redvenom (u/redvenom)

redvenom commented on Understanding ProRAW blog.halide.cam/understan... · Posted by u/tomduncalf

foldr · 5 years ago

Almost no-one who matters cares about "image quality". It's something that just needs to be good enough. It's not a particularly important aspect of making a good photo. OP's story highlights a much more important aspect: being in the right place at the right time.

I guess I'm getting old, but I can't help but observe that the image quality provided by a smartphone today is superior to anything available even to rich amateurs when I was a kid in the 90s. This is especially so when you look at color accuracy and dynamic range as well as resolution (which is much less important, but much more often obsessed over).

redvenom · 5 years ago

Good thing I don't care at all what most people care about. If everyone had your attitude we'd all be listening to pop music instead of classical as well.

redvenom commented on Understanding ProRAW blog.halide.cam/understan... · Posted by u/tomduncalf

altarius · 5 years ago

Honestly, I went out to Marin Headlands this morning to photograph the sunrise, brought my 60mpix fullframe camera and some amazing lenses. But while waiting for the best light or long exposures I snap off a couple pictures on the phone. And I was just thinking, if I'd just post to Instagram and not print, I probably wouldn't even bother with the fullframe camera - a nice hike without 20lbs of gear and as great photos if you don't need the resolution/detail. HDR+ and the other computational photography goodness makes for great photos straight out of the phone and a tiny bit of editing then goes long way.

I bet if you showed 20 non-photographers 2 images a phone screen, one from the phone and one fullframe edited, most wouldn't appreciate the difference.

That said, I wouldn't give up my camera for many shots but I can understand why many people do. Post-processing camera raws is definitely more cumbersome than quickly editing photos on a phone.

redvenom · 5 years ago

This highlights the difference between someone who cares about image quality and someone who just cares about reactions and likes.

redvenom commented on Understanding ProRAW blog.halide.cam/understan... · Posted by u/tomduncalf

hughes · 5 years ago

Are there even any camera companies that even have ambitions of reaching a level like this?

redvenom · 5 years ago

In most situations that photographers actually care about (i.e. capturing beautiful, good light), ILCs already murder the iPhone. Computational photography may be cool but it is just helping the iPhone emulate ILCs.

redvenom commented on Understanding ProRAW blog.halide.cam/understan... · Posted by u/tomduncalf

vmception · 5 years ago

The iPhone 12 Pro is better than EVIL & DSLR cameras, and that mostly comes down to software.

Introducing ProRAW in a software update is already going to solidify that.

If digital cameras want to compete here is what they need to do:

- add live photos as a default

If photography enthusiasts wants to gatekeep:

- buy an older camera and stick with that... collectible.

If Apple wants to continue making their devices more appealing than dedicated cameras:

- Add live photos to portrait mode

redvenom · 5 years ago

The iPhone 12 may have some cool auto computational features, but in no way is it better than an ILC camera like a DSLR. If you actually compare image quality side by side, a DSLR typically will smoke an iPhone. Not to mention there is no way to go past ~100mm on even the best phones.

redvenom commented on Understanding ProRAW blog.halide.cam/understan... · Posted by u/tomduncalf

mikece · 5 years ago

"RAW data is usually stored in the DNG file format, which stands for Digital Negative. Some camera makers have their own formats, but those companies are jerks."

I disagree with the second part of this quote. The major players (Sony, Canon, Nikon) have their own file formats which reflect the choices their engineers made in deciding how to record the raw sensor information at the time of the exposure. Theoretically you can make the case that one of them did it better than the others but since the applications photographers use to process RAW images are given the ability to read these RAW formats they aren't being jerks just for wanting to express their engineering genius in their own way. If, for example, Nikon REFUSED to give Adobe and others the ability to decode their raw NEF files, insisting you have to buy a piece of Nikon software in order to view and transform the raw images from your camera, then I would agree they are jerks. But just because a camera maker's engineers decided that (for reasons I don't know) the open DNG format won't deliver the best quality to their customers doesn't make them jerks.

Otherwise this is a pretty good article, even if it's little more than an educational promotion for Halide's camera app.

redvenom · 5 years ago

There's not much difference between the different formats in terms of engineering genius. The Raw data from a camera is basically a matrix of numbers...not too much innovation possible there. The fact that there are different formats is somewhat of a historical accident, and they preceded the DNG format. The format absolutely CAN be stored in a DNG, and in fact Pentax cameras have the option of either DNG or PEF.

redvenom commented on PHP 8 php.net/archive/2020.php#... · Posted by u/pow-tac

carrja99 · 5 years ago

I still love you PHP

redvenom · 5 years ago

Me too. For people on shared hosts (hundreds of small websites including small businesses), PHP is pretty much the only server-side language that you have access to (well, maybe aside from Perl).

redvenom commented on Quiver: A modern commutative diagram editor github.com/varkor/quiver... · Posted by u/dustingetz

toomim · 5 years ago

What's a "commutative" diagram?

redvenom · 5 years ago

It is a diagram whose vertices are mathematical objects and whose arrows are morphisms (often functions) between those objects such that any two paths between two vertices represent the same morphism/function. Typically it is used to infer information about one morphism or object using others, by keeping track of many properties at once in a graphical fashion.

redvenom commented on Linux on iPad ipadlinux.org/... · Posted by u/homarp

darig · 5 years ago

The title on the page is "Linux on iPad"

redvenom · 5 years ago

I was thinking the title meant that I could sync an iPad with Linux...too bad. I was hoping that someone made it possible to sync music with the latest iOS.

redvenom commented on Some Math Problems Seem Impossible. That Can Be a Good Thing quantamagazine.org/some-m... · Posted by u/sonabinu

dmurray · 5 years ago

That's a long way from being a convincing argument that compass and straight-edge can only produce quadratic extensions to number fields, though.

(I know it's true, just saying it looks like you've offered an explanation in elementary terms, but I don't think one exists).

redvenom · 5 years ago

Absolutely true, there is a lot to prove there. It's not an elementary explanation by any means, rather it is an outline that someone who knows Galois theory well could probably reconstruct.

redvenom commented on Some Math Problems Seem Impossible. That Can Be a Good Thing quantamagazine.org/some-m... · Posted by u/sonabinu

DougN7 · 5 years ago

I’ll share one I’ve been pondering for 30 years since my geometry teacher told me it’s impossible: It’s not possible to trisect an arbitrary angle using only a straightedge and compass.

redvenom · 5 years ago

The reason basically comes down to the fact that every time you perform a compass and straight-edge construction, you are constructing quadratic extensions of number fields, whereas trisection (in general) needs a cubic extension.

The 'in general' part is important: of course, you can trisect specific angles like a 90 degree angle.

(The construction of number field extensions is happening because let's say you construct a 90 degree angle, well that allows you to construct an isosceles triangle with equal sides length 1, and therefore you construct the square root of 2, so the extension Q(sqrt(2))