1 00:00:00,030 --> 00:00:02,470 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,470 --> 00:00:04,000 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:06,320 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,320 --> 00:00:10,690 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,690 --> 00:00:13,300 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,300 --> 00:00:17,025 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,025 --> 00:00:17,650 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,120 --> 00:00:23,640 [FELICE FRANKEL] We're lucky to have my friend, Brian Hayes, 9 00:00:23,640 --> 00:00:25,460 with us today. 10 00:00:25,460 --> 00:00:29,240 Brian is a writer-- a very wonderful writer, in fact, 11 00:00:29,240 --> 00:00:32,970 but he also takes photographs and he 12 00:00:32,970 --> 00:00:37,450 is very good at explaining what exactly is going on technically 13 00:00:37,450 --> 00:00:39,210 when you make images. 14 00:00:39,210 --> 00:00:41,150 And I thought it would be interesting 15 00:00:41,150 --> 00:00:46,800 for he and myself to just take a little more closer look at what 16 00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:48,380 happens. 17 00:00:48,380 --> 00:00:50,770 So I brought Brian into the studio 18 00:00:50,770 --> 00:00:53,920 to have a conversation with me and this is what 19 00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:55,530 you'll be listening to now. 20 00:00:55,530 --> 00:00:56,571 [BRIAN HAYES] Hi, Felice. 21 00:00:56,571 --> 00:00:57,980 It's great to be here with you. 22 00:00:57,980 --> 00:01:00,420 [FF] Maybe the place to start is discussing 23 00:01:00,420 --> 00:01:04,360 pixels and the sensor that's inside the camera that 24 00:01:04,360 --> 00:01:06,560 records the image. 25 00:01:06,560 --> 00:01:09,890 [BH] We know that the sensor is an array 26 00:01:09,890 --> 00:01:13,370 of little square pixels and we know 27 00:01:13,370 --> 00:01:17,110 that the picture that comes out of the camera in the end when 28 00:01:17,110 --> 00:01:19,535 look at on the screen or whatever, 29 00:01:19,535 --> 00:01:23,140 that that also is an array of little square pixels. 30 00:01:23,140 --> 00:01:26,380 And you can't help yourself just imagining 31 00:01:26,380 --> 00:01:29,870 that there's a simple one-to-one mapping, that each 32 00:01:29,870 --> 00:01:31,990 of those little squares in the sensor 33 00:01:31,990 --> 00:01:35,920 corresponds to one of the squares in the picture. 34 00:01:35,920 --> 00:01:38,210 And it isn't so. 35 00:01:38,210 --> 00:01:42,000 It just isn't so and it never will be. 36 00:01:42,000 --> 00:01:44,270 There's a computer graphics person 37 00:01:44,270 --> 00:01:50,020 named Alvy Ray Smith who wrote the most 38 00:01:50,020 --> 00:01:54,630 petulant academic paper that I've ever seen. 39 00:01:54,630 --> 00:01:57,539 The title is "A Pixel is Not a Little Square, 40 00:01:57,539 --> 00:02:00,670 A Pixel is Not a Little Square, A Pixel 41 00:02:00,670 --> 00:02:03,340 is Not a Little Square." 42 00:02:03,340 --> 00:02:05,610 [FF] I think we understand what he's trying to say. 43 00:02:05,610 --> 00:02:06,390 Right. 44 00:02:06,390 --> 00:02:08,350 [BH] He's quite firm about this. 45 00:02:08,350 --> 00:02:12,720 And of course, he also has to admit later on the paper 46 00:02:12,720 --> 00:02:15,490 that a pixel is a little square. 47 00:02:15,490 --> 00:02:16,150 [FF] OK. 48 00:02:16,150 --> 00:02:20,420 [BH] Pixels are what happened to photography 49 00:02:20,420 --> 00:02:25,190 when it became digitized, but they're not strictly 50 00:02:25,190 --> 00:02:25,930 an invention. 51 00:02:25,930 --> 00:02:29,219 They existed on film, we just weren't aware of them 52 00:02:29,219 --> 00:02:30,840 in quite the same way. 53 00:02:30,840 --> 00:02:36,440 And if you translate this discussion back 50 years, 54 00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:39,770 the question was then a matter of not 55 00:02:39,770 --> 00:02:43,145 how many pixels do you want, but how fine grained 56 00:02:43,145 --> 00:02:44,450 do you want your film? 57 00:02:44,450 --> 00:02:45,560 [FF] You bet. 58 00:02:45,560 --> 00:02:48,660 [BH] And the effect on the finished image 59 00:02:48,660 --> 00:02:51,780 was very similar. 60 00:02:51,780 --> 00:02:56,550 If you chose a film with large grains of silver, 61 00:02:56,550 --> 00:03:01,050 you got very fast exposures, tended to get high contrast, 62 00:03:01,050 --> 00:03:06,790 but you also got a lot of noise and random fluctuations, 63 00:03:06,790 --> 00:03:10,350 especially in dark areas of the photograph where 64 00:03:10,350 --> 00:03:12,320 it looked mottled. 65 00:03:12,320 --> 00:03:16,460 Now we have a much more regular geometric structure 66 00:03:16,460 --> 00:03:19,480 with, in spite of what Alvy Ray Smith says, 67 00:03:19,480 --> 00:03:21,640 little squares, pixels. 68 00:03:21,640 --> 00:03:24,440 And we care about counting those pixels, 69 00:03:24,440 --> 00:03:28,290 how many millions of them form an image. 70 00:03:28,290 --> 00:03:31,530 But the question of how much information is in the image, 71 00:03:31,530 --> 00:03:35,030 how closely can you look at it before you begin 72 00:03:35,030 --> 00:03:37,780 to see the structure of the image 73 00:03:37,780 --> 00:03:42,260 rather than the subject of the image, those issues 74 00:03:42,260 --> 00:03:44,950 have been there from the very beginning. 75 00:03:44,950 --> 00:03:46,660 [FF] So, for example, just comparing it 76 00:03:46,660 --> 00:03:48,960 to film, although most of our students 77 00:03:48,960 --> 00:03:51,870 possibly don't even know what the word means, 78 00:03:51,870 --> 00:03:55,500 they have seen a little example of how 79 00:03:55,500 --> 00:04:00,510 we see the difference between setting the ISO number at 200 80 00:04:00,510 --> 00:04:02,760 as compared to 6,400. 81 00:04:02,760 --> 00:04:04,460 That they will have seen that there 82 00:04:04,460 --> 00:04:08,720 is a lot of grain and noise, or appears to be grainy-- 83 00:04:08,720 --> 00:04:11,750 that's the word, although that might not be accurate. 84 00:04:11,750 --> 00:04:14,490 [BH] I don't think that the difference is worth 85 00:04:14,490 --> 00:04:15,160 bothering with. 86 00:04:15,160 --> 00:04:15,660 [FF] Yeah. 87 00:04:15,660 --> 00:04:16,459 [BH] It is grainy. 88 00:04:16,459 --> 00:04:17,880 It's noisy. 89 00:04:17,880 --> 00:04:23,890 I think that the clearest way to follow what's happening there 90 00:04:23,890 --> 00:04:26,150 and why that noise happens and why 91 00:04:26,150 --> 00:04:31,780 ISO matters is to think about the basic physics of what 92 00:04:31,780 --> 00:04:35,140 you're doing when you make a photograph. 93 00:04:35,140 --> 00:04:39,630 What you're doing is counting photons, the quanta of light. 94 00:04:39,630 --> 00:04:46,150 So you expose a piece of film or the sensor in a digital camera 95 00:04:46,150 --> 00:04:50,030 to the varying brightness in a scene. 96 00:04:50,030 --> 00:04:54,510 It's focused on the plane of the film or the plane of the sensor 97 00:04:54,510 --> 00:04:58,860 and what you're doing is in each small area, the square pixels 98 00:04:58,860 --> 00:05:02,630 on the sensor or the chemical film grains, 99 00:05:02,630 --> 00:05:05,380 in each small area you're counting how many photons 100 00:05:05,380 --> 00:05:09,000 strike that spot within the brief moment 101 00:05:09,000 --> 00:05:11,030 that the shutter is open. 102 00:05:11,030 --> 00:05:14,520 And there's a statistical issue here. 103 00:05:14,520 --> 00:05:18,680 When a photon hits the silicon sensor, 104 00:05:18,680 --> 00:05:21,320 it's supposed to not lose an electron 105 00:05:21,320 --> 00:05:24,550 and it's actually the electrons that you wind up counting. 106 00:05:24,550 --> 00:05:26,850 When it hits the film, it's supposed 107 00:05:26,850 --> 00:05:30,015 to catalyze a chemical reaction that produces 108 00:05:30,015 --> 00:05:32,480 a visible grain of silver. 109 00:05:32,480 --> 00:05:35,159 Both of those things are somewhat unreliable. 110 00:05:35,159 --> 00:05:39,280 It's-- in part, this goes back to the deep physics of quantum 111 00:05:39,280 --> 00:05:42,592 mechanics, that some of these things are probabilistic 112 00:05:42,592 --> 00:05:47,100 and you can't, even if you try, determine exactly what's going 113 00:05:47,100 --> 00:05:48,430 to happen. 114 00:05:48,430 --> 00:05:54,640 But for a lot of reasons, when, say, 1,000 photons hit 115 00:05:54,640 --> 00:05:59,340 the film or the sensor, you may register some other number 116 00:05:59,340 --> 00:06:01,590 other than the exact 1,000. 117 00:06:01,590 --> 00:06:04,610 You might count 900, you might actually 118 00:06:04,610 --> 00:06:06,850 count more than there were photons 119 00:06:06,850 --> 00:06:09,810 because some electrons are just spontaneously-- 120 00:06:09,810 --> 00:06:10,644 [FF] Yeah. 121 00:06:10,644 --> 00:06:12,810 [BH] And sometimes the chemical reaction in the film 122 00:06:12,810 --> 00:06:14,880 happens even without light. 123 00:06:14,880 --> 00:06:19,130 And there is a simple rule of thumb, a mathematical rule 124 00:06:19,130 --> 00:06:23,430 for explaining why it's so much better to have a lot of photons 125 00:06:23,430 --> 00:06:25,200 than just a few. 126 00:06:25,200 --> 00:06:27,810 The error that you get in counting 127 00:06:27,810 --> 00:06:31,800 turns out to be roughly the square root 128 00:06:31,800 --> 00:06:33,610 of the number of photons. 129 00:06:33,610 --> 00:06:36,380 And so if you have 10,000 photons that you're 130 00:06:36,380 --> 00:06:39,159 trying to count, well, the square root of 10,000 131 00:06:39,159 --> 00:06:43,820 is 100 and that's about 1% error. 132 00:06:43,820 --> 00:06:48,770 If you get 9,900 instead of 10,000 you're 1% off. 133 00:06:48,770 --> 00:06:53,050 And when you translate that into an amount of light 134 00:06:53,050 --> 00:06:57,959 or the gray level on an image, 1% 135 00:06:57,959 --> 00:06:59,500 is probably something you're not even 136 00:06:59,500 --> 00:07:01,970 going to be able to notice. 137 00:07:01,970 --> 00:07:04,460 On the other hand, if there were only 100 photons 138 00:07:04,460 --> 00:07:08,520 that you were counting, the square root of 100 is 10 139 00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:12,080 and so you can have an error of 10% and something-- 140 00:07:12,080 --> 00:07:15,100 some pixel might be 10% brighter or darker 141 00:07:15,100 --> 00:07:17,890 than it's supposed to be and you will notice this. 142 00:07:17,890 --> 00:07:21,000 And in fact, it looks like snow on the image. 143 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:23,990 It looks like random fluctuations 144 00:07:23,990 --> 00:07:25,530 darker and lighter. 145 00:07:25,530 --> 00:07:28,790 And that's true whether you're looking at a digital image 146 00:07:28,790 --> 00:07:31,130 or a film image. 147 00:07:31,130 --> 00:07:34,460 So you want to capture as many photons as you can 148 00:07:34,460 --> 00:07:37,650 and that's a complicated function of how 149 00:07:37,650 --> 00:07:41,610 long the shutter is open, how wide the aperture of the lens 150 00:07:41,610 --> 00:07:45,830 has been set, and how long or how sensitive the film is 151 00:07:45,830 --> 00:07:48,490 to light or how sensitive the sensor is. 152 00:07:48,490 --> 00:07:53,270 And the ISO dial is what determines that sensitivity. 153 00:07:53,270 --> 00:07:55,530 In the case of film, there was no dial. 154 00:07:55,530 --> 00:07:58,650 You went to the store and bought a film 155 00:07:58,650 --> 00:08:01,365 with an ISO rating of whatever you chose. 156 00:08:01,365 --> 00:08:04,370 With a digital camera you can adjust it was you wish. 157 00:08:04,370 --> 00:08:05,100 [FF] Almost. 158 00:08:05,100 --> 00:08:09,950 On my camera I cannot get-- I used to use Kodachrome 25. 159 00:08:09,950 --> 00:08:11,540 [BH] I was an Ektar 25. 160 00:08:11,540 --> 00:08:12,380 [FF] You're Ektar. 161 00:08:12,380 --> 00:08:13,180 OK. 162 00:08:13,180 --> 00:08:17,470 And I can't go down to 25 on my camera. 163 00:08:17,470 --> 00:08:18,590 [BH] That's true. 164 00:08:18,590 --> 00:08:22,790 I would say, however, that the whole strange historical 165 00:08:22,790 --> 00:08:27,050 accident that we have digital cameras with a setting that's 166 00:08:27,050 --> 00:08:30,190 labeled ISO is a little bit deceptive. 167 00:08:30,190 --> 00:08:35,690 Setting something to ISO 26,000 on a digital camera 168 00:08:35,690 --> 00:08:39,530 doesn't match, in any obvious direct way, what 169 00:08:39,530 --> 00:08:41,909 the setting would be on a film. 170 00:08:41,909 --> 00:08:46,250 And so it's with a good digital camera, 171 00:08:46,250 --> 00:08:53,140 the noise level that you get out of it at a low ISO setting 172 00:08:53,140 --> 00:08:55,700 is the equal of anything that you could have 173 00:08:55,700 --> 00:08:58,289 gotten on your Kodachrome 25. 174 00:08:58,289 --> 00:09:00,760 [FF] So in the course, we talk about 175 00:09:00,760 --> 00:09:04,390 that because we have control over everything 176 00:09:04,390 --> 00:09:06,390 we make in this particular course, 177 00:09:06,390 --> 00:09:09,810 because it's in a controlled situation, 178 00:09:09,810 --> 00:09:14,320 we are suggesting to set the ISO at the lowest number 179 00:09:14,320 --> 00:09:18,330 so that we do not pick up a lot of noise. 180 00:09:18,330 --> 00:09:21,720 [BH] Other things being equal, that's surely the-- 181 00:09:21,720 --> 00:09:23,890 [FF] Let's try to keep it simple for-- yeah. 182 00:09:23,890 --> 00:09:25,360 [BH] Well, yeah. 183 00:09:25,360 --> 00:09:28,471 [FF] So that's how we're taking pictures in our course. 184 00:09:28,471 --> 00:09:28,970 [BH] Yes. 185 00:09:28,970 --> 00:09:30,710 If you're taking pictures of something 186 00:09:30,710 --> 00:09:32,610 that holds still for you-- 187 00:09:32,610 --> 00:09:33,120 [FF] Yes. 188 00:09:33,120 --> 00:09:37,020 [BH] --and especially if you have a tripod so that 189 00:09:37,020 --> 00:09:38,620 the camera also holds still-- 190 00:09:38,620 --> 00:09:41,270 [FF] This is the only way we're taking pictures in this course. 191 00:09:41,270 --> 00:09:43,686 [BH] There would be no reason not to use the lowest ISO -- 192 00:09:43,686 --> 00:09:46,010 [FF] And we can add more light if we need to. 193 00:09:46,010 --> 00:09:46,660 [BH] Yes. 194 00:09:46,660 --> 00:09:47,701 [FF] So we have control. 195 00:09:47,701 --> 00:09:48,200 [BH] Yeah. 196 00:09:48,200 --> 00:09:50,370 [FF] This is very specific kind of photography. 197 00:09:50,370 --> 00:09:53,960 [BH] And you have a luxurious situation. 198 00:09:53,960 --> 00:09:55,490 [FF] Indeed. 199 00:09:55,490 --> 00:09:59,190 [BH] There are occasions when it's appropriate, 200 00:09:59,190 --> 00:10:01,650 I think, to use a higher ISO setting. 201 00:10:01,650 --> 00:10:03,110 But what you described, that kind 202 00:10:03,110 --> 00:10:05,000 of photography, of course-- why not? 203 00:10:05,000 --> 00:10:06,190 [FF] Why not? 204 00:10:06,190 --> 00:10:10,560 So shall we talk about exactly what happens to that pixel? 205 00:10:10,560 --> 00:10:11,170 [BH] Sure. 206 00:10:11,170 --> 00:10:15,680 I think the complexity of it is the kind of complexity 207 00:10:15,680 --> 00:10:19,700 that you don't really need to understand in detail. 208 00:10:19,700 --> 00:10:22,830 You certainly don't need it in order to make good pictures. 209 00:10:22,830 --> 00:10:25,500 There have been generations of brilliant photographers 210 00:10:25,500 --> 00:10:28,620 who knew nothing about the technology of cameras 211 00:10:28,620 --> 00:10:31,570 and certainly about the chemistry of film. 212 00:10:31,570 --> 00:10:34,170 However, I think it's something that 213 00:10:34,170 --> 00:10:37,440 is useful to have in the back of your head. 214 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:41,600 And it may change your attitude toward the images that come out 215 00:10:41,600 --> 00:10:44,210 of the camera and how you think of them 216 00:10:44,210 --> 00:10:47,110 and what you dare to do to them. 217 00:10:47,110 --> 00:10:50,020 There's a natural tendency, since we 218 00:10:50,020 --> 00:10:52,240 know that inside the camera there's 219 00:10:52,240 --> 00:10:58,040 this postage stamp sized slab of silicon that is the sensor that 220 00:10:58,040 --> 00:11:00,950 receives the light, the lens focuses an image 221 00:11:00,950 --> 00:11:02,760 onto that sensor. 222 00:11:02,760 --> 00:11:06,950 And we know that's made up of these little squares called 223 00:11:06,950 --> 00:11:11,660 pixels in a rectangular array like seats in a theater 224 00:11:11,660 --> 00:11:15,670 or something, you have rows and columns full of them. 225 00:11:15,670 --> 00:11:18,130 And the picture that comes out of the camera 226 00:11:18,130 --> 00:11:22,900 is also a rectangular array of colored squares in rows 227 00:11:22,900 --> 00:11:28,850 and columns, and so it's just natural to imagine that there 228 00:11:28,850 --> 00:11:31,460 is a simple one-to-one correspondence 229 00:11:31,460 --> 00:11:36,180 between the pixels on the sensor and the pixels on the image. 230 00:11:36,180 --> 00:11:38,380 And if only it were that simple. 231 00:11:38,380 --> 00:11:40,640 In fact, if you think about it a little more, 232 00:11:40,640 --> 00:11:43,580 you realize that it can't work quite that way 233 00:11:43,580 --> 00:11:46,670 because the square pixels on the sensor. 234 00:11:46,670 --> 00:11:48,950 I've learned recently that the professionals who 235 00:11:48,950 --> 00:11:50,710 make these things, they call them 236 00:11:50,710 --> 00:11:55,590 sensels on the sensor and pixels in the picture. 237 00:11:55,590 --> 00:11:59,200 But each of the picture elements on the sensor 238 00:11:59,200 --> 00:12:04,430 has to respond to any light that it receives of any color. 239 00:12:04,430 --> 00:12:07,450 And in order to take a color photograph, 240 00:12:07,450 --> 00:12:10,810 you need to have separate signals for at least 241 00:12:10,810 --> 00:12:12,680 three color channels. 242 00:12:12,680 --> 00:12:15,600 Each sensor element, then, is actually 243 00:12:15,600 --> 00:12:19,470 made up of four sensor elements, each of which 244 00:12:19,470 --> 00:12:22,420 has a color filter pasted on top of it 245 00:12:22,420 --> 00:12:24,630 like the kind of celluloid filters 246 00:12:24,630 --> 00:12:27,030 that you would use over a spotlight 247 00:12:27,030 --> 00:12:29,160 or something to change the lighting, 248 00:12:29,160 --> 00:12:31,400 except of course, they're very small. 249 00:12:31,400 --> 00:12:33,290 These are arranged in a pattern so 250 00:12:33,290 --> 00:12:36,983 that each group of four sensor elements 251 00:12:36,983 --> 00:12:41,660 has two green and a red and a blue filter. 252 00:12:41,660 --> 00:12:45,840 So right there if you have, say, 1,000 or a million pixels 253 00:12:45,840 --> 00:12:48,580 in the finished image-- 1,000 by 1,000, 254 00:12:48,580 --> 00:12:52,990 say-- you actually have 2,000 by 2,000 on the sensor. 255 00:12:52,990 --> 00:12:56,560 There are four million elements rather than just one million. 256 00:12:56,560 --> 00:12:59,240 So we're already at that point not having 257 00:12:59,240 --> 00:13:02,890 a one-to-one correspondence between the sensor 258 00:13:02,890 --> 00:13:04,780 and the picture. 259 00:13:04,780 --> 00:13:07,520 And in fact, it's not even close to that. 260 00:13:07,520 --> 00:13:10,730 There is no simple ratio. 261 00:13:10,730 --> 00:13:13,490 There are more sensor elements on the sensor than there 262 00:13:13,490 --> 00:13:20,530 are in the finished picture and no pixel in the image 263 00:13:20,530 --> 00:13:23,880 actually corresponds to any one sensor element. 264 00:13:23,880 --> 00:13:26,870 There's an algorithm that runs on the little computer 265 00:13:26,870 --> 00:13:30,770 inside the camera that looks at a whole neighborhood of sensor 266 00:13:30,770 --> 00:13:34,580 elements, and by averaging and filtering 267 00:13:34,580 --> 00:13:38,700 the outputs of a large number of elements 268 00:13:38,700 --> 00:13:42,450 it assigns a particular color to each pixel in the finished 269 00:13:42,450 --> 00:13:42,950 image. 270 00:13:42,950 --> 00:13:47,160 [FF] So that each manufacturer probably has their own formula. 271 00:13:47,160 --> 00:13:48,442 [BH] Very much so. 272 00:13:48,442 --> 00:13:49,983 And they don't tell us what they are. 273 00:13:49,983 --> 00:13:50,790 [FF] Of course not. 274 00:13:50,790 --> 00:13:55,730 Is it fair to talk about, in this conversation about pixels, 275 00:13:55,730 --> 00:13:57,530 is this a place where we could talk 276 00:13:57,530 --> 00:14:01,070 about the difference between RAW, TIFF and JPEG? 277 00:14:01,070 --> 00:14:02,150 [BH] Sure. 278 00:14:02,150 --> 00:14:06,100 [FF] It would be good to have an idea about the differences. 279 00:14:06,100 --> 00:14:06,710 [BH] Sure. 280 00:14:06,710 --> 00:14:11,500 So each camera has a choice of outputs. 281 00:14:11,500 --> 00:14:16,090 Typically, you can get either RAW or JPEG from most cameras. 282 00:14:16,090 --> 00:14:19,970 And the RAW format is not the same from company to company, 283 00:14:19,970 --> 00:14:21,010 I guess. 284 00:14:21,010 --> 00:14:25,370 But they're all, apart from details of file formats 285 00:14:25,370 --> 00:14:27,940 and things like that, they're all very similar. 286 00:14:27,940 --> 00:14:31,960 It's a collection of numbers that 287 00:14:31,960 --> 00:14:35,390 represent color values in a very direct way. 288 00:14:35,390 --> 00:14:39,500 If you looked at the numbers and assigned colors 289 00:14:39,500 --> 00:14:44,590 to each possible number, and you took a bunch of crayons 290 00:14:44,590 --> 00:14:48,190 and a big piece of graph paper with squares on it, 291 00:14:48,190 --> 00:14:50,680 you could actually reconstruct the whole image 292 00:14:50,680 --> 00:14:52,680 by painting the appropriate color 293 00:14:52,680 --> 00:14:54,670 in each square based on just looking 294 00:14:54,670 --> 00:14:56,620 at the numbers in the RAW file. 295 00:14:56,620 --> 00:14:58,340 You wouldn't really want to do this, 296 00:14:58,340 --> 00:15:00,910 but it's there in principle. 297 00:15:00,910 --> 00:15:03,900 Among the other common formats, the TIFF 298 00:15:03,900 --> 00:15:05,570 is actually very much the same. 299 00:15:05,570 --> 00:15:07,570 It has the same information in it, 300 00:15:07,570 --> 00:15:11,780 it's just been rewritten in a different order, basically. 301 00:15:11,780 --> 00:15:13,080 [FF] Good. 302 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:17,590 I have conversations with other photographers who are-- 303 00:15:17,590 --> 00:15:21,920 they cannot believe that I don't take RAW images. 304 00:15:21,920 --> 00:15:25,970 [BH] Well, there's more to that. 305 00:15:25,970 --> 00:15:30,390 If you take a RAW image and you upload it to a computer 306 00:15:30,390 --> 00:15:34,830 in that form and you use the appropriate piece of software, 307 00:15:34,830 --> 00:15:37,120 then, to convert it to a TIFF, you 308 00:15:37,120 --> 00:15:42,120 should have the same set of numbers in the new file 309 00:15:42,120 --> 00:15:45,810 as you did when it came out of the camera as a raw file. 310 00:15:45,810 --> 00:15:47,800 On the other hand, if you take a JPEG 311 00:15:47,800 --> 00:15:51,000 and then convert that to a TIFF, the numbers 312 00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:53,560 will not match up one for one. 313 00:15:53,560 --> 00:15:58,020 And the reason for that is that the JPEG format doesn't, 314 00:15:58,020 --> 00:16:02,250 in fact, store this big array of rows and columns 315 00:16:02,250 --> 00:16:04,090 of color values. 316 00:16:04,090 --> 00:16:09,960 Instead, it takes blocks of pixels and analyzes 317 00:16:09,960 --> 00:16:14,580 the set of colors found within each block and then 318 00:16:14,580 --> 00:16:18,050 in order to store the-- well, not the same information, 319 00:16:18,050 --> 00:16:21,700 but substantially the same information-- in a smaller 320 00:16:21,700 --> 00:16:25,170 amount of data, it encodes the information 321 00:16:25,170 --> 00:16:26,450 into a different form. 322 00:16:26,450 --> 00:16:29,520 You might, for example, look at the whole block of pixels-- 323 00:16:29,520 --> 00:16:31,280 I think they're eight by eight is 324 00:16:31,280 --> 00:16:33,430 the standard way of doing this. 325 00:16:33,430 --> 00:16:37,370 You take those 64 pixels, an eight by eight square, 326 00:16:37,370 --> 00:16:42,270 and you ask, what's the average color in that whole block? 327 00:16:42,270 --> 00:16:44,430 And so that's a first approximation 328 00:16:44,430 --> 00:16:47,120 of how you might represent the image. 329 00:16:47,120 --> 00:16:49,662 And then you ask, so, what's the average color 330 00:16:49,662 --> 00:16:51,620 on the right half, and what's the average color 331 00:16:51,620 --> 00:16:55,650 on the left half, and on the top half and the bottom half? 332 00:16:55,650 --> 00:16:58,660 And you store that information also. 333 00:16:58,660 --> 00:17:02,400 And there's a little more to it than this, but not much more, 334 00:17:02,400 --> 00:17:03,360 actually. 335 00:17:03,360 --> 00:17:06,079 What you wind up with is a way of representing 336 00:17:06,079 --> 00:17:11,140 the information that is more compact, but it's not exact. 337 00:17:11,140 --> 00:17:15,627 And when you then reconvert it to, say, a TIFF file, 338 00:17:15,627 --> 00:17:17,210 you're going to wind up with something 339 00:17:17,210 --> 00:17:18,970 that's a little bit different. 340 00:17:18,970 --> 00:17:22,089 And certainly, the purists among us 341 00:17:22,089 --> 00:17:25,900 would argue that there is damage done 342 00:17:25,900 --> 00:17:30,619 when you go to a compressed file format like JPEG. 343 00:17:30,619 --> 00:17:33,079 Unquestionably, there are changes made. 344 00:17:33,079 --> 00:17:37,500 That is, you have altered the information that is stored. 345 00:17:37,500 --> 00:17:41,220 And the argument is that these days, with ample disk 346 00:17:41,220 --> 00:17:44,359 space and essentially the ability 347 00:17:44,359 --> 00:17:48,230 to keep every image you take in its full form, 348 00:17:48,230 --> 00:17:50,790 why risk losing anything? 349 00:17:50,790 --> 00:17:54,890 That's a good argument, and I think that, for example, 350 00:17:54,890 --> 00:18:00,180 if you have the ability to keep both a RAW version and a JPEG 351 00:18:00,180 --> 00:18:01,960 that that's probably a good idea. 352 00:18:01,960 --> 00:18:03,990 It leaves your options open. 353 00:18:03,990 --> 00:18:06,150 You can always go back to the original form 354 00:18:06,150 --> 00:18:10,880 and work with it if it turns out that a particular JPEG isn't 355 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:12,710 looking the way you want to. 356 00:18:12,710 --> 00:18:14,970 However, I have to say that this is 357 00:18:14,970 --> 00:18:19,060 based purely on personal experience and not 358 00:18:19,060 --> 00:18:21,740 scientific investigation. 359 00:18:21,740 --> 00:18:25,710 I've found many cameras whose JPEG processor 360 00:18:25,710 --> 00:18:28,920 does a better job of sharpening and color 361 00:18:28,920 --> 00:18:32,080 correcting the image than I can do myself. 362 00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:34,600 [FF] I'm so happy you said that because I have, 363 00:18:34,600 --> 00:18:39,280 anecdotally, made comparisons between my images, 364 00:18:39,280 --> 00:18:44,330 either TIFF or JPEG, enlarged them like crazy on the screen, 365 00:18:44,330 --> 00:18:45,960 and I don't see the differences. 366 00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:46,790 [BH] Yes. 367 00:18:46,790 --> 00:18:47,620 Yes. 368 00:18:47,620 --> 00:18:49,220 Cameras are very good, I'm afraid. 369 00:18:49,220 --> 00:18:50,053 [FF] They are, yeah. 370 00:18:50,053 --> 00:18:52,390 And it's a lot of smart people who've 371 00:18:52,390 --> 00:18:55,050 worked very hard to make it come out well. 372 00:18:55,050 --> 00:18:57,690 Not to say that you can never beat them, 373 00:18:57,690 --> 00:19:00,600 but you've got to work pretty hard to do better. 374 00:19:00,600 --> 00:19:02,690 And it's also worth keeping in mind, 375 00:19:02,690 --> 00:19:06,780 if only as a way of keeping your sanity in a world where lots 376 00:19:06,780 --> 00:19:08,800 of people want to tell you what to do, 377 00:19:08,800 --> 00:19:11,700 it's worth keeping in mind that a "RAW' file, 378 00:19:11,700 --> 00:19:15,990 in spite of its name, is not "raw"-- it's "cooked." 379 00:19:15,990 --> 00:19:19,350 The camera has already done a lot of processing 380 00:19:19,350 --> 00:19:21,450 and it has to. 381 00:19:21,450 --> 00:19:23,780 What would truly be a "raw" file-- that 382 00:19:23,780 --> 00:19:28,610 is the output of the sensor directly 383 00:19:28,610 --> 00:19:32,210 without any processing at all-- it would hardly 384 00:19:32,210 --> 00:19:33,800 look like a photograph. 385 00:19:33,800 --> 00:19:36,890 The dynamic range would be all wrong, 386 00:19:36,890 --> 00:19:39,940 the colors would be wildly incorrect. 387 00:19:39,940 --> 00:19:43,810 The camera doesn't see the way our eye sees 388 00:19:43,810 --> 00:19:48,340 and it needs to be fixed before we even recognize it 389 00:19:48,340 --> 00:19:50,220 as a photographic image. 390 00:19:50,220 --> 00:19:53,280 This was also true in the age of film. 391 00:19:53,280 --> 00:19:56,320 If you look at, say, a color negative, 392 00:19:56,320 --> 00:19:58,360 a piece of color negative film that's 393 00:19:58,360 --> 00:20:01,940 been processed but not printed, the entire image 394 00:20:01,940 --> 00:20:06,260 has got a rosy salmon colored tone to it 395 00:20:06,260 --> 00:20:09,670 that's wildly far from the correct color. 396 00:20:09,670 --> 00:20:11,910 And that needs to be corrected. 397 00:20:11,910 --> 00:20:14,060 In the old days, this happened chemically. 398 00:20:14,060 --> 00:20:16,780 It was the film that you were printing 399 00:20:16,780 --> 00:20:20,220 to from the color negative was designed explicitly 400 00:20:20,220 --> 00:20:22,460 to correct for that distortion. 401 00:20:22,460 --> 00:20:24,130 And in fact, if you use that film 402 00:20:24,130 --> 00:20:29,040 to print from a negative that didn't have the orange cast 403 00:20:29,040 --> 00:20:31,670 to it, you would get something that was terribly wrong 404 00:20:31,670 --> 00:20:34,130 in the other direction. 405 00:20:34,130 --> 00:20:36,410 It's just never been the case that there 406 00:20:36,410 --> 00:20:40,140 was a "raw" format that was truly 407 00:20:40,140 --> 00:20:43,760 some kind of pristine representation of nature. 408 00:20:43,760 --> 00:20:46,440 It's all "cooked" formats. 409 00:20:46,440 --> 00:20:54,100 And given that, it's sort of liberating to know that there's 410 00:20:54,100 --> 00:20:56,240 already a whole lot of processing 411 00:20:56,240 --> 00:20:59,690 going on before the picture ever comes out of the camera. 412 00:20:59,690 --> 00:21:03,260 And so maybe you shouldn't be too afraid of turning 413 00:21:03,260 --> 00:21:04,640 a dial or two. 414 00:21:04,640 --> 00:21:07,580 The conception of a camera as some sort 415 00:21:07,580 --> 00:21:12,850 of objective recording device that captures reality 416 00:21:12,850 --> 00:21:16,100 without distortion has never been true. 417 00:21:16,100 --> 00:21:19,170 And even at a very fundamental level, 418 00:21:19,170 --> 00:21:22,290 when you look at the physics and technology 419 00:21:22,290 --> 00:21:24,331 of how the machine works. 420 00:21:24,331 --> 00:21:24,830 [FF] OK. 421 00:21:24,830 --> 00:21:29,510 So we talk very briefly about trying 422 00:21:29,510 --> 00:21:33,760 to get some really wonderful images for cover submissions, 423 00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:38,970 and we do talk about the submission should be 300 dots 424 00:21:38,970 --> 00:21:42,910 per inch because that's what the art directors usually ask for. 425 00:21:42,910 --> 00:21:47,020 And if it's a full bleed cover, it's 8 and 1/2 by 11, 426 00:21:47,020 --> 00:21:51,070 but sometimes your images is not that size 427 00:21:51,070 --> 00:21:54,760 so we briefly touch on putting it into software 428 00:21:54,760 --> 00:21:57,600 and increasing the file size. 429 00:21:57,600 --> 00:21:59,950 There's a lot that goes on when you click that button, 430 00:21:59,950 --> 00:22:00,800 I'm assuming. 431 00:22:00,800 --> 00:22:03,370 What do you think about all that? 432 00:22:03,370 --> 00:22:05,710 [BH] Increasing the file size is really very easy. 433 00:22:05,710 --> 00:22:08,630 As I say, you can just press a button. 434 00:22:08,630 --> 00:22:12,730 Increasing the resolution of the image is not so easy. 435 00:22:12,730 --> 00:22:18,560 In some precise sense, you're not adding any information 436 00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:21,220 to an image when you simply increase 437 00:22:21,220 --> 00:22:24,710 the resolution in Photoshop, say, by making it 438 00:22:24,710 --> 00:22:26,790 into a larger file. 439 00:22:26,790 --> 00:22:30,680 If you look at it in the simplest terms, if you were at, 440 00:22:30,680 --> 00:22:34,140 say 150 dots per inch, you could take each pixel 441 00:22:34,140 --> 00:22:37,950 and divide it into four smaller pixels. 442 00:22:37,950 --> 00:22:41,230 Each square becomes four tinier squares. 443 00:22:41,230 --> 00:22:44,650 Each of those four squares is identical. 444 00:22:44,650 --> 00:22:47,460 And you then have a file that's four times as large 445 00:22:47,460 --> 00:22:52,770 in terms of megabytes and has twice the resolution 446 00:22:52,770 --> 00:22:55,670 and it's now 300 dots per inch. 447 00:22:55,670 --> 00:22:59,030 If you look at the metadata in Photoshop or something, 448 00:22:59,030 --> 00:23:00,400 that's what it will tell you. 449 00:23:00,400 --> 00:23:03,791 But it has no more information than the original one. 450 00:23:03,791 --> 00:23:04,290 [FF] OK. 451 00:23:04,290 --> 00:23:09,900 But what we have touched on with the flatbed scanner 452 00:23:09,900 --> 00:23:14,560 is when we tell the scanner to scan at, 453 00:23:14,560 --> 00:23:18,860 let's say, 72 DPI and then we tell it later 454 00:23:18,860 --> 00:23:26,370 to scan at 300 DPI, are we not capturing more information when 455 00:23:26,370 --> 00:23:27,820 we scan the image? 456 00:23:27,820 --> 00:23:28,930 [BH] Absolutely. 457 00:23:28,930 --> 00:23:31,160 Yes, you are. 458 00:23:31,160 --> 00:23:34,330 You are dealing there with a physical process 459 00:23:34,330 --> 00:23:38,360 that-- again, if we look at it in the simplest terms, 460 00:23:38,360 --> 00:23:41,150 and this isn't terribly realistic-- but 461 00:23:41,150 --> 00:23:43,450 the sensor in the scanner, when you 462 00:23:43,450 --> 00:23:49,670 scan at reduced resolution, at, say, 150 dots per inch, 463 00:23:49,670 --> 00:23:54,960 it's going to use two sensor elements together as if they 464 00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:59,890 were one and simply record half as much information. 465 00:23:59,890 --> 00:24:03,412 Then when you set the scanner for 300 dots per inch, 466 00:24:03,412 --> 00:24:08,500 it reads each of those pairs of sensors as two separate sensors 467 00:24:08,500 --> 00:24:11,280 and records twice as much information, 468 00:24:11,280 --> 00:24:14,290 or really four times as much because it's in two dimensions. 469 00:24:14,290 --> 00:24:16,760 The scanner is moving across the surface, 470 00:24:16,760 --> 00:24:20,310 it's not just one line. 471 00:24:20,310 --> 00:24:22,600 When you do this in software, however, you 472 00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:25,540 have no way of going back to the original object 473 00:24:25,540 --> 00:24:28,220 that you were scanning or photographing 474 00:24:28,220 --> 00:24:31,230 and recording more information about it. 475 00:24:31,230 --> 00:24:35,450 All you have is what's in the original file. 476 00:24:35,450 --> 00:24:37,740 Now, this seems very gloomy. 477 00:24:37,740 --> 00:24:41,950 It seems as if you have no hope of actually increasing 478 00:24:41,950 --> 00:24:43,820 the resolution of an image. 479 00:24:43,820 --> 00:24:47,260 Once you've made it, if you can't go back to the original 480 00:24:47,260 --> 00:24:50,550 and recreate it from life, then you'll 481 00:24:50,550 --> 00:24:53,020 never have more dots per inch than what 482 00:24:53,020 --> 00:24:55,300 you captured to begin with. 483 00:24:55,300 --> 00:24:57,480 It's not quite that bad. 484 00:24:57,480 --> 00:25:01,350 The statement that you can never put more information into it 485 00:25:01,350 --> 00:25:03,460 than was there to begin with, it's 486 00:25:03,460 --> 00:25:07,840 true in some mathematical sense in that 487 00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:13,240 if you have, say, an image of totally random dots 488 00:25:13,240 --> 00:25:15,960 that are scattered across the surface 489 00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,190 and you try to increase the resolution in order 490 00:25:19,190 --> 00:25:23,340 to get more dots per inch, it's not going to work. 491 00:25:23,340 --> 00:25:28,250 All you'll do is make the dots you have a little bit fuzzier. 492 00:25:28,250 --> 00:25:30,430 But we don't generally take pictures 493 00:25:30,430 --> 00:25:32,980 of random arrays of dots. 494 00:25:32,980 --> 00:25:37,860 We take pictures of objects that have macroscopic form, that 495 00:25:37,860 --> 00:25:40,750 have sharp edges, they have areas 496 00:25:40,750 --> 00:25:43,070 of one color and another color, they 497 00:25:43,070 --> 00:25:45,720 have smooth gradients of color. 498 00:25:45,720 --> 00:25:49,640 And all of that is structure at a much higher level 499 00:25:49,640 --> 00:25:51,770 than individual pixels. 500 00:25:51,770 --> 00:25:54,560 And it is possible, if you're clever 501 00:25:54,560 --> 00:25:57,390 or if your software is clever, to find 502 00:25:57,390 --> 00:26:01,730 ways to boost the resolution of an image 503 00:26:01,730 --> 00:26:06,640 that if the image cooperates, if it's a picture of something 504 00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:09,880 that has reasonable structure to it, which 505 00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:14,546 could be anything from a human face, to a plant, 506 00:26:14,546 --> 00:26:16,640 to a technological artifact. 507 00:26:16,640 --> 00:26:20,580 Because reasonably large areas of color or smooth gradients 508 00:26:20,580 --> 00:26:23,280 or sharp edges and that these are the things 509 00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:26,800 that you're interested in, it actually comes out pretty well. 510 00:26:26,800 --> 00:26:28,130 I've done it myself. 511 00:26:28,130 --> 00:26:29,410 [FF] Me, too. 512 00:26:29,410 --> 00:26:36,120 [BH] And in most cases, the result is successful. 513 00:26:36,120 --> 00:26:38,760 There is a quasi ethical question 514 00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:42,670 here of do you disclose to the art director 515 00:26:42,670 --> 00:26:45,980 you're sending this to that, in fact, 516 00:26:45,980 --> 00:26:50,580 this was a 150 dot per inch file that you have manipulated-- 517 00:26:50,580 --> 00:26:54,920 there's that terrible word-- in order to boost the resolution? 518 00:26:54,920 --> 00:26:56,110 I'm not an ethicist. 519 00:26:56,110 --> 00:26:59,130 I leave that to other people to decide. 520 00:26:59,130 --> 00:27:02,720 It's not alteration of the content, in my view. 521 00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:05,370 It's not like you're air brushing out something that 522 00:27:05,370 --> 00:27:07,510 wasn't supposed to be there. 523 00:27:07,510 --> 00:27:11,126 But obviously, it is a deliberate act 524 00:27:11,126 --> 00:27:13,920 to make the picture look better. 525 00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:17,000 I would also say that another problem here 526 00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:22,000 is that the art director who insists that the file has 527 00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:28,040 to be 300 DPI is being rather foolishly rigid about this. 528 00:27:28,040 --> 00:27:31,630 There are images that you can print on a magazine cover that 529 00:27:31,630 --> 00:27:34,000 are 150 DPI that work out fine. 530 00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:35,900 But changing the world in that direction 531 00:27:35,900 --> 00:27:37,920 is much harder than fixing the photograph. 532 00:27:37,920 --> 00:27:40,290 [FF] Especially when the art director basically 533 00:27:40,290 --> 00:27:44,120 has to first talk to the editor, who generally knows 534 00:27:44,120 --> 00:27:47,710 nothing about image making. 535 00:27:47,710 --> 00:27:51,630 [BH] As a former editor, I will let you have your say. 536 00:27:51,630 --> 00:27:53,635 [FF] Thank you. 537 00:27:53,635 --> 00:27:55,550 But no, I would say for cover submissions 538 00:27:55,550 --> 00:27:58,390 where we're talking about we're bringing 539 00:27:58,390 --> 00:28:03,210 the notion of aesthetics and communication, 540 00:28:03,210 --> 00:28:06,670 creating a finer image. 541 00:28:06,670 --> 00:28:09,780 [BH] I entirely agree. 542 00:28:09,780 --> 00:28:13,190 There are various standards that get applied. 543 00:28:13,190 --> 00:28:18,750 Journalism has one set of rules that's really quite harsh. 544 00:28:18,750 --> 00:28:23,350 Photojournalists working for a newspaper or an agency 545 00:28:23,350 --> 00:28:25,690 like Magnum, they suffer severe penalties 546 00:28:25,690 --> 00:28:29,150 if they're caught making changes to images. 547 00:28:29,150 --> 00:28:32,810 [FF] Like moving Egyptian tombs. 548 00:28:32,810 --> 00:28:33,737 [BH] Yeah, right. 549 00:28:33,737 --> 00:28:34,820 [FF] Do you remember that? 550 00:28:34,820 --> 00:28:35,300 [BH] I certainly do. 551 00:28:35,300 --> 00:28:36,770 [FF] This was a long time ago. 552 00:28:36,770 --> 00:28:38,900 [BH] In that case, if I remember correctly, 553 00:28:38,900 --> 00:28:44,410 it wasn't the photographer, it was the art director 554 00:28:44,410 --> 00:28:45,220 who "improved." 555 00:28:45,220 --> 00:28:50,910 [FF] They moved the pyramids so that the typeface 556 00:28:50,910 --> 00:28:55,630 could be dropped more properly as a full cover design. 557 00:28:55,630 --> 00:28:57,310 That was a long time ago. 558 00:28:57,310 --> 00:29:00,100 It's dating us, Brian, I'm afraid. 559 00:29:00,100 --> 00:29:02,840 But those questions still arise. 560 00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:04,110 [BH] Of course they do, yes. 561 00:29:04,110 --> 00:29:06,830 And it's easier to do it in the photograph 562 00:29:06,830 --> 00:29:09,890 than it is to move the pyramid itself. 563 00:29:09,890 --> 00:29:12,320 [FF] As of today, yes, I would have to say that. 564 00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:16,380 So we are going to be discussing this in week five, 565 00:29:16,380 --> 00:29:17,950 how far can we go? 566 00:29:17,950 --> 00:29:20,974 [BH] It's a fascinating issue with a very long history. 567 00:29:20,974 --> 00:29:21,474 [FF] Yeah. 568 00:29:21,474 --> 00:29:22,300 Oh, yeah. 569 00:29:22,300 --> 00:29:27,740 [BH] And it is-- I think it's something that individuals, 570 00:29:27,740 --> 00:29:31,740 they need to make their own ethical choices, 571 00:29:31,740 --> 00:29:36,870 but obviously if you're working in a social setting 572 00:29:36,870 --> 00:29:39,570 where there are other people making the rules, 573 00:29:39,570 --> 00:29:41,590 you also need to be aware of that. 574 00:29:41,590 --> 00:29:43,550 [FF] There's a whole issue as we talk 575 00:29:43,550 --> 00:29:47,420 about the whole notion of manipulation and how far 576 00:29:47,420 --> 00:29:48,680 can one go. 577 00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:51,570 And certainly in science imaging, 578 00:29:51,570 --> 00:29:54,990 there are very serious restrictions, 579 00:29:54,990 --> 00:29:56,720 and there should be. 580 00:29:56,720 --> 00:29:59,390 It isn't all about the data, but the question 581 00:29:59,390 --> 00:30:01,610 is defining what the data is. 582 00:30:01,610 --> 00:30:05,600 The fact that you're making an image with a tool, 583 00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:07,640 you're already changing the data. 584 00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:10,440 We have to remember, and we'll go back to this later, 585 00:30:10,440 --> 00:30:15,900 but making a picture is making a representation. 586 00:30:15,900 --> 00:30:20,360 It is not the thing, it is a re- presentation 587 00:30:20,360 --> 00:30:23,960 and there is some sort of decision-making involved. 588 00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:27,470 The thing that I'm trying to emphasize in the course 589 00:30:27,470 --> 00:30:33,970 is that we have to create a literacy, in a way, 590 00:30:33,970 --> 00:30:37,920 of what makes for a good picture. 591 00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:42,820 And you and I might disagree on that, and we have, I think. 592 00:30:42,820 --> 00:30:46,150 And I hope that students come to their own decisions 593 00:30:46,150 --> 00:30:50,450 about what is better than that or less than that 594 00:30:50,450 --> 00:30:52,900 and what is good. 595 00:30:52,900 --> 00:30:55,670 But I think we have to start somewhere, 596 00:30:55,670 --> 00:31:02,370 and the "somewhere" for us is to create an image that 597 00:31:02,370 --> 00:31:09,450 well communicates what it is that this device or Petri dish 598 00:31:09,450 --> 00:31:12,850 or thing that we're photographing-- what picture 599 00:31:12,850 --> 00:31:15,140 can best communicate the structure? 600 00:31:15,140 --> 00:31:18,650 We're generally interested in structure. 601 00:31:18,650 --> 00:31:21,770 And if we are talking about process, 602 00:31:21,770 --> 00:31:26,060 for example, as we do when we make photo illustrations, 603 00:31:26,060 --> 00:31:29,050 we have examples later on that the students will 604 00:31:29,050 --> 00:31:33,930 see how I've used bits and pieces of photographs, 605 00:31:33,930 --> 00:31:36,780 put it all together for an illustration. 606 00:31:36,780 --> 00:31:41,270 So it's not a documentary image and there's a place for that 607 00:31:41,270 --> 00:31:42,410 in science. 608 00:31:42,410 --> 00:31:46,880 But in the end, it's about getting the finest quality 609 00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:48,900 to communicate the science. 610 00:31:48,900 --> 00:31:52,420 That is what we're doing here in this course. 611 00:31:52,420 --> 00:31:57,960 And by the way, we will be discussing using 612 00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,130 tablets and mobile devices. 613 00:32:01,130 --> 00:32:05,140 Very tangentially, but there's a place for that. 614 00:32:05,140 --> 00:32:06,070 Absolutely. 615 00:32:06,070 --> 00:32:10,140 When you really, really need to take a picture quickly and send 616 00:32:10,140 --> 00:32:12,830 it to your colleague to show them that you have evidence 617 00:32:12,830 --> 00:32:14,090 of what you've produced. 618 00:32:14,090 --> 00:32:17,370 But as far as making the finest quality image, 619 00:32:17,370 --> 00:32:19,840 we still are going to-- at this point-- 620 00:32:19,840 --> 00:32:23,230 stick to the camera and the 105 lens. 621 00:32:23,230 --> 00:32:24,760 That's what we're sticking to. 622 00:32:24,760 --> 00:32:28,650 [BH] I wouldn't try to argue otherwise. 623 00:32:28,650 --> 00:32:32,000 I think the way people will think 624 00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:36,740 of photography and of pictures in years 625 00:32:36,740 --> 00:32:40,230 to come may be rather different from our view. 626 00:32:40,230 --> 00:32:44,960 It's certainly changed within my lifetime, when photographs 627 00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:49,310 were physical objects that you put in scrapbooks 628 00:32:49,310 --> 00:32:51,420 or filed away. 629 00:32:51,420 --> 00:32:55,120 We don't think of them in those terms anymore. 630 00:32:55,120 --> 00:32:58,520 And I think they may change their nature again 631 00:32:58,520 --> 00:33:01,660 because they are so ubiquitous. 632 00:33:01,660 --> 00:33:05,110 But that doesn't really have much to do 633 00:33:05,110 --> 00:33:07,420 with the kinds of photography that 634 00:33:07,420 --> 00:33:11,240 are involved in, say, scientific documentation 635 00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:13,210 or scientific illustration. 636 00:33:13,210 --> 00:33:17,750 In art photography, you never know what's going to happen. 637 00:33:17,750 --> 00:33:21,830 And there are lots of artists, I think, 638 00:33:21,830 --> 00:33:25,040 who are now working with cell phones and such, 639 00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:30,030 and even with the plastic lens Lomo cameras and things 640 00:33:30,030 --> 00:33:35,170 that deliberately distort the view of the world. 641 00:33:35,170 --> 00:33:38,040 So I think there's lots of latitude 642 00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,480 for different approaches to this. 643 00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,830 But for serious documentary work or for trying 644 00:33:45,830 --> 00:33:50,710 to create the most vivid image that you possibly can 645 00:33:50,710 --> 00:33:52,750 of something that holds still for you 646 00:33:52,750 --> 00:33:56,180 while you point the camera at it, clearly 647 00:33:56,180 --> 00:34:00,850 you're going to use the best tool that you can come up with. 648 00:34:00,850 --> 00:34:03,150 Even mediocre ones today, I think, 649 00:34:03,150 --> 00:34:07,350 are considerably better than the best ones of a few decades ago. 650 00:34:07,350 --> 00:34:10,100 They're probably going to get better still.