Lytro, Instagram and Vine: How does technology change photography?

Editor's note: A columnist for thinking about photography, Taylor Davidson, wrote an article on how software changes the form and nature of cameras and photos.

I grew up in a photo heap, and I knew how to put black and white film in the cassette of a camera, and I also developed a picture in a darkroom that smelled of chemical potions and dried up the pictures in dim light. Now these have become nostalgic feelings, which have been replaced by Photoshop, computers and smartphones.

Once, exposure, flushing, fixing, dry.

Now, capture, screen, and share.

From the copper film to the Kodak Brownie film, and from the 35 mm full format film to the digital processing and storage card, the photo image has changed in substance and form. But the camera's appearance has not changed much until the smartphone that can be photographed has sprung up. The smartphone turned the camera from a hardware product into a software. Now "Camera" is the software that runs in the mobile phone's operating system, it can only use a variety of sensors installed in the mobile phone.

Along the industrial chain from research and development to commercialization, we continue to innovate software and hardware to improve the quality of our photos. Innovations in lenses, image sensors, processors, and computer hardware will also have new forms and patterns that can be used in the future, such as putting a camera on a garment, wearing it around the neck, or putting it on a shelf. If any small object could become a camera, how would we face them?

But today, the biggest innovation in the camera is in software. Computational photography (computational photography) greatly enhances our ability to record and express the world visually. Most obviously, it makes the picture more crisp, neater, and clearer, and it can perform well in environments that interfere with the quality of the image, such as dark light and vibration. For example, when we are in motion, in the High Contrast environment of life moment, we have not been shot before, but now the digital camera to help us achieve. Not to mention ink tones, high dynamic range imaging and panoramic photography.

Next, the computational photography will take us from taking the better photos to the different photos. We began to see through Lytro (light field cameras) and light field photography, and their ability to record and render multiple fields of depth in a single photographic work is changing the meaning of the photos and, more precisely, the opportunity to change them. Once the photos are bit-formatted, the technical choices we take to process the photos extend to everything we can do with bits (storage, sharing, syndication, etc.).

But now let's go back to the question: what happens when a camera becomes an app? When you break a camera into an application and a sensor connected to other applications and sensors in your smartphone, you are creating an interesting way to change the nature of the photo. For example, now there are sensors in the iphone to detect humidity, background light, close, motion (accelerometer) and orientation (gyroscopes), and may soon have atmospheric sensors. Paired with connection technology (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, ibeacon, NFC, etc.) and access to the information network, the camera is no longer an image sensor and lens, but a combination of all the sensors and apps in the operating system that is evolving. We have been using these techniques to add contextual and structured data, such as location, face, and scene, to the photos at or after the photo.
When we add peripheral information and other applications to image processing, the image sensor is no longer everything and only the camera.

In 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote that "software is devouring the world," and he is reminding us that software is reorganizing all industries. The software has completely changed our lives, and perhaps the most obvious example is the picture, and we experience the impact of each image software innovation. In 1999, a total of 80 billion photos were taken in the world, and in 2014 people were expected to share 1 trillion (or more) photos.

The change of human behavior just reflects the various economic changes in this industry, which is also the key point of Andreessen observation and investment. As the software industry destroys and changes the original value chain, those who make the damage and change will also gain huge economic benefits.

But the impact is not only economic, but also cultural, artistic and personal impact. As people's behavior changes, the meaning of the picture is changing: The photo becomes a form of communication, and the endless stream of photos changes the way we interpret and evaluate photos. Photos don't need to be "artwork", but it has to be related to our lives.

Taylor Davidson writes two articles each month that are related to photographic technology. Interested friends can read here.

PostScript: In this article, the author quotes Marc Andreessen in 2011, "Software is devouring the world", and a year ago we also reported an article, which mentioned: Alan Kay once said "arranges who are really investigative About software should make misspelling own hardware. (People who really care about software should be able to make their own hardware). Steve Jobs was later used to outline Apple's product development philosophy. I think it is also the iphone that drives the movement of the camera from hardware into software. But earlier this year, rang, the head of the MIT Media Lab, came up with a new version of "Hardware, as new software," when he summed up the future trend. Kato Ito that the new ecosystem is being built, hardware start-ups will usher in a new spring! We can't predict the future, but we can create the future!