick with their phones now.

Pretty much all of them are worse. Theres is no magic wrt to dynamic range on the DSLR (or mirrorless) so if camera does not HDR processing the result will be worse than smartphone's.

DSLR/mirrorless sensors have several stops more dynamic range than a phone (don't know exact numbers), so that's not necessarily true. The phone trick of taking multiple images doesn't always work if there's eg rapid motion.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#125

Post by cultofmetatron »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #16

I 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…

Its definitely done! and whats better, you can do far more with a proper raw file from a large sensor. the trick is the workflows aren't as simple as having it happen automatically.

in my workflow I use either dx0 photolab which has excellent facilities for really bringing out a single image.

sometimes I wanna go hardcore with a landscape and take multiple shots manuallly and blend them together using software like aurora HDR (example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/193526747@N04/52219385902/ ) That image is 5 stacked images combined together using a bit of computational photography and adjusted for saturation.

if you want somethign taht will get you descent results fast and work with raws. you can also go with luminar https://skylum.com/luminar

an iphone image looks better at first snap but my z5's images blow them out of the water once I give them some love in the edit room.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#126

Post by astrange »

account42 wrote: post #66
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #16

I 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…

Pretty much all RAW processing includes computational photography - at the very least debayering, but likely more.

Taking the RAW involves it too - autofocus and auto ISO.

And developing the raw involves picking a white balance and several kinds of lens correction.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#127

Post by astrange »

indianmouse wrote: post #18

The 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 "professio…

> 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.

"Full frame" cameras do not have the best image quality, and don't even have the best image quality for their price. (eg used medium format film cameras are cheaper.)

They're just the best cameras people have heard of. If you're doing product photography you might want a Phase One instead.

It doesn't matter much though; lighting and lens quality are what really make a photo even in a controlled environment.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#128

Post by sorenjan »

astrange wrote: post #114
buildbot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to do this. If you want to apply the algorithms and Iphone uses, simply take a burst and post process later for HDR or whatever. I remember being in middle school and messing around with Hugin and my Minolta bridge camera… People value quick shots/edits and don’t care about quality or editing things later don’t mind an iPhone doing all this behind the scene - but it is irreversible. The sort of err…

There is no consumer software that can do what the iPhone does with its sensors. iPhone HDR produces an HDR image file. Consumer HDR apps do the opposite - they take an HDR raw and tone map an sRGB JPEG out of it. The only portable format that really supports HDR images is EXR, so if you're not generating that you're not getting it. (I don't think there's anything that can do deep fusion either, though obviously you…

Hugin produces exr files from image stacks.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#129

Post by astrange »

bee_rider wrote: post #9

The 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.

It doesn't do that. Text just has a lot of edges so there's a lot of opportunities for image fusion to register them.

Apple power adapters actually have a bunch of text on them printed in unreadable light gray; you can try shooting them and while they're a bit clearer than plain old eyesight, they're still pretty unreadable.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#130

Post by causi »

dusted wrote: post #46
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #16

I 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…

They already are. However, most photographers do not appreciate this type of distortion being applied to their images. At a glance, my samsung note 22 ultra takes better picture than my nikon d7500. At a glance. However, as soon as you want to actually DO anything to it, like, view it in any real detail, or on anything but a tiny screen, reality returns.. While the phone is absolutely fantastic for a quick snapshot,…

I recently started collecting a few of the digital cameras I lusted after as a kid. It made me realize there's a huge population of cameras out there that would produce incredible photos if not for small details. Details like not having readily available batteries, or an odd cable or memory card limitation. The biggest one for me personally is CCD degradation in cameras that don't have a built in pixel mapping function, so every photo they produce has the exact same set of bad pixels. Sadly as far as I know there's no way to set up automated photo editing where you can just select all the files and hit "fix defect set for Camera A".
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