I see iPhone pictures posted on walls all the time, because most people aren't pretentious.
The iPhone photo of the golf players is better than the "photographer" shot in every way that actually matters; the guys are more comfortable and they have natural smiles, whereas the other photo is full of grimaces and frowns. Why that might be is hard to guess, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the photographer forcing them to stand there and hold a pose while they fiddled with their weird little machine.
Don't underestimate the power of the subject's comfort and state of mind. Gramma is happy to get the picture, she doesn't care how it got taken.
> The iPhone photo of the golf players is better than the "photographer" shot in every way that actually matters; the guys are more comfortable and they have natural smiles, whereas the other photo is full of grimaces and frowns. Why that might be is hard to guess, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the photographer forcing them to stand there and hold a pose while they fiddled with their weird little machine.
What an odd thing to infer. Just a really large leap.
The thing about street and impromptu work like this is that to be good, it must be done gently. Otherwise it's only about you, the photographer, who has made a mirror of your subjects without knowing it. That's why I said it doesn't surprise me no one in any of these samples wears a genuine smile. I've made shots like those too, but I never thought them good enough to publish anywhere.
"Why don't you show examples of your own work so we can compare, then?" For one, because I have no such rights to the likeness of anyone who's put up with my lens. For another, no one here is really whose judgment I care about in this respect. When it comes to photography, HN's commentariat has always managed to be that rare broken clock which is right not even once a day, and not even for entertainment is it worth soliciting such a farrago.
> "Infer?" Watch the demo video and see it happen.
I didn't know what you were talking about at first because I didn't remember seeing any video on the blogpost. If there had been video showing this happen, it would definitely be a good argument against it being inference! Instead, as best as I can infer, you mean the video on the home page and I watched the first ~1min where a photographer takes a photo and they didn't do any more fiddling than I have ever seen someone do with an iPhone and the couple having their photo taken didn't look uncomfortable at all! So not only is this not a video, afaict since I didn't watch the whole 5mins, of this particular set of photos being taken which means the inference made by the OP is very much so an inference but also I don't even think it shows an example of what they purported.
> That's why I said it doesn't surprise me no one in any of these samples wears a genuine smile.
Also, looks like you logged into your throwaway for this reply so now you've linked throwanem <> bdamm together.
Then why are you explaining why you’ve said something if I’ve never spoken with or interacted with you before as though I would know what you have said lol
It was more that you don't seem to know what you have said. But that two people happen to agree on a point and independently pursue it isn't close to the same as saying they are the same person.
My identity has been obvious from my HN profile for nearly that profile's entire existence. The identity of the person, whom you have accused of using me as a throwaway, is likewise quite visible. They are plainly not the same. So unless you mean me to go on under the conclusion you are incompetent to defame by virtue of being overtly delusional, I'm not really clear on your intent.
This is a quote from your initial response to me and was quoted just above where I suggested it must be an alt:
> That's why I said it doesn't surprise me no one in any of these samples wears a genuine smile.
So I ask again, why are you explaining "why <you> said it doesn't surprise <you>..." when I've never interacted with you before that reply of yours and you didn't say that prior to this explanation in that post?
I guess that may just be your style of communicating, though? Like you're explaining what you said to yourself? In your post you it seems you were speaking to yourself for a lot of it - posing questions for yourself to answer, eg.
Well, I'm not really considering you as a person, any more than you could so consider me, we never having met. That's fair, in that this is a website intentionally privileging the quality of discourse in prose over the quality of credentials behind a screen name. (Historically, at least. I do get the sense being called a 'robber baron' enough might go to some people's heads, possibly coinciding with a noticeable increase in the occurrence rate of epistaxis. But never mind.)
In Hacker News threads about photography, there is invariably a sizable fraction of comments made by people who know nothing of the subject, have never engaged with it to a meaningful degree, and despite such radical ignorance nonetheless feel themselves empowered to speak as if they had any idea what they were talking about, or indeed understood even what they don't understand about it.
It's so common in fact as to qualify in practice as an archetype or invariant of the genre, and it's that to which I'm responding. You're right that I'm talking past you, but don't make too much of it. It's just that I've seen this all many times before.
For the same reason, I predict your next effort would have been to claim I have no stronger basis to speak on the topic than do you, and demand I distill the experience of ten years and something like a hundred thousand exposures into a tidy, ChatGPT-compatible bullet list which you can then performatively evaluate and find wanting. Oh, you won't do that now, of course. But you thought about it two paragraphs ago. Unfortunately, when asked the impossible, I am able to reject it as such.
If you want to see the conversation go a different way, then try taking it in a different direction. I admit you have already done this once! It's rare to see someone claim at once that two other people, strangers all, are both lying. I don't actually mind, being if anything ennobled by the association, though the gentleman with whom you confused me would be entirely reasonable to object.
But to answer your proximate question with respect to the distant antecedent, I referred to the quite long thread [1] in which I hashed out this whole question with the developer of the B2B SAAS for photographers, Candid9, which this article exists to advertise. I also offered some critique of the article itself.
You having spoken as if from great and very confident knowledge of so complex and nuanced a topic, I suppose it seemed reasonable also to expect at least passing familiarity with the actual conversations among which you were doing so. Excuse me. I do have this regrettable habit of assuming people intend to contribute to a discussion when they choose to participate in it, but I realize you're not alone in appearing to have other reasons.
> Well, I'm not really considering you as a person, any more than you could so consider me, we never having met.
That's a really deranged way to approach interacting with people! It does, however, explain a lot about how you post: you're basically arguing with your internal constructions of how people on Hacker News are and not at all with what they say. Your posts, this one quite specifically, are just you disagreeing with your internal construction of posters:
> Well, I'm not really considering you as a person, any more than you could so consider me, we never having met
I do consider you a person, though! That's just a really weird thing you have decided on and it doesn't extend to everyone else.
> For the same reason, I predict your next effort would have been to claim I have no stronger basis to speak on the topic than do you, and demand I distill the experience of ten years and something like a hundred thousand exposures into a tidy, ChatGPT-compatible bullet list which you can then performatively evaluate and find wanting. Oh, you won't do that now, of course. But you thought about it two paragraphs ago.
I wasn't considering doing that at all! I don't care about challenging your photography knowledge. I don't know anything about it other than you claim to have a lot and I only got that because you made sure to tell me.
> It's rare to see someone claim at once that two other people, strangers all, are both lying.
I never claimed anyone was lying! I claimed, based on your reply implicitly asserting we had already conversed, the logical conclusion that you would have to be the other poster and were using an alt. Why else would someone explain to me what they have already said without having ever said it to me? Now you've explained that: you don't talk to people; you talk to ideas of people that you have internally constructed. That's not typical.
> You having spoken as if from great and very confident knowledge of so complex and nuanced a topic, I suppose it seemed reasonable also to expect at least passing familiarity with the actual conversations among which you were doing so.
I responded to one specific leap of theory of mind! It's actually a really narrow and simple topic: can someone infer from the blogpost that the boys were grimacing because the photographer was fiddling with a camera instead of fiddling with an iPhone. The answer, of course, is you can't with the knowledge presented.
> I do have this regrettable habit of assuming people intend to contribute to a discussion when they choose to participate in it, but I realize you're not alone in appearing to have other reasons.
I did contribute! I even went so far as to watch a large portion of the video you claimed showed that the stated theory of mind could be seen in action. I then wrote that the video doesn't show that at all. That's a contribution and a constructive one!
> you're basically arguing with your internal constructions of how people on Hacker News are
Yes. So are you. That's how language works in humans. This is a website. The words are mostly written by people, but only words are here. Hadn't you noticed?
> and not at all with what they say
Yet you fail to read what I actually wrote, in your haste to call me insane about it because of how much you dislike what you incorrectly assumed it to say. Have fun with whatever it is you're here to do.
> Why that might be is hard to guess, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the photographer forcing them to stand there and hold a pose while they fiddled with their weird little machine.
Considering there are 2 photos of the same subjects, this reasoning becomes very order-dependent, we don't know the order of the photos taken, so we shouldn't be judging the photos on things affected by that.
We should, however, so judge the claim that the photos are directly comparable, as is attempted here.
I honestly can't tell what the site author is trying to do. Criticizing oversaturation is reasonable. Claiming the camera is responsible for differences in pose and composition is madness.
I understand that that's the claim, yes. The author does an unsatisfactory job of defending it, which is extremely strange considering on how many axes an image out of a dedicated camera is palpably preferable to that from a phone, with its physical constraints and computational compensations.
I do shoot with both because I'm not foolish enough to think good work can't be forced from poor tools, but I know the difference between a camera that works with me, and a phone that mostly won't. This author appears not really to understand that difference clearly, identifying accurately some flaws and differences resulting from real constraints, and inventing others from accidents of poor test procedure such as obvious changes in pose between serially taken shots.
It's a confusing way to advertise his "Candid9" service to photographers; as one of those it leaves me hoping he's better as a programmer, and as a programmer it leaves me wondering why I should trust someone with such a questionable grasp of my problem domain has produced software that will successfully serve my needs.
I mean, when I do street work, I just get a phone number or email address and that works fine. What do I need with a QR code that requires a printer to produce? Good grief, I'm the only one I know who still runs on paper, I own three printers, and I haven't found a credible way to like QR codes! What does all this extra complication add for anyone involved, except some Michigander who wants a piece of what I'm doing for no good reason I can see?
most hn comment of all time. The whole point of the product is that giving someone a QR code ticket is easier than collecting email or phone number, which makes a big difference at high volume.
What kind of volume are you doing? I see three examples. Hell, I get more people than that stopping me to ask for pictures or try to hire me for event work when they see how I use a camera, most days when I'm just out for a walk.
Really, what it looks like to me is just that you have a product that costs ~nothing to operate and seems like it sort of makes sense for smallish wedding-and-anniversary party venues - but you've discovered too late what a nightmare that market is and that the fit's not actually that great, so you're pitching to people like me to try to salvage with a pivot, not realizing that the ask to add a Wal Mart style belt mounted printer to my kit in order to produce these QR code tickets is really just never going to happen.
It's bizarre to me in what world you live where this constitutes "easier," but I also don't care. You want to intermediate and transactionalize a relationship so ephemeral it can already be nearly overlooked even to exist, and where your presence is unneeded and unwelcome - and mine is the most HN comment ever? But it does explain why no one in your sample shots is smiling.
Most I've done is 60 group photos in an hour at a trade show.
> Really, what it looks like to me is just that you have a product that costs ~nothing to operate
Correct
> and seems like it sort of makes sense for smallish wedding-and-anniversary party venues
I would say the intended use case is destination venues like a upscale golf course or hotel.
> the ask to add a Wal Mart style belt mounted printer to my kit
Not how it works. If you looked at the website, you'd see that you print and cut the tickets at home before hand on a normal printer.
> It's bizarre to me in what world you live where this constitutes "easier," but I also don't care
Handing someone a ticket is easier than collecting their email.
> You want to intermediate and transactionalize a relationship so ephemeral it can already be nearly overlooked even to exist, and where your presence is unneeded and unwelcome - and mine is the most HN comment ever?
I have unlimited confidence and patience. Hit me with the snarkiest rebuttal you can muster!
I did look at the website, of course. How else could I have critiqued your comparison of phone and discrete cameras?
At a rate of one a minute in a destination venue, sure, this makes sense, assuming you could land that kind of deal reliably. So why are you trying to sell it to street photographers like me, who do things differently, with different desiderata and different needs? And if you are going to try to do that, then don't you think you might be wise to listen when a putative customer explains how you have failed to earn their money?
@throwanem I think I hit the depth limit so replying here. I would be happy to chat about how a street photographer could use Candid9, but do know that I've made plenty of money in other businesses and this is a fun passion project for me, so I'm not begging on my knees for someone to use my side project.
There's no depth limit, it's just that the reply link takes a few minutes to show up at depth. You can always reply from the comment view (click the timestamp) until the reply window (iirc 14 days) has closed. I don't care about Candid9; as I said, there's no place for it in anything I do. If it matters to you to pitch effectively to street photographers, I assume you would want to find out what we care about. If not, why pitch us at all? Unfortunately for me, it's too goddamned hot right now to go outside and live, and I'm bored of doing house chores. Good luck.
I don't really understand the current street photographers as I don't know how they would ever make money. Basically if you're already a street photographer, then you aren't motivated by money, which the pitch of Candid9 is that you'll make money. So pre-existing street photographers paradoxically are not the target market.
Right, at which point I cease to understand why the "For independent photographers" tab reads as if trying to pitch me a gig-economy style addon to an existing practice. I can't speak for the market you are trying to target, but I would wonder whether you miss people like them by hitting people like me.
I guess maybe it could be worth clarifying your copy, but who'd care? I do street work when I do it because I like meeting people and because it makes people smile. If I wanted money also out of it, I'd more likely just drop my hat on the sidewalk or something.
I still don't see why the comparison page (the one originally linked here, the iPhone 16/mirrorless shootout) treats variations in pose and composition as equivalent with those caused by camera physics, which was what originally caught my interest in any case.
Yes one use-case is a gig-economy street photography practice, which does already exist in places like the Brooklyn Bridge, Candid9 makes that easier.
Another use-case perhaps in your case is to do it for free and do higher volume and market your money-making services? I agree that it is fun and mood-lifting to take portraits, but also it would be cool to make it sustainable.
but yeah overall Candid9 is a hammer looking for a nail right now.
All these photos also seem to be taken at a further distance at a higher zoom with the digicam. Use 2x mode on iphone and step back a bit and the perspective/distortion should be similar. 12mp is still plenty. Also, they didn't mention if they turned off face smoothing on the iphone.
Google a couple years ago, however, made a big stink that they were forcing an always-on filter to "enhance" the appearance of dark skin on Pixels, so yeah you might need a real camera to get accurate photos of subjects with darker skin if you have a pixel.
There isn't an "accurate photo" that you can objectively adjudicate. All digital camera outputs are highly processed to get appealing results. The fact that you think Real Tone on the Google Pixel was "a big stink" only tells us about you, not Google.
It would have made more sense if they explained it as part of an overall tonemap accuracy update. Which does probably produce better overall results to be fair.
what? You can literally objectively see how much more “normal” they look on an actual camera. Especially the guy on the left, he looks atrocious on the iPhone
Do you know how childish you sound? That specialized equipment that does one thing really really fucking well is expensive? Is this supposed to be a gotcha
The iPhone photo of the golf players is better than the "photographer" shot in every way that actually matters; the guys are more comfortable and they have natural smiles, whereas the other photo is full of grimaces and frowns. Why that might be is hard to guess, but I'm pretty sure it had something to do with the photographer forcing them to stand there and hold a pose while they fiddled with their weird little machine.
Don't underestimate the power of the subject's comfort and state of mind. Gramma is happy to get the picture, she doesn't care how it got taken.