Live data from Hacker News

iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

twitter.com

371–380 of 467 posts

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#371

I had something like this happen the either week - someone took a photo of a group of us against a wooden wall in low light with the front camera of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and while the photo looked great zoomed out, if you looked closely it had applied the vertical line and texture of the wooden slats to my face, so I had a sort of wooden face! My assumption is that this is over enthusiastic ML processing trying to…

I worry that smartphone photos will become inadmissible in court as evidence ... and will also give all shady characters like politicians a cover to change narratives

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No free lunch, but an incredibly good value lunch. The quality that comes out of phone cameras is remarkable. And the times it messes up are so rare that it becomes a talking point worthy of hundreds of comments.

No free lunch is right. iPhone photos look incredible on iPhone screens. They look terrible on my high resolution desktop screen. Instagram kids don't know this, but that's ok, because we don't need them to, and neither do they.

> iPhone photos look incredible on iPhone screens. They look terrible on my high resolution desktop screen

yea, whith our first child we still used a dedicated camera (compact, no dslr) and there is a very noticeable drop in imagequality after that because we got lazy and use our phones.

then again "the best camera is the one you have with you"

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#374
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The quality that comes out of phone cameras is remarkable It's more than that, it's completely mind blowing when you compare it to a DSLR. In "good" lightning condition, your iphone will give you a picture 75% as good as what you could get with a 4k$ fullframe DSLR kit that's 10" long and weight a few pounds. the problem is when light is not perfect, that's when the bigger lens/sensor are worth it even for a beginne…

> the problem is when light is not perfect, that's when the bigger lens/sensor are worth it even for a beginner that doesn't know much about photography. I think the opposite is true, from my (amateur) experience. It's much harder to get a good photo in poor light with a dedicated camera if you don't know what you're doing than it is to get a good photo with a smartphone. In good light, the better sensors shine throu…

Yes and no - even latest iphone 13 pro / nexus 6 cameras will produce shots that are blurry in shadows due to aggressive noise reduction or let some fugly color noise pass through the alghoritms. You just need to open any night photo on bigger computer screen instead of just phone.

You have much much better starting point with a full frame.

Of course if you compare a clueless FF user with clueless phone user, phone can win but thats an unfair comparison. You don't invest often 5k into photo equipment and then be oblivious of what options it gives you. And even if you don't actively try to improve yourself, just using the camera will get you there (somewhere) eventually. Its not a rocket science, just keep doing it. That's not a "master" level, more like experienced beginner.

And even in the case of ignorant users, all cameras these days have auto setting which is actually pretty good and you can take final jpegs from it, ignoring the power of raw edit completely. Counter-intuitively, holding a bigger camera system steady for a good shot is easier commpared to lightweight, awkwardly-shaped phone.

That all being said, I will invest into some top-end phone next year mainly due to its camera power these days and convenience of always having it with you, and sharing kids photos with family instantly. No more always lugging around 2.5 kg of Nikon D750 with 24-120 lens and good bag. I will not make technically better pictures with it, but in my case other aspects outweight this.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#375

I hate how much phones lately alters the images. Of course it most of the time makes the images look better, and cameras are a big selling point on a phone. But I don't like how my photos of people suddenly have a filter applied to the faces, how a picture of leaves during fall have vibrance exaggerated, how the sky looks clearer than it really did.

What is "real"? Do you count infrared? Ultraviolet? What if you are color blind? For me photo is how I see it, not some "representation of reality" whatever that reality may be.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#376

I hate how much phones lately alters the images. Of course it most of the time makes the images look better, and cameras are a big selling point on a phone. But I don't like how my photos of people suddenly have a filter applied to the faces, how a picture of leaves during fall have vibrance exaggerated, how the sky looks clearer than it really did.

A while ago I was trying to compare a few of my cameras. It was a cloudy day in early fall. All three cameras and my eyes agreed that the sky was dull-grey and the leaves on the trees drab-brown. To the iPhone, however, the sky was more blue than grey, and the leaves had an autumn-orange hue instead of brown. It wasn't a complete fake, and if I had only had the iPhone picture I wouldn't have noticed. But it was just…

This kind of white-balance fuckery became very apparent last year, when the skies in the bay area turned orange and red from smoke. On many phone cameras, the photos were automatically color "corrected" to be completely wrong, with no option to avoid this.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#377

Remember the Rittenhouse trial and the big to do about the video being enhanced when zoomed? Digital evidence and photos are suspicious for the purpose of evidence. Not commenting on the results of the trial. Sidebar not specific to that trial, slow motion, and slowed video shouldn't be shown to jurors because it creates the illusion of having more time to think. Everything in real life happens at one speed, you can'…

I think it’s ok to select jurors based some basic abilities. I don’t know if this considered discrimination based on IQ in the US. But if a grown person has the mind of a 5year old or doesn’t know how to walk up stairs I think it’s fair to say “you shouldn’t be in a jury”. Likewise if a person doesn’t understand the concept of zooming an image or slow motion, then I think it’s quite fair to exclude them from jury duty.

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#378
I upgraded from an iPhone X to a 13 pro when it was released and since then it’s been a very mixed experience. The range of quality is incredibly frustrating.

I enjoy the speed with which I can take pictures that are not blurry. But in most cases I wish I could reduce the “AI aggressiveness” since they all look so artificially sharp. But that’s only part of it.

I have pictures of my family this Christmas where we posed in the same location, same light and with just a few seconds apart and the pictures look completely different when it comes to the colors.

“Different AI interpretation” I tell those around me that haven’t come in contact with computational photography yet.

Then I apologize, saying that I can’t know how the picture will turn out before it’s taken. And that there is no way to reanalyze. No way to feed RAW back to “the AI”.

But such is the future…

There’s a picture of me and my partner against a perfectly blue sky. I am a few cm behind her. She looks normal while my face looks half transparent / whitened like a ghost in the sky.

There’s pictures of text and logos on billboard and such that are so smooth as if they are photoshopped on top.

I often tell those people that not only do we need to accept that photos now are not the same concept as photos in the past, we also have to accept that the next iOS update could change the algorithm and photos from this Christmas will be different to photos from next Christmas even when shot with the same camera. Frustrating

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#379

I had something like this happen the either week - someone took a photo of a group of us against a wooden wall in low light with the front camera of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and while the photo looked great zoomed out, if you looked closely it had applied the vertical line and texture of the wooden slats to my face, so I had a sort of wooden face! My assumption is that this is over enthusiastic ML processing trying to…

I worry that smartphone photos will become inadmissible in court as evidence ... and will also give all shady characters like politicians a cover to change narratives

I think we're already past that point....

Re: iPhone camera app replaces person’s head with a leaf in photo

#380

I had something like this happen the either week - someone took a photo of a group of us against a wooden wall in low light with the front camera of the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and while the photo looked great zoomed out, if you looked closely it had applied the vertical line and texture of the wooden slats to my face, so I had a sort of wooden face! My assumption is that this is over enthusiastic ML processing trying to…

I worry that smartphone photos will become inadmissible in court as evidence ... and will also give all shady characters like politicians a cover to change narratives

I hope that smartphones photos become inadmissable. Because photos taken don't reflect what really happened.

I also hope smartphones start storing unprocessed version of every photo that will be admissable in court.

Post reply on HN