Phone Photo Magic
even if the picture is "phony", it sure looks nice
MOBILE PHONES / CAMERAS / INSPIRATION
The message of our title is etched, by law, into passenger side-view mirrors on automobiles. It is a reminder that the object (or elephant) seen through a convex mirror can be viewed in the mirror, thanks to the shape of the mirror and if you can see it, you should be CAREFUL. A convex mirror bulges outward and a concave mirror is recessed inward.
Concave mirrors are useful for seeing around corners or letting you see a wider angle behind you (some people put them on their computer monitors). Concave mirrors are all about concentrating an image and are the “secret sauce” in telescopes. While you keep your eyes closed with headphones, dental technicians and dentists use them to assess carefully where you have not been flossing.
Despite the similarity to the classic 1960s movie “A Man for All Seasons” about Sir Thomas More, it turns out that making do with “A Lens for All Reasons” is quite a challenge. Our eyes are a WONDERFUL compromise for all we may need to do but the real wonder of humanity is the adaptability of our brain to tweak these images for different uses. Now in the 21st century, our brains are “enhancing” our vision through these portable computers we hold in our hands. It is quite impressive that it has taken nearly 2M years for us to get there.
I thought of today’s post as inspired by the amazing quality of images we can take with our phones. My phone is a little bit older and operates with a single lens (not counting the front-facing selfie camera). In some ways, my phone is handicapped in the same way as we are. Our eyes are moderately concave lenses (they bulge out) but having two helps us in the judgment of depth perception, speed, and movement. In a computer analogy, one could say we humans are stuck with mediocre hardware but AMAZING software. I have dropped my phone a few times and it is coming to the end of its life. I have begun thinking about a new phone but have not made any decisions yet. My current phone is a Google Pixel 3 and is about 3 years old. If not for the broken screen, I would be happy to make it work for a while longer. Just like our eyes, the challenge of vision is often being able to capture adequate input light to generate an image. Phones compensate with longer exposures similar to the way it takes our eyes some time to adapt when moving from high to low light conditions.
If you are a frequent reader, you know I made a single political post a few days ago and did a mea culpa retraction a few days later. Treading into opinion is a fool’s errand and I suppose my amateur attempt makes me the fool. Talking about politics or religion or even the relative merits of types of mobile phones is probably not advisable. I believe for some, their attachments to their phones and ecosystems are akin to religious fervor. I find it interesting that our modern world presents us with enormous numbers of choices be they foods, toilet paper brands, supermarkets, or movie choices (Netflix, etc). It seems that our knee-jerk response to all these choices has been to narrow our likes and be quite committed to things like “who makes the best pizza” with real ferocity. I imagine these are all aspects of our individuality and to mess around about such things is not recommended.
So I will keep this discussion general in nature avoiding such pitfalls. One of the most interesting trends in phones is the continuous addition of more and more camera lenses. The newest iPhones have 3 lenses while the latest Samsung Galaxy phones have 4 lenses. Our phones just keep adding hardware to provide newer ways to see our world. Meanwhile, we get along with the same set of eyes. As the phones evolve it is the ingenuity of the software on the phone, coupled with specialized hardware that makes the abilities of the phones to do what our brains do, take in the raw image, and then arbitrate and determine what adjustments can be made to make sense of what the phone sees. When I think of the quality of phones from early smartphones to today, I think it is safe to predict the future will shock us all.
This proliferation of lenses is what inspired today’s photo. It is a tribute to the amazing adaptability of human beings that putting a different mirror on the passenger side of the car than what we have on the driver’s side would work. We are AMAZING in that little etched warning is sufficient to coordinate with our vision and simply route that image throughout our brain so that we simply keep driving, and don’t change lanes because those objects are “closer than they appear”. We can think of that as our amazing software and the reason why it is understood that once we put together an image between our eyeball and optic nerve, different parts and aspects go to completely different regions of our brain focused on completely different matters like color, motion, and memory. We are just amazing. I believe in these wonderful times that we are so fortunate to be part of, the way we process information will be mimicked more and more in the machines we make. I think that biological mimicry is a great next frontier for all of us.
It all started, at least for me way back in engineering school. There was a portion of physics we all had to learn called optics. So much of this we owe to a man named Gauss. Without going into it much, suffice it to say many physics and engineering students wrestled with his equations and a few others during classes about optics. I think it is safe to say, that Gauss may have contributed more to our understanding of how we see the world than almost anyone most people have never heard of. Gauss was primarily a mathematician. I think the best mathematicians came to explain some aspects of how the world works through the language of math. One of the many areas that Gauss revolutionized was that he EXPLAINED with mathematics how a lens of almost any shape and size works and can predict all sorts of cool things about what happens when the light enters on one side and exits on the other. For those of us who battled those equations and might take five to ten minutes to solve a given problem what if you could do that faster than a snap of your fingers? What those equations teach us is that different kinds of lenses bring with them compromises in the image they present. The modern cell phone accepts those limitations and enhances what is seen with software. It is a brave new world (thanks Aldous Huxley). Enter the modern cell phone and the SLR camera previously. I think, for many, an SLR camera was indispensable only 10-15 years ago and today we are perilously close to using them as frequently as our encyclopedias.
Why does this stuff “matter”? We all are quite concerned about our photos. Those family shots are idealized in our social media posts. Anything that makes us “look better” is worth it to the Instagrammers of the world. We are all quite willing to suspend authenticity to improve our image. After all, this is how the world sees us or perhaps how we wish to appear to the world. Does all of this breakneck speed improvement reach practical limits?
I have read a couple of sci-fi books by a person named Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is often referred to as a futurist. At an early age, he made amazing contributions to help people with hearing abnormalities and total deafness. He is one of the great innovators who drove the development and refinement of cochlear implants. He has continued to distinguish himself in many technological areas. He is most associated these days with his rather controversial ideas about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and super-intelligent machines. I think that his beliefs are somewhat fringe but his futurist ideas are interesting to read and consider.
In one of his books, he had a cartoon that he felt signified the moving targets associated with naysayers about what are the practical limits of artificial intelligence and whether are there barriers that will never be able to be achieved. He believes that many aspects of technology will follow the speedy advancement we have seen with computing which approaches exponential growth in some areas and is often referred to as Moore’s Law. He believes as a result we will transcend human performance in nearly all areas and much sooner than predicted. I think I am a bit more of a tech pessimist but his books are entertaining nevertheless. The cartoon I think is the most interesting. The gist is a pile of large Post-it notes from the past of all the things that would never be achieved by machines. As those “hard-to-imagine” things become part of everyday life, the post-it notes fall to the floor.
The problem with all lenses is you design them for a single use and accept the tradeoffs. That is why, on a high-end phone nowadays, we have multiple lenses available, each for different uses. We all want to be able to get lots of people into the image and we of course cannot get enough selfies. The range of images we can capture with our phones boggles the imagination mostly because the phone does all the work and figures out which lens is best for the job at hand. In many ways, with modern technology (and lots of lenses) we can begin to simulate what this one basic lens in our eye COUPLED with some amazing “post-processing” can do in the blink of an eye. We live in amazing times. Even though our phones have “better” lenses than our own eyes, there is still an awful lot they cannot do. It seems we are equipped with an amazing set of “post-processing” for everything we see. It is all buried somewhere in the six-pound mass balancing on your brain stem. Now, however, it is time for our “amazing brains”. We all know that our eyeballs pretty much stay the same shape all the time. We already knew they bulged out and that makes them convex. If all we had were these convex lenses, we would be as limited as an old Nokia phone. Luckily that thing I write about often and refer to as the “frontal lobe” is always ready to save the day.
Our brains acquire all of the basic yet amazing images our eyes can see and it does the rest. Remember, we are stuck with a couple of amazing yet limited convex lenses that are a compromise to collect enough information from all the directions stuff is coming at us. What does that mean? Well here are some examples and insights:
scientists think that what the eye “sees” is sent to three different regions of your brain that are focused on (1) shape (2) color and (3) motion/location/spatial
some things are simpler to understand. Depth perception, seeing in 3D is mostly a result of having two eyes. Having two lenses that can focus perhaps far and near almost simultaneously helps you gather enough info to realize when someone or something is close by or far away or even how deep the object is.
I think some of the most amazing things that our brains are accomplishing we just take for granted. Modern phone cameras are finally trying to tackle some of these things. Have you ever seen a photograph where there are multiple people at different distances and some of the faces end up “too wide”? Our brains take care of that (we recognize them immediately even though their face is too wide) while this modern world has to tackle such things with “artificial intelligence”.
I think the inspiration for all of this is what we see with our own eyes. Our phones and cameras are a wonderful thing. However, when you stop to consider the diversity of things our eyes can see, discern, and inform us about, they are the stars of this post. The eyes have it in this song also. Alas, our eyes and the accompanying memories that come along with what we see are sometimes imperfect. That is the real value of a photograph. So the next time you take a photo here is a song that I thought the video especially reminded me of why we take them. Two songs seemed fair since the post was long. With that, we will finish with a pun, the eyes have it. Adjourned. Hope to see you tomorrow.
Your pictures are often too interesting to ignore. And sometimes, the way your mind works is purely amazing. What an interesting topic tonight. I didn't tell you this when you did the retraction (of sorts), but I found nothing wrong with you speaking your mind. And if people couldn't handle that, then it was their issue, not yours. I get you not wanting to rock the boat, but sometimes, if you write long enough, you'll likely find that stubborn streak inside you to simply say, "Too bad, so sad," if someone doesn't like what you wrote. I've gotten more opinionated in my posts from time to time. It was damn near impossible to stay quiet during 2020. And trust me...I didn't. I didn't pontificate. I stated my opinion with fervor and then I moved on to the more Mary Poppins topics I explore. lol In any case, keep it up, Mark. You're handling this nightly writing thing pretty damn well!