Reddit user ibreakphotos discovers that Samsung's 'Space Zoom' simply replaces user's moon photos with higher-res images of the moon through a clever testing process.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are_fake_and_here/
This isn't computational photography — it's inserting imagery that simply isn't there.
@halide it _is_ there though. The phone just isn’t able to capture it.
Why should my photos that include the moon not look like what I was seeing when took the picture?
@sdw @halide if it knew what my kids eyes looked like, probably. I’m just taking a picture of the moon though, so doesn’t have the same sentimental value to me as my kids eyes. I wish the camera sensor could capture what I saw better, but this seems like a decent workaround for now.
I can’t agree with the this-is-fake response since all photos are fake compared to what _I_ saw anyways. We need brain sensors for that
I just want a picture of how I saw something. And the moon had texture.
@sdw @halide hehe certainly an unpopular opinion judging by all the comments
But can we get closer to a technical explanation of the different type of enhanced photography we’re seeing these days? Computational photography, super resolution, machine learning. I’m not sure I see a red line of what is ok or not.
I do see a conservative “real photography” group with gate keeping and other stuff when technology and culture moves forward/on with their definition of red line changing over time.
@tobiasdm @sdw @halide
I think what Samsung does is much closer to image generation than photography. It is quite similar to something like Dall-E (but smaller in scale due to the narrower use case), with the difference that instead of writing a prompt like "Photo of the moon with a crater of the right and top right and some dark spots close to the center" you give it a low resolution photo containing the same information and the NN produces a picture.
@tobiasdm @sdw @halide I find this is highly deceptive. It gives a false idea of what technology can do and at the same time it gives a dangerous precedent of personal computers replacing reality with simulation with zero transparency.
I wouldn't wanna put this sort of a "Santa Claus" inside the tech my children get familiar with. I would want my children to grow up with a grasp on what's going on.