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Ugh, god no. I don't want fancy software trying to think for me. I want raw sensor data captured with as much detail and fidelity as possible that I can feed in

by tomc1985 5y ago

Ugh, god no. I don't want fancy software trying to think for me. I want raw sensor data captured with as much detail and fidelity as possible that I can feed into my virtual darkroom workflow. The dynamic range thing is frustrating, indeed. But even so the data is usually still there. Perhaps better scene programs is a solution for traditional DSLR cameras, but most definitely NOT "computational photography" Photography needs better sensors and better scene programs, not a bunch of algorithms with their poorly-thought-out predefined notions of what is "good"

kaba0 5y ago
I don’t think you know what computational photography is. Do you also think that the famous photograph of the black hole is not true to life? It is not AI upscaling or whatever “magic” that just guesses at noise, most of it is just clever “hacks” to get out more data than you would ordinarily get, e.g. by using up the small vibration of the photographer’s hand to distribute the adjacent color filter’s input to where it belongs, and the like. Many part of it is done in hardware as well.
- astrange 5y ago
  A lot of people assume the worst about computational photography; there were stories about Samsung phones having an "unbelievably" good Moon photography mode, where everyone assumed it was just pasting in a photo of the Moon instead of just knowing not to overexpose it.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  That part is fine, though I have considered that to be just 'image processing'. There is a clear difference between what the iPhone 13 does computationally and what my DSLR body does computationally. The body doesn't claim to use AI, it doesn't refer to machine learning models, and aside from the physical characteristics of the hardware that affects the images that it takes, what I get out of it is pretty much raw sensor data. Which then gets fed into an image processing postproduction workflow. I would think that any photographer worth their salt would know that a lot of famous photographs of the stars are false color, as NASA very prominently annotates exactly how it achieved the image that it did on its site. But I would bet they are still hand-tuning the end result. Do these new iPhones come at you with, "hey, it looks like you underexposed the face so I fixed this for you" then ask me to keep or undo the changes?" From the description of it, they don't. It just happens, without your consent, because Apple thinks their phone is smarter than you are.

kaba0 5y ago

I don’t think you know what computational photography is. Do you also think that the famous photograph of the black hole is not true to life? It is not AI upscaling or whatever “magic” that just guesses at noise, most of it is just clever “hacks” to get out more data than you would ordinarily get, e.g. by using up the small vibration of the photographer’s hand to distribute the adjacent color filter’s input to where it belongs, and the like. Many part of it is done in hardware as well.

astrange 5y ago
A lot of people assume the worst about computational photography; there were stories about Samsung phones having an "unbelievably" good Moon photography mode, where everyone assumed it was just pasting in a photo of the Moon instead of just knowing not to overexpose it.
tomc1985 5y ago
That part is fine, though I have considered that to be just 'image processing'. There is a clear difference between what the iPhone 13 does computationally and what my DSLR body does computationally. The body doesn't claim to use AI, it doesn't refer to machine learning models, and aside from the physical characteristics of the hardware that affects the images that it takes, what I get out of it is pretty much raw sensor data. Which then gets fed into an image processing postproduction workflow. I would think that any photographer worth their salt would know that a lot of famous photographs of the stars are false color, as NASA very prominently annotates exactly how it achieved the image that it did on its site. But I would bet they are still hand-tuning the end result. Do these new iPhones come at you with, "hey, it looks like you underexposed the face so I fixed this for you" then ask me to keep or undo the changes?" From the description of it, they don't. It just happens, without your consent, because Apple thinks their phone is smarter than you are.