The Future of Photography

The last 10 years have seen a big change in how cameras are being used in cars. From the backup camera when reversing to the dash cam. From cameras as rear view mirrors (Audio E-Tron) to lane assist and obstacle recognition. From 360-degree parking helpers to autonomous logging trucks and obviously in self-driving cars, from Tesla to the more open-source approach of Comma's Openpilot. Also LIDAR is in the process of being turned into a solid-state system and prices are expected to come down.

An organisation of street events is asking photographers to gain verbal permission before shooting in a public place. The organisation, The Petapixel article that got us thinking. These are events that are about personal expression of sub-culture but how do we judge or decide between rights of photography in a public place versus respect of individuals? Is this a slippery slope? Is there a difference today from how digital natives will view the rights and risks tomorrow? Are we going to see a change in fundamental rights of photographers? Would that drive a positive or negative scenario? Would technology innovation out pace the revision of law? Will photography become about wearing a nanotech sensor on you jacket? And BTW, weird that this all happened in San Francisco which is one of the most liberal cities going!

Huawei wants to use an AI to help judge a photo contest. The Kirin 970 CPU with its NPU (neural processing unit). Pictures too grainy? Nvidia developed a new AI-based method to de-noise photos without prior knowledge of clean image data. (The research paper, PDF). This has the potential to get us to grain-free low-light photography with small image sensors.

Ade has been away on a UK vacation. This included being underground in a tine mine, sea kayaking, an outdoor theatre production and more. So what cameras do all that? And more importantly ;-) how did Ade build a wish list for future cameras - whilst also celebrating the cameras we already have! Links: Geevor Tin Mine, Koru Kayaking, Minack Theatre, Olympus TG-4, Some other tough cameras

The number of lenses in smartphones has increased from zero to now three in some phones over the years. An article in the Washington Post mentions a prototype of a smartphone by Light that features nine lenses. This might become the next version of their L16 camera that we discussed in ep09.

I guess most of us have a mental image of movie or TV locations where big trucks carry enormous lights around the place. They have to be big so they can be far away from the actors. They have to be far away so the light doesn't fall off across the scene in shot. Inverse square law can be nasty. But maybe the world is changing. Cameras are better in low light than ever before. What if you could make a whole TV series with just ambient light? Sharp Objects on HBO is doing just that!

Gimbals have had use in compasses, aircraft, rocket engines, astrology, still photography and film/video. We already talked about it in ep021. The dji Ronin-S is a handheld gimbal for cameras up to 3.6kg that is in a price range that makes it attractive even to ambitious amateurs. (Follow-up from ep025: Lightform Projection Mapping)

A while back, Hasselblad announced a new camera with 400 MegaPixels. More recently, Fujifilm announced the Instax SQ6. What happens when you pit them against each other? Can one of these systems claim to be more The Future of Photography than the other? How should we judge? What do you think?

Cardboard as a visual maker tool. Video: Adam Savage on discovering cardboard. Make Magazine cardboard projects. Cardboard furniture. Cardboard teleprompter. Google Cardboard. Nintendo Labo. Google AIY (Vision Kit). Jollylook cardboard camera for Fuji Instax.

It’s the marmite of sensors - you either love it or hate it. We are of course talking about the Fujifilm X-Trans sensor. Some say it delivers mushy detail and others say it has beautiful rendering. Occasionally there is common ground where most people think Lightroom does a not-great job on the raw files. But what’s this? Another new Fuji camera with a Bayer sensor you say? Yes, the Fujifilm X-T100 may be badged as entry-level but it has a lot going for it when it comes to sensor technology and picture quality.