Something else just occurred to me. The two great revolutions in photography over the last twenty years are (1) digital cameras and (2) digital manipulation of images. The second is arguably even more significant, since it can also be applied to photographs taken by traditional methods (and scanned) and has even more possibilities. How many of the photographs we now encounter daily are not Photoshopped or otherwise manipulated outside of the camera? Aside from the most casual photography, probably not many. Discounting for changes in composition (a professional photojournalist was caught doing that a few years ago, much to his embarrassment), do we object to after-the-fact enhancement of color, contrast or exposure, or cropping? Do we call that trickery or suggest that it creates a photographic abnormality, an unreality, or violates some rule of color theory? Not that I've ever heard.
What I am hearing is that photography, like writing, should adhere to some kind of grammar. In principle, I can agree, up to a point. However the purpose of grammar in writing is to make the writing comprehensible, to promote the goal of communications, the exchange of information and ideas, not to make all writing the same or even similar. If the purpose of photographic grammar is similar to writing (and it seems it is), then it should have the same goal.
I agree that when image manipulation moved out of the realm of NASA, and into our hands, many good and bad things became possible.
As far as the grammar goes, there is a common language for photography, as there is for film as in motion pictures, Tv, etc.
But it's known in the professional realm. You can buy books on the topic, and you will learn that language, but otherwise, most people have no idea it's there. It's a technical based language, and that's true even in the artistic end.
No its not a grammar that restricts the end product, its a grammar that ensures the end product will be what was originally intended. That image has to go through processes that require translation from one process to the next. On a professional level there are different people and different equipment being used at each stage of the process. The grammar ensures that the image will maintain its intended "look" at the end of the process.
I think you mistook my analogy for a technical point. I was not making a technical argument. I thought I'd made that clear from previous posts, but to say again, I am not disputing the technical methods or requirements for producing images that reproduce what the photographer intended. My point, all along, is to inquire about what the photographer intends. It seems to me that what the photographer intends to communicate to the viewer is key here, much less so than the technical methods for getting there. We know that both photographers and filmmakers employ a variety of techniques to alter what the camera captures, both at and after the fact. So I don't think the rules are so immutable as you suggest. On the technical side, perhaps, but not on the creative side.
Hmmm...I find it interesting that you feel so comfortable in defining what I know and what I don't know. I've been to Kodak in Rochester New York. Spoken with Kodak chemists that hold PhD's in their respective fields. I've been to seminars with German engineers from Zeiss Optics. I've learned a lot about what I'm talking about.
I see what you are saying to some degree, but you are making it way more complicated than it really is. Human vision is subjective to a degree but its not that subjective. A group of people looking at a purple flower all agree that its a purple flower. There isn't much discrepancy on what we are looking at. Whether its pleasing or not can be subjective but in many cases we mostly are in agreement on what we find visual pleasing.
Why would they pay Adrianna Lima millions of dollars to appear in Victoria's Secret, or Halle Berry millions for a movie, why would they spend millions to shoot "The Dark Knight" in downtown Hong Kong in IMAX if human vision and perception were so widely subjective. The answer is because its not that widely subjective. The majority of people find these efforts visually appealing.
He does have a point though. There are tens of million of people in the US alone, mostly males as a lot is sexually linked, who are partially or completely colorblind. Is there perception just are "real" as a color expert? Well, it's real to them, but it's wrong when compared to average human vision standards, and even average vision standards are poor when compared to those trained to it.
Then there are those with the visual equivalence of a "tin ear". They see it, but they don't perceive it.
What we're talking about is not just the wide sweep of a mood evoked in a dark scene or whatever, but the ability to see minor variations in color, among other things.
I can give an example using myself. Part of my area in the photographic and graphics industry was as an expert in color. I used to say that color was my life. Even the smallest errors would bother me. watching Tv at a friends house was difficult, etc.
But then about a year ago, I was using my spectrophotometer to read color patches for a new printing paper so I could make a precision profile. when, as I always do, I looked at the printed page of color patches, I noticed that while I measured differences, in some areas, those covering the blue and yellow spectrum, I couldn't see all the variations I was reading. That had NEVER happened before. I could always see any variation I could measure. That alarmed me. I was also seeing a slight shadow when I read a book or on the computer monitor from the type.
I went to my eye doctor, who was startled. He told me that people never notice this until it gets really bad, and that it was the very beginning of cataracts. That made sense, because cataracts begin to yellow the lens, and that turns orange later on. It also causes refraction, causing reflections that could look like a shadow.
I asked him if we could do anything about it, and he said I could have the operations, though people would normally wait another two years, until it got much worse. Well, I wasn't going to wait for that to happen!!! So we did it. The first eye, the right, went well, but the second, was a disaster. After several more operations, and months (one reason I wasn't here for some time early in the year) things have settled down.
But, now I see those colors again! Blue is no longer looking purple, and magenta is no longer looking reddish, and red is no longer looking somewhat orange. I can now see those variation again.
But what about the tens of millions who have this problem to a greater or lessor extent, and don't know it? It creeps up on you. I may have gone longer if I didn't still do photography, printing, and calibration.
So what was real here? That I couldn't perceive those colors properly, or what I saw both before and afterwards?
Reality for ME isn't really reality, it's just what I see of it.
Quote:
There is such a thing as natural skin tones, normal colors, normal contrast.
Agreed. We can even color correct a color image on a B/W monitor if we know the proper color values, and what to pick in the image. Dan Margulis loves to show people how to do that.
He does have a point though. There are tens of million of people in the US alone, mostly males as a lot is sexually linked, who are partially or completely colorblind. Is there perception just are "real" as a color expert? Well, it's real to them, but it's wrong when compared to average human vision standards, and even average vision standards are poor when compared to those trained to it.
Reality for ME isn't really reality, it's just what I see of it.
Oh yes I totally agree. And don't discount that vision and perception are not exactly the same for everyone. The scientists and engineers know that too.
At the same time they use the human visual system as the basis from which visual reproduction equipment is made. They average it out from the best case to the worst case
Oh yes I totally agree. And don't discount that vision and perception are not exactly the same for everyone. The scientists and engineers know that too.
At the same time they use the human visual system as the basis from which visual reproduction equipment is made. They average it out from the best case to the worst case
The one thing that we both know very well, coming from professional environments, is that those trained in it don't need to see things exactly the same way, we just have to understand what we're looking at, and agree on what we see.
But "normal" people can't, and really don't want to do that. They'll insist that what THEY see is correct. It's MUCH worse for audio, where we can't stop the sound and all listen to it for as long as we like as we can do with visual media.
I do see your point. This debate likely comes from the fact that a lot of things that were previously the sole domain of the professional world are working their way into the amateur world. Things that used to require a high degree of skill are being made much more simple. I do understand that.
But from a professional standpoint you see that those simplified solutions don't fully replace the actual mastery of the photographic technique. To really master it you cannot divorce the technical side from the artistic side, they work in tandem.
An example....
A few years ago "look up table" plug ins became extremely popular. The one that was used to death was the "Saving Private Ryan" look. It was a plug in that would automatically give any video the "SPR" look. Sometimes it was used well, most times it was horribly mediocre. Eventually it was worn out.
This was amateurs using simplified tools to create a look that previously required a great deal of skill to accomplish. But what those amateurs did not realize is that the full mastery to achieve that look required far more than they understood.
When they made Saving Private Ryan they made extremely exhaustive and thorough testing of everything to create that look. They were using cutting edge photographic chemistry techniques in the film print itself. At least for the time.
They tested the fabric of the costumes, they tested the materials the buildings were made of, they tested the make up the actors wore, they tested the paint used on the vehicles. They tested blood splattering effects, they tested how the debris flew from explosions. They tested everything to achieve that look.
In all of that effort the look wasn't intended to stand out on its own. It was only intended to serve the emotional impact of the story.
A plug in on its own limited way can approximate this look, but never fully replace all of the factors that went into creating it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
I think you mistook my analogy for a technical point. I was not making a technical argument. I thought I'd made that clear from previous posts, but to say again, I am not disputing the technical methods or requirements for producing images that reproduce what the photographer intended. My point, all along, is to inquire about what the photographer intends. It seems to me that what the photographer intends to communicate to the viewer is key here, much less so than the technical methods for getting there. We know that both photographers and filmmakers employ a variety of techniques to alter what the camera captures, both at and after the fact. So I don't think the rules are so immutable as you suggest. On the technical side, perhaps, but not on the creative side.
Hmmm...I find it interesting that you feel so comfortable in defining what I know and what I don't know. I've been to Kodak in Rochester New York. Spoken with Kodak chemists that hold PhD's in their respective fields. I've been to seminars with German engineers from Zeiss Optics. I've learned a lot about what I'm talking about.
I'm not defining what you do or do not know. I said that your statement shows that you don't understand "human perception". That you have a PhD in those fields hints at why that is... your focus (so to speak) is on optics, not on human perception.
Quote:
I see what you are saying to some degree, but you are making it way more complicated than it really is. Human vision is subjective to a degree but its not that subjective. A group of people looking at a purple flower all agree that its a purple flower. There isn't much discrepancy on what we are looking at. Whether its pleasing or not can be subjective but in many cases we mostly are in agreement on what we find visual pleasing.
No, you are ignoring what comes after human vision... and that is human interpretation. The reason why a dozen people can see the same crime happen and all recount different things. The reason why people with excellent vision can have different reactions to the same image. The reason why the average retention of information from a lecture is 20%, a bit higher with visual aids.
Certainly there is large degrees of overlap, particularly within the same age range, gender and culture. That we are all humans (well, as far as I know anyhow) ensures some degree of commonality, but there is a great deal of variability. And my point wasn't even about that so much as it was about the impossibility of "accurately" capturing a scene in a photograph. The experience of looking at the scene is different than the experience of looking at the photograph so it can never be exactly accurate... except in a narrowly defined scientific sense, which is less than useful to most people and the average joe's perception of what is an "accurate" photograph.
This is particularly relevant when looking at an action scene... view the real scene gives you but a moment to capture the information and process it. Viewing a photograph you can examine it in detail, look at all parts of the image, etc. The two experiences are completely different. And cameras have a much different range of lenses, aperture settings, ISOs, etc. than the human eye (and all human eyes are different), so some photos simply cannot be experienced and some live views simply cannot be captured.
LMAO at all the discussion over this. If it looks better, smile, if it doesn't, shrug and don't use it.
Either way, there is absolutely nothing to talk about. It's a free new feature, either your eyes like it, or they don't.
Any and all discussion over what is true HDR vs. whogivesaflute, is totally wasted breath.
If that's your opinion, why post in or even read this forum? That's an ignorant attitude that, if pursued to its logical extreme, would mean we'd be happy sticking with pinhole cameras and nobody would have bothered to do better.
Comments
Something else just occurred to me. The two great revolutions in photography over the last twenty years are (1) digital cameras and (2) digital manipulation of images. The second is arguably even more significant, since it can also be applied to photographs taken by traditional methods (and scanned) and has even more possibilities. How many of the photographs we now encounter daily are not Photoshopped or otherwise manipulated outside of the camera? Aside from the most casual photography, probably not many. Discounting for changes in composition (a professional photojournalist was caught doing that a few years ago, much to his embarrassment), do we object to after-the-fact enhancement of color, contrast or exposure, or cropping? Do we call that trickery or suggest that it creates a photographic abnormality, an unreality, or violates some rule of color theory? Not that I've ever heard.
What I am hearing is that photography, like writing, should adhere to some kind of grammar. In principle, I can agree, up to a point. However the purpose of grammar in writing is to make the writing comprehensible, to promote the goal of communications, the exchange of information and ideas, not to make all writing the same or even similar. If the purpose of photographic grammar is similar to writing (and it seems it is), then it should have the same goal.
I agree that when image manipulation moved out of the realm of NASA, and into our hands, many good and bad things became possible.
As far as the grammar goes, there is a common language for photography, as there is for film as in motion pictures, Tv, etc.
But it's known in the professional realm. You can buy books on the topic, and you will learn that language, but otherwise, most people have no idea it's there. It's a technical based language, and that's true even in the artistic end.
No its not a grammar that restricts the end product, its a grammar that ensures the end product will be what was originally intended. That image has to go through processes that require translation from one process to the next. On a professional level there are different people and different equipment being used at each stage of the process. The grammar ensures that the image will maintain its intended "look" at the end of the process.
I think you mistook my analogy for a technical point. I was not making a technical argument. I thought I'd made that clear from previous posts, but to say again, I am not disputing the technical methods or requirements for producing images that reproduce what the photographer intended. My point, all along, is to inquire about what the photographer intends. It seems to me that what the photographer intends to communicate to the viewer is key here, much less so than the technical methods for getting there. We know that both photographers and filmmakers employ a variety of techniques to alter what the camera captures, both at and after the fact. So I don't think the rules are so immutable as you suggest. On the technical side, perhaps, but not on the creative side.
Hmmm...I find it interesting that you feel so comfortable in defining what I know and what I don't know. I've been to Kodak in Rochester New York. Spoken with Kodak chemists that hold PhD's in their respective fields. I've been to seminars with German engineers from Zeiss Optics. I've learned a lot about what I'm talking about.
I see what you are saying to some degree, but you are making it way more complicated than it really is. Human vision is subjective to a degree but its not that subjective. A group of people looking at a purple flower all agree that its a purple flower. There isn't much discrepancy on what we are looking at. Whether its pleasing or not can be subjective but in many cases we mostly are in agreement on what we find visual pleasing.
Why would they pay Adrianna Lima millions of dollars to appear in Victoria's Secret, or Halle Berry millions for a movie, why would they spend millions to shoot "The Dark Knight" in downtown Hong Kong in IMAX if human vision and perception were so widely subjective. The answer is because its not that widely subjective. The majority of people find these efforts visually appealing.
He does have a point though. There are tens of million of people in the US alone, mostly males as a lot is sexually linked, who are partially or completely colorblind. Is there perception just are "real" as a color expert? Well, it's real to them, but it's wrong when compared to average human vision standards, and even average vision standards are poor when compared to those trained to it.
Then there are those with the visual equivalence of a "tin ear". They see it, but they don't perceive it.
What we're talking about is not just the wide sweep of a mood evoked in a dark scene or whatever, but the ability to see minor variations in color, among other things.
I can give an example using myself. Part of my area in the photographic and graphics industry was as an expert in color. I used to say that color was my life. Even the smallest errors would bother me. watching Tv at a friends house was difficult, etc.
But then about a year ago, I was using my spectrophotometer to read color patches for a new printing paper so I could make a precision profile. when, as I always do, I looked at the printed page of color patches, I noticed that while I measured differences, in some areas, those covering the blue and yellow spectrum, I couldn't see all the variations I was reading. That had NEVER happened before. I could always see any variation I could measure. That alarmed me. I was also seeing a slight shadow when I read a book or on the computer monitor from the type.
I went to my eye doctor, who was startled. He told me that people never notice this until it gets really bad, and that it was the very beginning of cataracts. That made sense, because cataracts begin to yellow the lens, and that turns orange later on. It also causes refraction, causing reflections that could look like a shadow.
I asked him if we could do anything about it, and he said I could have the operations, though people would normally wait another two years, until it got much worse. Well, I wasn't going to wait for that to happen!!! So we did it. The first eye, the right, went well, but the second, was a disaster. After several more operations, and months (one reason I wasn't here for some time early in the year) things have settled down.
But, now I see those colors again! Blue is no longer looking purple, and magenta is no longer looking reddish, and red is no longer looking somewhat orange. I can now see those variation again.
But what about the tens of millions who have this problem to a greater or lessor extent, and don't know it? It creeps up on you. I may have gone longer if I didn't still do photography, printing, and calibration.
So what was real here? That I couldn't perceive those colors properly, or what I saw both before and afterwards?
Reality for ME isn't really reality, it's just what I see of it.
There is such a thing as natural skin tones, normal colors, normal contrast.
Agreed. We can even color correct a color image on a B/W monitor if we know the proper color values, and what to pick in the image. Dan Margulis loves to show people how to do that.
He does have a point though. There are tens of million of people in the US alone, mostly males as a lot is sexually linked, who are partially or completely colorblind. Is there perception just are "real" as a color expert? Well, it's real to them, but it's wrong when compared to average human vision standards, and even average vision standards are poor when compared to those trained to it.
Reality for ME isn't really reality, it's just what I see of it.
Oh yes I totally agree. And don't discount that vision and perception are not exactly the same for everyone. The scientists and engineers know that too.
At the same time they use the human visual system as the basis from which visual reproduction equipment is made. They average it out from the best case to the worst case
Oh yes I totally agree. And don't discount that vision and perception are not exactly the same for everyone. The scientists and engineers know that too.
At the same time they use the human visual system as the basis from which visual reproduction equipment is made. They average it out from the best case to the worst case
The one thing that we both know very well, coming from professional environments, is that those trained in it don't need to see things exactly the same way, we just have to understand what we're looking at, and agree on what we see.
But "normal" people can't, and really don't want to do that. They'll insist that what THEY see is correct. It's MUCH worse for audio, where we can't stop the sound and all listen to it for as long as we like as we can do with visual media.
But from a professional standpoint you see that those simplified solutions don't fully replace the actual mastery of the photographic technique. To really master it you cannot divorce the technical side from the artistic side, they work in tandem.
An example....
A few years ago "look up table" plug ins became extremely popular. The one that was used to death was the "Saving Private Ryan" look. It was a plug in that would automatically give any video the "SPR" look. Sometimes it was used well, most times it was horribly mediocre. Eventually it was worn out.
This was amateurs using simplified tools to create a look that previously required a great deal of skill to accomplish. But what those amateurs did not realize is that the full mastery to achieve that look required far more than they understood.
When they made Saving Private Ryan they made extremely exhaustive and thorough testing of everything to create that look. They were using cutting edge photographic chemistry techniques in the film print itself. At least for the time.
They tested the fabric of the costumes, they tested the materials the buildings were made of, they tested the make up the actors wore, they tested the paint used on the vehicles. They tested blood splattering effects, they tested how the debris flew from explosions. They tested everything to achieve that look.
In all of that effort the look wasn't intended to stand out on its own. It was only intended to serve the emotional impact of the story.
A plug in on its own limited way can approximate this look, but never fully replace all of the factors that went into creating it.
I think you mistook my analogy for a technical point. I was not making a technical argument. I thought I'd made that clear from previous posts, but to say again, I am not disputing the technical methods or requirements for producing images that reproduce what the photographer intended. My point, all along, is to inquire about what the photographer intends. It seems to me that what the photographer intends to communicate to the viewer is key here, much less so than the technical methods for getting there. We know that both photographers and filmmakers employ a variety of techniques to alter what the camera captures, both at and after the fact. So I don't think the rules are so immutable as you suggest. On the technical side, perhaps, but not on the creative side.
Hmmm...I find it interesting that you feel so comfortable in defining what I know and what I don't know. I've been to Kodak in Rochester New York. Spoken with Kodak chemists that hold PhD's in their respective fields. I've been to seminars with German engineers from Zeiss Optics. I've learned a lot about what I'm talking about.
I'm not defining what you do or do not know. I said that your statement shows that you don't understand "human perception". That you have a PhD in those fields hints at why that is... your focus (so to speak) is on optics, not on human perception.
I see what you are saying to some degree, but you are making it way more complicated than it really is. Human vision is subjective to a degree but its not that subjective. A group of people looking at a purple flower all agree that its a purple flower. There isn't much discrepancy on what we are looking at. Whether its pleasing or not can be subjective but in many cases we mostly are in agreement on what we find visual pleasing.
No, you are ignoring what comes after human vision... and that is human interpretation. The reason why a dozen people can see the same crime happen and all recount different things. The reason why people with excellent vision can have different reactions to the same image. The reason why the average retention of information from a lecture is 20%, a bit higher with visual aids.
Certainly there is large degrees of overlap, particularly within the same age range, gender and culture. That we are all humans (well, as far as I know anyhow) ensures some degree of commonality, but there is a great deal of variability. And my point wasn't even about that so much as it was about the impossibility of "accurately" capturing a scene in a photograph. The experience of looking at the scene is different than the experience of looking at the photograph so it can never be exactly accurate... except in a narrowly defined scientific sense, which is less than useful to most people and the average joe's perception of what is an "accurate" photograph.
This is particularly relevant when looking at an action scene... view the real scene gives you but a moment to capture the information and process it. Viewing a photograph you can examine it in detail, look at all parts of the image, etc. The two experiences are completely different. And cameras have a much different range of lenses, aperture settings, ISOs, etc. than the human eye (and all human eyes are different), so some photos simply cannot be experienced and some live views simply cannot be captured.
Either way, there is absolutely nothing to talk about. It's a free new feature, either your eyes like it, or they don't.
Any and all discussion over what is true HDR vs. whogivesaflute, is totally wasted breath.
LMAO at all the discussion over this. If it looks better, smile, if it doesn't, shrug and don't use it.
Either way, there is absolutely nothing to talk about. It's a free new feature, either your eyes like it, or they don't.
Any and all discussion over what is true HDR vs. whogivesaflute, is totally wasted breath.
If that's your opinion, why post in or even read this forum? That's an ignorant attitude that, if pursued to its logical extreme, would mean we'd be happy sticking with pinhole cameras and nobody would have bothered to do better.