You're listening to Tips from the Top Floor episode 935 for July the 5th, 2023.
Music.
Hey hello and welcome it's Chris you are listening to your favorite photography podcast Tips,
from the Top Floor coming to you from Hanover from the viewfinder villa right outside the
gates of Hanover in Germany.
I am happy to have you back and let's see, one, two, three, we're talking about Getty today, about Game Boy, Blade Runner,
Nerd Level 10,000, something about science, National Geographic and some trend spotting.
Yes, there's a new trend in photography land. But let's kick this off with a slightly juicy piece of news from the photography world.
Renowned music photographer Alec Byrne has decided to take on the giant Getty Images.
This is about a copyright infringement lawsuit. Now Byrne is no small fry in the industry. He's
known for his iconic shots of the London music scene from the 60s and 70s.
He captured legends like ABBA and Fleetwood Mac. And what is this about? Well, he alleges that,
that Getty Images has been stealing his photography pretty much.
Well, they have... Okay, so what he says, what the lawsuit says is that they've been selling his photographs
without any agreement or contract with him.
He claims that at least 175 Getty Images customers downloaded and copied his photos through Getty's
premium access subscription option.
At least 62 customers purchased a la carte licenses to his images and he says
no I did not give KT any permission to do that. The lawsuit particularly focuses on a photo of ABBA that Byrne has shot in his private London studio
back in 1974.
And he claims that he only discovered in 2021 that Getty Images were licensing this image out to their clients.
And we're talking like publications like the Los Angeles Times, Vox, DotDash, they have published that image in particular.
Interestingly, earlier this year Getty Images itself sued Stable Diffusion as the AI image
company because Getty claims they had stolen over 12 million of its copyrighted photos.
It seems like Getty Images is caught a bit in the copyright conundrum, being both the
plaintiff and the defendant in different cases around copyright. It's a bit of a tangled thing
here. Yeah, so getty images. Yeah, I've, I like them so much. Cool project. Here's, here's,
here's an interesting project, which initially as a photography, well, okay, so have you had a Game Game Boy.
Chances are yes. Have you had a Gameboy camera? Not that many people, but you know this huge big blob of a thing that you would,
slot into the Gameboy cartridge slot and it had this ball-shaped big thing on the top
which is a camera that can tilt forwards and backwards and,
and the images would be very pixelated and but it's a style and it's It's a retro kind of thing that has always had its fans and so here's a modder called
Chris Graves and he's given the Game Boy Camera a kind of a makeover, sleek, minimalistic,
it transformed that into a Game Boy Mini camera the size of a Game Boy cartridge.
That's not just a cosmetic change. He's managed to like condense the original Gameboy camera into this small cartridge size
He's done this by using a custom circuit board and a smaller lens actually a lens from an iPhone XR.
But the mini camera uses the same sensor the same chipset the same ROM as the original
So it's pretty much the same camera and I've seen comparison images. Yeah, pretty much the same but it is the size of,
A Gameboy cartridge, it looks like one, just a little lens on it.
And the shell of that camera is 3D printed. Opens up possibilities.
It's a pretty cool project, so if you're a fan of the Gameboy camera, this might be right up your alley.
Okay, this next one. Here's some spy stuff. You know, the, the...
There's things in photos that might reveal information about you that you might not want to reveal.
Here's a good example. Keys.
A classic example has been possible for a long time. Take a photo of a key or someone dangles their car keys into the camera
and now people can recreate duplicates of those keys based on that photo.
Look at even fingerprints on a photo with a current camera with decent resolution fingerprints. You could use fingerprints or photos,
to Make like a like a fake finger to trick a keypad into letting you in,
Cameras are becoming increasingly high resolution and that's awesome on the one side and a little bit scarier on the other side
Now enter a blade runner Like thing that yeah, this is this is okay. This is really interesting a.
Research team from the University of Maryland has developed an AI powered method that can reconstruct,
complex scenes and objects in 3d,
using only the reflections in a person's eye Yes, you heard that right. The reflections in your eyes. So, our eyes do reflect the room around us in one way or another.
It acts a bit like a wide-angle lens, so you get a distorted version of that.
And that team has overcome a lot of challenges, such as having to compensate for not just the shape of the iris,
but the texture of the iris that gives you like a big...
A backdrop that is not easy to separate from what's in front of it and then.
They pulled that off and they did real-world experiments, so They were able to successfully reconstruct a room in 3d using these eye reflections,
And that is something straight out of a sci-fi movie This is very Blade Runner. So they they,
used Nerfs neural radiance fields for that which again can use can create 3d scenes from,
2d data inputs in some way and,
now If you see the examples, yes, you do not get like a high resolution of,
What is around it, but they had stuff on a table in front of that person and that stuff was.
3d if I'd based on the reflections in their eyes, so,
This is fascinating. And it's also a reminder of how technology and science continues to
push the boundaries of what's possible. It could well be—by the way, there's also
AI in that, of course, and this could well be something that in future adds information
to AI processing of images and might make photography different and better. But of course
it raises interesting questions. What does this mean for privacy? Could this technology
be misused? If we want to shield ourselves from people prying into our private life,
should we wear sunglasses from now on? Always? Or special lenses, special contacts that reflect
something else. I don't know. It's almost the future of photography is a moving target
and this is our job to keep up with it. So let's keep our eyes open, pun intended, and
see where this takes us. Yeah, this is weird. This is really weird. Next one, Nerd Level
10,000. So it's a fascinating project about photography and how it physically works. Like.
You know, there's a light ray and it goes through a lens and that lens bends the light
and it then goes through an aperture and through more lenses and then hits a sensor and it
gets captured by either a red, green or a blue pixel and then, and so on and so on.
Enter Blender. Blender is an open source 3D software that is used to render movies and stills and things.
Been using in some big productions. It's pretty much state-of-the-art and it's free and it's awesome
and Blender has become so good that it can do physical simulations of light.
So, it's always like there's always modules in there that can do physics in terms of like things bumping into each other and to make that realistic, that's very important to make a realistic movie, but this goes down to the level of simulating light.
So a photographer, and this is a link to a video in the show notes that,
if you're nerdy enough, you might want to watch it, a photographer has taken that in to the extreme and he's built a camera in Blender
that simulates light and the optics.
So it's like he does, he makes a model in in Blender of a box with a hole, makes a pinhole camera, and then he cranks up the amount of like,
samples for that operation and that makes a picture.
It simulates the light going through that hole and on the other side he places like a,
Canvas and it makes a picture a pinhole picture and he continues to like a build a proper camera box and then he builds a,
lens like a glass lens made of virtual glass, but that simulates how light gets bent in glass and,
And so he has a lens that then projects the image into the camera and then he builds,
He he continues he builds virtual film as in like three layers.
That capture different wavelengths and then he combines those three back into a,
color photo and then he builds even like an aperture
into that lens that can be changed by turning like a virtual aperture ring you
can link these things together physically in in blender now it's not a hundred percent perfect but the photos are amazing that come out of this even
and and even blender has its limitations of course but it's damn near close and
this is really this is nerd level 10,000 this is so awesome and the resulting
images are great. The article in the links or the video in the links shows
some of them and down to the bokeh and other kind of artifacts generated by those virtual glass lenses. Now again not perfect he writes under the video
let me quote him try this at your own risk I had this idea 10 years ago finally got around to it took a good couple of months to maybe I'll have to
back in another 10 years in order to properly simulate diffraction and lens flare. So yeah,
highest recommendation, go check it out. Wonderful photography related science-y nerd stuff.
Speaking of science!
There's an interesting field in scientific photography. Okay, art conservation. Let's make a jump to art conservation.
So, if you look at old paintings, they have varnish on them.
Patina, like the gunk of hundreds of years that has collected on those images.
And this is usually a very like a weird brownish kind of layer that makes the colors duller and that.
People to want to conserve and and and Take well people who want to conserve these images and and restore them to their original,
Pristine colors they have to take that varnish off it's one part of it and it's a painstaking process because you'd see people with cotton swabs and and,
cleaning solutions and and trying to guess where does the varnish end and where does the,
Picture start so you take only take the varnish off and not dissolve like part of the actual color. So,
A team of scientists at King's College in London has developed a super sensitive camera. That's about to revolutionize the way
that we preserve our cultural heritage.
It's a camera, yeah? It's not your run-of-the-mill DSLR.
It's a camera that uses a new-ish imaging technology. It's called macroscopic fluorescence lifetime imaging, FLIM for short.
And FLIM isn't new. It's been used in the medical field to study and to track cancer cells
and even detects brain tumors in these things.
Very, very clearly delineates tumors from the rest of the surrounding stuff.
But this time it's being used for art conservation,
and that might be a bit of a game changer here, because, again, traditionally art conservationists,
they have had to, like, really know what they're doing.
They would use ultraviolet light and a whole lot of guesswork to get it right.
And really relies on the skill of the person and it's prone to not being entirely accurate.
But this new camera system removes the guesswork by picking up like the minute differences in
how this centuries-old varnish appears next to the paint and the canvas.
So the system has, I don't know, technically I don't fully understand it, but it kind of
of makes the like like you shine a blue light against it and then the camera
kind of times every pixel times how long it takes the like the the the varnish
fluorescing and that makes it possible for some in some way or another to to
really exactly tell those apart make them visible so yeah art conservation.
And photography. All right!
National Geographic. National Geographic has a very special place in my heart.
The magazine. If you were in the United States, this has always been around for you.
But a German boy who grew up in the 70s and 80s, that was different. We didn't have National
Geographic here. It was an American thing. For the longest time, they started bringing it over here
later but back in that time we didn't have that. But our family had an American friend from California Valentina Valena, the old lady.
She's not alive anymore but I remember her visiting back in in the 80s a few times and when I was around 14 probably for my birthday she gave me a
subscription to National Geographic and for two to three years during that time
in my youth every month I would receive an envelope from the United States with,
the new issue of National Geographic in it and that helped pique my interest in
in the world, in traveling, and in the English language, because if I wanted to read something, I had to translate it.
That's why this next story kind of really touches me on a personal level, because it seems like.
The winds of change are blowing through the hallowed halls of National Geographic. The magazine is,
known for its amazing photojournalism and wildlife photography.
In. They have reportedly laid off the last of their staff writers along with a number of other
employees. This is according to the Washington Post reporting. According to them, 19 employees
including staff writers and members of the audio team, I guess around, well you need audio
production these days. They already were given the bad news back in April and...
This kind of coincides with widespread layoffs of their parent company, which is Disney.
Now, there is a bit of a mixed message here, because while it's been reported that all staff
writers have been let go, there's an internal source somewhere that suggests that the magazine,
still employs writers and editors. So there's a bit of interpretation here. This could mean that
that like dedicated writing roles have been eliminated,
maybe article assignments are now being outsourced to freelancers or cobbled together by editors
or written by, I have no idea.
There's two wildlife crime reporters who remain on staff. Their salaries are apparently funded
by the Wildlife Watch Program.
Which is supported by non-profit National Geographic Society. They already had some layoffs back in September 2022,
like the six top editors were let go back then. And they claim they will continue to publish
monthly, but the copies will no longer be on US newsstands. So yeah, it's it kind of it really
hurts right? I grew up with National Geographic and it seems to be pulling back on the legendary
photography that is known for. The magazine has reportedly.
Curtailed photo contracts that allowed photographers to spend months in the field.
Yeah, and National Geographic insists that these staff changes won't impact the quality of their
storytelling. Um, yeah. Just a bit of history here. Disney purchased National Geographic back
in 2017 as a part of a larger merge with 21st Century Fox. And that was kind of a turning
point because that's when the magazine turned into a for-profit organization. Up to then,
it was a non-profit journal of the National Geographic Society since 1888. So there you go.
All right and last but not least this one I thought this was really weird initially but then
Okay, so here's the story. Influencer Liliana Madrigal has stirred up a bit of a buzz on
TikTok. She claims that the secret to the perfect selfie isn't your iPhone's camera
but rather the screenshot function. Yep, they call it screenshotting. So I would have shrugged
this off, but that video has racked up like 4 million views at this point, I guess, roughly.
And the, what's her name again? Madrigal, she takes a jab at the iPhone's camera quality
for selfies, calling it really bad and she advocates for a pretty unconventional method,
for a selfie on the front-facing camera and then screenshotting the image from
the camera app on the screen and then she crops it and.
Makes it look like a regular photo without the screen elements and it's notable that this thing received like 400,000 likes
and lots of comments calling her genius for that tip and of course, I mean, this reminds me of when I was a kid
I grew up again in the 70s, 80s, back then I sometimes recorded something onto a cassette recorder
by just putting the cassette recorder in front of, let's say a TV and,
record through the microphone, so very unconventional, but it did the job. It wasn't good in quality or anything, but it did the job and it was okay
and for the time it was plenty good. Now of course,
we as photographers, we have these cameras with 5000 megapixels and super quality and so on
and so I tested this. I tested this and of course
Of course, resolution is one issue. 12 megapixels, that's what the front camera does, versus the 2 megapixels of the screen.
So you get this drop-in resolution, which is part of the image. The image comes out softer, of course, at the same size.
So it is really good at hiding blemishes in these things. So that's one of the effects that I'm pretty sure we're seeing here.
The other is that it's not mirrored.
Like, if you do that, then you see yourself like you see yourself on the camera, which is mirrored.
And that might change the perception here. And then last but not least, the one thing that this
live preview on the screen doesn't do is all the processing that the iPhone camera does. And,
if you've ever looked into this, the iPhone camera takes photos all the time without you
pressing a button. And then when you press the button, it uses photos taken prior to your
pressing the button and after you're pressing the button it's like 5, 10, 15 I don't know how many
photos that will then be fed through the the optimizing algorithms and bring out the detail
and so on and it's it is it's a different look than the just a plain photo from the camera that.
Is it's also processed but not to that extent and a lot of people seem to prefer the
air quotes crappy kind of quality from a screenshot to what the camera tickles out.
So I think it's just it's just again as in air quotes a serious photographer
that made me chuckle but then I'm also witnessing a new generation dealing with
photography completely non-technical completely they don't care if it's two
megapixels or 12 megapixels because it will be used in a context that doesn't
really rely on resolution. The processing isn't isn't working so they do it in a
different way and it's it's fine it's good enough it doesn't matter if it's
not perfect. So they experiment and I think that's a refreshing approach to
photography, even though I probably wouldn't do that. But yeah,
screenshotting, it's apparently a thing. So there you go.
Music.
And that was it for today's episode. Thanks for listening. Thanks for subscribing. Thanks for leaving a rating or review,
wherever you get your podcasts.
As always, you can leave feedback for the show at tfttf.com slash hi.
Let me know if you have questions, do you want me to discuss a specific topic, do you,
have an anecdote or something that happened to you that you are curious about, let me
know tfttf.com slash hi.
Music.
Here's Mark who has done just that. He writes,
Hi Chris, we are certainly living in another photography renaissance or the death of it.
I listened to a zoom call with ASMP yesterday and it's really the wild west out there regarding AI.
A lot has to be sorted out on both the importing of images and their export or usage.
Adobe is taking the right path but I feel that Pandora's box has been opened and it
will be 10 times bigger in a week.
Regarding using AI for street photography, I think it's a losing battle.
You have to remember that AI doesn't make a face.
I could be wrong. It is taking a photo from a source and replacing it.
I believe this will all come to a head when faces can be tracked.
Eventually.
I just think about how that will affect street photographers.
Once someone finds their face in your photo, the lawyers are going to have a field day.
Now add to that an AI generated face of someone else who the AI didn't get permission from
and you don't get permission from.
Happens if the face goes in onto a body that everyone recognizes? When can it be considered
art and can it be printed in a book of street photography or sold as a fine art print for
your wall? I love the street photography genre but I fear it may be at its end once people
can find your photo of their face in the image. Thanks for the great work you do. Hey Mark!
Time now here. Glad you're still in photography professionally. This feedback goes back to
the article about the photographer replacing people's faces in street photography using
AI generated different faces, I believe it was in the last episode.
I agree that this is a bit of the Wild West right now and that the pace of change is kind of frightening,
But there's one important thing to understand and that is the AI does not just copy and paste it,
Generates so these generated faces are like they're really generated.
But of course based on training on real-world material on photography out there on people's faces. It's
The best comparison I can come up with is like a bit like let's say you study
painting and you study what a Picasso looks like. You do this really well, spend
years and then you try to paint your own Picasso. What you paint might look like a
Picasso. It might even come close but it's not an exact copy. It's a newly generated piece of art that you just made based on what you learned and the AI
AI does something similar to that. All those current lawsuits that target AI
companies are not because an AI would make an exact copy or make a collage of
copyrighted snippets. That is not how it works. Those lawsuits are about the,
material that the AI uses for training. So Getty for example suing Stability AI
that's what they are suing them over. That Stability used Getty's images for training. So we will see some things come out of that. I just don't know which
direction that will go and when it will happen.
But yeah…,
Let's keep our eyes open.
And again, if you want to get your feedback here on the show, tfttf.com slash hi.
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And as usual, Patreon supporters are first in line. You get to listen to new episodes before anyone else does.
So, Eastern European electric photo road trip is a go, well, has been for a while.
There's one spot open, one last spot open on the way from Berlin to Transylvania.
Find out more at discoverthetopfloor.com.
It starts on September the 2nd.
And now go out and take amazing photos. Be nice to each other, make sure to spend some time in the sun, it's summer outside,
And of course...
Music.