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Posts Tagged ‘Hidden’

ZTE reveals the Axon 20 5G, the first smartphone with selfie camera hidden under the display

03 Sep

After multiple promises to release such a device, Chinese company ZTE has officially unveiled the Axon 20 5G, the first smartphone to feature a selfie camera located beneath the display. The mid-range handset, which is otherwise unremarkable, was introduced by the company on Tuesday, but questions on availability remain.

The Axon 20 5G is the first smartphone brought to market that features a front-facing camera under the display, something ZTE says was made possible using a variety of ‘high transparency material that includes new organic and inorganic films’ in addition to image software, The Verge reports.

Quite obviously, this design means the Axon 20 5G does not feature a visible selfie camera, rather presenting users with a clean, uninterrupted display free of notches, hole punches and thick camera-packing bezels. The actual quality of images produced by the hidden camera remains unclear, however, due to the current lack of reviews and sample photos.

The camera located beneath the display packs 32MP; it is joined by a 64MP primary rear camera alongside an 8MP ultra-wide and 2MP depth/macro cameras. The primary camera supports video recording at up to 4K/60fps with real-time HDR and real-time subtitles.

Novelty aside, the Axon 20 5G is a solidly mid-range device packing a 6.92in 20.5:9 FDH+ OLED display with 10-bit 1.07B color and 100% DCI-P3, as well as a 90Hz refresh rate. Circling back to the unique hidden camera, ZTE’s website explains that this unit features high-transparency micron-level material, a ‘special pixel matrix,’ triple selfie algorithm, an integrated circuit and an independent driver chip.

The light sensor, sound system and fingerprint sensor are likewise hidden beneath the display, according to ZTE, which has packed a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor and Adreno 629 GPU under the hood. Other features include an ‘AI performance engine,’ smart power-saving mode, ‘liquid cooling circulation,’ carbon nanofiber thermal pad and nano-level textured design.

Buyers will have two models to choose from, one featuring 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM, the other featuring 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. Both variants will feature a microSD card slot, 4220mAh battery and support for 5G. At this point in time, ZTE is only offering the Axon 20 5G model in China for the equivalent of around $ 320 starting price. It’s unclear whether the model will get an international release.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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MIT project uses camera and AI to ‘record’ hidden objects using the shadows they cast

10 Dec

Researchers with MIT’s Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have published a study detailing the use of cameras and artificial intelligence to recreate hidden actions based only on the shadows they cast. The method produces fairly low-quality results at this time but may be refined for future computational photography purposes that include helping self-driving cars ‘see’ hidden objects in their environment.

Shadows can reveal the presence of things a person may not be able to directly see; in the most obvious example, someone could, for example, perceive that a person is standing around a nearby corner because of the shadow they cast on the sidewalk. Though humans can perceive the movement of objects using their shadows, we cannot determine their colors and may not be able to determine their shape.

The newly detailed MIT AI can, however, recreate videos that include hints about an object’s color and shape based on the shadows it produces. As demonstrated in the video above, the AI was surprisingly capable of recreating the movement and general shape of hands and forearms in motion out of view of the camera. As well, the algorithm generated a video of hands moving large blocks and a small ball, recreating part of each object’s color.

This is the latest example of researchers combining cameras and artificial intelligence to produce seemingly magical results. This past summer, for example, experts with Facebook Research and the University of Washington unveiled an algorithm that can generate ‘living’ animations from individual still images.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Instagram CEO says it will start testing hidden ‘likes’ in the US starting this week

10 Nov

After testing it in numerous other regions, including Brazil, Japan, Canada and Australia, Instagram has confirmed it will start hiding ‘likes’ for accounts based in the United States this coming week.

The confirmation comes from Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri during the below interview at WIRED25. In it, he says certain users in the United States will have ‘private likes’ as soon as this week. Based on how Mosseri addresses the crowd, it appears as though the rollout will be random.

While elaborating on why Instagram is looking to test this, Mosseri said:

It’s about young people. The idea is to try and depressurize Instagram [to] make it less of a competition [and] giving people more space to focus on connecting with people that they love [and] the things that inspire them.

It very much seems as though this is a work in progress, far from being set in stone, so initial feedback will likely play a major role in whether or not this feature — or mores the lack of a feature — sticks around.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Fujifilm teases development of X-Pro3 with titanium body, mini rear LCD, hidden display and more

21 Sep

At its Fujifilm X Summit in Tokyo, Japan today, Fujifilm announced the development of its forthcoming X-Pro3 and teased several new and intriguing features the rangefinder-like mirrorless camera will have.

The first detail Fujifilm noted in its presentation is that the X-Pro3 will be built with a titanium body, which will come in three colors: Black, DURA Black and DURA Silver. The standard ‘Black’ version appears to be painted, while the ‘DURA’ versions are coated in some manner. Titanium is a challenging metal to work with, but more durable and lighter than other metal alloys traditionally used in camera bodies.

Fujifilm also talked about the improved hybrid viewfinder in the X-Pro3. Inside the viewfinder is a new electronic viewfinder (EVF) that will offer higher resolution, higher contrast, wider-gamut color space, improved brightness and a higher refresh rate. Fujifilm also says it’s managed to decrease distortion and improve the angle of view inside the viewfinder.

Note the ‘Provia’ film stock icon shown on the compact LCD on the rear of the camera. This film stock icon will stay there and is dynamic in that the ISO rating in the icon changes as you change it on the camera.

Further switching things up, Fujifilm announced that it will be repositioning the standard rear LCD in favor of a compact LCD that is comparable to the top LCD on the GFX cameras, except on the back of the camera. In a neat little trick that nostalgia-seeking photographers will love, this compact LCD can also be used to show the film simulation in use, a nod to the days where you’d rip off part of the film package and place it in the mount on film cameras.

You’ll note we said reposition because, as Fujifilm demonstrated, the display is still there, it’s just hidden. Now, the main rear display sits on the back of a hinged panel, meaning you have to flip it down to navigate the menu or review images/video. Fujifilm says the repositioning of the LCD was done to ‘keep photographers looking through the viewfinder’ rather than ‘chimping’ at the back of the camera.

It’s an unusual approach and, while we can see it appealing to waist-level street shooters, we’ll have to wait to see what it’s like for other types of photography. There have been a lot of calls for an articulated screen on the X-Pro and X-100 series cameras, but we’re not sure this solution will satisfy everyone, either. It will, at least, create a more obvious distinction between the X-Pro and X-T series: with the rangefinder-shaped model being the one you shoot through the viewfinder.

‘Classic Negative’ will be the 10th film simulation Fujifilm has released.

Lastly, as has been rumored, Fujifilm its 10th film simulation called ‘Classic Negative’ that will resemble the look of Fujicolor Superia.

Despite being billed as a ‘development’ presentation, Fujifilm spilled quite a few details about its upcoming X-Pro3 camera system. The camera will officially be announced on October 23rd. To get to all of the details regarding the new X-Pro3 system, skip to roughly the 1:10:00 mark in the above video.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Don’t Create Detail, Just Reveal It – How to Reveal the Hidden Details in Your Photos

24 May

The post Don’t Create Detail, Just Reveal It – How to Reveal the Hidden Details in Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.

Just as cleaning the lenses of your eyeglasses clarifies what you see, cleansing your pictures of dull lighting will put the sparkle in your photos.

Have you noticed how many individual tools are available in your favorite editing software for changing the values of pixels? The array is dazzling, and most of this editing involves “localized” procedures (dodging, burning, painting, cloning, masking, etc.) affecting specific areas.

But here’s something to consider.

Unless the image you are working on is either damaged (either completely blown-out highlights, plugged-up shadows) or just contains too much unwanted clutter, you rarely need to create specific detail with these tools. The detail is usually right there just below the surface waiting for discovery. You need only make global adjustments to the tones within the darker and lighter ends of the range to achieve pretty amazing results.

When I took this shot of my wife Barbara fifteen years ago, I put it in the reject file because it was so dark. But carefully adjusting and lightening the shadow and middle tones in the picture separated the deep shadow tones from the middle tones. Now both she and the picture are definite keepers. No local editing was necessary, and there is no tell-tale evidence of a touchup. The image contained all the necessary lighter tones – they simply had to be uncovered.

Push tones instead of pixels

Post-processing digital images is usually a process of subtraction; removing the visual obstacles that are covering the underlying detail in a photographic image. This detail will reveal itself if you merely nudge the tonal ranges instead of the pixels.

The fact is…all the detail in every subject has been duly captured and is hiding in either the shadows or the highlights, waiting to be discovered.

The digital camera’s image sensor sees and records the entire range of tones from black to white within every image it captures. What is hiding within this massive range of tones is the detail. Unfortunately, the camera sensor has no way of knowing the detail that may be under (or over) exposed within that range. It simply captures everything it sees inside the bookends of dark and light.

Camera image sensors can capture a range of tones up to 16,000 levels between solid color and no color. This doesn’t mean that all 16,000-pixel values are actually present in the picture; it just means that the darkest to the lightest tones are stretched out over the significant detail that is hiding in the middle.

Adjustments made to the image in Alien Skin’s Exposure X4.5 revealed detail in the sunlit walkway and darkened archway that appeared lost in the original capture. No painting or cloning tools were necessary.

The purpose of this article is not to get geeky about the science, but to assure you that there is an amazing amount of detail that you can recover from seemingly poor images.

A basic JPEG image can display more than 250 tones in each color. While that doesn’t sound like much, you should know that the human eye can only perceive a little over 100 distinct levels of each color. No kidding! Technically, 256 tones are too many.

The balancing act

Here’s a sobering truth. Your camera can capture more detail than your eye can detect and more tones than your monitor can display. As a matter of fact, it can capture up to 16,000 levels of tones and colors. That’s more than any publishing resource (computer monitor, inkjet printer, Internet, or even any printed publication) can reveal. Each of these other outlets is limited to reproducing just 8-bits (256 levels) of each color. The camera’s light-capture range is even beyond the scope of human vision. The range (light to dark) of your camera is immense compared to any reproduction process. What this means is that the editing part of the photography process needs MUCH more attention than the image capture process.

This introduces a complex but interesting phenomenon. Your post-production challenge is to emphasize the most important details recorded inside the tones captured by your camera and then distinguish them sufficiently for the printer, your monitor, or the Internet to reveal.

Your camera captures an incredible amount of detail in each scene that isn’t initially visible. However, with the right software, this detail can be uncovered just as an electron microscope can reveal detail buried deep inside things that the naked eye cannot perceive.

Image editing is all about discovering and revealing what is hiding in plain sight.

Image clarity

Bringing a picture to life doesn’t always require additional touchup procedures. Sometimes, just massaging the existing detail does the trick. The Highlights, Shadows, and Clarity sliders were all that were required to transpose this shot from average to special.

Clarity is the process of accentuating detail. The dictionary defines clarity as “the quality of being easy to see or hear; sharpness of image or sound.” When we clarify something, we clear it up. We understand it better. We view an issue from a different perspective.

Many image editing software packages have a slider called “clarity.” The function of this slider is to accentuate minor distinctions between lighter and darker areas within the image. Each of the other tone sliders (Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Clarity, and Dehaze) all perform a clarifying process on specific tone ranges.

The real beauty of shooting with a 12/14-bit camera is the level of access you receive to the detail captured in each image. If you want to think “deep,” you can start with the editing process of your digital images. You’ll be amazed at what you will find when you learn to peel away the microlayers of distracting information in well-exposed photos.

Just as cleaning the lenses of your eyeglasses clarifies what you see, cleansing your pictures of dull lighting will put the sparkle in your photos.

Adobe Camera Raw controls reveal significant detail in the darker portions of the image by simply adjusting the Basic slider controls.

Learning to expose images correctly

The information you learn from excellent teaching resources like Digital Photography School teach you how to correctly set your equipment to capture a variety of subjects and scenes. Study the articles in this amazing collection and learn to shoot pictures understanding the basic tenets of good exposure. Poorly-captured images will hinder your discovery of detail. However, correctly exposed images will reward you with, not only beautiful color but, access to an amazing amount of detail.

Learn to harness the power of light correctly for the challenge that each scene presents by balancing the camera controls of ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed. The more balanced your original exposure, the less post-processing will be necessary.

Conclusion

Every scene presents a unique lighting situation and requires a solid understanding of your camera’s light-control processes to capture all possible detail. Any camera can capture events and document happenings, but it takes a serious student of photography to faithfully capture each scene in a way that allows all that information to be skillfully sculpted into a detailed image.

 

The post Don’t Create Detail, Just Reveal It – How to Reveal the Hidden Details in Your Photos appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Herb Paynter.


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Hidden gems of Japan: Tokyo and beyond with the Canon EOS M50

15 Aug

Alex T. Thomas and Kathryn Bingham are photographers, friends and Tokyo residents who have been studying the language and exploring Japan for the past four years. They’re interested in relics of the country’s ancient past, exquisite Showa-era bathhouses called sent?s, elaborately-appointed roadside rest stops and everything in between.

On a recent trip from bustling Tokyo to the peaceful riverside town of Gujo Hachiman, the pair each brought along the Canon EOS M50. Take a look at the hidden gems they encountered along the way.


This is sponsored content, created with the support of Amazon and Canon. What does this mean?

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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UK heatwave reveals hidden henges in scorched fields

22 Jul
Lancashire County Council

The UK’s recent heatwave has provided a glimpse into Britain’s history, revealing the outlines of ancient structures and buried features in the grounds of historical buildings.

The UK is home to multiple known prehistoric structures, but these new “phantom” henges are different, their presence only perceptible due to changes in grass color caused by drought. In a prolonged spell of very hot weather, stone or wood located beneath the earth stores heat, causing the grass above it to wither and brown at a faster rate than the grass surrounding it, effectively tracing the outline of the buried structures.

The warmer temperatures cause the grass above stone to wither, resulting in a tan outline in a brown field

According to the BBC, one such henge was discovered by aerial photographer Anthony Murphy, who was operating a camera drone over Newgrange, Ireland. Murphy spotted a circular imprint in a field near River Boyne, an otherwise invisible henge located near a different imprint spotted in 2010.

University College Dublin assistant professor of archaeology Stephen Davis confirmed to BBC that Murphy’s image shows an “entirely new” henge with captivating features. Others like it have appeared in the withering UK landscape, including imprints revealing the former rooms and corridors of an 18th-century mansion called Clumber House.

Though the building no longer remains, stone from its foundation is still present beneath ground level. The warmer temperatures cause the grass above the stone to wither, resulting in a tan outline in a brown field. Other past structures have also become visible, including a Victorian-era garden in Lancashire (above) and the outlines of runways and dispersal pans at what was once Lasham Airfield, which was returned to farmland after World War 2.

Via: BBC

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Pencil Art: 50+ Sculptures Explore the Hidden Beauty of This Utilitarian Object

04 Sep

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

A pencil is usually a tool, but what happens when artists subvert its common usage, transforming it into a medium for sculpting instead? Extraordinary sculpting skills paired with a steady hand and a magnifying glass make it possible to carve amazingly tiny figures out of the pencil’s lead. Some artists see flowers or portraits in cast-off pencil shavings, or glue masses of the writing instruments together to sculpt and sand them into new forms punctuated by the graphite or colored pigments inside each pencil’s core.

Pencil Lead Carvings by Salavat Fidai

HBO Asia recently commissioned an incredible set of Game of Thrones-themed pencil lead carvings from Russian artist Salavat Fidai, including the sigils of each House, a White Walker, the dragons and the Iron Throne. It takes Fidai about 6 to 12 hours to sculpt each one using a craft knife, a magnifying glass and a microscope. The artist says the most challenging piece in the collection was the throne, which took over three weeks to perfect. Of course, the Game of Thrones pieces are just the latest works from Fidai, who has also carved tiny architecture, superheroes and other fictional characters, and much more.

Vases Made of Pencils by Studio Markunpoika

Hundreds of pencils are glued together into a solid mass and then carved on a machine lathe to create vases and other decorative objects, revealing the insides of the pencils. Studio Markunpoika describes their process: “‘Amalgamated’ is a collection which explores the relationship of a mass produced ‘tool’ and its individual purpose. The beauty of the pencil as an object seems to go unnoticed if utilized only for their primary purpose. ‘Amalgamated’ is a visual and tactile investigation using pencils as a raw material. This holistic principle has been the fundament for creating this set of vases; let the pencils become a thing themselves.”

Pencil Lead Carvings by Dalton Ghetti

The most impressive works by Dalton Ghetti are undoubtedly those which turn single pencil leads into chains. You can’t help but stare at each one for a while, wondering how he managed to pull them off. The fact that the artist has been refining his process since childhood might tell you a thing or two about how he’s able to pull pieces like these off – or that some of his pieces can take months or even years to complete. He also carves his tiny sculptures without the aid of a microscope or magnifying glass, using sewing needles and razor blades.

Pencil Sculptures by Jennifer Maestre

The colorful bristling creatures of Jennifer Maestre seem to have come from the depths of the sea, their appendages recalling the natural shapes of urchins, anemones, coral, octopi and jellyfish. The artist uses colored pencils as a medium for her unusual sculptures. “The spines of the urchin, so dangerous yet beautiful, serve as an explicit warning against contact. The alluring texture of the spines draws the touch in spite of the possible consequences. The tension unveiled, we feel push and pull, desire and repulsion. The sections of pencils present aspects of sharp and smooth for two very different textural and aesthetic experiences. Paradox and surprise are integral in my choice of materials.”

Pencil Lead Carvings by Cindy Chinn

Cindy Chinn takes advantage of the length of graphite contained within a pencil, tunnel-like inside the wood, and translates it into lines of marching elephants or trains. Her ‘Elephant Walk’ series was commissioned by the California-based Epiphany Elephant Museum. Of the train piece, Chinn says “This piece was designed using straight lead pieces for the rails, with the tiny carved train placed and securely glued on top of the rails. The train engine is only 3/16” of an inch tall. The pencil is 5-5/8” long and mounted in a wood shadowbox frame as shown in the photos.”

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Pencil Art 50 Sculptures Explore The Hidden Beauty Of This Utilitarian Object

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[ By SA Rogers in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

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Video: Seven ‘hidden secrets’ in Adobe Lightroom

16 Jul

It’ll be a little while before Adobe can deliver on its recent promise to make Lightroom faster, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still figure out ways to make the program work faster for you. Case in point: photoshopCAFE founder Colin Smith has put together this really useful video outlining 7 ‘hidden secrets’ in Adobe Lightroom that will definitely help you get more out of the Raw editor.

Some of these tips are genuinely useful, and we’re going to guess that at least one or two of them will be new to you even if you’ve been using Lightroom for years.

Smith covers the tips in detail (and shows you how to use them) in the video above, but here’s the TL;DW version:

  1. Right click in the panels of the Develop module and enable ‘Solo Mode.’ This only allows one panel to stay open at a time, collapsing the rest.
  2. Click and drag your panel sidebar out to the left to make your sliders longer.
  3. Hold down Command (CTRL on Windows) and double click the center of a shape like a radial filter, and it will automatically snap to the edges of the photo you’re editing.
  4. Right click and uncheck to hide both modules and panels you don’t use.
  5. The Develop module doesn’t work on videos, but you can sync edits made to a single frame of that video onto the full thing. Just pull a frame, edit it, and then select the frame and video both and click Sync.
  6. You can turn any collection into a ‘Quick Collection’ by right clicking it and selecting ‘Set as Target Collection.’ Now you can curate photos into that collection with a single click.
  7. If you have multiple photos selected, you can still see the metadata for an individual photo without deselecting the bunch. Just click Metadata > Show Metadata for Target Photo Only.

And that’s it! Obviously these tips are easier to take in by actually watching the video, so click play, learn a little something and let us know which (if any) of these ‘hidden secrets’ were actually new to you.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

 
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Hidden Stories: 3D-Printed, Architect-Designed Rings Tell Looping Tales

26 May

[ By WebUrbanist in Design & Products & Packaging. ]

Most jewelry tells some kind of a story (about its origin if nothing else) but these pieces are a bit more explicit, featuring tales of structures, characters and actions in miniature built environments.

Architectural designer Artur Dabrowsk produces rings, cuffs, necklaces and bracelets that revolve “around the concept of ‘depth’ in terms of formal language (shadow lines, composition, depth of field) as well as in meaning (details, storytelling).”

Whether he is crafting mysterious staircases to nowhere or endlessly looped brick arches, each piece involves careful attention architectural detail (including theoretical structural load calculations) and is available in brass, bronze or silver.

The brick ring specifically goes back to his days in architecture school — “there is something very tactile and nostalgic that give [bricks] both timeless function and meaning,” says the designer.

“I was raised in a brick clad apartment building in Brooklyn,” he explains, “so I associated the brick wall as a shelter for my introverted childhood. The arch became a metaphoric portal through which I could turn the corner, open up, and express myself while still proud of my introverted self.”

Dabrowsk also has a thing for rabbits, which are something he has sketched idly for a long time and has since started to include as characters in his tiny built environments. “I started drawing them in the margins of my notebooks during grade school and personify them to express thoughts, situations or feelings I was having.”

“I think the imagery of it being personified is playful — the rabbit is cute, hops around, eats, multiplies… and lives naively in this world.” Even here, though, he is conscious of real-life conditions – the suspended rabbit above hands from what would, in reality, be the bare minimum load-support beam across an abyss.

Fans of architectural jewelry should also take a peak at this series of wearable skylines, featuring famous scenes and settings (though in a more two-dimensional format) from around the world.

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