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Huawei Caught Faking Smartphone Photo with a DSLR
- ggambetta 8y agoThis is an outrage! Next you're going to tell me that the pictures of happy creatives and handsome businesspersons in every service or product website are not actual users who are just so damn happy that they can't stop smiling, but actors/models or even (gasp) stock photos!
- skate22 8y agoMy favorite is when someone in an ad says "I'm not an actor"
- wepple 8y agoGiven that Apple set the standard by posting photos that are explicitly labeled as being shot on iPhone, it think it’s totally fine to expect an image with selfie-arm extending into the frame to have actually been shot on the device.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoAt least on billboards here in Berlin with a small print that the pictures are (heavily) post processed - 10cm size on a 10m high print.
- 21 8y agoObviously you haven't read the article: > Photos from Apple's "Shot on iPhone" ads are indeed taken with iPhones, albeit with additional equipment like special lenses attached to the phone, and they've been touched up with professional photo editing software. Yep, just a standard iPhone here as any regular user would have: https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphonefeat.jpg https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2017/06/shotoniphonefea...
- wepple 8y agoYeah, shot using an iPhone. Using the iPhone’s minuscule sized image sensor, through its tiny lens, and built in image processoring engine. With an attached lens. Huawei used a large image sensor DSLR with dedicated processing chips and lenses designed for the body. The product they’re trying to pass off as having produced the image needed have been within 29 square miles.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jchw 8y agoFood commercials are purely aesthetic. They are not really attesting to that the food you get will look or taste good. Logically, how could they? That being said, it's apparently a myth that food commercials don't use real food. But does it matter, given that your Whopper won't look exactly like the one in the ad regardless? It is a lot different if you outright claim your smartphone took photos it did not. That is more like saying that your new car can get 35 MPG when it couldn't under any circumstances. People would probably find it a lot easier to be outraged if Apple faked an iPhone camera shot, which probably says more about people than it does about companies.
- gruez 8y ago>Food commercials are purely aesthetic. They are not really attesting to that the food you get will look or taste good. Logically, how could they? That being said, it's apparently a myth that food commercials don't use real food. But does it matter, given that your Whopper won't look exactly like the one in the ad regardless? supposedly they have to use the same ingredients that make up the food. yes, they can still use all sorts of camera tricks and practical effects to get it look better than it is, but at least it puts an upper bound of how much bullshitry they can create.
- newnewpdro 8y agoWhen a relative entered into the advertising business out of college she would tell me all about the tricks they did to make foods look good in the photo shoots. The burgers had toothpicks inside to make everything stand taller, grapes and other fruits were dipped in oil...
- vatueil 8y agoArs Technica noted that "Shot on iPhone" ads are technically correct but may use additional lenses and photo editing: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/huawei-was-caught-using-a-pro-camera-to-fake-smartphone-photos-again/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/08/huawei-was-caught-us... > Photos from Apple's "Shot on iPhone" ads are indeed taken with iPhones, albeit with additional equipment like special lenses attached to the phone, and they've been touched up with professional photo editing software... A tiny, fine-print disclosure about lenses and retouches appears on the Apple ads...
- mehrdadn 8y agoDoes anyone know of recent instances of such false advertisements in the US? Or are there severe enough punishments to deter them?
- linarism 8y agoThe last time I remember something like this happening was from 2012[1]. [1] https://www.cnet.com/news/nokia-forced-to-apologise-for-fake-lumia-920-camera-video/ https://www.cnet.com/news/nokia-forced-to-apologise-for-fake...
- dahauns 8y agoI might sound jaded, but: isn't this happening constantly anyway? Usually with just a small bit of "fig-leaf" credibility (like the aforementioned "shot on iPhone" pieces, but especially supertiny illegible disclaimers) - but the effect is the same. I mean, watch this ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDjGnWO_fG4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDjGnWO_fG4 Can you spot the "screen image simulated" lines? Would you even have noticed it, had you not been looking for it?
- vortico 8y agoThe sensor and lens of phones are good enough today to look exactly like the picture in the video (besides the shallow DoF that is only possible with large lenses). The quality is primarily in the skill of lighting the room (in this case with $1000 of softboxes), and secondarily how the image is developed from RAW and retouched.
- mehrdadn 8y agoDo you get much mileage out of RAW photos coming from phones? I haven't had much luck with them.
- vortico 8y agoI don't have a phone capable of RAW images, but it's not a focus of the camera's design for those that have it, unlike professional cameras, so the bit depth will be low and it will expose the high ISO noise before "smart" denoising is applied when taking JPEG.
- jobigoud 8y agoThe shallow DoF can be approximated if you have depth information.
- vortico 8y agoYeah, but it looks crappy because you can't extract information behind the edges of foreground objects.
- utopcell 8y agoIf that were true, they wouldn't have faked the picture.
- vortico 8y agoProfessional cameras are easier to use, and the shallow DoF looks more professional (especially to inexperienced photographers).
- GFischer 8y agoNot the first time Huawei fakes something, they were cheating on benchmarks: https://www.phonearena.com/news/Huawei-Ascend-P7-found-to-be-cheating--Futuremark-disqualifies-it_id60037 https://www.phonearena.com/news/Huawei-Ascend-P7-found-to-be... https://www.anandtech.com/show/8403/examining-huaweis-benchmark-optimizations-in-the-ascend-p7 https://www.anandtech.com/show/8403/examining-huaweis-benchm... Samsung and others also did it: https://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-android-benchmarks https://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-and... I own the Ascend P7, and my GF is also a Huawei user, and they're good devices. But they feel the need to cheat.
- LoSboccacc 8y agoLooks like xiaomi is adding some pressure on the low end market, where people are a little more feature conscious. The p20 lite was brilliant my mother owns one and for what it cost it’s a great little device, but the tech content pales compared to the last xiaomi round
- gumby 8y agoI think the low end pressure is applying to xiaomi as well, from Oppo, Ding-Ding, etc...it's really hard to keep up with the cheap phone providers these days!
- soziawa 8y agoI thought they also cheated on the RF emission test.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arif_sohaib 8y agoI think that the over clocking cheat is a bit different if they are honest about and say the phone, when overclocked, are actually capable of this. The DSLR image is not possible in any case.
- 8y ago
- ams6110 8y agoSo what? Camera companies, television companies, have been using simulated images in advertisements since forever. It's an ad. Of course it's fake. What world are you living in?
- coldtea 8y agoIt's not about what world we're living in -- else we'd bend over and take any other kind of stuff that happens as well. It's about what world we want to live in, and that (among more important things) doesn't include fake images passed as real.
- nhojb 8y agoExactly. This is advertising people. Since the dawn of time advertisers have over-exaggerated and over-sold products. Call it an art (I might, but not in this case), call it a sham. It is what it is. No surprises here.
- Grue3 8y agoSeriously. Who would even assume that an ad is not shot with professional equipment in the first place?
- usaphp 8y ago> Everything was fine until people took a closer look at the behind-the-scenes photos (which have since been deleted) from the ad shoot posted by Elshamy to her Instagram account. I doubt it's an accident. It's probably just a PR stunt by huawei, otherwise not many people would even talk about this phone. Unless whoever is runnigng that actress's instagram account is incredibly stupid to not notice that clearly controversial photo: [https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/08/bts0.jpg https://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2018/08/bts0.jpg]
- gnode 8y agoOr alternatively the controversy increases Elshamy's profile. Given that the account is either controlled by her, or her agent, I'd say that's the more likely explanation.
- fulyscentedking 8y agoPhotos aside, can you trust Huawei in the first place in general?
- Markoff 8y agowill after installing Lineage it's relatively safe, but you are too late to party after bootloader unlock page gone, now it's up to finding friendly customer service representative or giving try to DC unlocker which sometimes work even on phones they officially don't support
- lancewiggs 8y agoWould you trust Google more or less than Huawei?
- scooke 8y agoWhy do people still not get it?? One wants to eradicate your way of life, deeply believing that their way is not just the best way, but needs to be the only way. The company just wants your data.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- StavrosK 8y agoJeez, you'd think the Red Scare would be a thing of the past, but no, apparently a phone maker wants to eradicate your way of life by selling you phones.
- dnomad 8y agoAt this point you really have to conclude that the intense anti-China bigotry here on HN is a deliberate strategy. Hate is who people like scooke are and HN makes every effort to spread and amplify that hate.
- 8y ago
- foobar1962 8y agoWhy aren't the actors/models refusing to participate in such deceptive practices? Surely they'd be thinking "Why are we pretending to take a selfie?"
- sergers 8y agoCause they are paid actors/models. There job is to put on a show and do their part, not think about the grander things like deception. Most claim they just show up for the part.
- starpilot 8y agoCuz it's not like they're claiming to cure cancer. It's just an ad. Most people don't care.
- skrebbel 8y agoI once saw a Microsoft Cloud poster in a train station that did claim they were curing cancer. I'd rather be the Huawei model than the designer of that poster.
- rexpop 8y agoBecause they are some of the lowest paid workers in the project. Why should they risk their precarious jobs when higher-paid, and more secure workers are also aware of the deception?
- Chris_Chambers 8y agoHow old are you?
- toomanybeersies 8y agoHow many software developers work on adware? People gotta eat somehow.
- carlmr 8y agoThey're probably happy they can put food on the table. Actors for ads are not really at the top of the food pyramid.
- Markoff 8y agoto be fair it should be mentioned Nokia did this in 2012 as well, it's not like Huawei doing it alone https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads-are-fraudulent https://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ad...
- gst 8y agoFor their N97 promo video Nokia faked the whole UI of the phone: https://youtu.be/vJpEuMidcSU https://youtu.be/vJpEuMidcSU
- signa11 8y agoiirc, nokia also tried that in the past...
- epse 8y agoCorrect
- codemusings 8y agoI mean even the resulting DSLR photo is touched up so heavily. How would anyone believe this is representative of the camera quality?
- ComodoHacker 8y agoBecause the phone camera does post-processing. That was the point of their ad pitch.
- gnode 8y ago> How would anyone believe this is representative of the camera quality? By being a typical consumer, without photography expertise. Also, they claim to use "AI" to post process the photos.
- novaleaf 8y agofakes aside, my wife bought this phone (the pro) and I have to say it has the best camera (+post processing) I've seen on a phone. My wife sucks at taking photos but with that thing they look kinda nice. Their 3 lens composite photo system seems like it actually, really helps. And their added post processing of "portrait" mode gives a nice instagramish look, It's too much for my tastes (I don't do instagram soo....) but it's interesting it does some depth-of-field stuff too (probably with the help of the 3 lenses) The only downside is I hate the $850 price tag (I refuse to pay more than $200 on a phone...) it'll be interesting when this sort of tech trickles down in the next few years.
- rangibaby 8y agoThis reminded me of one of my favorite neologisms, used to describe faked screenshots that make video games look better than they are: bullshots
- modzu 8y agoif you believe ANY advertising, you lose.