BebuLamar

Yup and so although I have no problem calling digital as digital because the analog signals from the sensor are digitized but it bothers me calling film as analog. I think the term analog for film photography came from Europe as they used it there first.

JBRIII

While from a technical standpoint your question depends on some official definition of photography (Check with the French language controllers or American standards organizations like ASTM), even back when, there were different films including IR film so which was the real deal?

Remember by the official rules that removed Pluto as a planet, all planets revolve around THE SUN, so no other planets beyond our system, or we are back at the center of the Universe, etc.

Bill 45

I think it will be short than you think. People don't want to take time to think about getting a picture, their want to just push a button and have a picture.

JBRIII

There are several good books on the general problems with A.I. One is "Weapons of Math Destruction". It's not so much about bad intentions, but how efforts to use it to avoid human prejudices often end the same as the data used is prejudiced from the start. For example, the incident where google identified an african as a gorilla. Most likely the data set of images contained few or no minorities. There are public datasets of images that are used as test data (same set can be used by all to compare methods for example), if the data set is biased so will be the results. It's one reason I have been impressed with Topaz as it appears to work very well on astro photos which I would not expect to have been used in the development. Even non AI regression analysis can do the same thing, unless there are separate tests to see if the data is at least similar to what was used in the development. There's always context for everything which can be easily forgotten with horrible potential effects. In another book, they developed AI for scanning cancer images, worked perfectly until tested on new samples. All the cancer images used in development has a ruler measuring the cancer on them. AI learned: Ruler = Cancer, No Ruler No Cancer, all false negatives, something to be avoided at all costs!

joer Loc: Colorado/Illinois

Robg

I don't understand.

Digital photography is digital because each photo is a collection of pixels, discrete points.

Film photography is analog, everything changes along a continuity. Perhaps at the quantum level we could say it too was digital, but I don't think we can be aware of quantum effects in film photography. In any case, at the quantum level, everything is digital (why it's called "quantum").

JBRIII

Astro photographers for a time put film between dryice and camera to cool it to get better results. Then switched to film kept in containers of hydrogen? for increased sensitivity. Also believe some film was pre-flashed to avoid reciprocy failure.

xt2 Loc: British Columbia, Canada

My guess, as we send men to the moon, spacecraft to Mars, computer AI that is so much “smarter”, weapons systems entirely reliant on AI once ordered to function, etc., the photographic world is about to be up-ended in the very near future… I think we are already there.

We only have to look to the current iPhone genre and products like Arsenal to see where the future lies for our hobby. Having said this, we hobbyists can avoid the rushing technological tsunami and rely on our DSLRs and manual controls until they all become redundant.

My guess is the manufacturers will abandon we “old geezers” and focus on the new purchasers that could care less about the experience of relying on manual controls and the slap of a mirror…with little pleasure in the “journey” but a single focus upon the slam bam thank-you mam finished product.

Cheers!

delder Loc: Maryland

I think we use the terms Film Photography and Digital Imaging/Photography to add clarity to this subject.

An observation of mine is the difference between producing a SINGLE [optical] print and the orders of magnitude involved in Acquiring and then Distributing a Digital image. When you release the Digital image, you loose control over HOW it is viewed. [Equipment, Bandwidth, Settings of Monitor etc.

Comments?

JBRIII

[quote=delder]I think we use the terms Film Photography and Digital Imaging/Photography to add clarity to this subject.

An observation of mine is the difference between producing a SINGLE [optical] print and the orders of magnitude involved in Acquiring and then Distributing a Digital image. When you release the Digital image, you loose control over HOW it is viewed. [Equipment, Bandwidth, Settings of Monitor etc.

Comments?[/quote]

I'm not sure about the acquiring, but I guess for Astro you would be correct there. No filter wheels and multiple pics to be summed up, etc. Of course, accurate guiding, film prep., etc. was more important then. But you are dead on about distribution and control. At best you would have had to mail them or scan and fax somehow to each person, now one click and I guess billions could have access to it and make changes as they wish. I once ran a meeting where we mailed notices, spent $600 on postage for a meeting of less than 200 people, now just an email list and your done. In the future, I guess you'll just into the metaverse, find a VR meeting place for your type of meeting and make a pitch, then of course maybe no true meetings in this reality. As a scientist I could spend all my time at meetings, if I just could produce virtual papers, etc. There's always those publish or perish type pesky details to keep one grounded in the real world.

goldenyears Loc: Lake Osewgo

"Weak AI" refers to computers and software created by humans to perform specific complex tasks that humans previously had to do on their own. That's what photographers can have today... a camera that performs all the tasks they used to have to do to take beautiful photographs, and loved doing it.

The holy grail for scientists working on AI is to achieve "Strong AI," also known as ASI, Artificial Super Intelligence which surpasses the intelligence and abilities of humans. If they achieve that goal, will a photographer's ASI robot camera autonomously leave it's docking station, go out the front door, and return later with beautiful photographs for their enjoyment?

Drbobcameraguy Loc: Eaton Ohio

Take a look at GauGan2. Nvidia makes it. Talk about amazing photo and drawing possibilities. I just downloaded Nvidia Canvas to play with it. It's neat. I personally have no use for it but I like neat stuff. Nvidia makes drivers called studio drivers just for editing photos and helping all the Adobe products work faster. Their website is very intense and hard to find what you want but if instead of browsing around it do a search and just look at the search results. Nvidia is Adobe and the photographers ace in the hole for maximum performance.

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JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

A photograph is an image produced by the effect of light on a light sensitive material. That can be film, or a digital sensor.

JBRIII

I disagree, the robot will decide what photos it likes and wants: Ah what a sexy pipe fitting, it just my charger boil.