{"id":16333,"date":"2016-11-10T14:52:46","date_gmt":"2016-11-10T19:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=16333"},"modified":"2018-10-25T15:22:43","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T19:22:43","slug":"computational-photography-and-the-pixel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2016\/11\/10\/computational-photography-and-the-pixel\/","title":{"rendered":"Computational Photography and the Pixel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/10\/18\/13315168\/google-pixel-camera-software-marc-levoy\">Sam Byford<\/a> (via <a href=\"http:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/computational-photography-pixel\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2016\/10\/18\/13315168\/google-pixel-camera-software-marc-levoy\"><p>Clearly, this is by far the most competitive Google has ever been in mobile photography. But the Pixel phones, on paper, don&rsquo;t have cutting-edge hardware, relying on an f\/2.0 lens without optical image stabilization. Instead, and in typical Google fashion, Google has turned to complex software smarts in order to power the Pixel camera.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>This no-compromise approach to HDR photography has partly been made possible by new hardware. The Hexagon digital signal processor in Qualcomm&rsquo;s Snapdragon 821 chip gives Google the bandwidth to capture RAW imagery with zero shutter lag from a continuous stream that starts as soon as you open the app. &ldquo;The moment you press the shutter it&rsquo;s not actually taking a shot &mdash; it already took the shot,&rdquo; says Levoy. &ldquo;It took lots of shots! What happens when you press the shutter button is it just marks the time when you pressed it, uses the images it&rsquo;s already captured, and combines them together.&rdquo;<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>The traditional way to produce an HDR image is to bracket: you take the same image multiple times while exposing different parts of the scene, which lets you merge the shots together to create a final photograph where nothing is too blown-out or noisy. Google&rsquo;s method is very different &mdash; HDR+ also takes multiple images at once, but they&rsquo;re <em>all<\/em> underexposed. This preserves highlights, but what about the noise in the shadows? Just leave it to math.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>Google also claims that, counterintuitively, underexposing each HDR shot actually frees the camera up to produce better low-light results. &ldquo;Because we can denoise very well by taking multiple images and aligning them, we can afford to keep the colors saturated in low light,&rdquo; says Levoy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Whereas iOS <a href=\"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2015\/12\/09\/ios-9-2\/\">won&rsquo;t let<\/a> me always take photos using HDR&mdash;which is the non-lossy choice since the phone also saves the non-HDR version&mdash;Google enables HDR by default and intends for you to leave it on.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sam Byford (via Nick Heer): Clearly, this is by far the most competitive Google has ever been in mobile photography. But the Pixel phones, on paper, don&rsquo;t have cutting-edge hardware, relying on an f\/2.0 lens without optical image stabilization. Instead, and in typical Google fashion, Google has turned to complex software smarts in order to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2018-10-25T19:22:45Z","apple_news_api_id":"0c72799b-a8f9-4ffa-bb2c-ef7c9bfa8a8f","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2018-10-25T19:22:46Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ADHJ5m6j5T_q7LO98m_qKjw","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[248,152,1428,1748,31,1380,153],"class_list":["post-16333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-android","tag-camera","tag-google-pixel","tag-high-dynamic-range-hdr","tag-ios","tag-ios-10","tag-photography"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16334,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16333\/revisions\/16334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}