The Future of Photography

Did the Kodak Coin announcement confuse you? Kodak (actually one of their licensing partners) wants to put the entire photography business on a blockchain. On this episode we try to make sense of this announcement. Also: Chris' new streaming setup that looks like portrait mode (YouTube) and let us know if you'd be interested in a TFOP meetup in the UK in 2018.

At the family holiday festivities, Ade saw kids as young as 8 get drones as presents. "Holy Flying Menace, Batman" he thought to himself. He quickly ran to safety and started researching the mainstream acceptance of consumer-grade drones. Even common newspapers had buying guides. Also this week, hilarity ensues when Chris flies his own drone indoors and crashes it :-) Would you be interested in a TFOP meetup in the UK in 2018? Potential for knowledge sharing, playing with other people's toys, recording a live show... If that sounds like fun to you, please let us know by registering your interest.

Chris and Ade explore some new research that just came out of Nvidia, a manufacturer of graphics and machine learning hardware. In the future it will be possible to translate a winter image into a summer image or a corgi into a german shepherd and they are showing that in a set of impressive demos. TFOP 002 Depth. Research website. Example video 1. Example video 2. Explanation video. [Slightly NSFW] Face swapping for fake p*rn.

This week Ade and Chris try to leave the science behind and talk philosophy. They almost manage it, but not quite. There is an amusing interlude while we try to imagine what art critics think and then the reality of what the real critics - friends and family - might say. Also, would you be interested in a TFOP meetup, workshop and live recording? Register your interest here and we will start developing the ideas!

Happy New Year! The L16 is an interesting beast. 16 cameras and some computational photography make this a brick-shaped camera that is hard to ignore. Chris and Ade bring you some first-hand experience, they discuss what this means for photography and also talk about some of its shortcomings as portrayed by an article on Petapixel. Our robot finally has a name: eevee. Thanks Dave Schuder for coming up with the idea! The t-shirt winners are Dave Schuder, Paul Friday for the cleverness award and Steve Connery and Deborah Nelson with a honorable mention each. Thanks all for your wonderful ideas!

Glitch art is the practice of using digital or analog errors for aesthetic purposes by either corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. It has a long history in movies, music and the arts. It also has some humorous unintentional outlets. A key assumption is that it's ok to destroy pixels - something photographers often try to preserve. And it's GREAT FUN!!! Try it yourself with the DECIM8 app discussed in the show and take a look at one of Chris' projects and a shot by Ade too.

Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) makes an interesting observation: lately the cameras that people bring to his live show's meet-and-greets have changed: where people used to bring phones, many of them now bring bigger dedicated cameras and analog media as well. Has the pendulum swung back? Has digital been a fad all along? Listen in while Chris and Ade look at the implications of this development.

For years, we have observed and participated in the megapixel race. Pretty much all photographers have an opinion on this. So do Chris and Ade :-) So how do all these pixels impact our images? Are they necessary? Can we use them to be creative? What might the results of that look like? All these questions and more inform the boys' weekly musing on The Future of Photography. Science article from 2005. Lightning over New York from 2016 by Dan Piech. Some really big photos.... Gigapan makes products for crazy-big images. Vanvouver time machine gigapixel image. Don't forget, our robot still has no name and you could choose it and win a t-shirt! Make as many suggestions as you like here by 24th December.

Today's lenses are made of solid glass. This makes bigger lenses heavy and bulky. While fresnel lenses have managed to make lenses flatter by splitting them up in concentric circles of lens segments, they have always had some level of quality loss which makes them not ideal to use in photographic applications. Microsoft has now patented a flat lens that uses tiny nano structures on a flat surface to bend light similar to what a traditional lens does. For the future of photography this could mean smaller lenses and thinner smartphones without a camera bump. Don't forget, our robot still has no name and you could choose it and win a t-shirt! Make as many suggestions as you like here by 24th December.

OH NO. Our robot has no name. What an inexcusable oversight of us. Help us give it (him? her?) a name for a chance to win a t-shirt with ... you guessed it ... our robot on it. Submit your suggestions here, the deadline is December 24 2017. Good luck! (and of course, we'd also be more than happy if it turns out gender-neutral :))