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Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that

by fleddr 4y ago

Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements. But only the beginning. We're going to be debating the question of "reality" a lot in the coming years. Surely, the next step in computational photography will be AI to fix your questionable shots. You photograph the Eiffel tower, but there's a lot of people obfuscating it, the horizon isn't straight and the light ugly. One tap and it's fixed, if it even requires a tap. You zoom in digitally to produce some blob of what is supposed to be a bird. Tap to fix it. And there you have it, a pro level shot without the 5kg 600mm lens. Just like AI art generation, photography will be going through some deep questions. Did you actually photograph that? And if anybody can photograph anything with zero skill, what is the point?

simplotek 4y ago
> Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements. In the past photography was optically pure shit, and we could only take 36 photos at a time before cranking out a new roll of film, and we had to drive to a photo store to pay to get those 36 photos developed and only them we could see if the photos were any good.
psychomugs 4y ago
The discussion on photography and its relationship to capital-R Reality dates back to the medium’s inception. There is no lens-sensor system that can capture what we see with our eyes, but is what we see even “reality?” Is the reality of a visually divergent person a lesser Reality than that of typically sighted people? Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” and Roland Barthe’s “Camera Obscura” are nice meditations on such questions.

by fleddr 4y ago

simplotek 4y ago

> Needless to say, people are pretty happy with smartphone photography. Which is optically pure shit, but clever software fixes that quite well. And not just that, it's idiot-proof. Those are two monumental achievements. In the past photography was optically pure shit, and we could only take 36 photos at a time before cranking out a new roll of film, and we had to drive to a photo store to pay to get those 36 photos developed and only them we could see if the photos were any good.

psychomugs 4y ago

The discussion on photography and its relationship to capital-R Reality dates back to the medium’s inception. There is no lens-sensor system that can capture what we see with our eyes, but is what we see even “reality?” Is the reality of a visually divergent person a lesser Reality than that of typically sighted people? Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” and Roland Barthe’s “Camera Obscura” are nice meditations on such questions.