(no subject)

[olivermoss]

* The BS around the capabilities of camera phones is insane. I have a 7 year old mid-range camera from a brand most people do not even count as a professional brand. I have the iPhone somenumber Pro with 3 lenses. (It's not the most recent, it's one behind) I did some shooting recently only carrying my phone due to the heat and also ... I accidentally have a package shipped to a wrong pick up location and did an accidental 3 hour walk last night. I need the walk, it was fine. But I, uh, mixed up two cross streets when I had it sent.

Anyway, yeah, most of the images I am going to reshoot... and I kind of want to ramble about this for several paragraphs because of some recent BS about how we 'just accept' AI in photography to argue with accepting it everywhere and it's like... back all the way up in *several* ways. Actual AI in any stage is rare and cell phone computational photography is not AI and... and several other things including the massive problem where people who start with phones tend to hit a wall when they try to use a stand alone camera, even in programmatic mode, due to deep, complicated lack of understanding of the images they make. It's not just that they can't make the images they want, it's not just that they can't express what the problem is, it's that they, on the most basic level, don't even know what is 'off' about the images to them. They also fundamentally misunderstand how their gear even works.

I read a few articles before making this post in case I missed a big development in AI assisted photography and no, it looks like I didn't. I personally never use a preset. I almost never use anything algorithmic in my image editing, but I know how to use the tools, have played with them and keep informed. I am not a purist, it's just not my thing... unless I really, really want to clone something out to fix a compositional problem in which case I absolutely do. In 99.99% of my images I am just reducing, by hand, the image dynamic range to make it look more like what my eye sees.


* I let my queue on my photo a day blog run dry during my heat wave migraine and I am going to reload it today. I was going to stick some recently taken cell phone images in there to quickly get some stuff going there, but when I reviewed my cell phone pics I just went nope to most of them.

* The package I picked up may or may have not been the poster image for the Stranger Things season 4 finale on a black T shirt... and also a dark grey T shirt...





The T shirt stock is nice, but the actual screen printing is not great and not well planned. It's got 'we didn't think this images would be this big, uh, get merch out fast' vibes. It is official Netflix merch. I still like it and if I buy anything else it will be in person. I've heard the officially released Hellfire club shirts are not as quality as the fan-made ones.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, while cell phone photography is better than it once was, it's nowhere near what you can do with a real camera, imo. It's all I have right now, and all I've had for years, but it's STILL frustrating more often than not. (Though I'm also not using a phone with a camera that's used as a selling point for the phone or anything. I'm sure some are better.)

But also, IT ISN'T AI. DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS??? (Not you, I hope it's clear the people who think it is.)

Those poster images are really cool - it's a shame that it's not a well-designed shirt. I hope the shirts are at least comfortable, and I hope the screen printing lasts. Annoying that it wasn't better planned.
Fan merch is so often better than original merch! It's almost sad.

[olivermoss]

I hope I never sound like I am talking down about cell phone photography, because I don't mean to and I used to switch between a Pen and iPhone a lot depending on the shot. But the actual data intake is very limited. And yeah, it's not AI. It's not close. I deeply dislike photos with actual AI and I am not the only one. And also, it's like... are people really going to sync to an AI for an assist in setting up the shot? I mean, people do. I know people who have tried such devices and the work they produce tends to be awful.

Yeah, the shirts are cozy. I will wear them, but they are solidly in 'could be better, and should be for the price'. Maybe better ones will come out at a point. I am hopeful for fan merch at Rose City Comic Con.

[mistressofmuses]

No, not at all! But yeah, there are very genuine limitations to what cell phone cameras can do (or at least can do well). And there's a LOT of misrepresentation, both overt, with simulated images showing off impossible results from the touted features, and covert, with things being handwaved as "AI" and the like when it... isn't that. I'm not sure if I've ever actually seen photos that really used AI, though I may have.

I'm glad the shirts are still worth wearing, though it's a bummer they aren't better for what they are. Hopefully fan merch does come to the rescue!

[olivermoss]

The AI pics I've seen have the same Uncanny Valley effect as super ultra insane HDR pictures of storms that only appeal to, I assume, 13 year old boys. So much visual noise and no understanding of subject. That may change, obvs. AI has a lot of dangers and I get very snarly when people use utter BS to normalize it.

[mistressofmuses]

Oh geez, those SUPER heavy HDR shots grate on me. (And I resent that despite having the HDR setting turned off on my phone camera, it still auto turns it on almost every time I try to use it, because it's an "auto suggestion" that I have to turn off AGAIN for every. single. fucking. shot. That's neither here nor there, but I DO NOT WANT SUPER HDR ON EVERYTHING DAMMIT.)

I'd love to live in a world where the idea of AI-assisted everything or "smart" everything wasn't something that had pitfalls and dangers that we have to be aware of. But we DO live in a world where any and all of that stuff can either be misused or open to bad actors or just plain malfunction in a way that is literally dangerous, etc. Trying to pretend stuff is already commonplace in a way it isn't and therefore should be further normalized via misinformation is VERY worth being snarly over.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I don't want to live in a world where most content is AI and also AIs are making the AI content look popular via bots... etc. The Dead Internet Theory isn't currently true, but it is a thing that could happen and it's one of many reasons I hiss at AI normalization or thinking it's 'cute' to help bots learn to recognize objects.

[mistressofmuses]

Ugh, no. I was thinking things like tracking and data security, but hadn't even touched on Dead Internet stuff. But yeah, the idea of AI-generated and AI-boosted content (when any AI that's trained on basically any dataset will know that boosting apparent popularity is the way to "win"/perform the best) utterly eclipsing any actually human-generated content is a pretty dark one. That's definitely not the world I want to live in.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, I am probably best off thinking about Dead Internet as little as possible, but that is a lot of why I hiss at these normalization attempts.