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GCam is Google Camera, the app that started all this. Funny how everybody praises iPhone when Apple actually have been very slow to notice this trend, and their

GCam is Google Camera, the app that started all this. Funny how everybody praises iPhone when Apple actually have been very slow to notice this trend, and their camera apps really sucked for many years. I hate GCam specifically because it requires lots of fiddling with mods and ad-hoc setups if you want full potential, but it doesn't change the fact that a "computational" camera outputs real scene data. >computationally detecting and smoothening human skin or the like Seems like there's some misunderstanding. I'm not talking about stuff like face detection or beautifying, computational bokeh, one-size-fits-all tonemapping etc. I'm talking about raw capture, which simply aligns and stacks many frames (discarding bogus ones) without demosaicing. There's really nothing more to it. Not much different than, say, Pentax' pixel shift. Similar process, same limitations and issues, no opaque magic that tries to think for you. I've used similar process for years with HDRMerge to shoot landscapes with my DSLRs. >If you don’t believe, try some of the latest “dumb” pro mirrorless cameras with the latest iPhone and compare their respective raw captures. I currently use the a7S III, but I fail to see how it's relevant. The difference is not due to them being dumb but because of having better sensors and optics, variable aperture, mechanical shutter etc. There's nothing smart or special in smartphone raw capture.

goblin89 5y ago
We seem to mostly agree. Here’s the line—on one side of it are phones, able to produce decent images despite hardware limitations by applying black-box magic when interpreting raw captures (but not faring that well when used to shoot raw); on the other side are cameras, employing advanced tech (and sometimes, indeed, magic) to assist you with capturing raw signal of much higher fidelity and yielding full control as to its further interpretation. That’s what I meant by cameras being in a qualitatively different category, and why I wrote my comment arguing against the next iPhone somehow rendering mirrorless cameras useless. (The only point where it might become more of a debate in my eyes is if phones start applying similar extensive processing that they do, but at raw levels. There could be genuine gains there—but also unwelcome unpredictable adulteration of DNG captures.)
- orbital-decay 5y ago
  My main objection is this: >able to produce decent images despite hardware limitations by applying black-box magic when interpreting raw captures (but not faring that well when used to shoot raw) Not really, the quality boost in recent smartphones comes exactly from bayer domain stacking, which is scene-referred capture. You can absolutely get precise photometric values from this process, as precise as your hardware and lighting allows you to, and as long as you calibrate your device. Those apps contain profiles for specific sensors precisely for this reason, albeit you can do it yourself better, as many people do just like they do it with proper cameras. There's no black box magic here, the output is just the same ordinary DNG with the CFA photometric interpretation, but with significantly lowered noise floor and better dynamic range. Moreover, the pipeline is strictly separated into two parts: bayer domain operations, which give the quality boost, and post-demosaicing processing (auto white balance, tonemapping, skin smoothing, other features aimed at point-and-shoot users - what you call magic). I'm not claiming smartphones are somehow better, which would be silly. I'm objecting to a claim that apps do some opaque magic behind your back when writing RAWs. They don't, you can get entirely normal RAWs with all the quality benefits of stacking (and its limitations). And to be honest, I feel like our discussion is creeping into a no true scotsman/audiophile territory a bit. There's nothing sacred or qualitatively different about single-shot capture, no modern normal-sized sensor gives you truly unprocessed internal bucket values, and even what is counted as single shot is often unclear (many sensors are capable of simultaneous multiple exposure capture requiring the same exposure fusion to get the result; is it single shot or not?). What smartphones, and some cameras, do is essentially temporal denoising, it's a routine imaging technique employed by videographers and in technical imaging (which is as precise and scene-referred as you can get), and I'm not sure what's magical here. Same with temporal super-resolution that many cameras do.
  - goblin89 5y ago
    Sure, some of the black box processing that phone camera does relies on known algorithms. The difference is that it also makes use of ML, which IMO either plays a significant role or will do so in near term. > auto white balance, tonemapping, skin smoothing, other features This, for example, I see as an opaque step with nondeterministic outcomes, which if you take away from phones and shoot raw reveals how far they are away from mirrorless cameras. (Cameras that shoot raw do not do this all that well, nor are they expected to.) > There's nothing sacred or qualitatively different about single-shot capture I stack exposures too. Whatever process works, works. The difference is that my flow is A -> N -> X, my camera’s built-in processing is A -> M -> Y, while ML-powered black-box compute in a phone does A -> ? -> R today or A -> ? -> Z tomorrow. Due to its automatic nature, I see this processing as taking more of the creative part of photographer’s role, unlike compute in cameras where it is a capture-time assistant. It will have to play a bigger and bigger role in how phone camera output improves in near future, as there is not that much space for enlarging the sensor or the lens; and as a user you either let it do the magic or you end up with a very mediocre camera. It is not inherently better or worse, but it relates to photography in the sense that I appreciate it in kind of as Nvidia Canvas et al. relate to hand-created art: different tools, different goals.

goblin89 5y ago

We seem to mostly agree. Here’s the line—on one side of it are phones, able to produce decent images despite hardware limitations by applying black-box magic when interpreting raw captures (but not faring that well when used to shoot raw); on the other side are cameras, employing advanced tech (and sometimes, indeed, magic) to assist you with capturing raw signal of much higher fidelity and yielding full control as to its further interpretation. That’s what I meant by cameras being in a qualitatively different category, and why I wrote my comment arguing against the next iPhone somehow rendering mirrorless cameras useless. (The only point where it might become more of a debate in my eyes is if phones start applying similar extensive processing that they do, but at raw levels. There could be genuine gains there—but also unwelcome unpredictable adulteration of DNG captures.)

orbital-decay 5y ago
My main objection is this: >able to produce decent images despite hardware limitations by applying black-box magic when interpreting raw captures (but not faring that well when used to shoot raw) Not really, the quality boost in recent smartphones comes exactly from bayer domain stacking, which is scene-referred capture. You can absolutely get precise photometric values from this process, as precise as your hardware and lighting allows you to, and as long as you calibrate your device. Those apps contain profiles for specific sensors precisely for this reason, albeit you can do it yourself better, as many people do just like they do it with proper cameras. There's no black box magic here, the output is just the same ordinary DNG with the CFA photometric interpretation, but with significantly lowered noise floor and better dynamic range. Moreover, the pipeline is strictly separated into two parts: bayer domain operations, which give the quality boost, and post-demosaicing processing (auto white balance, tonemapping, skin smoothing, other features aimed at point-and-shoot users - what you call magic). I'm not claiming smartphones are somehow better, which would be silly. I'm objecting to a claim that apps do some opaque magic behind your back when writing RAWs. They don't, you can get entirely normal RAWs with all the quality benefits of stacking (and its limitations). And to be honest, I feel like our discussion is creeping into a no true scotsman/audiophile territory a bit. There's nothing sacred or qualitatively different about single-shot capture, no modern normal-sized sensor gives you truly unprocessed internal bucket values, and even what is counted as single shot is often unclear (many sensors are capable of simultaneous multiple exposure capture requiring the same exposure fusion to get the result; is it single shot or not?). What smartphones, and some cameras, do is essentially temporal denoising, it's a routine imaging technique employed by videographers and in technical imaging (which is as precise and scene-referred as you can get), and I'm not sure what's magical here. Same with temporal super-resolution that many cameras do.
- goblin89 5y ago
  Sure, some of the black box processing that phone camera does relies on known algorithms. The difference is that it also makes use of ML, which IMO either plays a significant role or will do so in near term. > auto white balance, tonemapping, skin smoothing, other features This, for example, I see as an opaque step with nondeterministic outcomes, which if you take away from phones and shoot raw reveals how far they are away from mirrorless cameras. (Cameras that shoot raw do not do this all that well, nor are they expected to.) > There's nothing sacred or qualitatively different about single-shot capture I stack exposures too. Whatever process works, works. The difference is that my flow is A -> N -> X, my camera’s built-in processing is A -> M -> Y, while ML-powered black-box compute in a phone does A -> ? -> R today or A -> ? -> Z tomorrow. Due to its automatic nature, I see this processing as taking more of the creative part of photographer’s role, unlike compute in cameras where it is a capture-time assistant. It will have to play a bigger and bigger role in how phone camera output improves in near future, as there is not that much space for enlarging the sensor or the lens; and as a user you either let it do the magic or you end up with a very mediocre camera. It is not inherently better or worse, but it relates to photography in the sense that I appreciate it in kind of as Nvidia Canvas et al. relate to hand-created art: different tools, different goals.