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> “A camera is supposed to take pictures of what it sees.” Feels like that’s just a matter of expectations. A phone used to be a device for voice communicatio
by pavlov 2y ago
> “A camera is supposed to take pictures of what it sees.”
Feels like that’s just a matter of expectations.
A phone used to be a device for voice communications. It’s right there in the Greek etymology, “phonē” for sound. But 95% of what people do today on devices called phones is something else than voice.
Similarly, if people start using cameras more to produce images of things they want rather than what exists in front of the lens, then that’s eventually what a camera will mean. Snapchat thinks of themselves as a camera company, but the images captured within their apps are increasingly synthesized.
(The etymology of “camera” already points to a journey of transformation. A photographic camera isn’t a literal room, as the camera obscura once was.)
- paledot 2y agoFine, I expect an MRI to take pictures of what's actually going on in my body rather than inventing MRI-like images that can fool the radiologist into thinking I'm healthy when I'm not. Not sure why this is controversial.
- rzzzt 2y agoTaking this thought to its logical conclusion: https://bjoernkarmann.dk/project/paragraphica https://bjoernkarmann.dk/project/paragraphica
- kyriakos 2y agosmall correction “phonē” means voice not sound :)
- coldtea 2y agoIn ancient and koinē Greek it meant both voice and sound (including the sound of instruments, which carries in modern instrument names like "saxophone" and so on). They would say "ὀργάνων φωναί", "φωνὴ βροντῆς", "φωνὴ ὑδάτων" and so on for example.
- thsksbd 2y agoSome of us want a record of what was, not a hallucination of what might have or could have been. Courts, for example. Forensic science was revolutionized by widespread adoption of photography leading to a reduction of the importance given to witnesses. Who also hallucinate what might have happened.
- Auracle 2y agoSo when I took an 8 second exposure of the aurora on Friday and then used Capture One to process the raw to make it more vivid than it was in real life - is that a record of what was? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not super keen on AI type stuff in cameras as a whole. The line is muddy though. A smartphone camera straight up can’t capture the moon well, or at all. If it then looks more like it did in real life after processing is that better or worse than my above example?
- dendrite9 2y agoI recently took a picture of a lizard on a granite with large grains. When I zoomed in to identify the type of lizard I saw that all the grains and some leaves on a tree had been simplified with some type of swirl. I find it unlikely those swirls were artifacts of the sensor itself. My assumption is the effect is related to compression given how often it repeated but I'm not sure.
- TeMPOraL 2y agoHow often do you capture auroras or other beauty shots, vs. readouts on your electricity meter, stickers on the back of your furnace, receipts, and a hundred other displays and documents you need to send someone? I definitely do plenty of the latter, and in such cases, I'd really appreciate the AI to not spice things up with details it thinks should be there. I'm by no means against the feature. Hell, I shoot 90% of my family photos in Portrait mode on my Galaxy phone, which does some creative bluring and probably some other magic[0]. I just really appreciate being able to turn the magic on or off myself. That, and knowing exactly what the magic is[1]. -- [0] - I don't know what exactly it does, but switching from normal to Portrait mode is all it takes for my photos to suddenly look amazing, as judged by my wife, vs. plain sucking. [1] - See e.g. "scene optimizer" in Galaxy phones. It's a toggle on normal photo mode. I have no first clue what it does, I can't see any obvious immediate difference between shots taken with vs. without that feature.