[HN Gopher] Log is the "Pro" in iPhone 15 Pro
___________________________________________________________________
Log is the "Pro" in iPhone 15 Pro
Author : robenkleene
Score : 841 points
Date : 2023-10-11 03:18 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prolost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (prolost.com)
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I don't like this new modern color keying in videography, to me
| everything looks yellow and washed out.
|
| What's wrong with contrast?
| [deleted]
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Look at the picture of the dog: some of its fur is overexposed,
| and you can't get the values back. A logarithmic scale means
| you lose less detail at the extremes (bright and dark), so the
| log picture isn't overexposed.
| wazoox wrote:
| I think the question was more about the general tendency to
| make movies with that teal/orange look, that's still going on
| strong after 12 years.
| stephen_g wrote:
| What screen are you looking at it on? There are all sorts of
| colour grading styles, often it does go through trends but
| punchy images are still very common, and I'm not sure what
| you're talking about with yellow ones...
| OJFord wrote:
| > Standard iPhone video is designed to look good. A very specific
| kind of good that comes from lots of contrast, punchy, saturated
| colors, and ample detail in both highlights and shadows.
|
| I remarked to my wife showing me a video recently that you could
| tell it was taken on an iPhone, I don't think it's just the
| 'punchiness', for me the main thing is the way it seems to
| attempt to smooth out motion - the 'in' thing seems to be to sort
| of spin around showing what's around you while selfie-vlogging
| and tik-tokking and what-notting, and iPhones make it look like
| you did it with a steadicam rig that's not quite keeping up.
| pnpnp wrote:
| Another thing they've done more recently is HDR video (to my
| cave man brain, this means brighter brights).
|
| They've paired this with much higher brightness on the screens,
| which makes the videos look much more realistic. I first
| noticed this on my M1 Pro screen, which absolutely blew me away
| (1600 nits peak brightness).
|
| That's the biggest telltale "filmed on iPhone" trait I'm
| noticing right now. Yes, you can create HDR videos in other
| ways, and I'm sure it will be more popular on other platforms
| soon.
| DrawTR wrote:
| I know exactly what you mean by this! I can always tell if it
| was taken on an iPhone -- not that it looks bad, or anything,
| but there's always a few little cues that make it obvious. As
| you mentioned, I think the motion is a large part of it.
| basisword wrote:
| That's a specific camera mode (action mode I think). Does the
| standard video mode also do heavy stabilisation?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The stabilization is partially physical driven on phones this
| is called OIS. https://www.androidauthority.com/image-
| stabilization-1087083...
|
| EIS is not usually needed for video but maybe in some cases
| it's used?
| OJFord wrote:
| Does it perhaps auto-enable when it deems it appropriate?
|
| I don't have an iPhone, I've just noticed this (perhaps it's
| more obvious to me _because_ I don 't have one) in others'
| videos.
| leokennis wrote:
| To add, a few generations ago hand held video shot on iPhones
| was not (or hardly effectively) stabilized. But now iPhone have
| good stabilization. I think the tradeoff (the too-smooth motion
| thing) is worth it.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I remarked to my wife showing me a video recently that you
| could tell it was taken on an iPhone_
|
| It's also relatively understood that certain camera companies
| (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji) have a certain 'look' to them in how
| they process the raw image sensor data to generate a JPEG
| (there's a differences in the final colours).
| mattigames wrote:
| Someone used an iphone to record their desktop screen playing
| call of duty and the top comment on Reddit was how it made the
| game look Disneyesque, a spot-on assessment.
| jaipilot747 wrote:
| Do you have the link by any chance?
| 38 wrote:
| [flagged]
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Who is a target audience? Most Apple users wont spent time in
| postproduction and colour grade their footages. Pros will stay
| with dedicated technology made for cinematography.
| sbuk wrote:
| Steven Soderbergh an awful lot on an iPhone. He's made at least
| two movies with them. I'd argue that he is a 'pro'.
|
| https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/steven-soderbergh...
| te_chris wrote:
| "Pros" is a wide space these days. Hell, my mate has a film
| released on hbo max which was entirely shot in 4K on iPhones
| probably 6 years ago now.
|
| Think of the sheer amount of 'content' (used pejoratively)
| these days. That is not being made by traditional
| cinematographers. It's videographers, maybe with a pro camera,
| but maybe with an iPhone, or maybe one pro camera and an iPhone
| or two for backup. Think of weddings or similar as well,
| massive demand. Apparently everything needs to be video so why
| not this. As an aside, aforementioned director shot our wedding
| as a favour to us (in 2019) on a 4K lumix and an iPhone.
|
| It's the camera you have on you, innit.
| scottapotamas wrote:
| People vlogging would probably prefer the ergonomics and weight
| of a phone over something more serious, so I wouldn't be
| surprised if this competes with the GoPro on functionality and
| image for 'walk and talk' people?
|
| Guerrilla film-makers will probably love it - iPhones aren't
| really noticed and are allowed in plenty of places where
| serious cameras aren't.
|
| I can also see it being useful for some specific commercial ad
| work, I've seen people specifically shoot on phones to get the
| relatable phone 'look' for specific shots.
| indeyets wrote:
| "Enthusiasts", YouTubers, ...
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Why? Whats the benefit of having slightly more options on
| postproduction when you put output to compressed, 8bit, low
| bitrate platform that most people consume on their tiny
| mobile screens with blue light filter?
| crazygringo wrote:
| Because some people watch YouTube in 4K on their Apple TV?
|
| Also, compression doesn't lessen the effect of color
| grading.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Student filmmakers and the like -- ultra-low budget independent
| films, comedy webisodes on YouTube, and so forth.
|
| Basically everyone who wants to make films but doesn't have
| money for a real pro camera.
| dathinab wrote:
| first some people use it as a status symbol, naturally they
| will buy the pro no matter if useful or not
|
| then there are tons of semi-professional (semi wrt. photo/video
| capture, not wrt their job) people on platforms like YT,
| TickTock and similar which do only use their phone for
| capturing, they probably love this
|
| lets also not forget the people which aspire success on YT,
| TickTock and others
|
| similar a lot of hobby photographers don't bother with
| dedicated technology anymore so they might like that, too
|
| and the people which don't carry around a laptop (e.g. on
| holiday trips or even business trips) but might want to send
| slightly improved photos from there isn't small either
|
| anyway I guess the main selling point is like "not locking
| poor" for thos with confidence issues or more likely bad luck
| to live in less healthy social circles
| dist-epoch wrote:
| Most iPhone users probably use 20% of phone capabilities (each
| probably a different 20%).
|
| It's about being perceived as the best phone.
|
| Most Lamborghini buyers don't drive it at top speed either.
| xchip wrote:
| LUTs are a pretty basic stuff and videogames have been using them
| for ages, plus HDR, tone mapping and color grading. Old stuff.
| expertentipp wrote:
| Speaking of their raw formats. What's up with the iphone HEIC
| photo format? I only convert all HEIC to JPEG on Macbook and have
| no idea what advantage this format can offer me.
| SSLy wrote:
| HEIC isn't anything close to RAW. It's "normal" processed
| photos but with different encoding format.
| zik wrote:
| Yeah, what the heic?
| pitkali wrote:
| I use it on my Android phone to use less storage space. From
| what I remember of initial testing, the pictures were half the
| size.
| [deleted]
| amaterasu wrote:
| If I was a prosumer/hobbyist video equipment company, I'd be
| terrified about what Apple does next. They already have
| significant penetration into the editing market (both with Final
| Cut, and codec design), they control a number of the common
| codecs, and they have _millions_ of devices in the field along
| with substantial manufacturing capability. The cinema end aren't
| in trouble yet IMO, but the rest should be concerned...
| novok wrote:
| The market for 'actual' pro & prosumer cameras and such is
| pretty tiny. I think they'll be pretty safe for quite a long
| time.
|
| But they have pro video editing features! Yes, but it's a
| subfeature of their general platform, so they can 'count that
| low' for a hardware feature like that, that will also be useful
| for their entire userbase since everyone takes videos with
| their hardware and watches video on their devices anyway.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| They _owned_ the editing market with Final Cut and completely
| dropped the ball with Final Cut X. To the point they had to
| start selling the old version back. Then Premiere came back
| from the ashes and took the throne.
|
| One of the most glaring mistakes Apple did to its Pro market.
| And they did quite a few.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Cell phones _already_ killed standalone cameras:
| https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/wp-content/uploads/sit...
|
| This is just the mop-up operation. The only products left are
| going to be super-telephotos for live sports (sales: a hundred
| a year, if that?) and 4K+ IMAX digital cine cameras.
| quenix wrote:
| Looks like they killed cameras with built-in lenses. Cameras
| with interchangeable lesnes, which would've been used by the
| pros, have kept their market share identical if not grown a
| bit.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| For taking photos and sharing them in the digital only space,
| sure I'll buy that for the regular consumer. Making prints
| will expose all the small sensor flaws that exist quite
| quickly. I know it gets better every year but I used my phone
| camera (14 pro) to capture a few important shots that I would
| do anything to go back and had on a full frame sensor or film
| for.
| ClikeX wrote:
| They killed consumer point and shoots, not professional
| interchangeable lens cameras.
| haswell wrote:
| Smartphones changed the market such that people who just want
| to shoot good photos of their family don't need to buy
| expensive cameras anymore.
|
| But photography with dedicated cameras is alive and well, and
| won't go anywhere anytime soon even as these phones get
| better and better.
|
| The super telephoto market is alive and well, and Wildlife
| photography in particular is a big contributor to this. When
| Olympus released their 150-400mm (300-800mm full frame
| equivalent) super telephoto aimed at wildlife shooters, it
| was sold out for almost a year.
|
| For me, the new iPhone means I can shoot B-roll footage that
| looks great, but this will not replace my main camera anytime
| soon. It's currently far more viable for high quality video
| than it is for high quality photographs.
| canbus wrote:
| maybe for the average consumer. but how many professional
| photographers do you see using an iPhone?
|
| sensor size matters for low-light stuff too. sure, an iPhone
| can do a pretty good job at taking several pictures over say
| a 2s. exposure, but there _will_ be artifacts in the shot as
| there isn't physically enough light to form a legible image
| regardless of post-processing.
|
| this is just one of many reasons why digital cameras are NOT
| at the brink of collapse yet.
| heartbreak wrote:
| The folks working for your local news org are getting paid
| to take photos on phones. Almost all of the people you
| would probably consider "professional photographers" in
| that industry got laid off years ago.
|
| Watching them take photos on their iPhones at high school
| sporting events is always painful.
| rchaud wrote:
| I've never seen a wedding photographer using an iPhone,
| and the ratio of wedding photographers to news org
| photographers is probably 100:1 if not more.
| heartbreak wrote:
| If we're including the journalists using iPhones then no,
| that's not going to be the ratio.
|
| For what it's worth, I'm a professional sports
| photographer (side gig obviously), and I don't get paid
| for iPhone photos. I'm not disagreeing with you that
| iPhones cannot replace dedicated cameras, but they are a
| lot closer to replacing them for weddings than they are
| for sports.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| And yet digital camera sales only halved since 2003 ?
| (But I guess that we should be looking at all cameras for
| this, not just the digital ones ?)
| [deleted]
| tiahura wrote:
| By unit sales, or by deflated dollars purchasing
| increasingly niche priced units?
| vGPU wrote:
| Not even close. The pocketable point and shoot cameras? Sure.
| DSLR's? Not a chance. I've gone the upgrade path from a canon
| 6D to 5D4 to R6. The R6 especially is phenomenal and there
| isn't a single phone that can even try to come close to what
| it can accomplish even in "auto" mode.
| [deleted]
| ben7799 wrote:
| It's the content of the photos that matters though, and on
| that front unless you're into very specific types of
| shooting most people don't care about any advantage "Pro"
| gear brings.
|
| If you're out there shooting a hundred basketball games a
| year or you're camping out in a swamp every weekend to get
| a picture of a bird it matters.
|
| But that was never the majority of people buying "Pro" and
| "Prosumer" camera gear. For the vast bulk of the market the
| smartphone camera gets the job done at a fraction of the
| cost, way less stuff to carry around, and a much better
| workflow.
|
| Too many hobbyist photographers seem to miss the forest for
| the trees here, no one cares about how sharp the picture is
| or how much dynamic range there is if the content of the
| photo isn't compelling.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > The pocketable point-and-shoot cameras? Sure.
|
| The Olympus Tough series may be the last man standing in
| that category until Apple makes a shatterproof and
| diveproof iPhone.
| afavour wrote:
| The point isn't technical ability, it's market share. And
| smartphones have decimated DSLR market share despite being
| less technically able.
|
| I'm a data point in that: I bought a DSLRs and a few lenses
| probably 15 years ago. Over the years I used them less and
| less to the point that they're gathering dust now. It isn't
| worth the extra bulk when I head out the door, smartphone
| cameras are good _enough_.
| creddit wrote:
| I thought I read DSLRs are dead? Everyone is making
| mirrorless now?
| neogodless wrote:
| The R6 is marketed as a mirrorless DSLR. Obviously the
| SLR part isn't accurate but the way you use the camera
| with interchangeable lenses is about the same. So for the
| user it's just a technology and feature upgrade more so
| than a new product.
| sbarre wrote:
| The point he's making is about the sensor and the glass,
| not the mechanics of the camera body?
| haswell wrote:
| Most of the manufacturers are focused on mirrorless, but
| the DSLR market is still alive.
|
| Pentax has bucked the trend and has continued to release
| new DSLRs as recently as this year.
| drra wrote:
| Cinema is safe from the optics point of view as achieving some
| of the effects of large sensor + large lens is impossible with
| a phone size camera. But Apple has it cracked and they could
| easily crush that market. They have a great sensor with enough
| resolution per inch, great dynamic range, ability to produce
| lenses with super low defects and have enough processing power.
| Sensor wise ~100 megapixels should be enough to replicate fine
| grain of a good movie film and iPhone 15 sensor's dynamic range
| of 12-14 stops is on par with film already.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| You're contradicting yourself : can they compete with large
| sensors + big lenses or not ?
| kuschku wrote:
| Apple doesn't build sensors. Sony builds the sensors for
| Apple.
| https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1602516736145858561
|
| And it turns out, Sony already has significantly better
| sensors in their cinema cameras than what they sell to Apple,
| which is why almost half of Oscar and Emmy nominations are
| filmed on Sony Venice. Even the low end of their camera line
| is extremely capable, e.g. the FX3 which shot The Creator.
|
| Apple is far away from actually competing in that market.
| asimpletune wrote:
| Just wanted to clarify for others that FX3 is the low end
| of their cinema line, not their camera line.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Cell phones already killed compact point-and-shoots with their
| small lenses.
|
| But DSLR's with their large lenses aren't going anywhere,
| because physics. If you want to capture high-quality footage
| under low light conditions, or work with a variety of lenses,
| the tiny aperture on a phone is never going to be enough.
| positus wrote:
| The RICOH GRIII/GRIIIx is still alive and kickin'. Really
| nice sensor, super sharp lens, and small enough to fit into a
| pocket. I don't really use my iPhone camera anymore.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Well, Apple seems very cozy with blackmagic design but that
| doesn't mean that they aren't going to be sherlocked. Apple
| already has offerings in all these categories, it's just that
| the markets are different and will stay different some time
| more because of workflows and laws of nature but the laws of
| nature don't seem as safe anymore.
|
| Currently, the best editing software for social media appears
| to be CapCut as its ease of use for the power it provides is
| miles ahead of anything else.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| A big factor in buying a "pro" camera is controls. It's really
| difficult changing the focus in a controlled way while shooting
| with a phone. While in theory you can imagine Apple giving you
| API control for that and hooking it with an external focus
| pulling device, it's still a sub-optimal solution.
| m463 wrote:
| I think what is terrifying is that they're better enough to
| kill the details.
|
| Sort of a contrived example... you're a pro and let's say you
| NEED a headphone jack, but apple just killed headphone jacks.
|
| But more indirectly, they killed the lower volume, higher
| margin folks with alternatives that offer a headphone jack, and
| maybe even XLR headphones and microphones.
|
| An analogy might be tesla giving you a 90% better car
| experience, except they have killed off the dashboard. (now
| they've killed control stalks like PRND and turn signals)
| pitkali wrote:
| I don't know. If I were a pro like that, I would just have a
| dongle for that headphone jack. It would probably also have a
| better DAC than iPhones ever had.
| HALtheWise wrote:
| It's always surprised me that there's not more interest in log-
| scale/floating-point ADCs built directly into camera sensors.
| Both humans and algorithms care a lot more about a couple-bit
| difference in dark areas than light, and we happily use floating
| point numbers to represent high-range values elsewhere in CS.
| nvy wrote:
| I feel like professional/prosumer photogs, aka the kind of
| people who buy fancy SLR cameras and serious business lenses,
| probably already know this stuff. I also suspect that the vast,
| vast majority of phone users just want subjectively good-
| looking photos.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Yeah, 100%. About 99% of the customer base just wants to take
| a good photo with the smallest effort possible. Which makes
| it even more remarkable the company cares enough to include
| this kind of functionality in a consumer product.
| pas wrote:
| Apple sells a very enticing mix of feeling and product, the
| good old Jobs distortion field. They always had an enormous
| influence on what's cool, what's premium, what you should
| want, what's the baseline, etc.
|
| And it's entirely possible that they got to the point that
| they are now saying pro stuff is cool. Even is 99.x % of
| users won't really use it.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > Which makes it even more remarkable the company cares
| enough to include this kind of functionality in a consumer
| product.
|
| Maybe people are just starting to get sick of this argument
| being used against everything.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| How is this an argument against anything?
| LoganDark wrote:
| Whenever someone wants a new feature or gets disrupted by
| the loss of a previous feature, people go, "you have to
| think of the _consumers_. _Consumers_ don 't use those
| features, because _consumers_ are stupid. I can 't see
| why anyone would ever add/keep a feature that's not going
| to be used by those _consumers_. "
|
| The comment I replied to didn't go nearly that far, but
| it's an argument I've seen so often that I feel compelled
| to point out that " _consumers_ " are not the only target
| audience for Apple - they are trying to also market
| themselves to _creators_ , as well as _professionals_ ,
| and _they_ absolutely know the difference and notice when
| things like these become available.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > people go, "you have to think of the consumers.
| Consumers don't use those features, because consumers are
| stupid. I can't see why anyone would ever add/keep a
| feature that's not going to be used by those consumers."
|
| Well, I don't think "people" generally do that. It's
| nothing to do with stupidity; just lack of need and
| interest.
|
| > The comment I replied to didn't go nearly that far
|
| Not just "didn't go that far", it wasn't anything to do
| with that. It was just articulating pleasant surprise.
|
| If I were to return this thread to its objective origin,
| I would agree that if you're selling a mass-market
| device, it's surprising to cater to a fractional
| percentage of that user base. I don't see how that's
| contentious.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > if you're selling a mass-market device, it's surprising
| to cater to a fractional percentage of that user base. I
| don't see how that's contentious.
|
| I argue it shouldn't be that surprising because a lot of
| people find value in this 1%, and each person wants a
| different 1%.
|
| But maybe it's surprising because most companies are
| stupid and don't realize this.
| numpad0 wrote:
| There is no floating point ADC, just a stereo assigned to two
| volume levels to be stuffed into a float.
|
| hardware accelerated HDR on cameras are commonplace these days,
| especially in dashcams and CCTV cameras.
| amaterasu wrote:
| Some sensors do this internally, unusual though. The rest of
| the high-end ones apply curves manually in software directly at
| the egress of the sensor. The reason they don't in all cases is
| that it complicates black level correction, gamut transforms
| and demosaic operations (without some assumptions).
| audunw wrote:
| From an analog design perspective, I don't think that makes
| sense. Not that I'm an analog designer, but I worked closely
| with them as a digital designer on CMOS camera sensors.
|
| You're already extracting as much information you can from the
| analog signal on the least significant bits. It's not like
| designing a log-scale ADC lets you pull more information from
| the least significant bits. So you don't really have anything
| to gain. Why make a more complicated analog circuit to extract
| less information? It's generally better to let the digital side
| decide what to keep, how to compress the signal, etc.
|
| And I should mention that CMOS camera sensors can often do a
| lot of digital processing right there on the chip. So you can
| do log-scale conversion or whatever you want before you send
| the data out of the CMOS camera chip.
|
| It might be possible that you could reduce the power
| consumption of a SAR (successive approximation) ADC by skipping
| AD conversion of less significant bits if you have signal on
| the more significant bits. But I doubt the power savings would
| be very significant.
| adql wrote:
| See but you don't necessarily want full range logarithmic.
|
| If your darkest pixel is halfway down the ADC range, on linear
| you're throwing away one bit, on logarithmic you're throwing
| out way more bits. Just using higher bit linear ADC then
| converting it to logarithmic in post-processing seems more
| sensible. Hell you could even go signal magic and merge few
| photos with different shutter speed together to get most
| detail.
|
| Also proper log-to-in converter like AD8307 costs like $20 so
| I'd assume doing that woudl bring the sensor price way up if
| you needed to have a bunch of them.
| verall wrote:
| A lot of the processing steps expect linearity and would have
| to be reworked for floating point or log scale data. Most HDR
| sensors are using some kind of logarithmic compression for
| sensor readout, but I've never really heard of a floating point
| adc. Google seems to suggest tbey're not readily available.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah there isn't, it's not that simple, even at sensor level
| to have that much dynamic range
|
| A linear ADC with enough range is usually fine, you can do
| the math later. But maybe for this case it needs a non-linear
| element before the ADC? (no idea how log recording needs
| anything at the HW level)
| kqr wrote:
| Is the quantisation error on a modern 14-something bit sensor
| really that big of a problem compared to something like the
| inherent shot noise of dark areas?
| fiedzia wrote:
| Most recently microphones/recorders started using it for
| recording sound
| _kb wrote:
| From my understanding, the ADC's are still fixed point and
| linear. Two (or more) then run in parallel over different
| signal levels to produce the 32-bit float output.
|
| Encoding audio with different log-scale companding has been
| around for some time too (since the 1970's) with A-law and
| mu-law in G.711.
| u320 wrote:
| It doesn't really matter HOW they do it, as long as you get
| the advantages of float encoding (practically infinite
| headroom). Of course if you zoom in enough there will be
| something in there that uses integers, but this would be
| true for e.g. a floating point adder as well.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It should matter that "practiaclly infinite headroom"
| comes from the fact that the raw samples has 64 bit of
| dynamic range, than output format being float.
|
| (does that mean there is a crossover in the middle of
| amplitude range that shows LSBs of one of ADCs poking
| their heads, I mean, in a hypothetical ultra-naive
| implementation?)
| whyoh wrote:
| >the advantages of float encoding (practically infinite
| headroom)
|
| The best implementations have a dynamic range of about
| 140-150 dBA. Floating point is not needed to achieve that
| and it isn't always used (look at Stagetec products).
| FunkyDuckling wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure what you mean by floating point for
| an ADC.
|
| from a super high level all ADCS do is quantize an analog
| signal. They take in a voltage from say 0 - 1.8V and
| quantize that on a 12 bit range. Return a value from
| 0-4095. You could build one that scales this range with
| non-linear steps. But this doesn't add any value. We won't
| get more accuracy at smaller steps. Our noise and accuracy
| problems won't be solved by this as they are due to thermal
| noise or mismatch. quantization noise is not the problem.
| (We already build segmented ADCs to try and do this)
| morcheeba wrote:
| There was a company that did this circa 2003 - SMaL. Their
| "autobrite" sensor is built to capture log-scale natively.
| They've switched owners twice since then, but it seems like
| they're getting more traction in car vision systems than in
| professional video.
|
| https://www.vision-systems.com/cameras-accessories/article/1...
| ayoisaiah wrote:
| Log seems like a strong reason to finally switch from Android to
| iPhone if you're a photography/filmmaking enthusiast like myself.
| The ecosystem is so much more mature and the gap seems to be
| growing not shrinking.
|
| Android has Raw Video with MotionCam which also produces insanely
| good results1 (even better than iPhone's ProRes video), but
| everything else just sucks.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/O5fnGDR4i9w?feature=shared
| dharma1 wrote:
| MotionCam is great! They've been flying under the radar of RED
| lawyers (patent for compressed raw video) - long may it
| continue
| mirsadm wrote:
| I'm the dev of MotionCam. AFAIK the app is not infringing on
| that patent because I use my own form of lossless
| compression.
| pas wrote:
| If RED has a patent granted with a claim on compressed RAW
| data streaming/storage, then it doesn't matter which
| algorithm. (Though of course one could argue it's too
| broad, but it's not cheap to make this argument.)
| mirsadm wrote:
| I am not a lawyer but I believe their patent is regarding
| visually lossless compression of RAW data. MotionCam uses
| a form of bit packing to compress frames in real time
| losslessly. AFAIK that is not the same thing and does not
| infringe on the patent. Again I could be wrong and if I
| turn out to be wrong I can always disable compression
| entirely or just run it through zstd.
|
| I doubt their parent extends to just compressing some
| integers because zipping a RAW frame would not be
| possible which is clearly nonsense.
| pas wrote:
| > visually lossless compression
|
| Does it mean they apply some kind of human perception
| model (like audio codecs apply a psychoacustic one) to
| determine what detail can be omitted without future
| viewers potentially noticing the difference?
|
| > zipping a RAW frame would not be possible
|
| why? I mean it's just a big blob, if there's a lot of
| similar substrings in it, it might give a few percent
| compression ... also, nonsense doesn't mean non-
| patentable, right?
| mirsadm wrote:
| > Does it mean they apply some kind of human perception
| model (like audio codecs apply a psychoacustic one) to
| determine what detail can be omitted without future
| viewers potentially noticing the difference?
|
| I have not looked into it too deeply but it appears to be
| based on wavelet compression (more or less a copy of
| JPEG2000). They are able to achieve much better
| compression ratios. I am restricted to lossless
| compression (and in real time on a mobile device).
|
| > why? I mean it's just a big blob, if there's a lot of
| similar substrings in it, it might give a few percent
| compression ... also, nonsense doesn't mean non-
| patentable, right?
|
| What I mean is that it is unlikely that any form of
| compression of RAW video data is encompassed by their
| patent. But who knows.
| dharma1 wrote:
| Perhaps it could also be argued their patent covers
| cameras and their manufacturers, not 3rd party software
| that users can install on their phones? Also don't think
| MotionCam has enough users for their lawyers to care.
| Either way thank you for your software, it's dope
| eurekin wrote:
| Just chiming in to say thank you for doing such a
| product.
|
| Have you ever consider reaching out to any mirrorless
| manufacturer (maybe some form of a partnership?) about
| recording it's camera's sensor data? I have a Nikon and
| I'm still salty my Z 6I doesn't have real RAW :)
| mirsadm wrote:
| Thank you :)
|
| No I have not, it is likely not possible to do that
| anyway. MotionCam works fairly well because smartphones
| these days are very fast and have very fast storage. I
| imagine dedicated cameras are mostly made up of
| specialized hardware that is fairly restricted.
| heartbreak wrote:
| Gosh why didn't Sony's attorneys think of that.
| wraptile wrote:
| > a strong reason to finally switch from Android to iPhone if
| you're a photography/filmmaking enthusiast
|
| Correct me if I'm wrong but there's nothing stopping Android of
| supporting Log (or similar). I'm not a video engineer but it
| really doesn't seem that magic that it couldn't be supported
| outside of iphone 15, right? My guess that if this gains any
| real traction it'll show up in the next Android flagship.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| There are several apps on Android that do this already. Since
| 2021 at least.
| https://youtu.be/UEedYitrSiw?si=Ufj0HXW_07PfXIxg
| adql wrote:
| I think you're spot on, there just needs to be enough demand
| for manufacturers to compete on it.
|
| But the fragmentation does work against it. If some company
| does it it would be limited to their camera app and their
| format.
|
| Would be interesting if some company just decided to put
| c-mount on their phone so you could use actual proper lens...
| maksim-m wrote:
| > Log seems like a strong reason to finally switch from Android
| to iPhone if you're a photography/filmmaking enthusiast like
| myself
|
| On Android you have mcpro24fps app that supports multiple log
| profiles, shooting 10 bit video and more.
| ayoisaiah wrote:
| I've been a long-term mcpro24fps and a user of Filmic pro
| before that. It's a great app, no doubt about it. The issue
| is not the app, but the OEMs who makes things difficult,
| artificially limiting the capabilities of the devices and
| even removing features in updates. Nothing is consistent and
| each device works differently from the next one, even from
| the same manufacturer. A long running joke in the McPro24fps
| Telegram chat is to never upgrade!
| elAhmo wrote:
| I am by no means someone who shoots a lot of videos, but I have
| been playing a lot in the past few days with the camera app
| mentioned in this article, Blackmagic Camera, and I am super
| excited to do some shots that might seem a bit more professional.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Constant puzzle to me:
|
| Video is just made up of single sequential still images. Why are
| the color issues / tuning of videos like 100x more complicated
| and involve so many more tools than those of still images?
| elAhmo wrote:
| > Video is just made up of single sequential still images. It
| might seem like this, but modern video codecs are very advanced
| and video files produced by modern cameras cannot really be
| described as sequential still images.
|
| Codecs such as HEVC used many techniques to reduce the file
| size while preserving the image quality, like various frame
| prediction techniques and encodings. This makes workflows
| completely different.
|
| Images produced by smartphone cameras use different software
| and hardware features to produce the best possible image, and
| many of those cannot be equally applied to video.
| dannyw wrote:
| Does this also disable the excessive sharpening of iPhone's video
| processing?
|
| Even 'ProRAW' photos are sharpened and aggressively denoised,
| which ruins detail.
| foldr wrote:
| The sharpening is just the default display setting for ProRAW
| files in many apps. If I edit a ProRAW file in Lightroom and
| turn down the sharpening and denoising then it looks roughly as
| you'd expect (though there is some denoising inherent to multi-
| shot blending). It's a tricky one, because when you're aligning
| and stacking multiple captures, you definitely do want some
| sharpening (as the result is significantly softer than a single
| capture would be). But the default is maybe a little
| aggressive.
| [deleted]
| dharma1 wrote:
| It's mentioned in the article - turns sharpening way down. The
| footage still goes through iPhones ISP - with denoising etc -
| just with less processing and log profile
| KingLancelot wrote:
| [dead]
| wruza wrote:
| I'm very far from photography. Can someone explain why this is
| revolutional or something? I thought that for "pro" photos you
| just get the original pixel values from the sensor and work from
| there. X, Y and some color format of a specific bit depth (is
| that RAW?). What does "Log" do basically? Save space? Limit the
| exposition? Or is it just a format that existed for decades and
| iphone decided to support it? Or is the industry in such state
| that integrations like this are huge? It's not clear from the
| video. Thanks!
| danw1979 wrote:
| The article does a pretty good job of explaining it. I went
| from complete ignorance to layman's understanding in the 10
| minutes it took me to read it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It actually doesn't, it doesn't explain it at all.
|
| Because camera data is _already_ encoded logarithmically in
| common image and video formats.
|
| The article didn't explain what its "log" is at all. Is it
| the same as gamma? The same as HDR? Something professional?
| Or something new?
|
| If you don't know anything about photography, it seems like
| they're explaining something new. If you do know things about
| photography, you realize the article is full of buzzwords
| that aren't actually explaining anything at all.
| bujak300 wrote:
| As far as I naively understand, the number of distinct colors
| in a digital image is limited, so the "log" mode is using the
| available color space in such way that there are more details
| preserved in highlights and shadows. but then "color grading"
| or "color look up table" needs to be applied, to recover the
| original colors, because the "log" video looks greyish and
| washed out.
| pyrophane wrote:
| > With its high bit depth and dynamic range, log footage has many
| of the benefits of raw. But Apple Log is not raw, and not even
| "straight off the sensor." It's still heavily processed --
| denoised, tone-mapped, and color adjusted.
|
| I wonder if this is because, at the end of the day, it is still a
| tiny little camera with a small sensor and small lens, and so
| with none of the processing magic the image would look pretty
| terrible under most circumstancdes.
| ta8645 wrote:
| I've never owned an Apple device. I don't take photographs or
| video with my phone very often. But this video presentation was
| captivating. It was clear, concise, without any nonsense, and
| thoroughly interesting.
| pivo wrote:
| Well, there was one bit of nonsense and I thoroughly enjoyed
| it. I'm referring to the Ren & Stimpy "Log Song" sound track to
| the video of the woman walking up the stairs:
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=ren+and+stimpy+log+song&atb...
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I don't know if it's the same thing, but capture on my Nikon
| D7100 always felt more "manipulable" than capture on an iPhone
| or the like, I suspected as a downstream effect of using RAW
| format with a larger image sensor. Interpreting log through
| this understanding, it felt pretty intuitive reading through
| this post. I don't know if it's accurate, but it feels
| accurate...
| jsjohnst wrote:
| This is almost entirely due to sensor size. The sensor on the
| iPhone is smaller than your pinky nail with pixels between
| 1um and 2um in size (depending on which camera is used), the
| Nikon on the other hand has pixels over twice the largest
| size on an iPhone.
| [deleted]
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Well, except that log (as well as almost every other format :
| "gamma" refers to the exponent of a power function !) is the
| opposite of raw : raw is focused on fidelity to the number of
| photons, log and others on fidelity to how the (human) eye
| reacts to these photons :
|
| https://prolost.com/blog/rawvslog/
| matsemann wrote:
| One reason is also that phone cameras have many limitations,
| so to get good images they have to "cheat" to work around
| those limitations. Additionally they often apply filters to
| the images so it looks good "out of the box", like contrast,
| smoothing, sharpening. Those choices done for you mean you
| lose information to do better yourself.
| [deleted]
| deepGem wrote:
| I wonder if there is a big enough market for a middle
| ground device. A good SLR like camera which has a great
| sensor and a lens but a good control compromise on the
| software. Not fully managed PaaS but the VM equivalent, if
| you consider Nikon D7100 as the bare metal Linux box of the
| 90s.
| internetter wrote:
| Honestly the iPhone with an app like Halide is this. In
| some cases, iphone processed photos and videos get almost
| indistinguishable from thousands of dollars worth of
| camera, but sometimes they go overboard with processing.
| Halide lets you dial that back a bit.
| olivermuty wrote:
| Which is a great if you consider that 99.98% of iphone
| owners wont know how to do it better themselves.
|
| It will be fascinating for anthropologists a few hundred
| years from now to see the increase in quality in <<every
| day photography>> that came with the increasing quality of
| smartphone camera software.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yes, nothing really wrong with this. Just pointing out
| that what hits the sensor is far off from what's being
| saved.
|
| However, some phones now even apply AI filters to fill in
| detail it didn't capture. Like adding craters to the
| moon.
|
| And the thing about contrast, sharpness etc is that "more
| always looks better" at a quick glance. So when people
| are doing comparisons between phones etc, the one
| destroying the picture the most might be declared the
| winner.
| soultrees wrote:
| I actually think what's happening is that it's averaging
| out photography with such amazing tools in everyone's
| hands, however we are seeing an outlier explosion of
| creative photography that we haven't seen before.
|
| That said, the dopamine hit comes from taking your own
| shots and seeing the visual perfectness Apple creates,
| rarely if ever will those shots give the same effect to a
| viewer. So they don't need to be photography-perfect,
| they just need to appeal enough to our monkey brains and
| monkey eyes to get that shot of dopamine to want us to
| take more pictures, therefore using the phone and
| resulting cloud storage more.
| baz00 wrote:
| The magic of phone cameras disappears in a moment when
| you get hold of a mirrorless for 5 minutes. Even a bottom
| end one is orders of magnitude better than the best phone
| camera even if it's got a lot less megapixels.
| infecto wrote:
| Only applies to the small portion of the population that
| enjoys the process. I could never appreciate digital
| cameras. Take a bunch of shots , then go home and filter
| those shots for the good ones, then adjust the color of
| those shots. No thanks, not my cup of tea.
|
| Funny enough I enjoy shooting film over digital. A lot
| less work and decision to be made.
| baz00 wrote:
| I shoot film as well. It's definitely not less work but
| it is enjoyable.
|
| As for convenience, the DSLRs can be tethered to your
| phone now. I shoot on mine and they go to Apple Photos.
| infecto wrote:
| For myself at least there is less mental load shooting
| film compared to digital. I am not taking multiple shots
| of the same thing generally and I don't develop the film
| myself. Historically the two things I did not like about
| digital was too many photos to review and having to work
| on each photo at home. There is something about not
| having the choice of which shot to pick and how to adjust
| the colors that is nice.
|
| I have been interested in some of the micro 4/3 cameras
| that have prebuilt filters in them but I think film for
| me is king if I have a camera.
| baz00 wrote:
| You can run a digital camera like that too. I am more
| interested in composition than camera set up and spend
| most of my time shooting in aperture priority. At best
| I'll tweak the white balance but the camera mostly just
| deals with that for me. I take few photos. I spent 16
| days on a trek recently and took about 50 photos in
| total.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Phone cameras are digital cameras too.
| infecto wrote:
| Ok let me clarify for you. In this context I am talking
| about point-and-shoot cameras, bridge cameras, DSLRs and
| mirrorless. Everything but a phone camera.
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| The magic of phone cameras lies in their convenience.
| baq wrote:
| The micro 4/3 M.Zuiko 45mm 1.8 is the bees knees - but
| the process of getting a useful shot into my family
| icloud album is so much work I rarely pull it out.
| Mirrorless really should be bodies with sensors and a
| thunderbolt connection to a smartphone.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Affinity Photo will let you export an image into the
| Photo library directly from the editor. I use it to do
| minimal edits (a bit of crop, exposure, maybe
| highlights/shadows) and then go File > Share > Add to
| Photos. It's a great workflow for a hobby photographer
| like me and I like that it is a perpetual license. Adobe
| products will let a pro fly through hundreds of images a
| day, but this is more than enough for quick edits and
| dumping the files into iCloud.
|
| They offer a free trial, try it out! (I am not
| affiliated, just a happy user)
|
| https://store.serif.com/en-
| gb/checkout/?basket=ed0b917180520...
| baz00 wrote:
| Nikon's SnapBridge does that very well. Mine is tethered
| to my phone via WiFi when I'm out. Straight into my photo
| stream.
| olivermuty wrote:
| I bought a $1200 mirrorless which was supposedly the best
| in class a couple of years ago. All my photos look like
| they were shot on a potato compared to my iphone.
|
| Not to mention that I don't walk around with that
| mirrorless camera in my pocket at almost all times.
| baz00 wrote:
| I spent that and mine don't look like it's shot on a
| potato. Are you sure you know what you are doing?
|
| My Z50 and kit lens fits in my pocket fine.
| olivermuty wrote:
| Thats the whole point, I don't know what I am doing.
| baz00 wrote:
| Fix that. Then you have a right to complain :)
| numpad0 wrote:
| I once asked someone with a nice piece of kit that wasn't
| too far from mine in cost. They said they sorted top to
| bottom on DxOMark list and bought one on the top and they
| didn't even know what a prime is. But that approach
| seemed to work.
| criley2 wrote:
| I spent about that on a mirrorless and my photos blow
| smartphones out of the water.
|
| It takes 10x longer to setup, take, and post-process and
| is a hassle for many reasons, but the photo quality is
| extremely noticeably better.
| ClikeX wrote:
| My mirrorless definitely beats my iPhone. But I have to
| put in more time, it's not with me at all times and I
| need to transfer the images.
|
| In the end, the best camera is the one I have with me.
| And if I can take a pretty good portrait shot of my kid
| while I'm at a diner then I'm happy.
|
| To me, the memory/moment is more important than the
| "quality".
| cyberax wrote:
| Ehh, no.
|
| My typical test is to take a photo of the full moon. It
| works acceptably well on an iPhone (or Android). My
| recent Pixel phone even adjusts the brightness
| automatically. Sure, the lens is pretty wide-angle, so
| the pictures don't have many details.
|
| I had to fiddle around for 20 minutes with settings on my
| Sony Alpha camera, eventually using manual focus and
| manual exposure. The pictures are, of course, better
| because of the lens and the full-frame sensor.
|
| But the user experience is just sad. So I often just
| don't bother to take my camera with me on my trips
| anymore.
|
| Also, a note to camera makers: USE ANDROID INSTEAD OF
| YOUR CRAPPY HOME-GROWN SHITWARE. Add 5G, normal WiFi,
| GPS, Play Store, a good touchscreen. You'll have an
| instant hit.
| baz00 wrote:
| No. That's a hill I'll die on.
|
| Ass end Nikon Z50, 250mm kit lens, hand held, no setup
| really other than shutter priority ...
| https://imgur.com/edCyNjV (very heavy crop!)
|
| And a Pixel 6a mutilating a shot:
| https://imgur.com/290gXkU
|
| I do not want android on a phone. I don't want to update
| or reboot it. I want to turn it on, use it and turn it
| off again. And I don't want someone substituting pictures
| of the moon for stuff online (hey Samsung!)
| criley2 wrote:
| Great example of the primary difference here. I've said
| that the photos out of my mirrorless (also Z50, great
| camera) are true photographs in the sense that they
| capture light and show it to me.
|
| My smartphone however does not create photos, it creates
| digital art based on the scene. Your Pixel image is a
| perfect example of how algorithms (now called "AI") re-
| paint a scene in a way that resembles reality when zoomed
| out.
|
| Comparing smartphone and camera is really apples to
| oranges at this point, as smartphones aren't even
| capturing photos, they're entirely repainting scenes.
| Fanmade wrote:
| Well, you're of course using the best example on the one
| side and the worst on the other side, so that's not
| really a fair comparison.
|
| Apart from that: The phones generally try to substitute
| the tiny sensors through highly complex software
| algorithms, creating something that sometimes only has a
| broad similarity with the original scene. The cameras, on
| the opposite, usually have crappy software and rely on
| their great sensors (and other hardware). So in an ideal
| world, you'd have a proper camera with good software.
| That software then doesn't have to do all the (good or
| bad) stuff which is only there to try to make the best
| out of less than ideal image input, but instead it can
| provide more user friendly features which allow making
| quick and easy photos without having to study tutorials
| for a week (yes, now I am exaggerating a little on
| purpose :)).
|
| This software doesn't have to do all the crap that in any
| way reduces the image quality in the end.
|
| Please don't just think in the extremes, but look for the
| healthy middle way that would provide the best out of
| both worlds.
|
| It is not Android that does the image processing itself
| btw., but special software that the phone manufacturers
| add on top of Android. So this part would be the
| responsibility of the camera's manufacturer again, but
| this time they could focus more on their central use case
| (help making good pictures) instead of writing everything
| (like the user interface) themselves. And they could even
| provide their users with more options to extend their
| software for even better photos.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| Please, no. A camera need to be ready to shoot the moment
| I flip it on.
|
| I also don't want it to have reduced battery life just so
| that I can use the god-awful playstore on it.
| matsemann wrote:
| Does the phone really take a sharp picture of the moon,
| though, or does it just add detail it knows is there.
| kepler1 wrote:
| At this point I would've imagined Apple would have a moon
| detection feature and just replace it with a stock image
| cutout when detected in the field of view.
| macNchz wrote:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/samsung-says-it-
| adds...
| baz00 wrote:
| Samsung actually do that.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| I love my mirrorless, but it certainly wasn't 5 minutes.
| The first two lenses I tried (cheap ones obviously) were
| pretty underwhelming. Once I got a large aperture lens, I
| started to really get it. Even then, so many of my photos
| came out dark or blurry because I hadn't learned how to
| pick settings or focus for different lighting conditions
| and subject movement speeds. Autofocus on consumer
| cameras is pretty trash compared to iPhone/Pixel. EyeAF
| my ass.
|
| These camera companies need to invest more in their
| software. Superzoom, night sight, subject tracking and
| smart autofocus should be table stakes. Auto mode on my
| mirrorless should at least be on par out of the box with
| my phone. It's sad that the pixel phones with very old
| Sony sensors can take better 10x pictures than mirrorless
| out of the box. They need to worry less about better
| lenses and sensors, and worry more about better onboard
| compute capabilities.
| gehwartzen wrote:
| I feel the same comparing my iphone and mirrorless. It's
| obvious software is years behind in almost every aspect;
| even relatively easy fixes like the horrible designed and
| unintuitive UI choices where the same mistakes are made
| year after year despite complaints...ugh! The last thing
| I need when taking pictures is fumbling around in 5
| layers of menus to change important settings while my
| subject moves on and the moment has past. It almost feels
| on purpose as if the though is that added complexity is
| some proxy for it being "professional"
|
| If processing power is one of the bottleneck to get some
| of the features phones can do it would be great if there
| was a universal hotshoe-like way to mount phones to
| camera bodies to use the screen, touch capabilities, and
| offload processing power, maybe with all phones now
| having USB-C its more of a possibility. If the camera
| makers don't do it I wouldn't be surprised if
| Apple/Google eventually do and eat their lunch.
| sgarland wrote:
| Lenses make SUCH a difference. A family member asked me
| to shoot their wedding (no pressure, right?) and since
| without me it wouldn't have happened, I agreed. I also
| rented some L glass for my SLRs, and holy shit was that
| eye-opening. Turns out that a $2000 lens is objectively
| better than a $300 lens, who knew?
|
| The clarity, the sharpness, the pop - everything was
| improved. Good glass is a bigger difference than the
| body.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Can you say a bit more what you think was the factor?
|
| -- more control of depth of field / shallower DoF
| ability?
|
| -- faster shutter speeds?
|
| -- less chromatic aberrations?
|
| It doesn't intuitively feel like sharpness should be a
| factor -- even cheap kit lenses usually get that right.
| weebull wrote:
| * wider f-stop * less chromatic aberration * less
| distortion generally * smaller circle of confusion
|
| The chromatic aberration is an important but subtle
| effect. Remember that lenses are multiple pieces of
| glass, and every interface diffracts the wavelengths of
| light like a prism. One of the considerations in lens
| design is converging all those different wavelengths of
| light in the same place. Not just at one point, but at
| every point across the image plane.
|
| Poor lenses might do the well in an area. Good lenses do
| it everywhere.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Lenses affect color contrast too. I don't fully grasp it
| but internal reflections adding neutral white bias or
| correction tradeoffs between geometry and color or
| something. Aperture can be widened as much as lens barrel
| allows so that isn't it.
| sgarland wrote:
| Sorry, should have clarified. The lens in particular that
| made me rethink everything else I had was a 70-200mm
| f/2.8L. Zooms in particular often suffer from sharpness
| and chromatic aberration issues compared to a prime due
| to the larger number of optics. This lens did not. I'm
| sure a comparable prime stuck next to it would still show
| it up, but coming from kit zoom lenses, it was quite a
| shocking difference.
|
| The static aperture also helps tremendously of course,
| yes - nice bokeh with a tight zoom means you can easily
| get candid portraits that look great from anywhere in the
| room.
| baq wrote:
| 70-200 f2.8 L IS III is the Bentley of lenses, the Aston
| Martin, the Maybach, etc. you got the best hardware
| possible for the job. for the price it better be amazing!
| even the older ones without IS are excellent.
|
| L glass is also a very interesting used market - those
| things basically don't lose value IME.
| sgarland wrote:
| It was the IS II at the time, but yes - an absolutely
| spectacular piece of kit. I think it was about $100 to
| rent for the weekend? Very reasonable IMO, and made me
| realize that one could quite easily bootstrap a wedding
| photography business without actually owning gear.
|
| Other than the actual business side of things, pesky
| details like getting clients. And the massive stress of
| shooting a wedding. I was happy to do it gratis for
| family, but I don't think I'd want to deal with paying
| clients.
| halostatue wrote:
| When I was still shooting Canon, I used a 70-200mm f/4L
| which I picked up for a song (C$~600 sixteen years ago?).
| Not the beauty of a 2.8, but having a consistent 4 made
| for some _beautiful_ shots on Cape Breton.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| (Guessing the faster glass.)
| baz00 wrote:
| Actually this is potentially wrong.
|
| A $300 lens _is_ objectively better than a $5 smartphone
| lens.
|
| A $2000 lens _may_ be objectively better than a $300 but
| it depends what you 're standing in front of and you.
|
| The Nikkor Z 28mm f/2.8 is my favourite so far and it
| wasn't exactly expensive.
|
| The priority order for things is of course:
|
| 1. What the photographer is standing in front of
|
| 2. The photographer
|
| 3. The lens
|
| 4. The camera
| adql wrote:
| And the light. Good lighting can compensate for not so
| great sensor
| tjr wrote:
| This is also introducing the difference between zoom
| lenses and prime lenses. You can get a good 28mm lens for
| much less cost than a good 24-70mm zoom lens. Most
| novices in photography don't start nowadays with good
| prime lenses, but with cheap zoom lenses.
| baz00 wrote:
| The 16-50 that came with my Z50 is really good too.
| tjr wrote:
| Great! Inexpensive zoom lenses are getting better all the
| time. And manufacturing processes are likely also
| improving. The gap is narrowing.
|
| But, at least today, you still get enhanced features on
| the more expensive zoom lens, such as wider aperture, and
| a constant maximum aperture across the entire zoom range.
| Neither of those things _necessarily_ yields a superior
| photograph -- you don 't need f2.8 across the whole zoom
| range if you're taking pictures at f6 -- but they can be
| very helpful. If they're worth paying for depends on
| one's personal needs, desires, and budget.
| sgarland wrote:
| Fair enough; perhaps it's fair to say that given a
| specific application or lens type, a more expensive one
| will generally be better than a cheaper one. For example,
| you can get any prime or zoom you want from Canon as a
| normal or L variety. The latter will cost about 10x as
| much, and will be better. 10x better is subjective.
|
| On the flip side, my favorite macro was a Sigma 105mm
| prime. Tack-sharp, and cost well under $1000. Of course,
| I've never shot with the equivalent Canon L (which isn't
| quite the same at 100mm, but close).
| DonHopkins wrote:
| It's mainly zillions of photos of kids and pets and food,
| so it doesn't matter if other viewers aren't impressed,
| they're impressive to the person who took them.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Please point to some of your favorite examples of this
| "creative explosion".
|
| Here's one I posted several months ago on intentional
| camera movement photography:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34858318
| rchaud wrote:
| Yeah, from what I can tell, the vast majority of people's
| photos are only ever viewed on a phone.
| plastic3169 wrote:
| I think just the fact that people started practicing
| every day photography and seeing hundreds of shots done
| by peers everyday will be a huge factor in raising
| quality as well.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You remind me of a comment I heard from a user, "I like
| the magic wand button in Photos. Why doesn't it just
| automatically magic wand every photo?"
|
| Ha ha, I have no idea. Almost a decade ago I worked on
| the Photos team for a stint, I should have asked.
| jameshart wrote:
| Maybe similar to the (alleged) reason cakemixes require
| you to add an egg: it makes it feel more like you baked
| it yourself if you have to do more than just add water
| and put it in the oven.
|
| Maybe users feel like they 'touched up' their photo if
| they tap the magic wand button.
| cdogl wrote:
| I can't help but nitpick that this isn't really an
| anthropologists' domain.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Why not? Studying a culture from hundreds of years ago
| and measuring its advances in various ways, technological
| and societal.. seems fitting for the National
| Geographic's definition of anthropology as "study of the
| development of human societies and cultures".
| guappa wrote:
| The point is moot. Apple and google cloud won't exist and
| all the photos will be gone.
| gambiting wrote:
| You do know that people still print photos, right? Some
| of them will definitely survive. And unless the human
| civilization collapses I don't see why some digital media
| wouldn't survive either.
| fragmede wrote:
| Apple and Google seem dominant now, but how much stuff do
| you have from Yahoo and Myspace and Flickr?
| godelski wrote:
| > but how much stuff do you have from Yahoo and Myspace
| and Flickr?
|
| A fair amount. Not everything, but a decent chunk. You
| don't store things in multiple locations?
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't understand why that's relevant. I never upload my
| photos anywhere. I'm pretty sure my photos that I have
| printed and/or stored locally don't go anywhere if Google
| shuts down tomorrow.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Speaking of photography and the progression of technology
| (and not spoiling the amazing final scene of the story) I
| highly recommend reading this poignant prescient classic:
|
| "The Wedding Album" short story by David Marusek
|
| >"Wait a minute!" shouted Benjamin, waving his arms above
| his head. "I get it now. _we 're_ the sims!" The guests
| laughed, and he laughed too. "I guess my sims always say
| that, don't they?" The other Benjamin nodded yes and
| sipped his champagne. "I just never expected to _be_ a
| sim, " Benjamin went on. This brought another round of
| laughter, and he said sheepishly, "I guess my sims all
| say that, too."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_Album_(short_st
| ory...
|
| >"The Wedding Album" is a science fiction short story by
| David Marusek. It was first published in Asimov's Science
| Fiction in June 1999.
|
| >Synopsis: After their wedding, Anne and Ben realize that
| they are merely recordings of the real Anne and Ben,
| destined to relive the hours surrounding the wedding for
| all eternity.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/13576562
|
| >With wedding photos and videos and mementos of all
| kinds, newlyweds attempt to hold on to their special day
| and to cherish it forever. Someday technology may enable
| us to record not only our appearance and voices but
| everything we know, feel, fear, and love at the moment
| the shutter clicks. Then our wedding mementos, like Anne
| and Ben's in this story, take on a life of their own in a
| world where love may be eternal, but the world is not.
| Till deletion do us part . . .
| chefandy wrote:
| It's not my primary job, but I do some pro and fine art
| captures as well as video compositing and photo editing- the
| pro phones definitely have their uses just as my little micro
| 4/3 and full frame DSLR do, both with still and video work.
|
| With glass and a sensor that small they aren't for
| everything, but the days of mandatory compression, limited
| color depth, mandatory "enhancements" and all of that stuff
| are over. If I'm shooting a handheld gimbal video, of
| something like a person talking outdoors not in direct
| sunlight, I'm grabbing that iPhone Pro without thinking
| twice.
| [deleted]
| pen2l wrote:
| The guy in the video is Stu, not only does he have an
| impressive resume (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0556179/ known
| for originality, e.g. he did Sin City's look), he is also the
| original author of MagicBullet, which is one of the most used
| software by people in the industry to do easy color work. If
| there's one person who knows about color work, LUTs in creative
| work, color encoding systems, etc., it's him so naturally he
| knows how to present relevant subject matter without nonsense.
| jprete wrote:
| I'm glad to know that the person behind this post have real
| expertise, because at first glance the headline is a bit
| clickbait-like. (The content, though, makes excellent
| points.)
| toofy wrote:
| oh thx for sharing his background. this highlights something
| that i repeatedly find so frustrating.
|
| this guy knows what he's talking about. he has authority in
| his field. he has proven both theoretically and materially
| that his wisdom is high quality.
|
| yet, videos from people with far less expertise on the
| subject matter will likely drown his out. over and over again
| i've seen the top videos on so many subjects repeating just
| plain wrong information but the "creator" says it with
| confidence so people just eat it up. even worse, so many
| times i've seen people in the comments try to nicely point
| out where the "creator" went wrong, and people go after the
| commenter for daring to imply this person on the magic screen
| might be misinformed.
|
| it's such a shame that being higher in the search says almost
| nothing about your knowledge on a subject and only means
| you're better at manipulating the algorithm rather than
| having actual higher quality information.
|
| i really wish that our searches would prioritize _quality_ of
| information. at this point, years later, i think it's pretty
| clear that the "wisdom of the crowd will shoot the highest
| quality to the top" has been proven to not be the case.
|
| also, i don't want to imply that amateurs can't have valid
| and interesting perspectives, sometimes they might, just that
| being higher in search means quite literally nothing on
| wisdom of a subject--especially if a grifter can monetize off
| a trendy nuanced subject.
|
| anyway, this video was incredible information. thx for
| sharing his background.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| >> _i really wish that our searches would prioritize
| quality of information_
|
| Use a free service, and the person providing it doesn't
| have an incentive to give you what you want.
|
| Which is how we got current Google.
| struant wrote:
| The problem isn't that it is free. The problem is that it
| is funded by ads. Ads are a disincentive to providing
| useful information. That is fundamentally what an ad is.
| Someone paying to spread disinformation.
| tzs wrote:
| > That is fundamentally what an ad is. Someone paying to
| spread disinformation.
|
| So when I see an add for say Kenwood's latest radios in
| QST magazine, what would be the disinformation being
| spread? Or an ad for House of Staunton chess sets in
| Chess Life magazine?
| darkwater wrote:
| > Someone paying to spread disinformation.
|
| They prefer you to use the form "their take on reality" .
| Misinformation is bad! Point of view is good!
| devonkim wrote:
| Except much of the alt media ecosystem of grifters and
| influencers are precisely providing people what they want
| to hear and raise massive amounts of money doing so. They
| oftentimes do not think they're grifters because they
| feel they are responding to a "market need" and so they
| are providing a service even if they might not even agree
| ethically with the output necessarily. This is how we
| wind up with so many conspiracy theorist nutjobs
| dominating recommendation algorithms again and again
| across many different platforms. People are highly,
| highly fallible and what they want may be, in fact, some
| of the worst things for them. As such I'm convinced that
| most adults are only physically and legally that way
| given how incredibly naive and immature people appear to
| be as a baseline regardless of cultural or even
| educational background.
| toofy wrote:
| yeah, i mean, this is hn, we've been collectively
| dissecting the "you're not the customer" issue for years
| upon years.
|
| it doesn't make it less of a shame. and it certainly
| shouldn't stop us from wondering.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| IMHO, it's the monopoly aspect that really jumped the
| shark.
|
| Google as one among competitors (read: pre-Android/~2005)
| still had to be a useful enough search engine to attract
| users.
|
| Once their search share attained hegemony, user
| satisfaction deprioritized (relatively) and revenue was
| allowed to dominate.
|
| And thus, we now get a Google who has little interest in
| weeding out SEO'd spam. (And not as in 'tweaking their
| algorithm' -- as in fundamentally detecting and delisting
| all recipe-story porn and answer-mills)
| city41 wrote:
| Yeah this frustrates me too. I also see this when say HN or
| Reddit is talking about a topic I know very deeply. People
| say incorrect stuff often in those situations, and it makes
| me think most situations we are spreading incorrect
| information.
| withinboredom wrote:
| If I'm talking to a non-educated (in the subject matter)
| audience, I'll often aim for "correct enough" and people
| saying "well actually" is super annoying and confusing to
| everyone involved. There is always more to learn, and you
| can always go deeper into a subject, that doesn't mean
| everyone around you wants to go down that rabbit hole
| too; like 'cool flex bro.'
| freedomben wrote:
| Agreed, though I will say on HN there are usually (nearly
| always) people on that are correcting the misinformation.
| Sometimes their voices are drowned out by down voters who
| vote on emotion or a sea of spouters, but at least there
| is good discussion. Compared to Reddit and other places,
| it's amazing.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > If there's one person who knows about [thing] it's him so
| naturally he knows how to present relevant subject matter
|
| One lesson (no pun intended) of the academic environment is
| that no, it doesn't work that way. Some people are subject-
| matter experts, some are brilliant expositors, but while you
| can't be a good expositor without a decent knowledge of the
| subject matter, you absolutely can be a world-leading
| scientist and at the same time completely rubbish at
| explaining your ideas. (Some areas are better at making use
| of such people than others.)
|
| Good exposition deserves additional credit on top of subject
| expertise, is what I'm trying to say.
| david-gpu wrote:
| I agree, it is a different skillset.
|
| This also means that you will often find excellent easily
| digestible expositions of ideas from people who don't have
| a good grasp of the subject matter, which is problematic.
| dagmx wrote:
| Also the author of the excellent DV Rebel's Guide book which
| was an indie film makers bible for a long time. Obviously the
| title gives away its age though.
| riley_dog wrote:
| Fun Sin City story...
|
| https://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-
| discussions/301497...
|
| I'm the (formerly) young guy who rented the 550 to the
| production team for a few days. Pretty fun story to be tied
| to the movie.
| sbarre wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this out, I probably would never have dug
| further into his blog otherwise, and there's a ton of other
| fascinating posts.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Is this essentially RAW at 24-60fps?
| perbu wrote:
| The video is still compressed, but the colors are RAW. Sort of.
| macintux wrote:
| Comparison of RAW and LOG on the same site:
| https://prolost.com/blog/rawvslog
| pixelbath wrote:
| It is less processed, but TFA points out that it is definitely
| not RAW, particularly in the section titled "Log is Half
| Baked."
| mavidser wrote:
| That'd be 'ProRes RAW', which I don't think an iPhone can shoot
| in. Log is still processed video, just graded in a flatter
| profile so you can do more degrees of adjustments in different
| dimensions like color and exposure.
|
| RAW footage, can barely be called video. Those files don't even
| have any White Balance and ISO data baked in, just raw data
| from the sensor, providing even more amount of control in post
| production, at the expense of working with extremely large
| files.
| isomorphic wrote:
| Also, just to muddy these waters, Apple has the ProRAW format
| --which isn't a video format at all, it's a still-picture
| format.
|
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211965
| [deleted]
| mikae1 wrote:
| No, it's demosaiced[1]. Not raw data.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing
| WithinReason wrote:
| So then why not just use the raw data? Demosaicing triples
| the number of pixels, so expands the data by 3x.
| tuukkah wrote:
| (Conceptually, the number of pixels remains the same but
| the result of demosaicing is RGB pixels so what triples is
| the number of channels.)
|
| I hear it's good to perform demosaicing, denoising and
| super-resolution in one step, so perhaps that's what's
| happening here?
|
| EDIT: on the video (section "Log is Half-Baked"), they also
| mention the processing includes tone mapping, color
| adjustment and lens distortion correction.
| mikae1 wrote:
| A lossy compressed intra-frame codec such as ProRes 422 HQ
| still gives a lower bitrate.
| kqr wrote:
| Almost all the benefits mentioned in the video are (a) lack of
| post-processing and (b) high dynamic range. Is that what "log"
| means in videography?
| jorlow wrote:
| Log is lower contrast so it's less likely to clip (be a fully
| saturated color or pure white or black). And clipping
| inherently limits your max dynamic range.
|
| Log also means a "look" is not baked into the image so, since
| you're starting from scratch, it's 1) easier to tweak the
| images so you can cut between two cameras from different
| manufacturers without distracting differences and 2) you can
| give the image more of your personality.
|
| As a general note, I've found that in the world of
| "cinematography", tech terms aren't used very rigorously and
| there's a lot of cargo cult which comes from the benefit of one
| tech being conflated as a benefit of something else. It's often
| hard to sift through the noise when learning.
| shrx wrote:
| But clipping occurs before the log transformation. The
| sensor's ADC is still linear and has a fixed dynamic range
| regardless of the output encoding format.
| jorlow wrote:
| Significant clipping happens there yes but more clipping
| happens when the "look" is applied and contrast is added.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| A little bit. The log format is non linear. This means there
| are more details in the shadows relative to the really bright
| areas. This mimics the human eye and brain which also do not
| have a linear range of sensitivity.
|
| Basically, the common unit of light in cameras (a stop) is one
| click on the aperture wheel. E.g. going from 1/11 to 1/16
| halves the amount of light. Some cameras of course have a few
| settings in between. It looks linear to us but it is
| effectively logarithmic. The dynamic range of the human eye is
| much larger than the typical camera, screen, or print medium.
| The human eye has a range of about 20-22 stops (between black
| and white). A good camera might get between 12 and 14 stops. A
| decent screen might get to something like 8-10 and print medium
| is more like 5-7. Taking photos and shooting videos involves a
| lot of creative choices about what looks natural to us. HDR is
| basically taking and combining multiple exposures in a way that
| still looks natural to us on a medium that has less dynamic
| range than our eyes (-ish, a lot of HDR photography looks a bit
| unnatural for this reason).
|
| Digital photo processing is about compressing and moving light
| around to make the most of the much more limited dynamic range
| of the screen or print medium you are targeting relative to the
| camera that you used to capture that.
|
| When you do that, most of the interesting information is going
| to be captured in the darker portions of the image. You
| typically expose for neutral grey values which is only about
| 18% of the light. That means half of the darker information
| (shadows) is in that 18% range of values. And the other half is
| in the brighter part. Except our eyes are much more perceptive
| of the darker bits. So, a linear format is not ideal to store
| that. A log format allocates more bits to the dark half and
| less to the other 82%. That's a good thing because that allows
| you to do things like brighten shadows and pull out detail
| there.
|
| The log format does this by applying a log function to the raw
| sensor readings. That's why the format looks so flat because
| all the values end up being relatively close to the 18% mark
| (neutral). You "undo" this by applying a suitable lut that
| multiplies the values suitably. You deepen the shadows to near
| black and brighten the bright stuff to near white. The
| difference is that you now have full control over this process;
| can move the white, grey, and black points around. And you can
| apply color math to the log values before you apply the lut.
| This is not that different from how you'd process a linear
| format except now your starting point is better as you are
| using more bits for the darker parts of the image than for the
| lighter parts. This gives you more of the captured dynamic
| range to play with in post processing.
|
| The weakness of the iphone is that while it stores log format,
| it's not really capable of switching between LUTs on camera or
| while you are shooting. I'm guessing this just takes too much
| CPU/battery. So, you have to wait until post processing to see
| what the end result is going to look like. Some high end
| cameras have a lot of in camera processing that you can tweak
| in post processing.
| jlouis wrote:
| In videography the term "log" is heavily overloaded and you'd
| want to ask for more detail in order to figure out exactly what
| is meant.
|
| A pixel value, be it integer or floating point, means little on
| its own. There's a context for that value which is a color
| space. In the typical process, you have several color spaces in
| play: the camera has one for capture. There's one for color
| processing (the "working" space). And there's one for the
| display. When a pixel goes through the pipeline, it's processed
| via color space transformations.
|
| In the "classic" color spaces, the pixel values have a linear
| relationship, and all of them carry the same amount of
| information. The "log" color spaces all have a non-linear
| (gamma) curve: they retain less information at very low and
| very high pixel values, but subsequently retain more
| information in the middle. It's a form of compression.
|
| The human eye doesn't respond equally to all levels of
| brightness, so throwing away detail at the ends for more detail
| in the middle is usually a great choice. We retain information
| in the signal at the brightness level where the eye is able to
| perceive small details and texture, while throwing away
| information in the signal where it isn't.
|
| We can now map more dynamic range into the same amount of bits,
| due to our non-linear compression. How large a dynamic range is
| given by underlying color space we are operating in.
|
| If you go up in camera quality, you will typically see pixels
| use 10bits or more for their values. Combined with a log-curve,
| this leads to more information density, which allows capture of
| an even higher dynamic range. In turn, post-processing can now
| fix e.g. exposure to a much larger extent.
|
| Finally, a LUT is linear approximation. "Real" color space
| transformation will use the underlying mathematical curves for
| much greater precision.
| rebuilder wrote:
| No, "log" just means some form of logarithmic response curve
| when encoding color data. You don't necessarily get better
| dynamic range per se, but you get a more useful distribution of
| the light samples your sensor is taking.
| alexashka wrote:
| > Is that what "log" means in videography?
|
| > a) Lack of post processing
|
| No. Absence of processing (modifications to make it look
| 'better') is the default for all non-consumer devices.
|
| > b) high dynamic range
|
| Yes. In practice log is about choosing _which_ bits of color
| information to retain and which to throw out, to optimize for
| space.
|
| Log optimizes for retaining detail in very dark and very bright
| areas by sacrificing detail in the midtones.
|
| Non-log optimizes for midtones. That's all it is.
|
| So if you have a high contrast scene (bright blue sky, someone
| sitting in the shade), you'll want to use log. In an
| average/regular contrast scene, you use non-log, that way you
| get more detail in the midtones.
|
| In photography, there is no need to optimize for space (video
| is at least 24 frames/sec, photography is a few frames/sec at
| most, usually), so log is not a thing - we just capture all the
| things, all of the time.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| The concept of Log seems needlessly confusing from (still)
| digital image processing perspective, which I have some
| experience.
|
| Firstly the name is called "Log" (for logarithmic) but isn't that
| what gamma does in color spaces like sRGB since forever? "Normal"
| video standards like BT.709 also have non-linear transfer
| functions. I don't get why "log" is stressed here. Maybe it just
| means a different/higher gamma coefficient (the author didn't
| talk much about the "log" part in the article).
|
| And the main feature of it, at least according to this article,
| is that it clips the black and white level less, so leaves more
| headrooms for post-processing.
|
| This is definitely very useful (and is the norm if you want to do
| something like, say, high quality scanning), but I failed to see
| how it warrants a new "format". You should be able to do that
| with any existing video format (given you have enough bit depth,
| of course).
| jlouis wrote:
| The transfer functions in your (rec.709) color space is non-
| linear indeed. However, the pixel values you store are in a
| linear relationship with each other. The difference between
| values 20 and 21 are the same as the difference between values
| 120 and 121, assuming an 8bit signal. I.e., the information is
| the same for all pixels. Further down the chain, these values
| are then mapped onto a gamma curve, which is non-linear.
|
| What the "log"-spaces are doing is to use a non-linear
| relationship for the pixel values, as a form of lossy
| compression. If the signal has to factor through 8bit values,
| using a compression scheme before it hits the (final) gamma
| curve is a smart move. If we retain less precision around the
| low and high pixel values and more precision in the middle, we
| can get more information from the camera sensor in a certain
| region. Furthermore, we can map a higher dynamic range. It
| often looks more pleasing to the eye, because we can tune the
| setup such that it delivers a lot of precision and detail where
| our perception works the best.
|
| In short: we are storing (8bit/10bit) pixel values. The
| interpretation of these values are done in the context of a
| given color space. In classic (rec.709) color spaces, the
| storage is linear and then mapped onto a non-linear transfer
| function. In the "log" spaces, the storage is non-linear and is
| then mapped onto a non-linear transfer function. In essence we
| perform lossy compression when we store the pixel in the
| camera.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Thanks for the technical details.
|
| I think I get what you mean (in term of implementation), but
| can't we just alter the transfer function further so there
| are more values used for the mid-range colors?
|
| The two-step process you said (the storage is non-linear and
| is then mapped onto a non-linear) is basically equivalent to
| a singular transfer function which is the combination of two
| curves, since the sampling process itself is lossy.
| jlouis wrote:
| Yes, you can combine the steps to make it more efficient.
| In that view, it's "just" a different gamma curve. It's far
| harder to "split" a curve than combining two steps though.
| weebull wrote:
| > The transfer functions in your (rec.709) color space is
| non-linear indeed. However, the pixel values you store are in
| a linear relationship with each other. The difference between
| values 20 and 21 are the same as the difference between
| values 120 and 121, assuming an 8bit signal. I.e., the
| information is the same for all pixels.
|
| Difference on what scale? ... because (hint hint) it's not
| number of photons that hit the sensor. Nor is it photons
| emitted from the display.
|
| The truth is, it's a linear measure of the voltage which
| drives the electron beam of a CRT. Not a very useful measure
| anymore, but we've encoded this response curve into all of
| our images and, now, this is proving to be a mistake.
|
| Working with images would be so much easier if we stored
| values that represent linear light (i.e. proportional to
| photons entering/leaving a device) with no device curves
| baked in. Log formats do this, but because the order of
| magnitude of light is more important than the absolute value,
| it takes the log of the value. It's a more efficient use of
| bits in the storage / transmission.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Gamma curve is needed due to the fact human eyes are more
| sensitive to darker areas than the brighter areas (Stevens'
| power law), so with gamma you can get away with lower bit
| width without (perceptually) introducing noticeable
| banding.
|
| The fact it somewhat matched with a response curve of CRT
| seems to be a historical coincidence, based on multiple
| sources I've read in these years.
|
| I do agree we should have get rid of it at this point as it
| introduces many errors in color blending.
|
| > Log formats do this, but because the order of magnitude
| of light is more important than the absolute value, it
| takes the log of the value. It's a more efficient use of
| bits in the storage / transmission.
|
| It literally is what gamma curve does, ina slight different
| but mathematically equivalent way.
|
| "Order of magnitude of light is more important than the
| absolute value" is exactly what Stevens' power law
| describes.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| No, gamma2.2/sRGB is how the pixels are stored on disk, not
| linear values. Linear is almost never used except as an
| intermediate for processing where you can throw lots of bits
| at it (eg, fp16/32 on a GPU when applying effects or
| whatever)
|
| The difference is how the curves prioritize what bits to
| keep. Rec709 sacrifices the bright end to keep more detail in
| the darks, whereas log is more like linear perceptual
| brightness. So it'll have _less_ low light detail but more
| bright detail by comparison
| kllrnohj wrote:
| For some reason you're getting a lot of wrong or just bad
| replies. But the answer to your question is yes both
| sRGB/gamma2.2 & log are non-linear, but almost in the opposite
| direction. gamma2.2 is exponential not logarithmic. As in, it's
| spending all its bits on the lower half of the brightness
| range, whereas log is actually spending more bits in the
| highlights.
|
| It actually looks more like HLG in this way.
|
| https://www.artstation.com/blogs/tiberius-viris/3ZBO/color-s...
| has some plots of the curves to compare visually
| [deleted]
| bscphil wrote:
| > almost in the opposite direction
|
| I think you're mixing up OOTFs and EOTFs here. sRGB or HLG
| can refer to either the stored gamma, but more often means
| the EOTF "reversed" gamma that is used to display an image.
| When we refer to "log", this is almost always means a camera
| gamma - an OOTF. So the reason it's "in the opposite
| direction" is that it's designed to efficiently utilize bits
| for storing image data, whereas the EOTF is designed to
| reverse this storage gamma for display purposes.
|
| As you can see from the graph in [1], Sony's S-Log does
| indeed allocate more bits to dark areas than bright areas.
| (Though the shape of the curve becomes more complicated if
| you take into account the non-linear behavior of light in
| human vision.)
|
| [1] https://www.enriquepacheco.com/blog/s-log-tutorial
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I've seen that "S-curve" in multiple places, but I don't get
| it still: how is that a logarithmic curve/graph?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| That's neither logarithmic nor what log cameras capture.
| See the link posted by the sibling comment[1] for the
| actual curves.
|
| If you see an S-curve, that's usually what you will try to
| map the captured images too because it allows for increased
| detail in both shadows and highlights, while allowing a
| natural dynamic range in the middle areas. Log capturing
| allows you to have a much higher dynamic range (with a
| given number of bits), and thus more easily map to the
| S-curve that you want.
|
| 1: https://www.enriquepacheco.com/blog/s-log-tutorial
| jlouis wrote:
| > This is definitely very useful (and is the norm if you want
| to do something like, say, high quality scanning), but I failed
| to see how it warrants a new "format".
|
| This warrants a separate answer. Cameras are getting to the
| point where they can capture far more information than we can
| display. Hence, we need a lot of bit depth to accurately store
| this added precision. But adding bits to the data signal
| requires a lot of extra bandwidth.
|
| In principle, we should just store all of this as 16/32bit FP,
| and many modern NLEs use such a pipeline, internally. But by
| creating a non-linear curve on integer data, we can compress
| the signal and fine-tune it to our liking. Hence we can get
| away with using the 8-12bit range, which helps a lot in
| storage. With log-curves, 12bit is probably overkill given the
| current sensor capabilities.
|
| There's a plethora of log-formats out there, typically one for
| each camera brand/sensor. They aren't meant for delivery, but
| for capture. If you want to deliver, you'd typically transform
| to a color space such as rec.709 (assuming standard SDR, HDR is
| a different beast). The log-formats give you a lot of post-
| processing headroom while doing your color grading work.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Cameras are getting to the point where they can capture far
| more information than we can display.
|
| Haven't professional-grade microphones been in a similar
| situation for decades now, or is it the magic of remastering
| that keeps recordings from the 50s sounding so good on modern
| speaker systems?
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Why would you still assume SDR, aren't we talking about
| amateur photography here ?
|
| But yeah, I've been wondering why nonlinear formats would use
| integer values for a while now ?!?
| jlouis wrote:
| I'm suggesting rec.709 because it's what is a currently
| expected default for a screen. In your typical setup, your
| working color space is something like ACEScct or DWG, so
| you can map to several possible output formats with a
| little extra work if needed.
|
| The integer values are nice because existing video formats
| encode things as integers. So we can just stuff our stuff
| inside a codec we already have rather than having to
| reinvent the wheel on the codec side as well. Re-purposing
| existing toolchains for new uses tend to a thing that gets
| a lot of traction compared to building a new one from
| scratch. Even if the newly built toolchain is far better.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > but I failed to see how it warrants a new "format". You
| should be able to do that with any existing video format
|
| It's about support.
|
| The .zip format supports LZMA/ZStandard compression and files
| larger than 4 GB. But if you use that, a lot of software with
| .zip support will fail to decompress them.
|
| The same way with log. While in theory you could probably make
| .mp4 or .mkv files with H264 encoded in log, I bet a lot of
| apps will not display that correctly if at all.
| [deleted]
| ben7799 wrote:
| RAW formats on digital cameras are also storing data in a log
| format. RAW conversion process is normally converting that to a
| color space along with (for most cameras) doing the De-Bayer
| algorithm.
|
| The built in converter that produces JPG files in the camera
| does this too.
|
| Our eyes perceive light as linear when it's really logarithmic.
|
| There is really no difference between video and still here,
| it's just that it's more normalized at the consumer level to
| deal with RAW formats at this point for stills.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It's a bit of a gimmick. These phones just don't have the noise
| performance to make log video work outside if very very specific
| conditions. I had it also on my old LG V30 and it only was
| remotely useful in full sunlight (and since we're talking about
| very low processing, not much changed since then).
|
| This is inevitable because the noise floor is just too high to
| have a large usable dynamic range unless illumination is high.
|
| Combined with video compression it's just not great. It's not
| really even unique to smartphones, many DSLRs/MILCs when they
| first started supporting log video had similar issues, but
| obviously it's going to be much worse for a smartphone.
| dharma1 wrote:
| The sensor size is the limiting factor here re: noise
| performance and dynamic range, but the iPhone does better than
| most with some ML and other "computational photography" tricks
| for denoising that other small sensor cameras don't have. And
| ProRes is a great codec that doesn't really have compression
| artifacts at high bitrates.
|
| It's not going to replace your Alexa or even full frame dSLR
| but can be useful and is a welcome evolution.
| mirsadm wrote:
| This is not true. We've compared RAW video from smartphone
| cameras to a couple of professional cameras and the difference
| is not as much as you might think.
| internetter wrote:
| See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUn68iFMNXY. Remarkably
| similar. Big difference seems to be unavoidable differences
| arising from a small sensor like bokeh and DOF, and
| especially the consistency of colour from the ARRI which
| makes grading a breeze. But the fact that iPhone footage can
| be intermingled with 100$k camera footage (after grade)
| without being noticeable is shocking
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I don't understand what you're trying to say. Yes, in
| absolutely perfect light, if it has the focal length you
| need, it's going to be good. But that's a very particular
| situation, we both know that as soon as the ISO comes up it's
| not even close, and soon enough shooting in log then becomes
| a gimmick.
| foldr wrote:
| Have you done any comparisons that you can point to? The
| iPhone 15 hasn't even been out all that long. The video in
| the sibling comment notes that the iPhone does surprisingly
| well in terms of dynamic range, for example (7:12).
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Okay. Well, um, I guess we should all just pack up and go home.
| We're done.
| tehsauce wrote:
| > Apple shocked us all by addressing this head-on: The iPhone 15
| line charges via USB-C instead of Lightning, and this standard
| USB port can do a lot
| [deleted]
| Insanity wrote:
| Even more so than their revolutionary new design?
| switch007 wrote:
| Can title be "Logarithmic encoding is the ..."? Pretty confusing
| as "Log is the..."
| canbus wrote:
| the way i see it is it's the video equivalent of a RAW file for a
| still picture.
| macintux wrote:
| The article links to another article comparing them.
|
| https://prolost.com/blog/rawvslog
| newaccount74 wrote:
| Slightly off-topic, but is there a way to disable some of the
| photo processing on iPhones?
|
| For example, iPhones automatically brighten people once they
| detect a face, which is especially noticeable when taking photos
| against the light. It ruins the contrast and makes the photo look
| really bad.
|
| Is there a way to turn that stuff off?
| ayoisaiah wrote:
| Best thing is to shoot in Raw or ProRraw and post-process
| yourself
|
| Edit: Fix typo
| [deleted]
| liminalsunset wrote:
| This is a slightly off topic response as well, but some Android
| phones are currently capable of shooting RAW video in 12MP,
| sometimes at 60fps (more than 4K 8.3MP). Google shot a music
| video [1] (unfortunately only available in 1080p) on the Pixel
| 7 Pro using a third party app called MotionCam Pro. The app
| shoots RAW video which can be imported into DaVinci Resolve or
| similar, or rendered to a mp4 in-app with any log profile you
| prefer optionally, and has no processing applied.
|
| According to the developer of something called AMVR [2], the
| quality obtainable is much higher than that of even the
| aforementioned log files from iOS.
|
| I asked whether it would be feasible to shoot DNG on iOS as
| video and was told that iOS lacks a camera API that is
| performant enough, resulting in several fps only. I haven't
| personally tested it though, so maybe this could be a fun
| project.
|
| [1]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyeS_xYxCLI&pp=ygUfYW15IHNoY...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xra4ATrWZ4
| mirsadm wrote:
| I'm the developer of MotionCam Pro. I have no affiliation
| with AMVR, it bothers me that they present themselves as
| somehow associated with me.
|
| As a side note, whenever Apple takes steps to release a
| feature aimed at professionals there is a significant uptick
| in users trying out MotionCam. I think there is a small but
| very vocal group of users that have wanted something like
| this for years but have not been catered to.
| dijit wrote:
| I think blackmagics iPhone App disables a lot of automatic
| processing; however I haven't tested post-processing behaviour
| myself.
|
| Given that it gives such fine-grained control of the sensor, it
| wouldn't surprise me though.
| omnimus wrote:
| Blackmagic Camera app doesnt take pictures. Its for video.
| joking wrote:
| well, there are some other apps like Halide, but I doubt
| they are free.
| internetter wrote:
| Halide costs 12$ a year (or 60$ OTP I believe). I don't
| like subscriptions, but given the app has replaced 1500$
| worth of camera I used to carry with me, I'm ok eating
| the 1$ a month.
| dijit wrote:
| Quite right, this shows how little I actually looked at it.
| kouru225 wrote:
| I think you gotta buy a more professional camera app to fix
| stuff like that, and even that doesn't work for some things.
|
| I'm always pissed about bad the iPhone is at taking photos of
| rainy days.
| quitit wrote:
| The purists answer is to shoot RAW, but many just want a
| solution that doesn't require any post-effort off the device,
| for that the answer is "sort of":
|
| 1. Taking Live photos can be a good work around, since this
| mostly maintains the individuals frames which are used to build
| the full image. Use the built in photo editor to go to a
| different frame in the live photo and set this as the Key Photo
| - this dodges a lot of the HDR/image adjustment process.
|
| 2. Using the AE/AF lock can prevent a fair bit of the automated
| adjustments from taking place. (Tapping the screen on dark
| areas or hot points will adjust the exposure, holding your
| finger for a moment will turn on the AE/AF lock keeping it
| there as you move the phone around.)
|
| 3. If it's not just for one shot, but all shots you take. Go to
| the Camera settings and turn on preserve "Exposure Adjustment",
| in the settings which starts each camera session with the
| exposure settings preserved from earlier - and simply keep this
| on 0.0. This can also make it more straight forward (one tap)
| to undo much of the automatic levelling without locking AE.
| Similarly you may want to also disable night shooting for
| darker scenes, by preserving that setting too.
|
| 4. On older iPhones, disable the HDR mode.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Adding on to this, newer iPhones have a ProRAW feature.
| Various tech youtubers have documented ways to create a
| shortcut in the Shortcuts app to automatically convert them
| to HEIF or JPEG, which might impose slightly less processing.
|
| Similarly, ProRAW photos imported to Apple Photos on Mac can
| be reduced in processing by clicking Edit Photo, and then
| hitting Save Changes without necessarily changing any
| settings (or just changing something inconsequential would
| work too). Doing editing forces the Photos app to discard the
| preprocessed image embedded in the ProRAW and replaces it
| with a software processed version which I find slightly more
| natural. However, ProRAW is still processed by the phone, so
| you need to download a third party app and shoot classic non
| pro RAW (then use the same conversion shortcut maybe) on top
| of it.
| olliej wrote:
| It _might_ be worth trying halide? I know they used to have
| "we make photography better" with a pro-photographer angle, but
| I guess to an extent it depends on what the camera is
| providing, but I recall halide kind of implied they got raw
| data?
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Halide has several modes, one of which is giving you the full
| unadulterated RAW, and optionally doing in-app jpeg
| conversion with less offensive processing. These photos have
| more noise due to the limitations of the sensor.
|
| Halide, like the official camera app, can also shoot ProRAW
| but ProRAW is not totally RAW, it has been processed with the
| frame stacking to reduce noise, but introduces sharpening
| artifacts.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| The video is so good I watched it to the end despite not even
| having iPhone nor having any plans to have it or shoot videos.
| Packed and succinct.
|
| But makes me wonder how soon we would see an... SSD iPhone cases?
| Because you can always duct tape the external drive to the phone
| but it would block the screen. *grin* Sure, you can use double
| sided tape, but... And slightly tangential - how short and
| compact USB-C cable can be? Sure there are tons of the angled on
| the market, but I assume they aren't guaranteed to give you full
| 10gbps Gen2 speeds.
| walteweiss wrote:
| I think that would be not a short cable, but more like Mophie
| juice pack (it's a case with external battery). Also, back in
| the days I bought a card reader for an iPad 3, for 30 pins
| connector. Could be something similar, as SD-cards are quite
| big these days as well.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > more like Mophie juice pack (it's a case with external
| battery).
|
| >> SSD iPhone cases
|
| But yeah, this is what I vaguely had in mind though I did
| forgot those rigid cases even existed, because my phones
| lasts at least two days on their own _finger guns_.
|
| Considering the case would be quite fat and rigid for the SSD
| alone, it would make sense to skip cable shenanigans and just
| use a 'dock style' connector.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| I'd assume that SD cards don't provide the required write
| speed, limited by their flash memory or even the interface
| specs.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm thinking a hand-held mini Steadicam with a hard disk as the
| counterweight.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > Sure, you can use double sided tape, but...
|
| You got it wrong. Camera people LOVE the tapes, look at any
| picture of a movie shooting behind the scenes and you'll see
| every camera has 4-5 pink/yellow/green sticky notes on it.
|
| So taping an SSD to your iPhone while shooting a movie it's
| actually a cool thing. Makes you look authentic "don't give a
| shit" kind of thing.
| emsixteen wrote:
| Great video - Concise and informative, without any guff.
| fallingmeat wrote:
| I don't know anything about photography, but curious to know what
| the cheapest "pro" alternative is. The phone is now $1200! This
| feature is cool, but if you wanted that feature, is it cheaper in
| a purpose-built device?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| You can buy a two year old Android phone to do the same thing,
| which is very inexpensive. Just disable every app except the
| camera app.
| yabones wrote:
| The original Blackmagic Pocket Cinema was about $500 on sale,
| but only shot in 1080p. The new generation is about $1300. And
| then you have to buy lenses :)
|
| So, overall it's not bad value. It's not going to replace pro
| gear any time soon, but it's great that it can do stuff like
| this now.
| marosgrego wrote:
| Canon EOS M can be bought for around $100 used and shoot
| 1440p raw with Magic Lantern. Also it can use cheap old 16mm
| film lenses with crop mode.
| 3x35r22m4u wrote:
| Could someone please confirm or deny Samsung has it better
| because they included 10 times larger sensors, 20x better zoom,
| titanium since 2017 and hired BTS for their ads?
|
| Reference: https://youtu.be/dLHJl7mwY7M?si=e0Cm2q4bnn_u14Qf
| internetter wrote:
| > hired BTS for their ads
|
| Hardly a selling point.
|
| > titanium since 2017
|
| Source?
|
| > 10 times larger sensors
|
| 4 times (48mp vs 200mp), and zooming into the highest quality
| images produced by both cameras yields little difference.
|
| This comment feels like grasping at straws. The iPhone and
| Samsung both have excellent cameras, and excel in different
| places. Camera comparisons by professional photographers show
| that much. In my non-professional opinion, samsung wins in some
| edge cases, but the iphone generally has a better colour
| profile and undeniably better video capabilities, but debating
| about minute differences in camera processing in a text only
| forum feels counter productive, especially when plenty of
| professional comparisons exist.
| bux93 wrote:
| Since Apple sources their camera chips from Sony, the more
| relevant question is how Sony's flagship (the Xperia 5 V?)
| stacks up with its Sony IMX888 vs the Sony IMX803 in the apple.
| It used to be that Sony's flagship had a slightly better
| imaging sensor than the Apple flagship, but I don't think
| that's the case any more. At any rate, Android doesn't seem to
| provide an API that exposes log/raw-ish sensor data for video
| (although for stills, it's been there since 2015).
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| How could that possibly be confirmed or denied? If you're not
| asking a question don't use a question mark: just make your
| point.
| piperswe wrote:
| I didn't know it could record straight to USB-C storage! That
| gets rid of a major reason to spend crazy money on a 1TB phone,
| and it's definitely a game changer for anyone shooting 4K ProRes.
| radicality wrote:
| Afaik it's actually not even possible to record that directly
| to the phone, it has to be into an external usbc drive. If I
| had to guess it's probably because of overheating concerns with
| the high write rate.
| skunkworker wrote:
| That requirement is for 4k60 Log only. 4k30 log will write to
| disk but takes up around 100mb/sec. From some videos I shot
| last weekend.
| slau wrote:
| Is that Mb or MB?
| skunkworker wrote:
| 4k30 Log is approx 100MB/second
| karolist wrote:
| To capture any 4K ProRes footage with 128GB 15 Pro you need
| an external drive, this is presumably because 128GB model
| has a single memory chip and data write speeds are
| insufficient.
| quitit wrote:
| The article is slightly misleading here.
|
| The 4k60 ProRes mode is not available for shooting on the
| 128gb model until an external drive is added, but for any
| larger capacity iPhone Pro, the mode is available for
| shooting without the external drive. This doesn't affect the
| Pro Max as that isn't available in a 128gb configuration.
|
| Notably, a similar limitation existed with the iPhone 14 Pro
| using 4k30FPS, at the time the reasoning was that it simply
| fills the device too quickly to be useful.
| kalleboo wrote:
| I have a 512 GB 15 Pro Max and it won't let me record 4k60
| ProRes to internal storage
| quitit wrote:
| You are 100% correct and my original data is wrong.
| (imore.com)
|
| Apple's website lists the external drive requirement for
| 4k60FPS:
|
| 4K at 60 frames per second (fps), iPhone 15 Pro and
| iPhone 15 Pro Max only, when using an external storage
| device that supports speeds of at least 220MB per second
| and maximum power draw of 4.5W
|
| Unfortunately there is no way to edit my above comment,
| so my apologies for being the source of incorrect
| information here.
| adityapurwa wrote:
| I always wondered why some of the raw vs edited video on social
| media shows the raw one as a very washed and unsaturated picture.
| I even thought they made the raw looks so bad, so that the edited
| one looks great.
|
| I never owned a pro-camera, only a smartphone. So, reading this
| article now I learned that it was washed and unsaturated for a
| good reason. Is this Log thing 15 pro specific or its software so
| that we can use it on an older iPhone?
| stephen_g wrote:
| This was a huge problem even for professionals at one point -
| there was a time starting a bit before 2010 where more cameras
| started to switch from doing all the process in camera to raw
| and log recording, and people didn't understand how to work
| with it, properly expose it, etc.
|
| I remember for example with RED's first cinema camera, seeing
| people do shootouts (camera comparisons) where they'd record
| and compare the low-quality, partially decoded monitor output
| that didn't have a proper LUT applied, to HD cameras that did
| all in-camera processing. Later cameras could do all the 4K
| processing and apply proper LUTs in the hardware in real-time,
| but earlier ones didn't have the processing power, you had to
| do it all in post. People just didn't get it, and it worried
| people when things come out all washed out before applying any
| kind of LUT.
|
| Crazy some of this is trickling down into phones.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I am not an influencer. I am not a fashion model. I am not an
| interior designer. I don't use my cellphone camera to generate
| "content". I use it to document things. I need it to take clear
| pictures that accurately represent _things that I see_. We are
| now moving away from auto-focus and auto shutter speeds toward
| on-the-fly retouching, editing, of material by the camera. This
| is dangerous. Pictures taken buy such cameras can no longer be
| considered accurate representations. Correction of shadows, the
| replacement of dull color with vibrant, the smoothing of textures
| ... every photo is now a crafted work of art by the machine. They
| are a distorted representation. This will come back to haunt us.
|
| Think of this: a cop body camera that auto-adjusts faces to
| display them more clearly at night. Sounds like a good idea. Then
| something happens. The cop says "I couldn't see the guy's face"
| but the body camera shows the face clear as day. Yes, the camera
| did take a more clear and useful photo, but it is not a proper
| depiction of the reality experienced by the officer.
| willio58 wrote:
| > every photo is now a crafted work of art by the machine.
|
| This was always the case. Unless you have a very specific
| camera setup where you're trying to avoid this, there have
| always been certain characteristics that come through in photos
| from cameras. In fact, it's the main selling point of some
| cameras. Hasselblad, polaroid, cannon, sony all have their own
| 'looks' when it comes to output.
|
| > The cop says "I couldn't see the guy's face" but the body
| camera shows the face clear as day.
|
| I'll use a similar but opposite argument here. Ever since
| iPhones came out they could never really capture dark-skinned
| people as we see them through our eyes. Unless you had perfect
| lighting, you could clearly see issues with the sensor catching
| the contrast in their face. With all the retouching you speak
| of, iPhones have gotten much better at showing some people more
| closely to how we see them in reality. So when that cop claims
| "I couldn't see the guy's face, the damn camera is too good!",
| I'd be very hesitant to believe him.
| cptskippy wrote:
| > I need it to take clear pictures that accurately represent
| things that I see. We are now moving away from auto-focus and
| auto shutter speeds toward on-the-fly retouching, editing, of
| material by the camera. This is dangerous.
|
| You could argue that up until now you were not able to take
| photos or video that accurately represented the world you see
| but instead only using the rose color lenses of the device
| manufacturer. The photos and videos that you take today with
| your phones or cameras have distortions applied automatically
| based on presets provided by the software used to capture the
| media. Sometimes you get options like Vibrant, Indoor,
| Portrait, and Landscape mode to choose how the images or video
| are manipulated. You don't get to see what the camera actually
| saw, only what the device manufacturer wants you to see.
|
| Log video is like Raw photos. As this capability becomes more
| prevalent, I could see it becoming a requirement for criminal
| investigators and other to capture evidence using a Log or Raw
| mode.
|
| What I would argue is that, if it's not there already, we need
| signatures and metadata stored in the EXIF of photos and video
| captured that tells how the image was capture. With that you
| could determine to what extent the media has been manipulated.
| lang_agnostic wrote:
| > We are now moving away from auto-focus and auto shutter
| speeds toward on-the-fly retouching, editing, of material by
| the camera
|
| This is a great point but it's not what the article is about.
| This is about bringing existing features of digital cinema
| cameras to a portable phone.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Yup. And the move from a camera to a _cinema camera_
| incorporating cinematography trickery represents a marked
| change in what a personal camera is and does.
| keyle wrote:
| Great video btw. Well explained and as succinct as possible.
| user3939382 wrote:
| [flagged]
| hsdropout wrote:
| Blammo's best seller!
| sen_armstrong wrote:
| [flagged]
| video-log-comp wrote:
| A question to the experts here: What happens if we take the "log"
| video and compress it using current compression algorithms and
| ship the LUT with it?
|
| If I understand this correctly, the quality of dark scenes should
| then improve.
|
| Would that then also allow users to edit the LUT or supply their
| own to get a better picture on their respective monitors?
| wayfinder wrote:
| Storing data on a logarithmic scale requires a higher bitrate
| otherwise it will actually look worse.
|
| So for a finished product, the way it is now is better.
|
| Plus storing extra data in the dark areas for display is
| pointless. You only do it because you want to manipulate the
| data and maybe bring something out of the dark area, but in the
| final product, dark is dark.
|
| If you, for whatever reason, wanted to give the user more data,
| then you would provide a 10-bit or 12-bit linear file.
| video-log-comp wrote:
| Thank you for your explanation.
|
| Do I understand correctly, that this idea wouldnt work
| because you either end up with the same quality, but bigger
| files or with the same file size, but worse quality?
|
| I had this idea that you could increase the amount of black
| colors a monitor could display if you combine 4 pixels.
| Having 3 black, and one of them "one bit" less black. This
| way you could have a more fine grained black-white
| transition.
|
| I thought a "log" video might be able to contain the
| information to allow this without to much overhead.
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