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I could pick on quite of few nits here but I'm going to focus on one in particular that I'm very familiar with as a photographer and mass media studies student.

I could pick on quite of few nits here but I'm going to focus on one in particular that I'm very familiar with as a photographer and mass media studies student. > I want the data coming off of the sensor to be the data that makes up the image. I want to avoid as much processing as possible and I want the photo to be a reflection of reality as it is, not reality as it should have been. Sure, sometimes I'll do some color correction or cropping in post, but that doesn't change the content of the image, only its presentation. First nit: the iPhone camera, and all digital cameras, are deeply influenced by computational photography techniques. What this means is that you essentially never get the raw pixel values, although there are exceptions. The image you get is already significantly manipulated. Second nit: color correction, color in general, dynamic range, focus, depth of field, and more are all manipulations made by default, even long before digital cameras when film was king. There is no "correct" image version of what our eyes see, there is only pleasing to the photographer and the audience. An example: the negative for Ansel Adams' well known "Moonrise Over Hernandez , New Mexico" looks like, at first glance, something a professional would trash for lacking detail. Here's contact print vs the version most of use will probably recognize: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f5fe5ca8d6a356d4136ec94/1620499484148-PJP8X728J79GWLZGEVYD/beforeafterMoonOverHernandez.jpeg?format=2500w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f5fe5ca8d6a35... Here are four different versions Adams printed over the course of 3 decades: https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f5fe5ca8d6a356d4136ec94/1620499552352-R7VDU80OD5YWT2QWMN3F/moonrise-printings.jpeg?format=2500w https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f5fe5ca8d6a35... I will mention, but won't even get into a topic that will surely bait HN commentors: Kodak designed and standardized its color film to represent Caucasian skin tones. It wasn't until chocolate and furniture makers complained that everything looked like the same gross mud in their expensively-produced product catalogs that Kodak took a look at rendering dark brown/red/yellow tones more pleasingly. Notice I said "more pleasingly", not "correctly".

sbuk 2y ago
That quote intrigued me too. Surely RAW (which can be produced with an iPhone [and others...]) is what the author is looking for. Case of not RTFM'ing?
- xena 2y ago
  I shoot in raw from my iPhone and Canon EOS R6 mark 2. For my iPhone I usually use Halide's Process Zero to remove all the computational photography garbage that I can from my images.
  - erichocean 2y ago
    Halide's Process Zero literally adds "computational photography garbage", what do you think de-Bayering actually is?
- cratermoon 2y ago
  RAW is minimally processed data, but it's still processed. Also, it has a wider dynamic range than the 12 stops a human eye can produce within a given scene. The ability of the iris to change size and the brain's ability to process what the eye sees gives the impression of a wider dynamic range. In short, no image, with no process, accurately represents how the eye sees a scene.
Animats 2y ago
> Kodak designed and standardized its color film to represent Caucasian skin tones. That may be an urban legend. There was a popular reference card that had a light-skinned woman, but that wasn't the problem. This is closer to the old Technicolor vs. Eastmancolor debate. Here's the trailer for Disney's "Song of the South" (1946) [1] That's three-strip Technicolor. Good dynamic range, with each of three colors on its own strip of black and while film. Here's the trailer from "Shaft" (1971) [2]. That's single-strip Eastmancolor. Dynamic range is not as good, as you can see in the street scenes where lighting wasn't controlled. Eastmancolor took over in the 1950s because the cameras are much smaller and production is easier and cheaper. NTSC Color TV really did have something to standardize skin tones. NTSC color TV transmits an intensity value and two vector components which determine the color. The color vector components are rather low bandwidth (only about 10 full range color changes across the width of the tube), and so some NTSC receivers had a gimmick which, when the vector is near the "skin tone line" for a standard skin tone, pulled it to a fixed value.[3] The effect was that all faces had roughly the same skin tone in UV color space, but intensity could vary. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxwqH47Ne70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxwqH47Ne70 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlsufZj9Fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlsufZj9Fg [3] https://bramstout.nl/en/webbooks/vectorscopes/#yiq-and-the-skin-tone-line https://bramstout.nl/en/webbooks/vectorscopes/#yiq-and-the-s...
- cratermoon 2y ago
  I knew someone on HN would come along with a poorly-researched and misdirecting "nuh uh".

sbuk 2y ago

That quote intrigued me too. Surely RAW (which can be produced with an iPhone [and others...]) is what the author is looking for. Case of not RTFM'ing?

xena 2y ago
I shoot in raw from my iPhone and Canon EOS R6 mark 2. For my iPhone I usually use Halide's Process Zero to remove all the computational photography garbage that I can from my images.
- erichocean 2y ago
  Halide's Process Zero literally adds "computational photography garbage", what do you think de-Bayering actually is?
cratermoon 2y ago
RAW is minimally processed data, but it's still processed. Also, it has a wider dynamic range than the 12 stops a human eye can produce within a given scene. The ability of the iris to change size and the brain's ability to process what the eye sees gives the impression of a wider dynamic range. In short, no image, with no process, accurately represents how the eye sees a scene.

Animats 2y ago

> Kodak designed and standardized its color film to represent Caucasian skin tones. That may be an urban legend. There was a popular reference card that had a light-skinned woman, but that wasn't the problem. This is closer to the old Technicolor vs. Eastmancolor debate. Here's the trailer for Disney's "Song of the South" (1946) [1] That's three-strip Technicolor. Good dynamic range, with each of three colors on its own strip of black and while film. Here's the trailer from "Shaft" (1971) [2]. That's single-strip Eastmancolor. Dynamic range is not as good, as you can see in the street scenes where lighting wasn't controlled. Eastmancolor took over in the 1950s because the cameras are much smaller and production is easier and cheaper. NTSC Color TV really did have something to standardize skin tones. NTSC color TV transmits an intensity value and two vector components which determine the color. The color vector components are rather low bandwidth (only about 10 full range color changes across the width of the tube), and so some NTSC receivers had a gimmick which, when the vector is near the "skin tone line" for a standard skin tone, pulled it to a fixed value.[3] The effect was that all faces had roughly the same skin tone in UV color space, but intensity could vary. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxwqH47Ne70 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxwqH47Ne70 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlsufZj9Fg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlsufZj9Fg [3] https://bramstout.nl/en/webbooks/vectorscopes/#yiq-and-the-skin-tone-line https://bramstout.nl/en/webbooks/vectorscopes/#yiq-and-the-s...

cratermoon 2y ago
I knew someone on HN would come along with a poorly-researched and misdirecting "nuh uh".