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> While it's true that photography in the past was racially biased, it is unclear why modern photography is still racially biased. It may just be genuinely hard
by speedplane 7y ago
> While it's true that photography in the past was racially biased, it is unclear why modern photography is still racially biased. It may just be genuinely harder to photograph dark skin
Perhaps if those with dark skin were a majority, far more R&D spending would go into dealing with dark skin tones than say, better zoom lenses or image processing speed. As a practical example, I suspect HDR would have arrived much faster than it did.
- creato 7y agoCamera companies have been competing on ISO/gain performance and dynamic range for as long as they've existed. It has little or nothing to do with skin color. There are plenty of motivations for delivering high ISO and good dynamic range beyond capturing skin colors. The idea that it was furniture companies and chocolate vendors that drove this development is absurd, that is probably just Kodak sales pitches backfiring on them 50 years later. Anyone that wanted to take a photo of a white person, let alone any subject, in a slightly darker environment wanted the same thing. Or for an even better way to look at it: if you can photograph fast moving subjects twice as well, you can also photograph subjects twice as dark. Again, this is something everyone that uses a camera wants, independent of race. As for HDR: it is only relatively recently that digital sensors have started outperforming film's dynamic range, which was pretty good for a very long time. Digital camera vendors absolutely had massive financial incentive to fix this deficit. When they started to even come close, that's when the market exploded for movie production, and probably a lot of other commercial applications as well.