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Of course, this is one in a million chance but it highlights very nicely IMO a much bigger issue: what is reality? Some would say only the classical optical ca

Of course, this is one in a million chance but it highlights very nicely IMO a much bigger issue: what is reality? Some would say only the classical optical camera would capture faithfully our reality. But does it? The reality of the sunlight is a broad spectrum of radio emissions: UV, infrared and more. Does the optical camera capture these? No. Thus, which reality does it capture? Our perceived reality? Other would argue: at least the optical system would capture events in time faithfully. But does it? What would we see in a femto second? Certainly not the pictures we normally see. So the results of an optical system are also super imposed realities, not very much different than the results of a computational photography. There is simply no single one reality, only our perceived realities. But if so, can we still call it reality or it’s merely a product of our sense, our perception and hallucination?

Gigachad 3y ago
Probably something closest to what your eye sees is ideal for most photos. But dumb optical cameras have all kinds of artefacts that eyes don’t. When I slightly bump the camera, the whole image comes out blurry, my eyes don’t do that. Things like lens flares don’t exist either.
- andreicap 3y ago
  > all kinds of artefacts that eyes don’t. Eyes do have lots of artefacts, your brain fills in the gaps, like the blind spot [1] It's not much more different than computational photography, really. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)
TeMPOraL 3y ago
> There is simply no single one reality, only our perceived realities. This does not follow at all from your earlier paragraph. The reality we're talking about here, which regular photography reflects while computational one doesn't, is the correlation of recorded data with the state of the world. The pixels of a regular photo are highly correlated with reality - they may have been subject to some analog and digital transformation, and of course quantization, but there's a straightforward and reversible (with some loss of fidelity) function mapping pixels to the photographed event. Computational photography, in contrast, decorrelates pixels from reality, and discards source measurements, leaving you with a recording of something that never happened, but is sort of similar to the thing that did. I elaborated on this elsewhere in the thread, so let me instead point at another way of noticing the difference. Photogrammetry is the science and technology of recovering the information about reality from photos, and it works because pixels of regular photos are highly correlated with reality. Apply the same techniques to images made via computational photography, and the degree of uncertainty and fidelity loss will reflect the degree to which the computational photos are AI interpretations/bullshit.
verisimi 3y ago
> what is reality? Well, the only thing we can say is that we can eliminate Apple phones and their software from our enquiries!
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> The reality of the sunlight is a broad spectrum of radio emissions: UV, infrared Thats irrelevant, radar reflects reality, photoshop doesn't. Even children understand this distiction.
sanroot99 3y ago
But computational should be able to atleast reproduce what optical does
belugacat 3y ago
The classical optical camera does not capture anything. It is a light sealed box, with a pinhole for a lens. As an optical system, it interacts with electromagnetic waves that go through it, that's the only 'reality' you can really care about. What captures an image is an imaging surface; traditionally a chemical emulsion on a piece of film, now a complex array of digital sensors. This imaging surface is of human design, it therefore images what its designers designed it to image. But don't forget that it is a sampling of reality; by definition always partial, and biased (biased to the 400~700 nm range, for starters).
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > But don't forget that it is a sampling of reality; by definition always partial, and biased (biased to the 400~700 nm range, for starters). This does not matter in any way. What matters is that, what comes out on the other end of filtering and bias, is highly correlated with what came in, and carries information about the imaged phenomenon. This is what both analog films and digital sensors were designed for. The captured information is then preserved through most forms of post-processing, also by design. Computational photography, in contrast, is destroying that information, for the sake of creating something that "looks better".
visarga 3y ago
> Of course, this is one in a million chance but it highlights very nicely IMO a much bigger issue: what is reality? What photo is admissible in court?

Gigachad 3y ago

Probably something closest to what your eye sees is ideal for most photos. But dumb optical cameras have all kinds of artefacts that eyes don’t. When I slightly bump the camera, the whole image comes out blurry, my eyes don’t do that. Things like lens flares don’t exist either.

andreicap 3y ago
> all kinds of artefacts that eyes don’t. Eyes do have lots of artefacts, your brain fills in the gaps, like the blind spot [1] It's not much more different than computational photography, really. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision)

TeMPOraL 3y ago

> There is simply no single one reality, only our perceived realities. This does not follow at all from your earlier paragraph. The reality we're talking about here, which regular photography reflects while computational one doesn't, is the correlation of recorded data with the state of the world. The pixels of a regular photo are highly correlated with reality - they may have been subject to some analog and digital transformation, and of course quantization, but there's a straightforward and reversible (with some loss of fidelity) function mapping pixels to the photographed event. Computational photography, in contrast, decorrelates pixels from reality, and discards source measurements, leaving you with a recording of something that never happened, but is sort of similar to the thing that did. I elaborated on this elsewhere in the thread, so let me instead point at another way of noticing the difference. Photogrammetry is the science and technology of recovering the information about reality from photos, and it works because pixels of regular photos are highly correlated with reality. Apply the same techniques to images made via computational photography, and the degree of uncertainty and fidelity loss will reflect the degree to which the computational photos are AI interpretations/bullshit.

verisimi 3y ago

> what is reality? Well, the only thing we can say is that we can eliminate Apple phones and their software from our enquiries!

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> The reality of the sunlight is a broad spectrum of radio emissions: UV, infrared Thats irrelevant, radar reflects reality, photoshop doesn't. Even children understand this distiction.

sanroot99 3y ago

But computational should be able to atleast reproduce what optical does

belugacat 3y ago

The classical optical camera does not capture anything. It is a light sealed box, with a pinhole for a lens. As an optical system, it interacts with electromagnetic waves that go through it, that's the only 'reality' you can really care about. What captures an image is an imaging surface; traditionally a chemical emulsion on a piece of film, now a complex array of digital sensors. This imaging surface is of human design, it therefore images what its designers designed it to image. But don't forget that it is a sampling of reality; by definition always partial, and biased (biased to the 400~700 nm range, for starters).

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> But don't forget that it is a sampling of reality; by definition always partial, and biased (biased to the 400~700 nm range, for starters). This does not matter in any way. What matters is that, what comes out on the other end of filtering and bias, is highly correlated with what came in, and carries information about the imaged phenomenon. This is what both analog films and digital sensors were designed for. The captured information is then preserved through most forms of post-processing, also by design. Computational photography, in contrast, is destroying that information, for the sake of creating something that "looks better".

visarga 3y ago

> Of course, this is one in a million chance but it highlights very nicely IMO a much bigger issue: what is reality? What photo is admissible in court?