Excellent writing, John. Things are already becoming clearer! Looking forward to part 3.
At the end of the last instalment I wrote:
"All you - and ol' George -
really wanted was the finished photograph, and if digital photography doesn't need a negative then neither do I. Right ? ? ? "
To understand just where the negative disappeared to, and why, we need to take a broader look at the digital process that culminates - specifically - in the Jpeg image.
(Note: I wrote most of the following in a couple of posts on another thread, but have combined and edited them here, as this is where they fit into the overall discussion of Jpeg and TIFF.)
I look out my door into the front pasture and see a black and white cow. What actually happened here, in the instant my own two eyes recorded the image of the cow?
First off, light - that is to say Light with a capital "L" - was reflected off the cow and was gathered and focused by my eye's lenses (yup, just like camera's lens). That gathered light then landed on the light receptors, the rods and cones in my eye's retinas (yup, just like the pixels or photo receptors in the camera's sensor - its retina) and then was transmitted as hundreds of thousands of tiny electrical impulses up my optical nerves to my brain (yup, just like the tens of thousands of bytes of information electrically transmitted from the camera's sensor to the camera's central processor - its CPU or "brain").
Now things get a little more complicated and a lot more interesting.
Those electrical impulses travelling up my optic nerves are basically meaningless as an image; if you took any one of them by itself it would tell you nothing about the fact that there is a black and white cow in my front pasture. Equally, the bytes of information being transmitted from the camera's sensor to its CPU are utterly meaningless as an image, entire.
The image of the cow I see with my eyes only becomes an image when the neural structure of my brain acts as a translator and organises all those incoming nerve impulses into something I recognise as "black and white cow" (yup, just like the bytes of information only become a photograph when the programming of the camera's CPU acts as a translator and organises all those incoming bytes into something I recognise as "black and white cow").
You guessed it . . . The digital photography process is only a very crude and simplistic imitation - cobbled together out of glass and metal and plastic and batteries - of what our eyes & brain do every waking moment, and do far better and faster than the best digital cameras in the world.
And so we come to Algorithms, or, " Who is it
really that runs the Digital Photography asylum?".
What we just established above is that - in imitation of the human eye-brain connection - the CPU of the camera receives a ginormous number of individual and unique pieces of data collected by the camera's sensor and organises them into something we recognise as the image of a black and white cow.
BUT . . . and you knew there had to be a BUT in here, didn't you . . . the CPU is just a stupid as the sensor. Neither one has any intelligence at all, nor do they have any ability to make decisions. They are electro-mechanical idiots that only do what they are told to do, nothing more, nothing less.
The "what" that tells the CPU what to do is the Algorithm. A very weird word that belongs in the class of words that really smart people with PHD's in Theoretical Reverse Ambivalence In No-Exit Logic Strings use casually whilst sipping their cappuccino.
It's actually dirt simple. All an algorithm is, is a very specific set of instructions designed to get you from a given point "A" to a given point "B" all the time, every time, no exceptions. Without an algorithm or algorithms to tell it what to do, a CPU is a perfectly useless piece of silicon that isn't worth the teaspoon of sand it was made from.
At this point you might be thinking "OK, great, but I really couldn't care less. I took my picture, I got my picture, I emailed it to my Mom. So shut up and ditch the subject, willya?"
Well . . . I
would . . . but first I'm obligated to tell you that the picture you sent was
not your picture. And that none of the pictures you have ever taken were or ever will be your own pictures.
This is the dark side of the Algorithm Moon.
To explain this clearly, though, I first need half a dozen people to look at my black and white cow. My question to each of them is simple: "Please have a look at the cow and tell me
exactly what shade of black and what shade of white is the cow?"
What I will get is six conflicting answers. Answers that contradict one another. And six people ready to kill each other because
their black and white is right, and everybody else's black and white is wrong.
"It's a black so black it's almost blue-ish, and the white is actually greyish."
"Nope. It's a
brownish black and the white is sort of creamy."
"You're both dead wrong. The black has red highlights to it and the white is absolute pure white."
(you can continue with this just as far as you like . . . )
If you set up your tripod and take exactly the same picture with a half dozen cameras from different manufacturers, you will discover that you have six very different pictures. Different in exposure levels, different in white balance, different in color values, different in contrast, different in any standard you wish to apply. The same is true for all the different "camera" apps of mobile photography.
Why?
Because each manufacturer creates and uses their own proprietary algorithms - the instruction set that tells the CPU the steps it must follow - to create an image that they swear is truer to life (and to profits) than any other manufacturers' image. And those algorithms are created and tested against the biological eye-brain algorithms of their creators,
and the Marketing Department,
and Sales,
and the Corporate Executives.
So what you see on the screen of your camera is, in fact, not at all your own image but a construct created by and for another set of eyes, another set of visual values.
To make it even worse, those people probably used existing "foundational" algorithms accepted as standard to the industry and put their own twist to them. Or used a foundational algorithm that had
already had a couple tweaks to it, and
then added their own twist.
In any event, not
your picture at all, as I said, but a montage of other people's pictures projected to you for your viewing pleasure on the screen of your camera.
Ever wonder - usually with some frustration - why it was that the gorgeous scene you saw somehow - in a way you can't really put your finger on - wasn't the same at all in the resulting picture?
Or why, perhaps, when comparing your pictures to your memories of what you saw, you think for the hundredth time "I'm just not very good at photography?"
To misquote Bob Dylan, "it ain't (all) just you, babe . . . "
This is The World of the Jpeg Image.
Now, to be fair I have to say that most Jpeg images are really excellent and, as photographs go, represent to the best of their creators' abilities exactly what you framed on the screen of your camera.
They should be: the manufacturers of digicams spend an enormous amount of money and time on the development of their algorithms so that you, the end user, are over-the-moon happy with your pictures.
And most people are.
However, to return to the opening query of this writing, that digital photography no longer needs the negative (Right ? ? ? ), the Algorithm is What Happened To - and replaced - not
only your negative but the
need for the negative in the Jpeg image process. And, by the way, ultimately fulfilling George Eastman's grand Vision of seamless and painless and instantaneous photography for Everyman.
THE TRADEOFF
I write this in bold and capital letters because nothing in the Universe comes free.
There is no such thing as a Free Lunch, or Something For Nothing, or The Chicks For Free.
This includes digital photography . . . despite what the digicam manufacturers' ad campaigns say.
The TRADEOFF is that you - the Photographer - no longer have any control whatsoever over the photographic process. Granted, you still point the camera in the direction of your subject, but to the camera - and the photographic process - you are simply and only The Finger That Pushes The Button, and nothing more.
(This, dear readers, is where - at long last - the TIFF image . . . and the next instalment . . . take centre stage. Stay tuned!)
R'gds,
John
