The future of photogrphy?

jerry12953

jerry12953

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Jeremy Moore
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According to an article in New Scientist (22nd Oct)

"The interface uses the sensors and processing power found in smartphones to provide photographers with more information before they click. For example accelerometers can detect that an image is aligned with the horizon or when your hands are shaking. The phone can then warn you with guidelines on the screen, audio cues or vibration"

"....guidelines are summarised using a traffic lights system that lets you know the quality of a shot before you take it....."

"Sam Hasinoff, a software engineer at google, has a solution [to depth of field/exposure problems] that gives photographers the best of both worlds. He takes multiple wide-aperture photos with different DoF's and combines them to create a picture with a DoF equivalent to a small-aperture photo but taken in a fraction of the time, since wide aperture reaches the correct exposure level much faster"

"Earlier this month Adobe.....gave a sneak preview of a tool that can unblur digital photos. It examines the image calculate the movement of the photographer that led to blurring, then computationally reverses the motion to clear up the photo"

It just gets easier and easier.
 
This can make it easier but the only thing it can't do is to have a good eye(composition) which is the difference between a good photo and a great photo.That is my opinion.
 
My thinking is that technological advances have consistently made photography "easier" in a technical sense. There must be all sorts of images which are possible now, or possible for those with few photographic skills, than were impossible in pre-digital days.

Photography is a complex blend of creative and technical skills. The software and hardware developments like these, and others we already take for granted , are increasingly taking technicalities out of the equation.

Anyone WILL be able to do it soon enough.
 
Agreed that technology will only make things easier. And whilst better equipment does make for better photos - it's only one factor that contributes - e.g. creative eye, patience, luck.
 
There would be a similar conversation if you were to wind the clock back 60 years or so. Technology does not spoil imagery, more it opens new, creative doors. Also, as has been mentioned, there is nothing quite like a well thought out and composed shot and I can't see the personal touches being replaced by tech anytime soon.

Amdy
 
Who cares, not me, I don't want this.

I as in "I" want to take the photograph and enjoy the mistakes and learn from them, if it gets any more automated then I may as well go and buy a print from a shop and chuck the camea away.
 
JSER said:
Who cares, not me, I don't want this.
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Embrace the technology. It wont hang around for you unfortunately.:wave:

Seriously though I think people should stop worrying about new technology. It will continue to zap certain skills from our hoppy but will open up new skills as well. Just like digital cameras opened up skills in post processing. Just see it as an exciting time to learn new skills
 
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Richmate said:
Embrace the technology. It wont hang around for you unfortunately.:wave:

Seriously though I think people should stop worrying about new technology. It will continue to zap certain skills from our hoppy but will open up new skills as well. Just like digital cameras opened up skills in post processing. Just see it as an exciting time to learn new skills
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We don't have to embrace it if we chose not to.

Many are returning to film as a hobb, ok, some simply want to point and shoot, bu I want to enjoy the whole process.

Why have a DSLR with manual and manual focus, because it is still wanted.
 
Advances in technology are great, that can't be denied.
But I wouldn't want to lose the feeling that you get when you take that great picture knowing that you nailed it rather than the computer.
I know DSLR's are fully of electronic wizardry just now, but think this will take a lot of enjoyment out of our hobby/profession.
 
Some people are results focussed and others are process focussed. If the camera gets me what I want I'm not that bothered to be honest. If it makes it easy to get the image I want then that is even better.
 
jerry12953 said:
According to an article in New Scientist (22nd Oct)

"The interface uses the sensors and processing power found in smartphones to provide photographers with more information before they click. For example accelerometers can detect that an image is aligned with the horizon or when your hands are shaking. The phone can then warn you with guidelines on the screen, audio cues or vibration"

"....guidelines are summarised using a traffic lights system that lets you know the quality of a shot before you take it....."
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I can see when the horizon is level. And I also know when there's a danger of camera shake, depending on focal length - which is rare with IS and high ISO anyway. Such a system can do nothing about subject movement.

"Sam Hasinoff, a software engineer at google, has a solution [to depth of field/exposure problems] that gives photographers the best of both worlds. He takes multiple wide-aperture photos with different DoF's and combines them to create a picture with a DoF equivalent to a small-aperture photo but taken in a fraction of the time, since wide aperture reaches the correct exposure level much faster"
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Sounds like focus stacking, which is common enough. How does taking multiple images take less time than one? :thinking: And most creative folks seem to want less DoF not more. If you want everything sharp regardless, use a compact.

"Earlier this month Adobe.....gave a sneak preview of a tool that can unblur digital photos. It examines the image calculate the movement of the photographer that led to blurring, then computationally reverses the motion to clear up the photo"
Click to expand...

It was a hoax. Adobe pre-blurred the demo images - they confessed on DPReview. I have seen that shake-unblurring technqiue done for real, but it took a photoshop expert flippin ages to do.

It just gets easier and easier.
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Seems to me as technolgy makes things easier, it just increases the number of crap photos taken. 90% of a good image is the subject and light and the real skill is getting that scene in front of your lens, making sure the camera/lens/settings show it to best advantage, and timing the moment - and nothing has changed there.

PS Cheer up Jerry :D
 
Photography is on it's way out now.Everthing is just an image.It has been since digital came along.
In 10yrs time no one will be stood at the side of a football field with a massive lens and DSLR,a point and shoot will be able to do the job.
Good photographs are not worth anything anymore.No one has any respect for the "creative eye" anymore because they do not know if it was the creative computer that did it.Just about all skill has gone.
Most of the motorsport events I attend now,I try and use some skill to get the good shot.I waste my time because the person with the fastest motordrive just hits the button and knocks of 10 shots.Scatter gun photography.
No skill what so ever anyone could do it.
It is tempting to think that "the creative eye" will save photography but it is not proving to be the case due to the way images can be changed by computers.No one now knows what is a photograph and what is an image.
Most of the time as things advance there is an overall benifit.But in the case of photography I have my doubts.
A machinest at a lathe, is replaced by a computer controled machine that does the job quicker ,cheaper and better.The machinest looses his job his skills are lost,but it was never about his skills.In the case of photography it was about the skills.
I heard some one say just the other day "There are no photographers anymore just another person with a camera" and it's true.
Still it does not mean that you can not go and buy a camera and enjoy taking your images and altering on your computer.After all who would know.
 
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kestral said:
Photography is on it's way out now.Everthing is just an image.It has been since digital came along.
In 10yrs time no one will be stood at the side of a football field with a massive lens and DSLR,a point and shoot will be able to do the job.
Good photographs are not worth anything anymore.No one has any respect for the "creative eye" anymore because they do not know if it was the creative computer that did it.Just about all skill has gone.
Most of the motorsport events I attend now,I try and use some skill to get the good shot.I waste my time because the person with the fastest motordrive just hits the button and knocks of 10 shots.Scatter gun photography.
No skill what so ever anyone could do it.
It is tempting to think that "the creative eye" will save photography but it is not proving to be the case due to the way images can be changed by computers.No one now knows what is a photograph and what is an image.
Most of the time as things advance there is an overall benifit.But in the case of photography I have my doubts.
A machinest at a lathe, is replaced by a computer controled machine that does the job quicker ,cheaper and better.The machinest looses his job his skills are lost,but it was never about his skills.In the case of photography it was about the skills.
I heard some one say just the other day "There are no photographers anymore just another person with a camera" and it's true.
Still it does not mean that you can not go and buy a camera and enjoy taking your images and altering on your computer.After all who would know.
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What gloomy outlook :(

As for the guy at Santa Pod (and every other motorsports or outdoor event) thanks to technology, his skill in applying it and the business idea to sell it, he's got a new job that only exists because the technology has made it possible.
 
It took Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 8 hours to take the first photo in 1826. That's an 8 hour exposure. In daylight. Things have moved on a bit since then. About the only thing that hasn't changed in photography is this:

Cameras don't take photographs. Photographers do.

This will never change.
 
kestral said:
Pho
In 10yrs time no one will be stood at the side of a football field with a massive lens and DSLR,a point and shoot will be able to do the job..
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Funny, 10 years ago they said film would die a death never to be see again and that we would all be driving electric cars :lol::lol::lol:
 
jon ryan said:
It took Joseph Nicéphore Niépce around 8 hours to take the first photo in 1826. That's an 8 hour exposure. In daylight. Things have moved on a bit since then. About the only thing that hasn't changed in photography is this:

Cameras don't take photographs. Photographers do.

This will never change.
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Very true... Just look at some of the photos on TP, covering all sorts of topics. Some of them actually take my breath away, and that's NOT because of the PP skills being used...

It's because, for example, someone has bothered to get up at stupid o'clock and go somewhere to capture what's available. Or maybe because the look in the eyes of his or her model (be it a member of their own family, a friend, a stranger in the street, or a paid model) might show some level of communication, interaction or connection with the tog behind the lens. You can't really fake that kind of stuff in Photoshop because none of it has a great deal to do with technology.

IMHO, technology is a tool to be used to enhance what the photographer does. Not replace it...
 
100%

We had a talk last week by Adrian Oaks, Devon.

Most of the most superb shots were taken at a time I would be turning over in bed for the third time not using a 25th century camera from Star Trek.
 
renu said:
This can make it easier but the only thing it can't do is to have a good eye(composition) which is the difference between a good photo and a great photo.That is my opinion.
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:thumbs:

there is a human element in all photography...its called perception/creativity/conceptualisation...etc...from the mind...a computer to end all computers
vastly superior in intellect, memory, and vision
no electronics will CHOOSE your shot...but may help you to achievie it
 
ChrisGilbert said:
At the end of the day you can be the best photographer in the world and have the best equipment money can buy but if you're not there to take the shot then you might as well give it away. It's not about what gear you've got.
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It can certainly swing the odds in your favour though
 
For me a lot of people seem to confuse imaging technology and photography. There is a world of difference between an image and a photograph. Technology allows the former, the Photographer the latter.

I love technology with a passion and I'm a massive consumer of it. As such I'll embrace anything which genuinely moves things forward and helps my creative side develop and take photographs better. (And god knows I need the help!)
 
HoppyUK said:
It was a hoax. Adobe pre-blurred the demo images - they confessed on DPReview. I have seen that shake-unblurring technqiue done for real, but it took a photoshop expert flippin ages to do.
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If that was the take-home message you got from the DP Review article (and if you cared to read the Adobe's Photoshop Blog entry upon which they based their story) then I fear you have mis-read it.

Adobe said:
UPDATE: For those who are curious – some additional background on the images used during the recent MAX demo of our “deblur” technology. The first two images we showed – the crowd scene and the image of the poster, were examples of motion blur from camera shake. The image of Kevin Lynch was synthetically blurred from a sharp image taken from the web. What do we mean by synthetic blur? A synthetic blur was created by extracting the camera shake information from another real blurry image and applying it to the Kevin Lynch image to create a realistic simulation. This kind of blur is created with our research tool. Because the camera shake data is real, it is much more complicated than anything we can simulate using Photoshop’s blur capabilities. When this new image was loaded as a JPEG into the deblur plug-in, the software has no idea it was synthetically generated. This is common practice in research and we used the Kevin example because we wanted it to be entertaining and relevant to the audience – Kevin being the star of the Adobe MAX conference!

For more information and examples on the common practice of synthetic blurring being used as part of research in this area, check out:

http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/mdf_deblurring/synth_results/index.html

http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~leojia/projects/robust_deblur/

http://www.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il/~levina/papers/deconvLevinEtalCVPR09.pdf
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So, by their statement of the facts, that's one of the three images presented in the demo (and arguably the least important) which had motion blur artificially applied to a sharp original, but the deconvolution software was still performing its task on that. The other two images were genuine out-of-camera shake.

You might suggest that Adobe's credibility has been somewhat undermined, and perhaps that Adobe are lying through their teeth about the facts, but, by any stretch of the imagination, that does not amount to an confession by them that the whole demo was a hoax.
 
Musicman said:
If that was the take-home message you got from the DP Review article (and if you cared to read the Adobe's Photoshop Blog entry upon which they based their story) then I fear you have mis-read it.

<snip>
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Oh right, apologies then. It seems like DPReview are the ones being economical with the truth then with that misleading intro.

Very happy to be corrected on that Rob - it was an amazing demo. V clever tech :thumbs:
 
JSER said:
Funny, 10 years ago they said film would die a death never to be see again and that we would all be driving electric cars :lol::lol::lol:
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Film is pretty much dead except for the niche enthusiast market. You'd have to pay me to touch one again :D.

Electric cars are also coming there. If we ignore mainstream hybrids like prius, this years frankfurt auto show revealed many new electric models and concepts from the ones like BMW and others. Surely, cars are more expensive, and have much longer lifespan, but the electric revolution is slowly picking up, and technology is getting better.
 
'The seeing eye'

IMVHO one is born with it.

Yes I know the technicalities and rules, thirds etc, can be learned but to 'see' a picture is something your'e born with.

It's not the camera it's the person using it that makes the photograph.

Will any camera ever have the ability to 'see' a good picture, I think not.

D in W
 
kestral said:
Photography is on it's way out now.Everthing is just an image.It has been since digital came along.. [and a load of other stuff]
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Disagree with almost every word of that post. I'd cite examples and evidence, but I don't think it's worth the effort, plus, it's dinnertime. :)

These "the future of..." and "...is dead" topics pop up constantly, all over the web. Suffice to say they're all pretty much a waste of time. :thumbs:
 
It's less about who takes the image as it's about who the image is viewed by.

As long as images are being taken to please people, people will be taking the images.

The best programmes in the world will let you take an exposure where the captured image is optimised for the dynamic range, but it won't determine whether or not it's the right exposure. They may guide you in following the "rules" of composition, but they won't know when it's feels right to break/ignore them.

Automated image taking is perfect for automated image viewing.. but the threat (if there is one, or if you want to see one) is more likely to come from the other end, the audience. The more images we are bombarded by on a daily basis as viewers, the less we appreciate them, and the less we understand about how to view them.
 
I read the thread, and thought about it, but I'm not sure I really care very much.

Photography has been around - in some sort of modern sense - since the 19th, and it's come a long way. No doubt a lot of the developments were criticised at the time - the 'miniature' 35mm format, AF and AE, and the whole digital concept etc - and some didn't make it; but the general trend is continuous, and accelerating, technological advances. Whether these are all a good thing or not is another matter, but the industry is driven by profit and it will continue. If nothing else, there's not a great deal to choose between the manufacturers - none of them are significantly 'better' than the others - and the marketing departments have to come up with something new to offer their customers every year or two.

If nothing else, it does mean we have a wider choice than ever before. You can shoot just about anything you want, from plate cameras (if you're prepared to go to enough trouble), through large/medium format and 35mm film, to their digital equivalents, and wet process, edit on a computer and print in various ways. Can't be bad.
 
If, as some suggest, the technology is killing photography then why are there so many Critique threads on here which are packed with compositional, lighting and DoF suggestions? Surely if it's now so easy then they'd all be perfect!
 
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