Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The limits of "computational photography"

yager.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 223 posts

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#161

Post by buildbot »

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…

Sure, there’s not a photoshop button, but does github count https://github.com/timothybrooks/hdr-plus

It’s just an algorithm.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#162

Post by dimatura »

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,…

Yep, I forgot the name of the settings but my Sony mirrorless has some modes which are in the same spirit of the typical smartphone camera - sort of like an enhanced Auto mode. Though In my experience, definitely less aggressive than what my pixel does.

Camera manufacturers definitely are at a disadvantage when it comes to AI/ML expertise, infrastructure and data compared to Google or Apple. So I do think these big cos. do a better job on average from a purely technical viewpoint. On the other hand, there's no accounting for taste - stylistically, I do agree with many others that they are often too heavy-handed.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#163

Post by matheweis »

This is not a new problem and can sometimes have disastrous results.

10 years or so ago a variation of this made headlines all over as certain Xerox Workcentres were transposing numbers during scans, due to a compression algorithm that was sometimes matching a different number than the one actually scanned.

https://www.theregister.com/2013/08/06/xerox_copier_flaw_mea...

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#164

Post by ghaff »

astrange wrote: post #122
stephencanon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I know it was the fave of a lot of nature photographers and the like, but I never liked the greens in Velvia in particular. If I were going to use a slow film, I'd use Kodachrome 25--which had about the same working ISO. (That said, at some point, Kodak improved the look of 100 ISO Ektachrome and that's pretty much all I used from then on.)

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#165

Post by aoeusnth1 »

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…

Capture One creates .dng files, which are HDR raw equivalents when combining hdr from bracketed RAWs.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#166

Post by buildbot »

joking wrote: post #120
SSLy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>camera manufacturers simply don’t have the same compute available. what forbids them from buying the competitive SoCs from Qualcomm? Pride?

They don't really even have to do that, they could use the iPhone soc, but the pairing between the phone and the cameras it's not optimal.

Huge amounts of power and data - the power cost of sending 48MP over a PCB vs. over wifi is 12 orders of magnitude. 40pJ Vs . 2.5J !!!!

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#167

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

steveBK123 wrote: post #98
psychphysic wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly sometimes I just want to apply whatever ai magic elixir my phone does to the raw image from my DSLR. Messing around in lightroom etc is just not worth it for hundreds of shots I take per day sometimes.

The trick is to not take 100s of shots per day, and failing that, filtered out 70-95% of what you shoot, before editing.

That somewhat depends on three main things: your photography style, your equipment quality, and your skill. If you shoot landscape photos, you almost certainly don't want to be taking 100s of shots per day and should spend more time and effort on composition. If you shoot wildlife action (e.g. birds in flight, especially fast ones like swallows) you'll be taking hundreds to thousands of shots per minute of action (30 shots/second from a high-end body like a Sony a1 or Cannon R5 means 1800 shots per minute, even mid-range bodies take 10 shots/second). If you've got good enough equipment and skill that most of those shots are usable, then there's going to be a lot of sorting to find the ones worth editing.

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#168

Post by buildbot »

corysama wrote: post #154
causi wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 functi…

I don’t know what I’m talking about. But, I recall the Unity3D folks talking about a camera calibration process that involved photographing a dozen full frame images of a flat neutral gray surface, averaging all those images to average out the sensor noise and being left with an image containing the per-pixel bias of that particular sensor.

This is called flat frame calibration, basically all cameras sold today will have that auto applied to your raw data even. I had to implement it here for processing raws from a very old camera: https://blog.maxg.io/reverse-engineering-the-sinar-ia-raw-fi...

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#169

Post by WaffleIronMaker »

worewood wrote: post #112

There was a very good video from Marques Brownlee about the issue [1]. IPhone cameras are getting worse. [1] https://youtu.be/88kd9tVwkH8

And, in a similar vein, I enjoyed his video on The Best Smartphone Camera of 2022, where he applied a scientific ranking system taking 21.2 million votes from 600,00 users. I had previously assumed, due to Apple's reputation, that iPhones would take pictures that people like more, but that was not the case.

[1] https://youtu.be/LQdjmGimh04

Re: The limits of "computational photography"

#170

Post by buildbot »

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.

Dead wrong. There are cameras that have 15 stops of native dynamic range.
Post reply on HN