Recently, I witnessed a hive mind of people attacking the concept of AI with a misplaced anger to a product. The product was Topaz’s Photo AI tool. The tool itself is interesting. It combines several of their products that supposedly utilize AI to denoise an image, upscale an image, remove unwanted elements and resharpen blurry photos. It works very well at achieving these things, and I’ve used Topaz’s Gigapixel for about a year, to upscale images 8x-10x without pixelation. So why are people angry with Topaz and their products? Because they use the word “AI” in their promotional material. The comments of the promotional ad were very hostile to the use of AI in photography. I believe the anger is misplaced and I want to address AI in general with some point and counter points to what I noticed in the comments. At the bottom of this article are common Arguments raised and responses to them. What exactly is AI? Artificial Intelligence is often misunderstood. AI became a buzzword very quickly as it was a way to capture the attention of people interested in the technology. But what exactly is AI? Years ago I read an article that talked about […]
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Over time I have read many reviews of Fuji and their lenses, claiming that they are slow in autofocus. The claim is that the competition has much faster autofocus. I’m left baffled because I can’t quite understand what level of speed they require? Perhaps it’s more of a question: Are people wanting technology to make up for their mistakes, or wanting technology to enhance their skill? Slow Autofocus Back in 2014 or so I bought a Sigma DP Merril DP3. It’s a fixed lens body, small and compact, and made use of stacked sensors. It used three sensors, each tuned to a color frequency, stacked on top of each other. The resulting image was amazing. It was equivalent of a full frame 60 megapixel shot – that is, if there was enough light. In the shadows and low light, it became useless. It also suffered from “slow autofocus.” By slow, I mean the lens would hunt and hunt for a focus and sometimes never get it! Imagine trying to focus and the gears whine… and the lens expands and contracts for 3-5 seconds before landing on focus. Now that was slow focus. Fuji XF 35mm f/1.4 I recently picked up […]
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Unlike the hype on this camera, I have to say I’m somewhat disappointed in the quality of photos. After reviewing hundreds of images from this camera body, I find that the images lack detail, seem soft (where they shouldn’t be), and miss details in shadows or poorly lit environments. Yes, the specs on the camera are amazing. Yes it is weather sealed. It rivals the X-T5 in terms of processor, sensor, MegaPixel and stabilization but just doesn’t come together. Of course there are good shots out there. In perfect conditions (well lit scenes) the shots bring loads of detail and quality. It’s the normal working conditions where the problems start to show up. ISO ranges above 800 are far too noisy, bringing significant detail drop-off. Recently, I saw an in-depth review of the camera and it came out looking really good and detailed in the studio setting. I was fairly surprised as many shots I find online are simply lackluster. I don’t think it’s a problem of the photographer, but a camera that struggles to find focus and capture detail. Example Shots from the X100VI
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