NAB is a trades union for American broadcasters - which is a bit dull. But every year they have a big ol' party in Vegas and they all bring their new toys. This year's NABshow has just finished and some of the filmmaker's and video broadcaster's toys could have far reaching consequences for photographers. New BMPCC at just $1295 Apple ProRes Raw analysis from Noam Kroll Record what you like with the Atomos Ninja V Tiny camera shooting 4K raw from Indiecam Padcaster live broadcast kit More NAB201...
Apr 18, 2018•27 min
We catch up on some recent development on things we have mentioned in previous episodes: Skydio R1 autonomous drone in-depth test (originally mentioned on TFOP 019 ) || Lytro is no more , Google buying Lytro? , Google's Light Field Experiments ( TFOP 015 ) || NVIDIA's FastPotoStyle algorithm ( scientific paper ), Visual Poetry ( TFOP 011 ) || Behind The Scenes of Apple's HomePod ad , showing how little CGI was used....
Apr 11, 2018•30 min
People have been talking for years about extracting photos from video. Most people don't see it as currently viable because photo and video require very different camera settings and video footage is far less detailed than stills photos - until recently. Mythbuster Ade coined the term Videotography and got to work. Photos extracted from Ade's New York video , Chris' adventures on a ship in the arctic , Tips from the Top Floor 739: The Bumblebee Principle...
Apr 04, 2018•31 min
In this episode we discuss image stabilization from mechanical to digital to optical, we touch on Steadycam, gyro-based stabilizers and dive into how Hyperlapse seems to manage to do all that with a simple smart phone camera. Comparison of image stabilizers , The Technology Behind Hyperlapse EPISODE SPONSOR: Jimdo.com - to get 20% off JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness for your first year, use code FUTURE....
Mar 28, 2018•33 min
This week Ade has been looking into very small things - in fact singles. How do you photograph a single atom ? How do you capture a single photon ? Is there anything that small worth photographing? EPISODE SPONSOR: Jimdo.com - to get 20% off JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness for your first year, use code FUTURE....
Mar 21, 2018•25 min
The Skydio R1 seems to be the first fully autonomous selfie drone that actually delivers on their promise. Tested.com did a review in a forest. On the topic of printing: 3D printing pens , 3D avatars , vertical wall printing , hand jet , braille embosser , Barilla pasta printer , Heston Blumenthal , cake printers , 3D chocolate printing , toast printer #1 , toast printer concept , nail printer . EPISODE SPONSOR: Jimdo.com - to get 20% off JimdoPro and JimdoBusiness for your first year, use code ...
Mar 14, 2018•32 min
Ade does a science show - but this is head-science. How does wearing a body camera impact the behaviour of police officers and the citizens they engage with? How does the press treat formal studies? Could the technology be misused ? And how might video footage be misinterpreted due to the perspective of the shot? Take the NY Times test on this last question and see how you fare. And if you want to buy a body camera . Don't forget to let us know if you're interested in our 2018 TFOP meetup and ju...
Mar 07, 2018•30 min
Increasing resolution of existing photos has traditionally been done by a combination of extrapolation of the existing images, followed by some form of more-or-less smart sharpening. The Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen, Germany, has developed a new machine-learning based system named Enhancenet-PAT , which shows much greater success in increasing photo resolution using automated texture synthesis. Here's a talk (14-minute video) that explains this in more depth....
Feb 28, 2018•21 min
What if I want to climb a mountain to take photos or videos? What if I am a keen cyclist? What if I am a scuba diver?Traditionally I needed bespoke kit but now technology is helping us out. Do I still need an enormous DSLR or can I do something else? This week Ade and Chris talk about mobility with photo kit and how you can achieve it. What's out there today that's tiny and cool? Where does it go next? What (if anything) does this mean for the future of photography? Some fun 360 degree toys... N...
Feb 21, 2018•46 min
Lightfield photography (aka plenoptic photography) enables photographers to computationally re-focus their images and create different perspectives. We explore the history and future of Lytro and what this technology means for photographers and videographers alike. Lytro Cinema and Immerge 2.0 . Adobe's Lightfield experiments . Lightfields explained in videos: Talk by Paul Debevec (start here), Talk by Mark Bolas...
Feb 14, 2018•44 min
I want... all my images on all my devices, all edits sync'd, cloud backup, publishing, automatic keywording and a yacht. OK, maybe the yacht is out of scope but the rest is largely available in various forms and Ade has been checking out Google , Adobe and iCloud services to see what works and what really doesn't. Conclusions? This integration or workflow element of our photography is important but which services do Ade and Chris trust with their images and their money? How about a TFOP meetup i...
Feb 07, 2018•48 min
Did the Kodak Coin announcement confuse you? Kodak (actually one of their licensing partners) wants to put the entire photography business on a blockchain. On this episode we try to make sense of this announcement. Also: Chris' new streaming setup that looks like portrait mode (YouTube) and let us know if you'd be interested in a TFOP meetup in the UK in 2018....
Jan 31, 2018•34 min
At the family holiday festivities, Ade saw kids as young as 8 get drones as presents. "Holy Flying Menace, Batman" he thought to himself. He quickly ran to safety and started researching the mainstream acceptance of consumer-grade drones. Even common newspapers had buying guides . Also this week, hilarity ensues when Chris flies his own drone indoors and crashes it :-) Would you be interested in a TFOP meetup in the UK in 2018? Potential for knowledge sharing, playing with other people's toys, r...
Jan 24, 2018•22 min
Chris and Ade explore some new research that just came out of Nvidia, a manufacturer of graphics and machine learning hardware. In the future it will be possible to translate a winter image into a summer image or a corgi into a german shepherd and they are showing that in a set of impressive demos. TFOP 002 Depth . Research website . Example video 1 . Example video 2 . Explanation video . [Slightly NSFW] Face swapping for fake p*rn ....
Jan 17, 2018•31 min
This week Ade and Chris try to leave the science behind and talk philosophy. They almost manage it, but not quite. There is an amusing interlude while we try to imagine what art critics think and then the reality of what the real critics - friends and family - might say. Also, would you be interested in a TFOP meetup, workshop and live recording? Register your interest here and we will start developing the ideas!
Jan 10, 2018•39 min
Happy New Year! The L16 is an interesting beast. 16 cameras and some computational photography make this a brick-shaped camera that is hard to ignore. Chris and Ade bring you some first-hand experience, they discuss what this means for photography and also talk about some of its shortcomings as portrayed by an article on Petapixel . Our robot finally has a name: eevee . Thanks Dave Schuder for coming up with the idea! The t-shirt winners are Dave Schuder, Paul Friday for the cleverness award and...
Jan 03, 2018•54 min
Glitch art is the practice of using digital or analog errors for aesthetic purposes by either corrupting digital data or physically manipulating electronic devices. It has a long history in movies, music and the arts . It also has some humorous unintentional outlets . A key assumption is that it's ok to destroy pixels - something photographers often try to preserve. And it's GREAT FUN!!! Try it yourself with the DECIM8 app discussed in the show and take a look at one of Chris' projects and a sho...
Dec 27, 2017•23 min
Adam Savage (of Mythbusters fame) makes an interesting observation : lately the cameras that people bring to his live show's meet-and-greets have changed: where people used to bring phones, many of them now bring bigger dedicated cameras and analog media as well. Has the pendulum swung back? Has digital been a fad all along? Listen in while Chris and Ade look at the implications of this development....
Dec 20, 2017•31 min
For years, we have observed and participated in the megapixel race. Pretty much all photographers have an opinion on this. So do Chris and Ade :-) So how do all these pixels impact our images? Are they necessary? Can we use them to be creative? What might the results of that look like? All these questions and more inform the boys' weekly musing on The Future of Photography. Science article from 2005 . Lightning over New York from 2016 by Dan Piech . Some really big photos... . Gigapan makes prod...
Dec 13, 2017•28 min
Today's lenses are made of solid glass. This makes bigger lenses heavy and bulky. While fresnel lenses have managed to make lenses flatter by splitting them up in concentric circles of lens segments, they have always had some level of quality loss which makes them not ideal to use in photographic applications. Microsoft has now patented a flat lens that uses tiny nano structures on a flat surface to bend light similar to what a traditional lens does. For the future of photography this could mean...
Dec 06, 2017•23 min
OH NO. Our robot has no name. What an inexcusable oversight of us. Help us give it (him? her?) a name for a chance to win a t-shirt with ... you guessed it ... our robot on it. Submit your suggestions here , the deadline is December 24 2017. Good luck! (and of course, we'd also be more than happy if it turns out gender-neutral :))
Nov 30, 2017•5 min
In the last few years we have seen many approaches to animating photos. Not video as such, more visual effects for impact and fun. Right now it is getting easier all the time. Chris and Ade discuss how we got here, what tools we can use today and the impact they have on our images. From cinemagraphs , through professional tools and now into consumer space, we have lots to play with. Animoto and Quik will help you with presenting photos to friends and family. And Apple Live Photos , along with Sa...
Nov 29, 2017•32 min
What if one photo could contain multiple focal lengths and treat the magnification of background and foreground in a fundamentally different way? Researchers at the UCSB (the University of California, Santa Barbara) have moved one step closer to this. Their research paper shows their algorithm allowing to take a stack of images that was taken from different perspectives and at different focal lengths and combining them into a single photo with variable focal lengths....
Nov 24, 2017•25 min
Are you deep? Depth has many meanings in photography. Specifically for computational photography it can involve calculating depth, blurring, focus stacking and more. Chris and Ade discuss all these things and the way our cameras can work it all out - so mostly yeh then and less on philosophy! Mamiya waist level finder Asus Zenfobe AR Apple ARKit Photogrammetry Bookmark the website here...
Nov 20, 2017•25 min
So what exactly is computational photography? Chris and Ade discuss a range of examples including panoramas, HDR and lens correction. Do they nail the jelly to the wall? Not completely but it’s fun trying and the more they try the bigger the topic gets. More power is definitely good though! Wikipedia definition Bookmark the website here
Nov 19, 2017•23 min
Did you hear the one about the new podcast? Well this is it. Chris and Ade met, talked and found an enormous new area to podcast about. The Future of Photography includes computational photography, image making, smartphones, software, film and more Bookmark the website here
Nov 18, 2017•11 min
