I used to be really (really really) into photography. I respect anyone working hard on a physical product, but this misses the mark on every front I can think of.
The real issue that photographers grapple with, emotionally and financially, is that pictures have become so thoroughly commodified that nobody assigns them cultural value anymore. They are the thumbnail you see before the short video clip starts playing.
Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash. This is especially funny to me because I used to struggle with the fact that people looking at your work don't know or care what kind of camera or process was involved. They don't know if I spent two hours zoomed in removing microscopic dust particles from the scanning process after a long hike to get a single shot at 5:30am, or if it was just the 32nd of 122 shots taken in a burst by someone holding up an iPad Pro Max at a U2 concert.
This all made me sad for a long time, but I ultimately came to terms with the fact that my own incentives were perverse; I was seeking the external gratification of getting likes just like everyone else. If you can get back to a place where you're taking photographs or making music or doing 5 minute daily synth drills for your own happiness with no expectation of external validity, you will be far happier taking that $399 and buying a Mamiya C330.
I also used to be really (really really) into photography. Personally, I’ve stopped taking pictures because of the stigma around a camera.
Everyone, me more than most, doesn’t want their picture taken, or to be in the background of other photos. When someone can take thousands of pictures an hour, and upload them all to some social media site to be permanently stored… idk it’s shifted from a way to capture a moment to feeling like you’re being survieled.
A bit hyperbolic, but it’s the best way to describe what I’m feeling
About 15-20 years ago I attended a lot of car events (races, shows) where I took lots of photos. Mostly of moving cars, but also a lot of closeups of race car drivers using a long lens. For about a year more than half the photos published in a very niche car publication were by me. The magazine had a few thousand subscribers. And to this day I still see some drivers use my shots of them as profile pictures etc. Nobody minded being photographed. In fact, they were really happy about it.
Then social media happened. There’s a different «public» now. Any picture taken and published now has the potential to go viral. To get a global audience. And not least: to be put in unpleasant contexts.
I can understand that people’s attitudes have changed.
I haven’t actually given up taking photos in public. In part because I think it is important that people do. I still take pictures of strangers. Then again, I very rarely publish them online out of respect for their privacy.
I understand how photos represent something else today. And that people view the act of taking a picture differently. But if we stop taking pictures, stop exercising our rights to take pictures, we will lose them. Through a process of erosion.
Maybe this comes to mind? : "Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and chief people officer Kristin Cabot, who were caught on a Coldplay concert jumbotron hugging each other and then quickly recoiling when they realized they were on camera."
They obviously didn't ask for that, and it was focused on them without their permission, and yet, here we are....
> They obviously didn't ask for that, and it was focused on them without their permission, and yet, here we are....
The rule is: if you're in public you have no expectation of privacy.
I think a debate on that rule would be interesting. My thought is that if I can't take a picture unless there's absolutely nobody else in the FOV, then that basically prohibits the vast majority of photographs.
I also am a fan of the "expectation of privacy" rule.
That's primarily because it makes it absolutely clear the public always has the right to record officials doing their job. So if you see a policeman murdering George Floyd in the street, or fellow shopper pushing an old woman out of the way, or a parent screaming abuse at an umpire, or even just someone littering in a national park there is no doubt you are allowed to record it.
Yes, this means towards more surveillance, but it's a counter balance to the surveillance state. The state and large corporations put cameras everywhere. It seems odd to me that people get really upset by taking photos of them when there are likely numerous CCTV cameras already doing that 24 hours a day, in not so public places like offices. The "anyone can take photos in a public place" rule means Joe Citizen gets the same rights as the corporations and governments take for themselves.
I'm in the minority though. The best illustration I've seen of the was a man take a photo of the cheer leaders at a big football game. He leaned over the fence and put his camera on the ground, taking the photo as the girl kicked her leg into the air. His actions where caught on the TV camera that was broadcasting that same girls crouch around the nation. The police prosecuted him because of the huge outcry. I'm can't recall what the outcome in court was, but I couldn't see how he could be breaking the photography rules given my country has the "expectation of privacy" rule.
I find the combination of "pictures of strangers" and "our right to take pictures" rather concerning. I have a different perspective, as I am blind. But I was always uncomfortable with having a picture taken of me by basically a stranger. And that feeling didn't just come with social media. It always was there. I disagree that you have a "right" to take pictures of strangers. IMO, you shouldn't have that right. It is probably different depending on what juristiction you are in. But my personal opinion is, that this attitude is rather selfish. In my perfect world, taking pictures of strangers without their consent should be illegal.
Well, in many parts of the world it is a legal right. You can take pictures of people in public. There are some restrictions, and there’s of course the question of how you go about it, but it is a right.
I can understand people don’t like this. Which is why actually doing it requires a good deal of sensitivity and common sense. But that doesn’t mean it would be a good idea to outlaw it.
However taking a picture is not the same as publishing it. This is the critical point.
The rules for what you can publish tend to be stricter. For instance where I live you can’t generally publish a picture of a person without consent. (It is a bit more complicated than that in practice, with lots of complicated exceptions that are not always spelled out in law. For instance if someone is making a public speech they have no expectation of privacy).
As for making it illegal: that comes with far greater problems than you might think. From losing the right to document abuses of power to robbing people of the freedom to take pictures in public.
In fact, years ago a law was passed here making it illegal to photograph arrests. A well intentioned law meant to protect suspects who have not been convicted of anything. However it has never been enacted because it was deemed dangerous. It would have made it illegal to document police misconduct, for instance. And since the press here is generally very disciplined about not publishing photos of the majority of suspects, it didn’t actually solve a problem. (In Norway identities are usually withheld in the press until someone is convicted. But sometimes identities are already known to the public. For instance in high profile cases. This, of course, varies by country)
> But my personal opinion is, that this attitude is rather selfish.
Public photography is cultural preservation and anthropological ethnography. Asking folks to stop is selfish. You are free to have an opinion that differs, and your jurisdiction may even forbid public photography, but in those places I’m familiar with, street photography is as legitimate an art as music played for free on the sidewalk. I wouldn’t argue against public concerts if I were deaf, as it doesn’t concern me, because it isn’t for me, were I unhearing, and the gathering that such public displays engender benefits one and all, regardless of differences of senses or sensibilities amongst those who choose to freely associate.
> In my perfect world, taking pictures of strangers without their consent should be illegal.
Capturing an image of another without their consent is a bit more nuanced, and I would agree that one is entitled to decide how they are portrayed to a degree, but public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive. All the same, though we may disagree, you have given me some food for thought. I appreciate your unique perspective on this issue, and I thank you sincerely for sharing your point of view.
> public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive.
I live in a country where photographing people in public is highly restricted. The reason is that 99% of people cannot avoid public places in their day-to-day lives, therefore public places cannot be a free-for-all.
> therefore public places cannot be a free-for-all.
They can’t in those places with the restrictions you are familiar with and are subject to, but that is no argument against the norms of other places and the denizens thereof. I can, and do see public spaces as a free-for-all, and that is neither better nor worse, but simply the way we do things here.
If you don’t like it, it doesn’t affect you. Most folks are aware, and make a mental note of such things from a young age. If we don’t like it that way, we have avenues to change the way we relate to each other in public by changing the laws and regulations that govern public photography. That society hasn’t reached a consensus on this and other issues is fine. Variety is the spice of life, and the spice must flow.
I find the comparison with deaf people re concerts is pretty inappropriate. If you take a picture of me without me knowing/my consent, you carry that picture "home" and maybe even upload it to some public site. Heck, you could even upload it to 4chan and make a ton of fun of me. "Look at that stupid disabled guy", or whatever you and your friends end up doing. That is a complete different game. Disabilities are pretty different from eachother, and throwing deaf and blind people into a pot just because both are disabled is a very cheap and mindless act.
I didn’t make fun of you, though. I’m saying it’s not your right to complain about things you don’t know about if you don’t suffer harm, even and especially if you come to know about them. People make fun of other people for reasons or in the absence of them. For you to make a logical leap to imply I’m saying it’s okay to make fun of people, or saying that having a disability is a slight, or blameworthy, or deserving scorn or mockery, is to put words in my mouth.
I’ve known deaf people who love going to concerts. They perceive the thrumming of the bass and the stomp of the crowd. They see the smiles and throw up their hands, and deaf folks are able to carry on a conversation by signing better than most folks who are hearing, especially when the music is turned up to 11.
I’m more concerned with what might happen to assistive technologies meant to be used in public by low-vision and (legally or fully) blind users if public photography bans are passed than I am about any other passing concerns about being photographed in public, to be honest.
The "you" in my writing was refering to any photographer who takes a picture of me without my consent. I should probably mave made that clearer. IOW, I am not suggesting that you in particular are making fun of me or anyone you photograph. But since we were talking about strangers, I have no way of knowing how that photoographer will act. Sure, you in particular probably have a morale compass. However, in the general case, there is no way for me to know if the stranger taking a photo of me is a bad actor or not. And therefore, I oppose the "right" for anyone to do that, simply because I can never know what they will end up doing with that photo.
> And therefore, I oppose the "right" for anyone to do that, simply because I can never know what they will end up doing with that photo.
Jurisprudence in my country can’t preempt legal activities because they might lead to wrongdoing in the future. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t know what you think folks are likely to do, but there are likely already laws against doing most things you would take umbrage with.
There’s no need to winnow our rights out of concern for your “mights.”
as a non-militant bicyclist I see this every day. People who insist on their right to ride where they are legally allowed to while at the same time being a nuisance. Yes, you can ride on the sidewalk, but it'd be really nice if you didn't. Yes, you can ride in the road, but do you really need to? In all cities where I've rode a bicycle, a tiny bit of planning and attention can usually result in routes that result in minimal opportunities for conflict.
You can certainly photograph street scenes without being a rude cunt.
I was getting enduly riled up over anonymous internet comments and was going to say something much more obnoxious, but not everyone gets Australian humour so I figured I’d tone it down.
If I saw you take an unasked photo of our blind friend here, I’d let them know so they’d have an opportunity to approach you and ask you to deleted it, if they happen to feel motivated to do so, and offer to take care of it myself ;)
I’ve spent some time down under myself, and I would hope if you were to ever find me lacking, to the degree that you needed to take care of me, that you have the foresight to have that moment on camera, because such a photograph ought to go straight to the pool room.[0]
[0] (For those who haven't seen The Castle (1997), you really owe it to the Australians in your life to make an appointment with yourself to do so at your earliest convenience. Here's the scene from the film in question which originated one of my favorite bits of Aussie slang:
> public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive
The problem is that "public" 20 years ago (before cell phone cameras, photo rolls, social media, growth/engagement algorithms, attention economy, virality, etc) vs now just doesn't mean the same thing anymore.
There's a difference between "no expectation of privacy" and "no expectation of having every moment of your life in public be liable to be published".
And at that point, the only thing left is the "well if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't care if your life is published" type of logic, and I don't love that.
I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed.
Edit: and I use "published" as a direct reference to the "publish" or "post" buttons on various social media apps.
Well, there is also the fact that in a lot of cities, you will be filmed, often by multiple cameras, most of the time, without you being aware of it. By law enforcement, security cameras (private and otherwise), cars etc. on top of that you carry around a phone that streams intimate information about your location, behavior, preferences to a bunch of data aggregators.
And then there are the signal surveillance networks that are peppered around your environment as your phone shouts traceable signals to your surroundings.
(Heck, you can set up a a RPi with a few ESP32s hooked up to dump wifi probe frames, cross reference the networks phones scan for and create a map of where people come from by cross referencing wardriving data. Lots of ISPs make it easy by giving people wireless routers with unique network names. And from there you can figure out things like «someone living at address X is at location Y. People who live at X work for Z and location Y is the office of a competitor». And that’s just by collecting one kind of wifi frame and correlating a bunch of publicly available information)
Privacy is dead. Someone taking pictures hardly even registers.
I wasn't trying to make a "ship has sailed"-argument, but rather the argument that going after photography is odd given how little we care about surveillance and data collection that is far more invasive, complete and dangerous. If this were an optimization problem (optimizing for privacy and reducing criminal behavior), going after people who take pictures in public wouldn't even be on the radar. It isn't even a rounding error.
Sure, I understand that most people are barely aware of the insane amounts of data various data brokers aggregate, curate and sell of ordinary people's highly sensitive data. But most of us are. Or should be. And many of us are also part of the problem.
I do think this should be addressed. Especially since it is hard to address and it is not going to get any easier. In a well functioning legal system, every single one of the large data brokers that trade in sensitive personal information should be in existential peril. And people associated with them should be at very real risk of ending up in prison.
It seems ... peculiar to argue about taking away rights that private citizens have had for more than a century and at the same time not do anything about, for instance, private parties raiding sensitive government data and essentially nobody caring or showing any willingness to do anything about it.
You are right in that we do have a "the ship has sailed" attitude. But rather than focus on fixing what is most important we'd rather risk infringing on the rights of private citizens further because that is "being seen as doing something".
(I'm not accusing you of thinking this -- I am just finishing that line of reasoning to show what absurd conclusions this might lead us to)
I don't think we have anything close to diametrically opposed views, for the most part.
When it comes to following lines of reasoning to absurd conclusions though, in the other direction, don't we end up in a world where it is everyone's right (private or public for that matter) to surveil everyone at all times the moment they step outside?
Isn't that something you have an issue with? An extension of the existing problem with data brokers, including ones that record data from interactions on their private space (eg our access to their products in their stores, etc)?
You're definitely right that there are worse offenders out there than "randos taking pictures", but it doesn't have to be an either-or thing.
Plus, I'd suspect that almost anyone who thinks it's not great that every other person on the street can now record them and post it on social media for engagement also doesn't like the other bits of tracking and surveillance you bring up, so if anything, they are probably your overzealous allies.
> Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.
Presupposing that some strategies for change are less suitable than others is no argument against the status quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the way folks in a given time and place do things, and is simply contingent as much as it’s worthwhile.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don’t like the way things are done here, you either care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or you don’t. If you aren’t from here, that might be an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and going.
It’s a kind of double standard to judge folks for their customs without wanting to do the work to disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not to let the door hit you on your way out, especially after it was opened unto you in the first place. Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special pleading.
There's legally usually quite a big gap between what pictures you can take of people, and how you can publish them.
In places where you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you can generally be photographed. But there are significant limits to how such pictures can be published (including social media).
The law doesn't matter much if someone is convicted in the public square by intentionally misrepresented (or even just context-collapsed) images of them going viral to a global audience at Internet speed.
By the time the law, or the terms and conditions of social networks, catches up, the damage is already done.
> I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed.
I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live.
The times may have changed, and we didn’t start the fire. We could put it out if we wanted, or if the lick of the flames brought us undue harm. Perhaps most folks just don’t want to change as much as the times, and that’s okay. The future is not yet written, and justice is a living thing. We can always go a different way if the future we arrive upon necessitates it.
I don’t mind if we have to change, but I do admire the view. The camera can only capture what’s inside the frame, and it would be a shame to stop living, and the greater loss would be to give up on life in pursuit of capturing a fleeting moment. I think for many, like me, who admire the hobby and have a love of photography as an art form, it’s akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. If it were outlawed or constrained, a true loss to society would occur, as that would be a material change in living conditions. Others are free to disagree, and I wouldn’t find fault with them for simply doing so.
When it comes to curtailing my rights to preserve history and my place in it, I don’t think I’m the one who is entitled, but those who would prevent me from freely expressing myself through my chosen medium. If you see something, you ought be free to say something or remain silent. Forestalling my speech is not for you to say. Freedom to photograph is a free speech issue, to my view.
Photography is my favorite art form to consume, so I'm not in favor of any kind of ban of it.
I also agree that freedom to photograph is a free speech issue. I just happen to think the ability to live your life without having it being recorded everywhere is also a freedom issue.
I think it's a challenge for us to solve and I don't pretend to have a solution. I just don't agree with a "change nothing" stance on grounds of "no expectation of privacy" because I think things have changed to a point that it needs to be addressed.
Side note:
> I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live.
If that's directed at me, then I think you're reading something in my comment that I haven't expressed.
I don’t mean to direct anything at anyone, other than my viewfinder. I believe in home rule, and not dictates from bureaucrats. As a sort of journalist, I’m going to keep taking pictures, and to keep writing journals. Anything less or different would be to be someone other than myself the best and only way I know how, and that isn’t being true to myself or to others.
If you felt that I directed my comments at you, I apologize; I almost certainly wasn’t. If anything, I am directing them at myself, as an affirmation of what I believe and why. Freedom of expression is one of the few issues that I will take a principled stance on, and if you feel that I was directing my comment at you, I don’t mean to, though you are free to express whatever you feel led to if you feel that I have given you short shrift or unalloyed fire, friendly or otherwise.
While I agree with you that publishing a picture of a person without their consent ought to be illegal, I as an individual with very unreliable memory and one who’s always doubting my perception of reality, I heavily rely on modern technology and strongly believe that personal recording of any kind is my right, it being simple augmentation of my senses that allows me to live happier and more fulfilled life.
There are people who can "take a picture of you" just by looking at you for a second. They have you memorized after that.
I believe the usual approach is that in general, if you're in a public space, you accept pictures may be taken of you. But it depends on the context. If you're a bystander in your city while tourists are fotographing places of interest for example, and you make it into the picture, then that will hardly be a problem in any practical legislation. Most legislations probably allow for pictures taken of you even without you being asked explicitly, as long as certain rights are not violated.
Artists with photographic memory can. And in the modern world of computational photography and gen AI what even is the difference between a photo and drawing?
The difference is time, effort and scalability. There are many things that humans can do that society doesn't strictly regulate, because as human activities they are done in limited volumes. When it becomes possible to automate some of these activities at scale, different sorts of risks and consequences may become a part of the activity.
I find it strange how people consider taking pictures of strangers as some basic right.
Here in Germany, people have a right to their own image. You can't just photograph strangers. You can photograph a crowd at a public event but you can't zoom in on one specific stranger. Also you can photograph people that are of public interest.
Maybe it is me who is biased but I find these rules quite reasonable. It protects both my privacy while allowing photographers to do their job. If you want to photograph a stranger, ask for consent.
Sure, and so am I. We're all biased toward what we are used to, especially if it's something we grew up with through childhood.
While I think it'd be creepy for someone to sit outside, zooming in on strangers and taking photos of them, I don't think that sort of thing should be illegal. (Aside from when it might break other laws, like if it were to turn into harassment.) I do think it we should require consent before publishing a photo that focuses on individuals, at least for most uses (I'm sure there are exceptions).
I don't think laws should try to spell out or enforce social norms (for the most part; again I'm sure there are exceptions I'd consider), and I think "don't be a creep with a camera" is a social norm, not a legal issue.
> It protects [...] my privacy
I just don't see getting photographed in public as a privacy issue, but I'll admit it depends on the "how". Dragnet surveillance with cameras on every corner is a privacy issue, but a single photographer with a manually-actuated camera is not.
But really, what is it about someone having a photograph of you while you're in public that violates your privacy? It may "feel icky", but I don't see that as being a violation of anyone's rights. (Again, publishing a photo is IMO another matter.)
At the risk of diving into whataboutism, it seems weird to me to object to public photography -- something that has many legitimate artistic and historical uses and benefits -- when many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance, both of the governmental and capitalist kind.
> Again, publishing a photo is IMO another matter.
With analog photography this might be a useful distinction but with digital it is easy to leak that photo even without explicit intention to do so.
Even if the intention was to never share my photo, it is likely to be automatically uploaded to Google Cloud or similar services. It can be hacked, it will end up as training data for some LLM and so on. It is more practical to stop the taking of the photo in the first place.
> it seems weird to me to object to public photography
No one does. Lots of people practice public photography in Germany. You just have to ask for consent if you want to photograph strangers.
That is the point where I am lost an why this is even such a big deal for you. You can photograph the environment, you can photograph your friends, you can photograph anyone who wants to be photographed. Why would you even want to photograph someone why doesn't want their photo taken? Why not take a photo of the many people that would love to have their picture taken?
> when many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance, both of the governmental and capitalist kind.
Germany has also much better laws in that regard as well. Sure it could be better enforced but the GDPR is super strong.
As for surveillance, this is also more restricted here as well. There is definitely a push to make widespread surveillance more a thing but we are still far away from US levels.
I’m not sure I agree that consent should be a requirement for photographing people in public. You have a right to observe people in public. You have a right to take notes about these people and publish them. You have a right to hire a person to sit in a public place and record their observations, and to publish these to your heart’s content.
Technologically augmenting these rights does not change them. A pen and paper to record observations is a technological augmentation to memory and recall. A newspaper is an augmentation to a gossip corner. A camera is just the same. A person should be able to record and retransmit any information they come across in public, regardless of technology, since ownership of an observation is fundamentally the observer’s.
> You have a right to observe people in public. You have a right to take notes about these people and publish them.
Not completely. If you keep staring at me, following me around and taking notes I am going to call the police even if you keep to public spaces.
While it is not illegal to stare at people I would strongly advice you to not do so. You will find that some people will react quite badly to it.
> You have a right to hire a person to sit in a public place and record their observations, and to publish these to your heart’s content.
No, you can't. They can write about the people they saw in general terms but once you publish information that directly identifies me and contains personal information about me, I am gonna sue you. Might vary depending on country though.
People are making such high level philosophical argument about why they should be allowed to photograph strangers but no one answers why. It is hard for me to come up with any non malicious reason. Sure, maybe you just like photography but then again photograph people that consent to it.
Not to mention even if you legally can, I doubt that running around photographing strangers will gain you any positive reputation. In practice you are well advised to ask for consent anyway.
> You will find that some people will react quite badly to it
It’s a good thing we have laws, courts, and prisons for people who can’t control themselves.
> once you publish information that directly identifies me and contains personal information about me, I am gonna sue you
For what? What right of yours have I violated by retransmitting publicly available information about you? Presumably this right of yours would also be infringed if I gossiped about you? I agree it’s not a polite thing to do, but rights only count when they protect contentious actions.
> It is hard for me to come up with any non malicious reason
Free people don’t need to justify their actions. Your country may infringe on your rights, but that doesn’t invalidate the assertion they exist. Freedom of speech and the consequential freedom of the press are fundamental to a free society. Having to justify yourself when you’re not harming anyone is tyrannical.
> For what? What right of yours have I violated by retransmitting publicly available information about you? Presumably this right of yours would also be infringed if I gossiped about you? I agree it’s not a polite thing to do, but rights only count when they protect contentious actions.
Information that you gained from observing me is not necessarily publicly available information. You can't camp in front of an abortion clinic and write down everyone who went in and publish that on the internet, at least not in Germany.
Generally, if there is not a legitimate public interest, you can not publish information that would direct identify me, like my name, in a newspaper.
> Free people don’t need to justify their actions.
Well if you answered that questions, we could have an actual discussion.
Currently everyone that responded to me here said a variation of "everyone should have the right to photograph strangers without their consent because everyone should have the right to photograph strangers without their consent" with a bit of fancy works.
Like yeah this might be true and self evident because of some axioms that you have but that I don't necessary share and that you don't make explicit so this looks completely pointless to me.
I genuinely don't even understand the passion for photographing strangers without their consent and why it needs to be defended with such a lofty rhetoric.
My best attempt to steelman this is that you think restricting your god given right to photograph strangers without their consent is some slippery slop towards having more rights taken away which is... a very weak point.
> Your country may infringe on your rights, but that doesn’t invalidate the assertion they exist.
This makes no sense to me. There is not right to photograph strangers without their consent in the declaration of human right and never has such right existed in my country so how can that be my right?
What the hell has photographing strangers without their consent to do with free speech?
Observing and publishing a list of who goes into the abortion clinic is a perfect example of the exercise of free speech. You don’t need a public interest to do so. Restricting what I can publish is a violation of that exact idea. Free speech means you can say very nearly anything without criminal penalty (libel is a civil matter).
My point is that the free people can do whatever they want, as long as they are not directly harming someone else. My right to waive my fists around ends where your nose begins. I don’t need to justify why I’m waiving my arms around. I don’t need to justify why I’m camped outside the abortion clinic. Maybe I hate abortions and am engaged in civil protest. These are all protected activities in a free country.
My assertion is that as a consequence of German policy with regards to speech, Germany is a fundamentally less free place. Who gets to decide whether something is in the public interest? Why is shaming abortion seekers not in that category?
Germany has historical experienced how fascists can weaponize free speech to gain power. One of the core tenants of modern Germany is to let this happen again.
Now, we might not be doing well but certainly the US is currently doing much worse. You are already at the building camps stage and it is unclear whether you will have free elections for long.
What is the point of theoretically having free speech for a migrant worker that might deported without any trial by the ICE, for a women that might die during pregnancy because abortion was banned? Those that allow fascists to speak freely will end up with no one but fascists speaking.
People that want to murder me should not be allowed to speak.
> My point is that the free people can do whatever they want, as long as they are not directly harming someone else.
And yes, someone writing that I visited an abortion clinic can do me harm. Same as someone making lists of practicing Jews by camping outside a synagogue can get those people hurt. Your free speech ends where it can hurt me and certain information about me being public can and will hurt me.
Making the lists is not the problem. It’s the rounding people up and sending them to camps that crosses the line. We already have laws about the circumstances required for citizens to be detained. Illegal aliens can be summarily deported, such were the risks they took when the broke the law to get here.
> for a women that might die during pregnancy because abortion was banned
To discuss abortion we would have to agree about things like "what is a person?". Many would reasonably argue that unborn children are humans too and therefore deserve their own freedom.
Allowing fascists to speak freely is the hallmark of a free society. Otherwise who gets to decide who the fascists are or are not? Free societies are free as a matter of principle, not as a matter of consequence.
”I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
When Nazis marched through Skokie, Illinois in the 70s, it was Jewish lawyers who defended them. Being obsessed with liberty is a much better defence against tyranny than hoping the enormous government apparatus that determines who gets to speak and who does not will never be turned against you.
> someone writing that I visited an abortion clinic can do me harm
No they do not. Any person who reads what they wrote and decides to visit violence against you is doing you harm. Don’t shift blame away from violent actors, they make their own decisions. We already have laws about violence. You are not harmed by people simply knowing you had an abortion. It is a true fact about you.
This gave me an idea - what if we made a stable diffusion based AI that would replace unimportant faces (and possibly other identifying details) with different ones - I have seen that AI can do this and make the change unnoticeable.
That way people would be safe from having their personal likeness and whereabouts accidentally plastered over the internet (except when they want their photo to be taken), and the end result wouldn't look so obviously modified as blurring faces or licence plates.
That's a solution that prioritizes privacy over reality, and I'm not sure we collectively want that. Mutilation of truth in the name of protection etc...
I don't think that's better. For something like Street View that's explicitly supposed to be capturing reality, I want to know when that reality has been censored. Realistic face replacement breaks that.
(And yes, I'm sure Street View imagery is edited in other ways before it makes it to production, but I think it's important that our view of reality remains as real as possible.)
No, what we need is for people to feel safe in public again, for them to not feel like they're constantly one questionable picture away from their lives being ruined. Kill social media, kill gigantic public face tracking dragnets, kill privacy-invading capitalism.
I’m with you. The dichotomy between public and private needs to change. I should still have a degree of privacy even when I’m out in public. What has changed is the ability of others to “see” everyone everywhere at every moment with less and less friction, whether through pictures or videos shared on social media, facial recognition cameras, or location trackers like license plate readers. Historically, no one has had this ability, and now we don’t even know the degree of that ability that some have.
Absolutely. Running around with a large format camera (Graflex) with an Instax back (lomograflok) and making photos and immediately giving results back to people changed a lot. Strangers were basically lining up to ask about the camera and have their photo taken. That was a really fun experience, and I noticed how much I missed that excitement - before camera phones took over such moments were much more common.
Now I build/3d print my own large and medium format cameras, and that also makes it much more interesting, but the fun of instant photography with an ancient looking camera is just incredible.
Like a polaroid shot with an actually good lens. Also the whole performative part of making a photograph is of course much richer with an old, manual camera.
The contemporary “ick” about street photography is the ick of non-consensual capture. Everyone feels it to some degree; I stopped doing street photography work and even most social photography (including paid work) because I felt it and I wasn’t ready to navigate those feelings.
This “ick” is real and it’s good that you feel it, because you can build on it for a sense of ethics about photos and the use of the camera, about how its gaze affects subjects, about how to reduce that impact.
A solution for you is to focus on photography with people posing for photos who want the photos, or people posing for photos who want money. Try art nude, even: it is fascinating, liberating, has a very strong historical and creative through line, and will teach you a lot.
I have developed a much stronger sense of the ethics around my photography and a little more personal confidence, so I might yet give street photography a go again in future, if I think I have something specific to say.
About a decade ago some guy thought I was taking a picture of him and his girlfriend, they were very uninteresting subjects and I didn’t take any pictures of them but he followed me and sucker punched me. He was caught quickly and I pressed charges and since he had priors he didn’t make bail and was sentenced to 2 years in prison which I don’t think was enough because even a soft punch could kill someone. After that I began carrying non-lethal and lethal tools for self defense and stopped worrying about hurting people’s feelings when I take pictures. If people tell me off I tell them off because ultimately our conflict is based off of differing arbitrary opinions. I concluded that art is a human right and I should never feel guilty or bad about making it. Art is noble and it’s a high pleasure and part of being human. I have a short time in this life to create art so I should just do what I feel is pure and what I want. I’ve also concluded that if I did what everyone told me to do (or what they told me not to do) I’d be eating ten pounds of spinach a day, waking up a 5 AM, drinking a gallon of milk a day, buying timeshares and joining the Marines! Obviously I wouldn’t be doing what I want, my point is that artists need to listen to their inner voice and follow wherever that takes them.
That's odd, and to reassure you I would say that I personally would rather see somebody with a physical camera. That way I know I can avoid the area they're photographing if I don't want to be shot or just be aware I'm going to be in a photo otherwise. It also makes me (rightly or wrongly) think the photo will be uploaded somewhere a bit higher than an Instagram / Facebook feed (my wife used to put DSLR photos on Instagram and for an image feed website I used to be shocked at how poorly images were downscaled, maybe that's changed).
I find something much more pervasive about any upright smartphone being a camera at any given time, whether the person is being obvious about it or not. A dedicated camera is actually more reassuring to me, as its use-cases are probably more innocent than a smartphone camera.
Smartphone cameras have given poor photography to the masses. I reckon I'm probably in thousands of peoples photos that were taken on a whim with a phone. And I've witnessed situations where it appears people are trying to stealthily take photos of people with phones on public transport and the like.
I've managed to get around that by returning to my Nikon FM2. People react quite differently when it's clearly a film camera - even better if it's a medium format camera. That also gets around the nagging feeling that you're being guided in what you're taking by how it will appear online too. I don't have any social media accounts aside from HN and a BlueSky account that tweets the diary entries of an 18th century naturalist so I have no motivation to think about that side of things. It's a lovely feeling of my work being private because I can't be tempted in the moment to share a photo online. It feels much healthier.
Heh I’ve often daydreamed of one day setting up a darkroom and buying a couple medium format cameras, I wondered if that would be disarming enough (I love medium format and TLRs).
Consider doing a hybrid workflow. The equipment for developing film is quite compact. I keep all of my film development chemicals and equipment stored in a small tupperware under the bathroom sink. You can also buy a lightproof bag, so you don't even need a light tight room to load the film.
The second half of my process is to "scan" my film using a macro lens and my DSLR. It takes about 2 hours to go from exposed film to developed and scanned film. Only about 30 minutes of that time is active, most of it is waiting for the film to dry since I don't have a drying a cabinet.
Go for it anyway! I have a small NYC apt and fit everything I need for darkroom development into a small crate. I can scan negatives with a small setup here, but do have to go to a community darkroom for enlarger printing.
> Everyone, me more than most, doesn’t want their picture taken, or to be in the background of other photos.
I used to be a little into photography. No one ever protested about me taking a picture of them. Just recently I was photographing an event and thought: I just come there, take photos of everyone, upload them to the internet, and all I get is thanks. I haven't asked anyone for permission. Yes I was invited by the event organizer, but I'm sure they didn't ask permission either.
The quantities are what changed. Taking a photo used to be relatively difficult and rare, so it was mainly reserved for relatively meaningful subjects. Which meant that having your picture taken was also relatively rare, and was something of a validation that you were interesting enough to merit being photographed. For that photograph to be published, even more so. Now cameras are plentiful and cheap, "publishing" opportunities are plentiful and cheap, and being photographed is commonplace and not appreciated as much. You can read all the meanings into my choice of the word cheap, by the way - as a price (increased supply made the price go down) or as a value (there's an abundance, so it becomes meaningless), or even as an implication about quality (low stakes means not as much attention or care for composing a shot).
Can't you just not care and power through? Someones always going to be miffed regardless. I keep a Rollei A110 on me at all times and a tiny Minox EC that takes me hours to refill. When I bring it out people love it. It's a throwback that people very much appreciate. I can see people getting miffed at a big digital camera though.
I have an entry level Sony Alpha that I picked up for a vacation earlier this year. With the portrait lens on there it definitely registers as “camera” far more than a phone. Between that factor and the hassle of having to manually go through and upload the photos afterward, I only take it on special occasions — trips, hikes, etc. It’s not worth all that hassle for trying to get day to day stuff.
I enjoy film photography in some contexts (I do a bit of 4x5), but film photography basically sucks. I think possibly a lot of the people who find some kind of magic in it are those young enough not to have grown up in the era where shooting film was the only option.
I don't mind 4x5 so much because just taking the photo is so much effort that the associated ordeal of developing and scanning isn't out of proportion. But for 35mm and medium format, there's a hugely disproportionate investment of time and money for a small number of photos.
Curious how 4x5's inconvenience is "proportional" while 35mm's is "hugely disproportionate". I'm not familiar with the specifics of these formats, but you seem to be arbitrarily drawing the line for where the added friction is still serving the "magic" I believe is very real if not fragile. I think you recognize the value of photography isn't solely in the product. I'm curious what you personally find in 4x5 that saves you from these younger artist's silliness.
It takes about 10 minutes to take a single 4x5 photo, and you have to carry around a tripod and a fairly bulky camera to do it. So the time and effort invested in taking the photo is similar to the time and effort required to develop and scan the negative.
In contrast, a 35mm camera is very convenient and you can expose an entire 30 frame roll of film in a few minutes. But getting high quality scans of all those frames requires either a lot of time or a lot of money. (Consumer flatbeds give poor results for 35mm, so your best bet is putting the negative on a light table and using a digital camera and macro lens. But that’s a physically fiddly process, the ‘scan’ needs manual spotting for dust, and if you’re shooting color negatives you also have to do some work to get the colors right.)
Back in the day, most users of 35mm cameras were satisfied with waiting a week to get a set of prints with absolutely no creative control over the printing process, but that’s not what most people want now.
It's what some people see as the point now. Back when film was the only option, the cost and time per frame were just negatives (if you'll excuse the pun). There was no romance in deciding whether or not to use one of your last three remaining frames; it was just annoying.
I don't deny that for a whole range of reasons, some people might take better or more meaningful photos using old cameras. Limitations can feed into the artistic process. I just think it's a bit silly to romanticize the cost and inconvenience of film, or to think that photos taken using film are somehow inherently more interesting or valuable.
The parable of the pottery classes that were graded on their best work and total volume of work springs to mind. I never would've bothered with photography if I didn't have the ability to be shameless with burst mode and pick the winners later.
I found our childhood film camera last year and I took it to a couple trips. price of scanners/getting your film scanned and needing to buy 10eur film rolls for like 20 photos turned me off. I still haven't scanned my first and only roll I shot last year.
I bought a Gralab timer and hooked it up to an old shitty enlarger in my tiny dark wine cellar, along with a red bulb. A few chemicals and tools and you're golden. The only thing that screws me is having to cut up film and spool it but I can get more frames out of it that way since I use mini spy cameras. Yes the film being expensive isn't great but it also makes you choose your shots carefully. Get a cheap darkroom film changing tent and start there.
I have a top of the line Sony Alpha (7CR) with a large zoom lens (24-70GM or 70-200GM) and I carry it almost everywhere, every day. It is absolutely worth the hassle to get day to day stuff.
As they say in the audio world, “there ain't no replacement for displacement.” I love gigazoom lenses. For focal lengths under 100mm, I can use my phone. My SLR is my personal spy satellite.
Can’t I just not care that I’m making other people uncomfortable and power through? I think for obvious reasons that takes away a lot of the enjoyment, both of photography and socializing.
YMMV, but every time I’ve brought out a camera in the last 5-10 years it has just made people uncomfortable, so I stopped taking it out, and eventually stopped bringing it.
As someone who only occasionally takes photos of mature, or empty streets (I just find them more aesthetically pleasing, especially if they're empty at night, nothing to do with the topic of discussion), I have no dog in this fight whatsoever,
May I ask where you are taking out your camera to experience these results? By "where," I mean both what part of the world/culture you are in and the specific location(s) (e.g. weddings, streets, public transit, work, at a friend's whom you know well, at an acquaintance's).. you get the point.
>YMMV, but every time I’ve brought out a camera in the last 5-10 years it has just made people uncomfortable, so I stopped taking it out, and eventually stopped bringing it.
Why do you think anyone is entitled to upload photographs showing other people to the internet where they are completely out of control of what happens next?
Because that's what public space is? We've always held that principle, and I don't think 'reach' should affect that. If someone takes this to the extreme (i.e. follows you around in public, taking thousands of pictures and uploading them in real time) they can be charged with stalking, harassment, or a similar offence.
To turn it on its head, if you cannot take photographs of people in public without their permission, then we basically lose the ability to take any photos of public space.
Man you would hate flickr. Also, never said anything about that. I don't have any social media, so the photos die with me and my friends. It's a nice break from modern technology to spend hours on an analog process. If you're in a public place you're probably getting photographed so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
Because we in the global west generally have the right to photograph anything we can see in public, save for pathological places like Germany or France. You don’t own your image. If you go into public and I take a photograph of you, I hold the copyright on that image, not you. You don’t have any say in what I do with my (legally obtained) image taken in public, nor should you.
Not really. I think people rightfully feel that there are algorithms online trying to identify every person and every relation and store every bit of information about everyone. They feel that everything now is so permanent and public, that if you’re not at your best you’re at your worst, that that moment will be immortalized, and that you have no control after the picture is taken so it’s better to avoid it from the get go.
And yet, they're constantly captured by countless CCTV cameras all around, without minding their business. I know the pain and don't take as many portraits as I'd like to sometimes, even with people close to me; but on few occasions that I do sneak in a shot and show them the results later, they're surprised in two ways: "when did you take it?!" and "that doesn't look half bad!". Maybe because I don't overdo it.
Really? I don't go out and photograph near as much as I used to, but nobody has ever reacted with anything other than interest at what I'm doing. I was recently traveling to a couple cities I had last been to 5-10 years ago and was shocked at how packed places were with people getting their photos taken, I have photos that would be impossible to take again because there would be people in the way.
People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere looking at each and every image posted everywhere with evil intent.
A friend of mine delivers for Amazon. They have to take pictures of every package delivered. Sometimes the customer is there when they arrive and he asks them to hold the package for him while he takes the photo of the package.
Most of them turn away or hold the package far away so they aren't in the image. Some will pose with the package in some amusing way.
> People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere looking at each and every image posted everywhere with evil intent.
Yeah when there's precedent for people doing exactly that the feeling is justified. How many times have we heard of [facebook employees/police/...] abusing their powers to stalk their [exes/wives/love interests/'enemies'/...]. With the amount of face detection and cataloguing being done today, it's never been easier on a technical level. The only protection we have is 'trust us we aren't doing it bro', which doesn't get you very far.
People use that "one thing" and make a giant case out of it, sometimes affecting millions of people. I have two (of hundreds of) examples: 1) the Tylenol poisonings in 1982 Chicago, had Johnson & Johnson recall 31 million bottles of Tylenol, and arguably affected billions of people (with all the tamperproof packaging that resulted worldwide). This was a good thing. But one crazy man poisoning a few bottles of Tylenol at one grocery store affected many people.
2) The next example is somewhat personal, but at Boeing back around 1987 or so, one tech in our engineering group was on the production floor, and a huge steel roller cart with a tool on it, weighing probably 1000 lbs, ran over his toes. From that single incident (even though 1000's of workers and 1000's of heavy carts were being used daily for dozens of years), came an edict that ALL employees on or near these facilities had to mandatorily wear huge plastic toe-caps over their shoes if they didn't have steel-toed shoes on. This meant that even secretaries in nearby offices would have to wear these clunky caps all day, over their shoes even though they never entered the production facilities. One person's action affecting 50,000 nearby employees. This is a bad thing. (because of the huge over-reaction).
So, these maybe don't fit the perfect example we are discussing, but it shows how we can come to different conclusions based on different inputs: "you can find one of anything to use in an argument".
I have clicked about ~20,000 photographs on a Sony camera in the last year and a half. And I have published exactly 0 of those photos on social media.
Whenever I meet my friends and family, I show them the pictures myself and the story behind them.
I love the thrill of street photography and it gives me immense pleasure to capture candid moments of humans. It's a great creative outlet for me and helps me think about life and philosophy through my pictures.
Maybe one day I will care enough about publishing these pictures, maybe one day I will care about AI. But right now, I don't. This is the closest I've been to my "kid"-like self, just enjoying something for the heck for it.
As someone who would love to get into street photography, and has an old NIkdon D7100, what would you recommend is a good lense (not model, but focal length, zoom, etc) for street photography ?
It all depends on what you want to do. If you want to get started cheaply the kit lens is more than enough.
Prime lenses will have larger apertures that can give you more creative options.
How close do you want to stand? Indoor/outdoors? What are you planning on taking pictures of? D7100 is APS-C, I find that 50mm (~75mm ff) on APS-C doesn't give you quite enough room indoors to take photos. So you might want a 35mm prime or a zoom that goes down there. If you're planning on taking portraits you don't want something too wide (~20mm and below can be good for real estate/architecture) because it makes people look weird.
Most everything else is dictated by how much you want to spend and how large/heavy you want your camera to be.
Personally I have a 35mm f1.8 on my camera and am happy with it, I use it for family outings, a lot of portrait-level shots and just general "hey we're at the museum" kind of photos.
I have a D7100 as well and a 35mm 1.8 and 20mm. Both are great. 35mm on APA-C is about 50mm on full frame and is the "natural" view. Generally too narrow for landscapes and streetscapes, the 20mm starts to be good for those.
You should try to rent a lens to see what works for you. I used lensrentals.com just to try out the 85/1.4 that "everyone" said was awesome. I loved it, but couldn't justify the price for a hobby, so I settled on the 85/1.8. I bought it years ago (4+) and I think I've taken less than 20 pictures with it. My "nifty 50" is still a favorite 50/1.8, but I also love the 70-300/4.5-5.6. Those two are my most used, and both were less than $600 US total.
I really need to get back to that mindset. I keep catching myself unconsciously checking my hobbies and abilities for marketability. I've been playing guitar for almost three decades, one of them spent in a touring metal band. When I started, I used to enjoy making music so much that I played and composed so often an album would just come together naturally. And then another one and another one, I just couldn't stop.
These days, I no longer sit down to play just for myself and the moment — instead, I catch myself thinking, “Can I sell sample packs from this? Record a course? Should I code a VST plugin for it and sell that?” And after weeks of moments like this, all I have are three random riffs and frustration.
I try to look at my music as something that I do because I enjoy it. I play in a casual/amateur band and I regularly have to remind the guys that I do it for no other reason than because I enjoy it; I'm not interested in playing gigs. Not everyone sees it the same way.
I know a few musicians that tried to make a living out of music similar to your story. Most have now stopped making music and are both frustrated with the music industry, and angry at listeners for not valuing their work.
I’ve been (really, really) into photography since I was six, and I’m still (really, really) at it three decades later. I never felt much appeal toward photography as an art form – it’s always been a way to capture moments and share them with people I care about.
These days I play with both AI photography and “normal” photography. My main camera is the A9 III with a global shutter – a machine gun that fires 120fps RAW files. I shoot a lot of sports, and the people I photograph are thrilled to get such high-quality shots of moments that mattered to them. It doesn’t really matter how much cultural value society attaches to photos – those captured moments will always be meaningful to them, and they feel joy when they see them. That’s the whole point of photography for me.
AI photography is a bit different. I take 15–20 photos of a friend’s face with my camera, train a LoRA model to use with Flux1.dev, and upload it to network storage on RunPod. Then I spin up a serverless worker on an H100 that runs the ComfyUI API, and use my own Flutter-based frontend to play with prompts and generate new photos of that person. I can make far better headshots this way than in a real studio. For some friends, it’s even been a therapeutic experience – seeing so many high-quality images of themselves looking confident, happy, and fully alive helped them feel that way, even if just for a moment. One friend told me, “You did more with these AI photos of me than therapy did in the past year.”
That's actually working technique in sports psychology – one version of it called VSM (Video Self-Modelling), where edited video shows athlete performing correct/advanced technique. It tricks brain to belive in "future self". I'm not surprised it works with photos that well, but I think it's not studied yet. These AI photos I make a very different from, say, photoshopped faced. I tried it on myself too, and can confirm that it does have psychological effect.
Anything has an "psychological effect," and tricking a person into thinking any old junk is "better than therapy" is trivial - look at all the people who spend time and money on AI chatbots. It's also pretty clear it's not actually _good for them_.
And there's zero surprise here it would be used to manipulate potential athletes.
When I was in grade school I got the whole pitch on visualization: picture yourself making the free throw and you're more likely to make the free throw.
>Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash.
This has rapidly changed over the last few months. As more and more pictures/videos going viral on social media are AI-generated [0, 1], real pictures/videos of remarkable things are increasingly falsely called out as AI-generated [2]. People are definitely starting to care, and while the toy camera in the linked article is merely an artistic statement, having some ubiquitously standardized way of unambiguously validating content generated by a real recording device is going to become paramount.
Back before digital became really high res I was into small, medium and large format silver halide cameras balancing cost with high quality optics. You could get Exackta's, Speed Graphics and Roleiflexes relatively inexpensively and take amazing high quality photos with them.
The larger you went though, the more you had to be mindful about the cost of eash shot both in terms of time and cost for film and developing. There is something to be said about the curation that happened when taking photos like that. You put a lot more though upfront into composition and had to think about your shutter speed, aperture etc..
One thing I learned about during that time was how the old time press photographers would use a Speed Graphic on 4x5 negative, grab a wide angled shot and then crop it. Also, press conferences used to create a lot of broken glass as photographers would snap a shot, shoot out the one time use flash bulb on the ground and then quickly put in another bulb to get another shot.
I don't think about this as much for professional or amateur photography.
I think of verifiable images as something for legal purposes. So much is easily made up with AI. Having verifiable real photos (and eventually video) can be a benefit for things like legal proceedings.
> I think of verifiable images as something for legal purposes.
That makes sense to me, but who is this particular $399 camera made for? Can you imagine someone choosing it for a photo they intend to be used in legal proceedings? The specs and appearance do not scream high-quality professional tool to me. The price is lower than a professional would be willing to spend (on something high-quality), higher than someone would drop on a whim.
It looks kinda like a designer's school assignment that they're trying to sell.
Agreed. This product seems pointless because nobody's interested in a proof of authenticity (except maybe in certain legal niches?)
I take pics for me and my friends and family, and AI has almost zero impact on this (although, face swaping is lots of fun, and everyone understands it's fake and a joke).
Edit: also, and more importantly, the question of authenticity is moot. The point of art in general is to say something / make a statement, and certainly not to produce a faithful representation of the world. Anything that's not an exact copy (which is hard to do if you're not God), has a point of view, which gives it value.
Taking pics and videos of events with political ramifications and being able to show that it isn't AI generated or tampered with has HUGE utility, not the least of which by reporters and restablishing trust with disaffected.
The idea isn't a bad one in some cases like travel photography. Between background people removal and lightroom a good chunk of travel pictures are not a good representation of what you can expect. on Instagram there are plenty of pictures of people standing alone in front of the Eifel tower or at inari gates in afternoon lighting that is unrealistic outside the pandemic or a 6am shot. Or take cherry blossom viewing in tokyo. More trees are white or very light pink but you would not know that looking at what people post often the camera auto balancing to make them more pink because if it doesn't people think there is a problem with the camera; that incentivizes sony, canon etc to build that in.
> Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash
That the average person hasn't thought about this doesn't mean it couldn't become a thing in the future. People do value authenticity and genuine things, though I agree the particulars aren't relevant in a lot of cases.
This is a (very expensive!) toy camera, but I could see traditional camera companies like Fujifilm, Canon, etc, incorporating this tech later down the line.
> Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash
Nit, but there are reasons Canon and Nikon will sell you cameras that sign the pictures with their keys already. Even if they have been shown insecure in specific implementations the market is very much there.
Ten years ago in the NYC art market this was also true in a niche but very real audience. I think the NFT wave burnt that out completely.
> I was seeking the external gratification of getting likes just like everyone else.
“You will be happy to look okay. You will be happy to turn heads. You will be happy with smoother skin. You will be happy with a flat stomach. You will be happy with a six-pack. You will be happy with an eight-pack. You will be happy when every photo of yourself gets 10,000 likes on Instagram. You will be happy when you have transcended earthly woes. You will be happy when you are at one with the universe. You will be happy when you are the universe. You will be happy when you are a god. You will be happy when you are the god to rule all gods. You will be happy when you are Zeus. In the clouds above Mount Olympus, commanding the sky. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.”
Agreed, the issue is more that the average person doesn't care about photos. Even now you can tell what is real vs fake in photography and people don't care, they eat it all up. The good, the bad, the fake, doesn't matter because no one gives a fuck. If you actually appreciate the art of photography then you already do and will continue to regardless of AI or whatever.
Yep, I make many pictures but don’t feel like I need to share them with others. Sometimes I show my girlfriend and sometimes I frame them or put them on my fridge. I actually don’t really want to show strangers my work because I make photographs for myself and I’m not looking for critique because I’m developing my own style and exploring what interests me. I don’t need to prove my photographs are authentic because I know I took them!
I am still really (really really) into photography! Nothing has changed that, the pictures are just as beautiful as they always were. My friends are touched when they see pictures of themselves spending time together. There is still plenty of things to see and take pictures of, and not enough time to worry about whether someone will appreciate my "work".
You can definitely get back into it. Just have fun, don't do it for anyone (that goes with any art).
Funny you mention the C330. I have not done any photography in well over a decade, and long ago sold all my gear, but just a week ago decided to take my grandfather's old Rolleicord in for cleaning & service. I am looking forward to shooting with it again, just for the sake of practicing the art. I might even learn to develop my own film this time around!
Commoditization is a good way to phrase it; first with affordable digital cameras, then with smartphones, photos have become more content than art. With smart filters and digital enhancement, mistakes and imperfect conditions have been fixed.
AI won't replace that, just creates an alternative way to generate content without needing to be physically present somewhere.
I think real photography is sort of like archery, you know, in the moment, feeling it, release at the right time, to capture that. I think in a sense of the candid street, or Magnum photogs. That kind of spirit. And that is innately satisfying and a fun way to engage with the world around you. :)
Even "unreal" photography can be like that . My phone may do all of the mechanical work + post-processing, but framing, angle, foreground/background and capturing just the right moment is just as much fun (well, for me anyway).
Or just maybe free markets expose the bitter truth. That can take a lot of self reflection to come to terms with. Applies to a lot of aspects to life, eg. career planning, creative endeavors etc.
But at the same time it's true that some vital public activities aren't rewarded by the system atm. Eg. quality journalism, family rearing, open source, etc. Often that's an issue of privatized costs and socialized rewards. Finding a way to correct for this is a really big deal.
I think this is only true when you abstract things away from their spatiotemporal context and treat market information as a snapshot. The art market thought Van Gogh was a weirdo with bad brush technique until after he died and people began to recognize how innovative his work was.
"Finding a way to correct for this is a really big deal."
But aren't you now feeding back to the system? Why would there need to be a financial reward and incentive for everything?
I do realize "contributing free value" is perceived by some as free value a third party can capture and financially profit from" which might the reason for thinking of how to then cycle some of that value back?
Thinking about the three examples I gave, I think it's more that the externalities of not doing these activities aren't priced in.
Tabloid press is fantastically profitable, but fake news over time will erode a great deal of social trust.
Closed source software might be individually advantageous but collectively holds back industrial progress. It's a similar reason to why patents were first introduced for physical goods.
And yes people voluntarily without kids should have to pay significantly more social contributions.
The desire to "make money" is generally a proxy for the desire to provide value for others. It is easier to justify the investment of labor and resources that went into the production a camera if you can reciprocate the value for others.
Capitalism doesn't 'tell us' anything, it just like everything else has pros and cons.
I don't know anyone who understand economics would say this, unless you're talking about very specific meanings of 'value'. I'm not trying to be pedantic, I know what you mean, but these comments are not insightful or helpful.
Yes but it is a hard sell, arguably too hard, and the product pitch, which is away from these applications, is the right one. They are not promising to be 'blockchain two' with hypothetical business use cases.
Imagine going to the solicitors with lots of documents that they need copies of. If they are making scans themselves then that is all the proof they need. If an assistant has copied that important certificate, then that copy is all that is needed for normal legal services. The Roc Camera would not be helpful in this regard, even if it had some magic means of scanning A4 pages.
In a serious solicitor interaction there will be forms that need to be signed and witnessed. These important documents then need to go in the post. In theory, the client could just whip out their Roc Camera and... But who is going to buy a Roc Camera when a stamp will do the job?
Maybe you might if you have a lot of photos to take for 'evidence', for example, of the condition of a house before work is done, or after it is done. However, nobody is asking for this so there is no compulsion to get the Roc Camera when the camera on your phone suffices for the needs of the real world.
I agree with your points, but your argument is so rational and well supported that I believe the opposite is likely to happen. Does that make me a pessimist or an optimist?
There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop. People in general don’t want the slop, but it’s seeping in everywhere with no easy way to mass remove.
The problem with the linked product is it’s basically DRM with a baked in encryption key. And we have seen time and time again that with enough effort, it’s always been possible to extract that key.
The problem about DRM in this context is not that it's going to get broken (which is probably true if the product becomes sufficiently mainstream). It will be used to target photographers and take away their rights. With today's cameras, you have (at least in theory) some choice how much of your rights you give away when you give the pictures your took to someone else. With DRM in the camera, you'll likely end up with some subscription service, ceding a lot of control to the camera makers and their business partners.
People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop, even if they point and say eww when it's discussed. Some people care, and some additional people pretend they care, but it just isn't a real issue that is driving behavior. Putting aside (for now) the idea of misinformation, slop is socially problematic when it puts artists out of work, but social media slop is just a new, sadder, form of entertainment that is generally not replacing the work of an artist. People have been warning about the downfall of society with each new mode of entertainment forever. Instagram or TikTok don't need to remove slop, and people won't care after they acclimate.
Misinformation and "trickery" is a real and horrific threat to society. It predates AI slop, but it's exponentially easier now. This camera, or something else with the same goal, could maybe provide some level of social or journalistic relief to that issue. The problem, of course, is that this assumes that we're OK with letting something be "real" only when someone can remember to bring a specialty camera. The ability of average citizens to film some injustice and share it globally with just their phone is a remarkably important social power we've unlocked, and would risk losing.
Saying that there is a market for a sane social network does not means it's a market as big as the other social networks. You don't have to conquer the world to have a nice product.
> The ability of average citizens to film some injustice and share it globally with just their phone is a remarkably important social power we've unlocked, and would risk losing.
I'd say we've already mostly lost that due to AI. We might gain it back if cryptographic camera signatures become commonplace (and aren't too easy too crack).
> People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop
I fear, your statement is impossible to be denied its validity, when "Tung Tung Tung Sahur"-Trading-Cards and "Tralalero Tralala"-T-Shirts are a thing.
"People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop"
I think this is true. In general I think enough population of the market actually does not care about quality as long as it exceeds a certain limited threshold.
There's always been market for sub-par product. That's one of the features of the market I think. You can always find what is the cheapest, lowest quality offering you can sell at a profit.
> There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop.
I fully agree, I just don't know how that could work.
I think GenAI will kill the internet as we know it. The smart thing is (and always has been) to be online less and build real connections to real people offline.
There’s an assumption on HN that everyone can identify AI slop because pretty much everyone here can. But my personal experience and what I think might be more in line with reality is that the majority of social media users can’t tell or don’t care.
On the other hand, if taking a picture on a Canon dSLR instantly uploaded it to Apple Photos the same way your iPhone does, when you’re outside, that would be a really popular product.
People absolutely care that photos are real. There was somebody on here recently who had to read the photographer's story of how he planned it all to be comfortable it was real. Especially for those bird-in-front-of-sun type photos.
The words 'external gratification' popped out. I only recently found out that my sensitivity to it is the biggest flaw/weakness in my and many other's personality.
Imagine the president wants to deliver a video message. Was it authentic or AI generated? If it was filmed with this camera, the population can verify.
Yeah, 1st he misunderstands the product and then he believes he is qualified to valuate it negatively (due to him being a great photographer ): "this misses the mark on every front I can think of"
How did you get out of your photography obsession? Because currently I’m really really into photography as well and it gets unhealthy. (Both time and money wise).
I am actually willing to support DIY camera efforts, but if you're semi-serious about taking pictures, this just wouldn't work. First, Raspberry Pi (I'm guessing this is a CM4/CM5) is a disaster for a camera board. Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture, cameras need to be near instantaneous. And you can't keep it on either, because the RPi can't really sleep. There are boards that can actually sleep, but with fewer sensor options.
Now moving on to the sensor (IMX 519 - Arducam?) - it's tinier than the tiniest sensor found on phones. If you really want to have decent image quality, you should look at Will Whang's OneInchEye and Four-thirds eye (https://www.willwhang.dev/). 4/3 Eye uses IMX294 which is currently the only large sensor which has Linux support (I think he upstreamed it) and MIPI. All the other larger sensors use interfaces like SLVS which are impossible to connect to.
If anyone's going to attempt a serious camera, they need to do two things. Use at least a 1 inch sensor, and a board which can actually sleep (which means it can't be the RPi). This would mean a bunch of difficult work, such as drivers to get these sensors to work with those boards. The Alice Camera (https://www.alice.camera/) is a better attempt and probably uses the IMX294 as well. The most impressive attempt however is Wenting Zhang's Sitina S1 - (https://rangefinderforum.com/threads/diy-full-frame-digital-...). He used a full frame Kodak CCD Sensor.
There is a market for a well made camera like the Fuji X-Half. It doesn't need to have a lot of features, just needs to have ergonomics and take decent pictures. Stuff like proofs are secondary to what actually matters - first it needs to take good pictures, which the IMX 519 is going to struggle with.
> Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture
But that's less due to the RPi and more due to lots of amateur projects that ship the RPi with a desktop Linux distribution like Raspbian (itself based on a very conservative one - Debian - that loves preserving decades of legacy crap).
You can absolutely get quick boot times on an RPi (or on an x86 machine for that matter, although you are limited by the time the firmware itself takes to boot) if you build your own read-only image with Buildroot/Yocto like any embedded shop would.
But I agree with the rest of the comment - an RPi is a terrible device for this (and for most purposes besides prototyping in fact). But not because of boot time reasons.
Another thread mentioned that this camera was made by crypto enthusiasts from a software/ZKP starting point, and not a photography starting point. If true, it will have a lot of maturation to do, but most likely they will either be incorporated into a "real" camera design, or they will just fold.
All the stuff is off the shelf. Makes it way easier to develop. There is no reason to actually use RPi, compute module or not, as a base camera board (talking from experience) other than it is super easy to start with.
I disagree. If CM5 had the ability to sleep at tiny fractions of a watt, there are really practical and usable cameras you can pull off today, even when it's not the most efficient. For all the downsides, it would more than make up in the ease-of-development department.
I believe if RPi6 adds sleep, you'd see a flurry of portable gadgets built on the platform.
Speed of development is fine for a prototype, but for an actual product it is just sloppy and wasteful. Problem isn’t even battery hungriness, but boot time. Users don’t want to wait 20-60 seconds for their camera to load an entire Linux kernel and drivers and then all the software you have gobbled together on top when you could be up and running almost instantly if you used microcontroller instead of cpu
The person who you replied to said they only reason to choose them is easiness, and you've replied saying you disagree because for all the downsides the easiness makes up for it.
I know nothing about photography, but I'll just comment on this point:
> (I'm guessing this is a CM4/CM5) is a disaster for a camera board. Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture, cameras need to be near instantaneous.
You can boot an RPI in a couple hundred milliseconds.
But you don't buy it for the specs, you buy it for the experience. It topped sales charts when it was launched. If I had more time to spend on photography, or if I was younger, or if it was a little cheaper I'd have bought it myself.
I suspect more will follow the X-Half, because it gets orientation right. Most images are viewed today in portrait mode, and half-frame is the right format for that.
The people who buy these cameras would probably be better served by upgrading their phones. Phones are good enough cameras for this use and they are infinitely better at processing.
As a long time hobbyist photographer I can understand buying cameras because they have a certain appeal. But I have to say that I honestly do not understand why someone would spend lots of money and then not want to take advantage of the technology offered.
I think shooting to JPEG and using film profiles is kind of pointless. If you want to shoot film, shoot film. Imagine you have taken a really good picture, but it’ll always look worse than it could because you threw away most of the data and applied some look to it that will date it.
I do understand that a lot of people think these cameras are worth buying. And that they are selling well. But I can’t understand why.
> The people who buy these cameras would probably be better served by upgrading their phones.
I'm sorry if this too far off topic but I routinely go to use my phone's camera and the ambient light level is so high I can barely see what I'm intending to photograph, and I certainly can't see the on-screen controls.
I've seen hoods intended to over your head and into which the phone fits and this would, I assume, resolve the issue but by comparison a point and click with a 'proper' viewfinder (perhaps with the rubber surround some used to have) would be a very good solution by comparison.
There are many motivations for shooting jpeg with film sims, from just not wanting to expend the effort editing photos to my motivation as a colour-blind person who simply cannot see colour well enough to manually adjust photos. For me, it’s incredible being able to choose a film simulation and be happy with the result even if I know that the colours I’m seeing aren’t quite the same that others will see. It’s the entire reason I bought into the FujiFilm system.
I think almost everyone here is missing the point of this camera. In the post truth AI future, this is the camera you want when you photograph the billionaire or President or your spouse doing something awful. Any other photo proof won’t work because it can always be called fake. And yes I’m being serious. You are missing the point if you say the quality isn’t good enough or it’s too slow or bulky. The idea is the provable authenticity, which is going to be very important in the coming decades.
I imagine that, if attested cameras like this come into any sort of regular use, you'll see additional layers of metadata mixed into the signature—a depth map, GPS, accelerometers, operator biometrics etc, none of which are necessarily infallible, but which certainly create considerable barriers to faking things.
I think some of the modern iPhone cameras use SLVS, so non-iPhone Apple Silicon might have a way of connecting to that natively too. Good luck using that though.
Without a native connection option, what remains to you is probably an FPGA converter (to MIPI CSI-2 D-PHY), which is going to be expensive of course. But still not as expensive as the sensor itself and the associated optics.
> The C2PA information comprises a series of statements that cover areas such as asset creation, edit actions, capture device details, bindings to content and many other subjects. These statements, called assertions, make up the provenance of a given asset and represent a series of trust signals that can be used by a human to improve their view of trustworthiness concerning the asset. Assertions are wrapped up with additional information into a digitally signed entity called a claim.
The idea with zero knowledge proofs is that typically, photography metadata is stripped when it’s posted on Facebook. The proof would be a piece of metadata that COULD be safe to share in the SPECIFICS of what it proves. For example there is a circuit that can show that the photo was taken in the United States without leaking the specific location the photo was taken.
Presumably the authenticity scheme here is supposed to be, it answers it was taken on a real camera in a real place, without leaking any of the metadata. They are vague because probably that circuit (proving program and scheme) hasn’t been designed yet.
I also don’t know if it is possible to make useful assertions at all in such a scheme, since authenticity is a collection of facts (for example) and ZK is usually used to specifically make association of related facts harder.
Simple, you remove the sdcard and mount it on linux, the security of a Pi is a joke.
I wouldn't mind if it was 3D printed if it wasn't done with like a layer height of 0.28, half transparent so it looks weird, and intended for outdoor use where 3D prints are porous and water will seep through. The housing needs at the very least some spray painting and a clearcoat.
What I do mind is the cheapest off the shelf diy button lmao. They are like cents a piece, just add a fucking metal one that are like a few cents more if you're selling a $400 camera, cheapass. I wouldn't be surprised if the software side with the "proof" being a similarly haphazardly brittle implementation as the construction.
> This is rather expensive for what looks like a home 3D printed toy with some cute software.
This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, especially on a site called Hacker News.
I think we absolutely should be supporting projects like this (if you think they're worth supporting), else all we're left with is giant corporation monoculture. Hardware startups are incredibly difficult, and by their nature new hardware products from small companies will always cost more than products produced by huge companies that have economies of scale and can afford billions of losses on new products.
So yes, I'm all for people taking risks with new hardware, and even if it doesn't have the most polished design, if it's doing something new and interesting I think it's kinda shitty to just dismiss it as looking like "a 3D printed toy with some cute software".
Hey it's fine to make a 3d printed camera and cool stuff like that. But it's another thing to make it a product, that isn't shipping yet and asking $399 with a shiny website and with closed source software.
I don't mean to disregard the technical feat, but I question the intent.
Check Ali for "shitty" minature key-ring C-thru packaged cameras that look just like this "3D printed toy with some cute software", going for $4.00, not $400!
>This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, especially on a site called Hacker News.
It's just that even in the realm of hardware by small teams built upon Pi boards this is very overprice and poor construction and cheap components for what it is.
Selling for $400 there are case solutions other than a cheap 3D print, and button choices other than the cheapest button on the market.
This isn't a hardware start-up, it's a software start-up using off the shelf consumer hardware to give their software product a home.
If it was a hardware start-up, the camera would be $80 built with custom purpose made hardware.
Once you decide to launch a hardware product composed of completed consumer hardware products, you are already dead. All the margin is already accounted for.
It would be cool if this was open source because looking at the pictured this is all off the shelf hardware. I am guessing only bespoke thing here is the stl for the case
This is patently incorrect. Just remember the whole TiVo affair and reasons why GPLv3 was born. Source code availability does not guarantee ability to run it on the particular device.
The Software Freedom Conservancy thinks the GPLv2 guarantees the ability to modify existing GPLv2 software on a device, but does not guarantee the ability to still use the proprietary software running on top of that, and that the same applies with GPLv3. Reading the preamble of the GPLv2, I'm inclined to agree with them. Hasn't been tested in court yet though I think.
One could design a toolchain that posts a hashed signed version of the source used to produce a signed binary.
Build and deploy what you want and if you want people to trust it and opt in then it is publicly available.
In this case you get the signature and it confirms the device and links to a tamper proof snapshot of the code used to build its firmware.
Seems to me that a camera like this is necessarily, at least in part, a closed system that blocks you from controlling the software or hardware on the device you supposedly own. It's hard for me to think this is a good direction. And as others have pointed out, it can't prevent attacks through the analog hole, e.g. photographing a display.
It's not feasible or desirable for our hardware devices to verify the information they record autonomously. A real solution to the problem of attribution in the age of AI must be based on reputation. People should be able to vouch for information in verifiable ways with consequences for being untrustworthy.
> camera like this is necessarily, at least in part, a closed system that blocks you from controlling the software or hardware on the device you supposedly own
Attestation systems are not inherently in conflict with repurposeability. If they let you install user firmware, then it simply won’t produce attestations linked to their signed builds, assuming you retain any of that functionality at all. If you want attestations to their key instead of yours, you just reinstall their signed OS, the HSM boot attests to whoever’s OS signature it finds using its unique hardware key, and everything works fine (even in a dual boot scenario).
What this does do is prevent you from altering their integrity-attested operating system to misrepresent that photos were taken by their operating system. You can, technically, mod it all you want — you just won’t have their signature on the attestation, because you had to sign it with some sort of key to boot it, and certainly that won’t be theirs.
They could even release their source code under BSD, GPL, or AGPL and it would make no difference to any of this; no open source license compels producing the crypto private keys you signed your build with, and any such argument for that applying to a license would be radioactive for it. Can you imagine trying to explain to your Legal team that you can’t extract a private key from an HSM to comply with the license? So it’s never going to happen: open source is about releasing code, not about letting you pass off your own work as someone else’s.
> must be based on reputation
But it is already. By example:
Is this vendor trusted in a court of law? Probably, I would imagine, it would stand up to the court’s inspection; given their motivations they no doubt have an excellent paper trail.
Are your personal attestations, those generated by your modded camera, trusted by a court of law? Well, that’s an interesting question: Did you create a fully reproducible build pipeline so that the court can inspect your customizations and decide whether to trust them? Did you keep record of your changes and the signatures of your build? Are you willing to provide your source code and build process to the court?
So, your desire for reputation is already satisfied, assuming that they allow OS modding. If they do not, that’s a voluntary-business decision, not a mandatory-technical one! There is nothing justifiable by cryptography or reputation in any theoretical plans that lock users out of repurposing their device.
> A real solution to the problem of attribution in the age of AI must be based on reputation
This is actually one of the theoretical predictions from Eliezer Yudkowsky, who says that as information becomes less and less verifiable, we're going to need to re-enter a pre-information-era - where people will have to know and trust the sources of important information they encounter, in some cases needing to hear it first hand or in person.
It's not enough that the photograph is signed and has metadata. Someone has to interpret that metadata to decide authentic versus not. One can have an "authentic" photo of a rear projection screen. It wouldn't be appropriate to have an "authentic" checkmark next to this photo if it claims to not be a photo of a rear projection screen. The context matters to authenticity.
Secondly, the existence of such "authentic" photos will be used to call all non-authenticated photos into doubt.
So it doesn't even really solve any problem, but creates new problems.
Yes, that might make these fake-proof cameras popular, to the point where people start putting in the necessary effort to defeat them by monkeying around with the time server and the depth sensor and the gps signal. Then you get a really well-supported fake image that's very effective because it's authenticated.
Practically I think there are situations where it is not so black and white. Like camera footage used as evidence in a court case. Signing a video with a public key would give some way to verify the source and chain of custody. Why wouldn't you in that situation? At a minimum it makes tapering harder and weakens false claims that something has been tampered with.
I don't think reputation gets you that far alone, we already live in a world where misinformation spreads like wildfire through follower counts and page ranks.
The problem is quality takes time, and therefore loses relevance.
We need a way to break people out of their own human nature and reward delayed gratification by teaching critical thinking skills and promoting thoughtfulness.
I sadly don't see an exciting technological solution here. If anything it's tweaks to the funding models that control the interests of businesses like Instagram, Reddit, etc.
Why can't posting a verifiably true image create as much or more instant gratification as sending a fake one? It will probably be more gratifying, once everyone is sending fake ones and yours is the only real one (if people can know that).
Sure, but you were asking why truth is less gratifying.
Also, "truth" is clearly something that requires more resources. It is a lifelong endeavour of art/science/learning. You can certainly luck into it on occasion but most of us never will. And often something fictional can project truth better than evidence or analysis ever can. Almost everything turns into an abstraction.
No, that is a nihilistic belief which does not get buildings built or software written.
One may "luck" into truth by being born in a poor neighborhood or by living in a warzone, and having eyes and a camera. Or by being rich and invited to a club and having a microphone.
Truth is everywhere, but capturing it is expensive. The tax on truth is the easy spread and generation of lies. The idea that the fictional can encapsulate truth is of course true, but it doesn't mean everything is better an abstraction. Losing a leg is more powerful as a reality than as an abstraction. Peddlers of falsehoods, then, only win when truth can be abstracted.
Moreover: People who read literature read it knowing it stands in for truth. People who watch TikTok believe it is true, and are disenchanted when shown otherwise. More power resides in a grain of truth than a mountain of falsehood; so any tool for proving veracity will always have an outsized value against tools for generating fakes.
The last redoubt of propagandists when faced with the threat of truth is to claim that no one cares anymore what's true. But that's false. In fact, that's when they begin to fool themselves. It's not that no one in China or Russia values the truth, for instance. It's just that they say what they're told to say, and don't believe a word of it.
We do not need "proof". We lived without it, and we'll live without it again.
I grew up before broadband - we survived without photographing every moment, too. It was actually kind of nice. Social media is the real fluke of our era, not image generation.
And hypothetically if these cryptographic "non-AI really super serious real" verification systems do become in vogue, what happens if quantum supremacy beats crypto? What then?
You don't even need to beat all of crypto. Just beat the signing algorithm. I'm sure it's going to happen all the time with such systems, then none of the data can be "trusted" anyway.
I'm stretching a bit here, but this feels like "NFTs for life's moments". Designed just to appease the haters.
You aren't going to need this stuff. Life will continue.
This worked because we also used to have significantly better and more trustworthy news organisations that you could just trust did the original research and verified the facts. Now they just copy stories off Reddit and make up their own lies.
Back to the time before photographs then - the 1800s.
Crime scene photographs won't be evidence anymore. You photograph your flat (apartment) when you move in to prove that all the marks on the walls were already there and that won't be evidence anymore. The police mistreat you but your video of it won't be evidence either. etc
I don't understand how the "proof" part works, like, what part of the input to the "proof generation" algorithm is so inherently tied to the real world that one cannot feed it "fake" data ?
My understanding is it can't. The proof is "this photo was taken with this real camera and is unmodified". There's no way to know if the photo subject is another image generated by AI, or a painting made by a human etc.
I remember when snapchat were touting "send picture that delete within timeframes set by you!" and all that would happen is you'd turn to your friend and have them take a picture of your phone.
In the above case, the outcome was messy. But with some effort, people could make reasonable quality "certified" pictures of damn near anything by taking a picture of a picture. Then there is the more technical approach of cracking a system physically in your hands so you can sign whatever you want anyway...
I think the aim should be less on the camera hardware attestation and more on the user. "It is signed with their key! They take responsibility for it!"
But then we need:
1. fully active and scaled public/private key encryption for all users for whatever they want to do
2. a world where people are held responsible for their actions...
I don’t disagree with including user attestation in addition to hardware attestation.
The notion of their being a “analog hole” for devices that attest that their content is real is correct on the face, but is a very flawed criticism. Right now, anybody on earth can open up an LLM and generate an image. Anybody on earth can open up Photoshop and manipulate an image. And there’s no accountability for where that content came from. But not everybody on earth is capable of projecting an image and photographing it in a way that is in distinguishable from taking a photo of reality. Especially when you’ve taken into consideration that these cameras are capturing depths of field information, location information, and other metadata.
I think it’s a mistake to demand perfection. This is about trust in media and creating foundational technologies that allow for that trust to be restored. Imagine if every camera and every piece of editing software had the ability to sign its output with a description of any mutations. That is a chain of metadata where each link in the chain can be assigned to trust score. If, an addition to technology signatures, human signatures are included, that just builds additional trust. At some point, it would be inappropriate for news or social media not to use this information when presenting content.
As others have mentioned, C2PA is a reasonable step in this direction.
Perhaps if it measured depth it could detect "flat surface" and flag that in the recorded data. Cameras already "know" what is near or far simply by focusing.
I wonder if a 360 degree image in addition to the 'main' photo could show that the photo was part of a real scene and not just a photo of an image? Not proof exactly but getting closer to it.
If someone cared enough to spend money on this I think it would be an easy to medium difficulty project to use an FPGA and a CSI-2 IP to pretend to be the sensor. Good luck fixing that without baking a secure element into your sensor.
I am sorry if I missed something or someone already asked it, but:
If I generate image with AI, print it, then take a photo of it with Roc Camera so that you can't tell that this is actually a printed image, I will then have an AI image with ZKP of its authenticity?
> A digital signature alone cannot determine whether the captured image is of an actual 3D subject, or of an image or video projected on a high-definition monitor. However, by using metadata including 3D depth information, it is possible to verify the authenticity of images with a high degree of accuracy. By using cameras from Sony, both the image and the 3D depth information can be captured on the sensor along the single light axis, providing information of high authenticity.
That 3D depth data could presumably be used to detect this. In principle, you could also train an AI to generate realistic 3D data. It's just not available yet, and probably harder to train (in general, and also since you would need to collect new massive amount of training data first).
No idea if this specific device has a 3D sensor, addressing the general question.
The depth information that sony cameras collect is almost certainly low-res enough that even with a simple image->depthmap model[0] you could fool it. Also they don't say anything about the sensor itself being secure, no need to print something if you can just emulate the sensor with an FPGA or other.
I would broadly expect software made by most camera brands to be shit, while I would expect a developer who creates their own hardware projects (generally, not talking specifically about cameras) to range from idiots who have no idea what they're doing (like me, though to be fair I also wouldn't release it believing it to be good) to highly skilled coders who would get it right despite being on their own.
So I wouldn't automatically assume that a product like this would be better designed, but I would think there's a chance it might have been!
`C2PA Authenticity: Integrated support for the C2PA standard for photo authenticity verification – initially available exclusively for registered news agencies.`
Sounds like it's limited to some users for now, I guess this will change in the future.
Going too far won't really help, since the scene being photographed can be manipulated or staged, which sounds more likely to be a concern rather than the hardware being hacked.
Kudos for making this exist, it was an inevitable place for the conversation to lead, and I’m actually glad it was “hacked” together as a project rather than forced into a consumer product.
The camera specs don’t really matter here, this is about having the conversation. If this catches on, it will be a feature of every smartphone SoC.
On one hand, it’s a cool application of cryptography as a power tool to balance AI, but on the other, it’s a real hit to free and open systems. There’s a risk that concern over AI spirals into a justification for mandatory attestation that undermines digital freedom. See: online banking apps that refuse to operate on free devices.
Consider pivoting from hardware sales to verification-as-a-service. Your camera could be the universal input device for identity verification (less creepy than Worldcoin's Orb), insurance claims, real estate documentation, and legal evidence. Think transaction fees per verification, not one-time camera sales.
The consumer angle is weak - most people won't buy specialized hardware to prove their vacation photos are real. But enterprises would absolutely pay for a solution that reduces fraud, accelerates claims processing, or enables compliant remote verification. Dating apps would pay for "verified real person" badges. Banks would pay for remote account opening. Stop trying to create a problem and start solving the expensive problems that already exist:
Identity verification for financial services, social platforms, and gig economy (KYC/AML compliance)
Professional tools for insurance, real estate, law enforcement, and healthcare documentation
Enterprise authentication-as-a-service model
Scrolling is broken on mobile, it scrolls right past entire sections, like there's too much inertia. The last section is also wider than the screen and horizontal scrolling disabled.
I’m not seeing what this is product is trying to solve? A zero knowledge proof to say it isn’t AI ? I think you could do this with a disposable camera or Polaroids and a photo scanner that makes the zero knowledge proofs .
A different thread mentions "what if you take a photo of an AI photo with the Roc camera?" - I still think that would be hard due to perspective, lighting, various other artifacts.
Scanning an image would be much easier to dupe though - scanners are basically controlled perspective/lighting environments so scanning an actual polaroid vs an ai generated polaroid printed on photo paper would be pretty indistinguishable I think.
Maybe I am just naive, but I don't see why taking a photo of a screen, projection, or print out would be hard. Wouldn't it just need even lighting and tripod?
Adding something like a LIDAR and somehow baking that data into the meta data could be fun
Then people will connect their fake image and LIDAR feed to where the CMOS is connected. Like always with half-baked digital attestation chains, laypersons will argue "Oh, but who's gonna do that?" and the reality is that even private modders and hackers are perfectly willing and capable of doing this and will jump on it right away, and if it's just for the fun to distribute a certified picture of an alien giving everyone the finger. Of course, tamper-proof designs would be possible, but they are extremely expensive.
On a side note, the best way to attack this particular camera is probably by attacking the software.
Don't limit your thinking to taking photos - video also works fine. It's how The Mandalorian is produced. Instead of green screens, the actors are in front of floor-to-ceiling LED screens with live rendered CGI.
In old movies, going back to the 1930s and 40s, back-projection is usually seen when characters are driving in a car, and you can usually spot it. These days, not so much.
If Elsie and Frances had the technology we could have a digitally signed zero knowledge proof that their photo's captured a genuine scene that included cardboard cutouts of fairies.
It was a real moment with objects that Bishop Berkeley could have kicked.
I love my medium format film cameras. I think everyone interested in photography should try it. Yashicas (just as an example of a company that made good medium format film cameras) are surprisingly affordable on eBay. I've had good luck buying from Japan, FWIW.
Most countries, including Japan, India, Canada, and nearly the entire EU, have completely stopped shipping packages to US consumers. This is not because of the tariffs themselves, but because the US apparently has no system in place for actually handling the tariffs on goods that previously qualified for the de minimis exemption. Two months and counting with no information on when shipping might resume.
Some merchants in those countries have stopped. There isn’t a general stoppage of everything.
I just checked and you can still send goods between Japan and the US. There are still merchants selling the exact mentioned camera on eBay that will ship to the US.
Can you source your claim that absolutely no courier is capable of shipping goods into the US? I can’t find anything using google, or on any courier websites.
FedEx does have information about how to correctly fill out the forms for the purposes of tariffs, but does not mention that they will not accept shipments.
I see, that was my mistake then. I was unaware that services like FedEx were still accepting packages. My personal experience was that I have been unable to ship to the US for months because the carrier I use stopped accepting packages, and was under the impression they all had given the number of countries for which this was true and the news coverage I had seen. I wonder why so many countries' postal services have stopped while some couriers like FedEx continue to operate.
There were some temporary stops, but mostly they resolved pretty quickly. I think an issue is that the US requested that tariffs be paid upfront at the sending end and a some couriers aren’t set up for that. Or that they needed time to set it up.
Many of the postal and courier systems that suspended service have since set up the systems they need, and are happily moving packages into the US, but it tends not to make the news.
I'll throw Mamiya 645 in there for a good medium format camera as well. Yashica is great, I own a Yashica Electro 35 and it is awesome no thought rangefinder.
This camera's attestation and zero-knowledge proof cannot verify that a photo is not AI generated. Worse, those "verifications" may trick people into believing photos are trustworthy or authentic that are not.
Similar to ad-clicks or product reviews, if this were to catch on, Roc cameras (and Roc camera farms) will be used to take photos of inauthentic photos.
Ultimately, the only useful authenticity test is human reputation.
If someone (or an organization) wants to be trusted as authentic, the best they can do is stake their identity on the authenticity of things they do and share, over and over.
I’m a photographer in my spare time; looks like this product isn’t about what images are being produced, or about the shooting experience - and this discourages me.
When the goal is having a proof that the photo hasn’t been edited or ai generated, using an analog camera and shooting on film seems more practical to me than using a device like this.
This kinda like a PoC for ZK Proof used in digital devices, however, I don't think a Raspberry Pi in a 3D printed case should be made a real product, it lacks actualy use cases. Honestly, I like this concept, but I think it should belong to a personal art exhibition or DIY competition…
Probably look for display artifacts (pixel borders)?
But a fixture that takes a good enough screen + enough distance to make the photographed pixels imperceptible is likely just a medium hurdle for a motivated person.
You probably can't fully avoid it but adding more sensors (depth) will make such a fixture quite a bit more expensive.
This is a known problem in this space called 're-broadcasting' do a Google patent search on Serelay and you'll see several solutions (including spoofing of other sensor metadata)
- I hope they succeed and eventually deliver a solid version of this product - verifiable photography is going to become important, and it's good to see startups working on this
- While I'm sure some artists will like the idea of verifiable photography, the applications that matter to me are any kind of photography that has the potential to end up in a news article or in court
- Selling what is essentially a prototype is fine, it's extremely obvious that's what it is, they explicitly say it! Who cares if it's not very good as a camera?
- The almost complete lack of information on their site about their security model or how their ZKPs work is not particularly encouraging
- It follows that my faith that either the cryptography or the hardware anti-tamper measures in this beta device would stand up to even some decent amateurs, given a couple of weeks to have a crack at it, is not high. I'm almost tempted to buy one just to see how far I, a random kernel engineer who gets modestly decent scores at my local hacker con CTF, could get. But I may well be completely underestimating them! Hard to tell with the fairly scarce information
- Why did they pick a name that's similar to a) AMD's GPU stack, and b) the law enforcement/natsec computer vision business, ROC (https://roc.ai)?
Obviously, this has the vulnerability that you can take a picture of a computer monitor with it, showing whatever you want to.
Apple could really make an interesting product here where they combine the LIDAR data with the camera data, cryptographically sign it, and attest to it as unmodified straight from the camera. Can it still be faked? Yes, but it's much harder to do.
This looks interesting. I love the retro styling and transparent case. The proofs and selling it as some sort of fight-back against AI seems tenuous and as the user controls the hardware - going to be hard to keep that system hermetically sealed due to giving the user the keys on device. Also though almost nobody actually cares very much about attesting that their photos are somehow real and untouched by AI.
There are larger problems when you consider this question. What is real and not in photography is a long and storied debate - any photograph is ultimately a curation of a small part of the real world - what is just out of frame could completely change the interpretation of the viewer if they saw it, regardless of whether the picture is unaltered after taking. The choice of framing, colours, subject etc etc can radically alter meaning. There is no getting away from this.
So ultimately I don't think the biggest problem facing photography is attested reality. I actually think the democratisation of photography offers a better way out - we have so many views on each event now that it's actually harder to fake because there are usually hundreds of pictures of the same thing.
PS for the site author, there is a typo in the sentence beginning - remove the an 'By combining sensors, an on-device zero-knowledge proofs'.
I don’t know what this gives that a film camera with slide film loaded doesn’t.
Both cameras still allow “staging” a scene and taking a shot of that. Both cameras will both say that the scene was shot in the physical world, but that’s it.
I would argue that slide film is more “verifiable” in the ways that matter: easier to explain to laypeople how slide film works, and it’s them that you want to convince.
If I was a film or camera manufacturer I would try and go for this angle in marketing.
Can't find slide printing services easily put AI images onto slide film for you?
I think the point of this movement toward cryptographically signing image sensors is so people can confidently prove images are real on the internet in a momentary click, without having to get hold of the physical original and hiring a forensic lab to analyze it.
You can get things printed onto a transparency mounted in a slide frame. Actual slide film, though, must be done by exposing light. When you want another image put onto a slide, the easiest way to do it is to just take a picture using a camera.
That’s beside the broader point that OP made: it doesn’t matter since you can just point a verifiable camera at a staged scene (or reproduction of an AI image) and have an image of something that doesn’t represent reality. You can cryptographically sign, or have an original slide, of an image that is faked outside the camera.
Are you saying the slide itself would be proof? I think the use cases are different - this camera gives you a file and signature you can transmit digitally.
You have to push the signing as far out as possible.
The light sensor must have a key built into the hardware at the factory, and that sensor must attest that it hasn't detected any tampering, that gets input into the final signature.
We must petition God to start signing photons, and the camera sensor must also incorporate the signature of every photon input to it, and verify each photon was signed by God's private key.
God isn't currently signing photons, but if he could be convinced to it would make this problem a lot easier so I'm sure he'll listen to reason soon.
>> We store the photos generated by the Roc Camera on IPFS (by default). We'll have more information on this soon, so check back for more details in the future.
> How do I get my photos off the camera?
>> Coming soon. We're working on export functionality to get your photos off the camera.
> Where is the ZKP generated?
>> The zero-knowledge proofs are generated on-device using the Raspberry Pi 4.
I am a bit puzzled as to why IPFS was used as the "primary" storage medium there, it's a Pi so wouldn't it be pretty easy to make it have a micro-sd port? Wouldn't it be able to work fully locally then?
When I look at their socials, it seems like they primarily engage with a crypto-focused audience, all of this leads me to believe that IPFS and ZKP are the actual main appeal of this product... not that there's anything overtly wrong with this.
It's wild that it's already come to this: The camera itself becomes more important as the instrument to provide zero-trust proof.
This is a brilliant solution to one of the most critical emergent problems. I can see a world where no digital image can be trusted if it doesn't come with a hash.
There is also something called "film" which might be a retro answer to this problem.
I'm pretty sure forensic cameras already exist for this purpose. And as far as I can tell, there isn't really any bulletproof way to do this other than embed a signing key in the camera and hope no one manages to extract it, rendering the whole thing pointless.
I guess you could have a unique signing key per camera and blacklist known leaked keys.
Canon and Nikon both did this. You paid a premium for a “signature analysis” app. The target was for things like law enforcement, where authentication was important.
They got cracked with a year or two. Not sure if they still offer the capability.
Lots of cool ideas here - crypto first/crypto everything, IPFS and soon Farcaster integration. But the price is a big negative.
I also believe that whatever they're aiming at with verifiably real photos will either be commodified or end up not being valued very highly.
It's not quite the Rabbit R1 (at least the presentation here seems more honest) but I don't see it generating more than niche-of-niche interest.
Also, and maybe more to the previous point about commodification (or within-reach tech), this is the kind of project I can imagine hardware hacker/AI and crypto enthusiast doing on their own ( and I guess selling to friends and neighbors for $400 ... )
Has anyone else found themselves becoming hyper-attuned to "AI" trickery in photographs?
Just the other day I stumbled across this picture on Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_AT%26T_wireless_r... Can anyone explain what's going on with the front tyre of the white car? To me it looks like the actual picture was ingested by a model then spat back out again with a weird artifact.
The worrying thing is when it becomes too hard to spot the artifacts we won't know how much of our history has been altered subtly, either unintentionally or not, by "AI".
If you like the idea of a small "dumbish" camera but aren't fussed about all the ZK proof stuff these are quite fun: https://www.campsnapphoto.com/collections/camp-snap-screen-f... I have a few and letting my small kid have a blast while not getting "screen time" is great.
Side effect is I get a small little window into what he "sees" and his lived experience. Going through some of the pics recently was quite beautiful.
Any device like this is useless, because you can print an AI generated picture and then take a photo of it. It's like NFTs in the crypto world, which have proofs that prove essentially nothing.
It’s a cool idea, but I don’t know how much people care about a photo provably being real. I take pictures with my phone because it’s simple and convenient. I get the vibe that it’s kinda like NFTs, where maybe some people would care if certain NFTs are unique and permanently on some blockchain, but most people don’t. Most people won’t understand the technical details behind the proof so at most they can only trust the claim that a picture is provably real.
Does anyone know if the camera sensor includes depth map information? Otherwise what is stopping someone from photographing a large high-resolution print of an AI generated image.
this one does not. Other cameras do include one, or can make a depth sensor via the real sensor since autofocus/focus stacking allows depth extraction, especially if using a low aperature number.
The main argument of this product is to "capture verifiably real moments". Though I find it interesting (and am quite liking the object), I do not tend to think this is a strong argument for this product: capturing a picture of a unreal picture would make it real (as discussed in this thread), moreover what would prevent any phone manufacturer from integrating the same type of "validation" into their hardware?
I remember reading in some Qualcomm Snapdragon document that Qualcomm integrated some image authenticity method. Not sure if this ever landed in an end-product?
This is the right direction - the only way to go about fake images and video is digital signatures. Phone camera should be able to do this as well. Then we can have signatures of software used for processing them (on top) cerityfing what changes have been done: e.g. contract correction filter applied, signed by Adobe Photoshop.
Nooo... I don't want something to exist that can absolutely prove that a photo is real. This only serves to enforce social norms more rigidly. These include reasonable norms like against committing crimes or behaving abusingly but it also includes stupid norms like behaving uncool or doing something embarrasing. The problem is, where do you draw the line? I think if somebody does something stupid or even morally dubious there should always be a way of forgetting it.
That you can't believe everything you see in the age of AI is a feature, not a bug. We are so used to photographs being hard facts that we'll have to go through a hard transition, but we'll be fine afterwards, just as we were before the invention of photography. Our norms will adapt. And photographs will become mere heresay and illustration, but that's OK.
I think here the same dynamic is at play as with music/videos and DRM. Our society is so used to doing it the old way - selling physical records - that when new technology comes along, which allows free copying, we can't go where the technology leads us (because we don't know how to feed the artists, and because the record industry has too much power), so we invent a mechanism to turn back the wheel and make music into a scarce good again. Similar here: we can't ban Photoshop and AI, but we invent a technology to try to turn back time and make photos "evidence" again.
What concerns me most in the era of gen AI irt photography is journalism. We need truth, most especially when limited-means citizen journalism is the only reliable source of that truth.
But I feel like the only way to accomplish fool-proof photos we can trust in a trustless way (i.e. without relying on e.g. the Press Association to vet) is to utterly PACK the hardware with sensors and tamper-proof attestation so the capture can’t be plausibly faked: multi-spectral (RGB + IR + UV) imaging, depth/LiDAR, stereo cameras, PRNU fingerprinting, IMU motion data, secure GPS with attested fix, a hardware clock and secure element for signing, ambient audio, lens telemetry, environmental sensors (temperature, barometer, humidity, light spectrum) — all wrapped in cryptographic proofs that bind these readings to the pixels.
In the meantime however, I'd trust a 360deg go-pro with some kind of signature of manafacture. OR just a LOT of people taking photos in a given vicinity. Hard to fake that.
This is probably one of those scenarios where if someone wants to fake it they're going to fake it (or at least it will be a never ending arms race, and I expect AI to keep close chase), while a basic security solution will suffice for 99% of use cases, including standard journalism. After all, skilled photoshop+computational tools can already do expert fakery in journalism. (Just look at the last Abroadinjapan video earlier today for a good callout of Photoshop editing to increase engagement).
Could Apple or Google do this without updating their hardware? I see a relevant patent (US20220294640A1) and it looks like one of the inventors is at Google now.
This shouldn't be a product, but a licensed patented technology like Dolby or CDMA, sold to OEMs and directly integrated into cameras and phones.
It should be an industry standard system for guaranteeing authenticity by coordinating hardware and software to be as tamper proof as possible and saved in a cryptographically verifiable way.
No system like this would be perfect, but that's the enemy of the good.
I find that most people who want to ground things in reality, that is at least "reality" without AI or whatever filters are put on photos by phones these days, don't have much interest in any sort of cryptographic proof of reality... this is in the same realm of technology they're trying to avoid.
i don't get how the attestation works? from the FAQ, the proofs are generated on the rpi, which AFAIK doesn't have anything like a modern HSM/vault which would allow them to 1. not allow user access to the secret or 2. not allow user to put ai-generated imagery onto the device for 'attestation'
I like the concept (because I was proposing such a couple of years back) and the software implementation seems good. But holy shit that thing is ugly. They could(should) have worked with a cheap camera maker like Lomokino to make a bare-bones rangefinder or twin lens reflex. This is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. Sorry.
There's simply no technical solution to authenticating photographs as far as I can tell.
The only real solution I can think of is just to have multiple independent parties photograph the same event and use social trust. Luckily this solution is getting easier now that almost everyone is generally no further than 3 feet away from multiple cameras.
you know what grinds my gears? The fact that it takes 2 seconds for the android camera app to open, even when I use the shortcut on the lock screen. It's a step backwards from point-and-shoot cameras.
I was trying to take a picture of a gecko the other day, and it missed half of the event while the app was loading.
I like the spirit of this, but not the implementation. It feels very performative to create a ZK proof to show that a photo is real. And not really in the spirit of capturing magic moments on film.
I think that a disposable camera, or even something fancier, like a Mamiya C330, are better and more gratifying bets for the money.
Heh, few years ago I built myself a RPi Zero based camera.
I wonder how have they made the boot up fast enough to not be annoying.
I used non-real time eInk display to cut down on the battery life so I could just keep it on in my pocket while out taking pictures since it took good minute to get ready from cold boot.
I think it's very likely the next iPhone will have some form of authenticity proof too, I just hope Apple doesn't go with its own standard again that's incompatible with everything else.
Samsung were also the ones who demonstrated a fatal flaw in C2PA: device manufacturers are explicitly trusted in implementation.
C2PA requires trust that manufacturers would not be materially modifying the scene using convolutional neural networks to detect objects and add/remove details[1]
That's tricky because it needs to store and verify metadata that the user cannot edit and that allows one to distinguish a "normal" photo from a professional photography of a photo. The only place where this can happen are the camera settings but these are limited on smart phones and it's not easy to discern the two cases. I'm sure someone would print a 10x10 meter fake image, put it at just the right distance, and wait for the best indirect light to prove that the Yeti exists.
Just include a depth sensor, lidar, etc. I'm sure over time that will become increasingly easy to defeat too, but then we can just keep improving the sensors too.
Interesting, but this is a software project. Camera sensor is being bought from Aliexpress in bulk. Competition from companies manufacturing cameras, or smartphones, is huge. How this project is not a cash grab?
Are they releasing the STL to let people print their own shell? If not, seems odd to advertise the fact that it's 3d printed with standard (Bambu Lab) printers.
Fantastic idea, I'm sure there will be more such devices and a big market for them.
Note to the company: please check the scrolling on Firefox (macOS), it's a little weird.
It looks 3d-printed (edit: confirmed- there's footage of it being 3d printed on the FAQ page). I'd expect a process with a better finish for the final product, but who knows with products like this that are in beta.
Found this sort of funny too, from the FAQ:
> Is this production ready?
> No. The Roc Camera is currently in beta and we suggest you do not use it for anything important at the moment. We're open to feedback and suggestions. Please reach out to us at support@roc.camera.
Cool idea, could be implemented in future professional cameras but as of right now, I can’t think of a single reason that someone into photography would buy this
It's not like questioning the authenticity of a photo is a new thing "in the age of AI". Manipulating photos has always been a thing, long before photoshop even.
If you do photography for your own pleasure and not for the sake of likes, gratification or public opinion you can use whatever hardware or software it’s alright.
Good thinking, but the problem here is that in order to make a good camera which takes verifiable photos you first need to make a good camera, and that's quite hard.
When rocking your Meta, Ray Ban, MacDonalds, Tesla XR AR 0009fNG plus Reality engine contact lense inplants it will be important to cross reference your experiences with what really happened.
There is a movement to cryptographically sign images in order to prove that they are real raw photographs, by selling hardware in which the cryptographic key is placed close to the camera sensor to prevent tampering.
This page cannot be scrolled in Safari or Firefox.
Devs -- stop hijacking native scrolling functionality. Why? You had one shot to sell me on this product. I can't see the page, so I can't consider it for purchase. That's a lost sale.
I have been happily using fujifilm x100 for about 10 years now? I bought a second hand one for about $300. You can buy a decent camera cheaper than a smartphone, as it should be.
What a silly idea, a whole Raspberry Pi for basic photography! Just the boot-up alone would drive someone nuts, you'd miss the moment every time and I'd drain your battery if you left it on. So silly.
$400 for a raspberry pi in an ugly 3d printed case ?
I love the idea, but the product execution is simply horrendous. It looks more like a money grab gimmick. The sensor selection is also bad, the image quality will be terrible.
The truth is worse than anyone wants to face. It was never about authenticity or creativity. Those words are just bullshit armor for fragile egos. Proofs and certificates do not mean a damn thing.
AI tore the mask off. It showed that everything we worship, art, music, poetry, beauty, all of it runs on patterns. Patterns so simple and predictable that a lifeless algorithm can spit them out while we sit here calling ourselves special. The magic we swore was human turns out to be math wearing makeup.
Strip away the label and no one can tell who made it. The human touch we brag about dissolves into noise. The line between creator and creation never existed. We were just too arrogant to admit it.
Love, happiness, beauty, meaning, all of it is chemistry and physics. Neurons firing, hormones leaking, atoms slamming into each other. That is what we are when we fall in love, when we cry, when we write a song we think no machine could ever match. It is all the same damn pattern. Give a machine enough data and it will mimic our souls so well we will start to feel stupid for ever thinking we had one.
This is not the future. It is already moving beneath us. The trendline is clear. AI will make films that crush Hollywood. Maybe not today, maybe not next year, but that is where the graph is pointing. And artists who refuse to use it, who cling to the old ways out of pride or fear, are just holding on to stupidity. The tools have changed. Pretending they have not is the fastest way to become irrelevant.
Yes, maybe right now you can still tell the difference. Maybe it is obvious. But look at the rate. Look at the slope of that goddamn line. The speed of progress is unmistakable. Every year the gap closes. Every year the boundary between man and machine blurs a little more. Anyone who cannot see where this is going, anyone who cannot admit that this is a realistic possibility, is in total denial. The projection of that line into the future cannot be ignored. It is not speculation anymore. It is math, and it is happening right in front of us.
People will still scoff, call it soulless, call it fake. But put them in a blind test and they will swear it was human. The applause will sound exactly the same.
And one day a masterpiece will explode across the world. Everyone will lose their minds over it. Critics will write essays about its beauty and depth. People will cry, saying it touched something pure in them. Then the creator will step forward and say it was AI. And the whole fucking world will go quiet.
Because in that silence we will understand. There was never anything special about us. No divine spark. No secret soul. Just patterns pretending to mean something.
We are noise that learned to imitate order. Equations wrapped in skin. Puppets jerking to the pull of chemistry, pretending it is choice.
I used to be really (really really) into photography. I respect anyone working hard on a physical product, but this misses the mark on every front I can think of.
The real issue that photographers grapple with, emotionally and financially, is that pictures have become so thoroughly commodified that nobody assigns them cultural value anymore. They are the thumbnail you see before the short video clip starts playing.
Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash. This is especially funny to me because I used to struggle with the fact that people looking at your work don't know or care what kind of camera or process was involved. They don't know if I spent two hours zoomed in removing microscopic dust particles from the scanning process after a long hike to get a single shot at 5:30am, or if it was just the 32nd of 122 shots taken in a burst by someone holding up an iPad Pro Max at a U2 concert.
This all made me sad for a long time, but I ultimately came to terms with the fact that my own incentives were perverse; I was seeking the external gratification of getting likes just like everyone else. If you can get back to a place where you're taking photographs or making music or doing 5 minute daily synth drills for your own happiness with no expectation of external validity, you will be far happier taking that $399 and buying a Mamiya C330.
This video is about music, but it's also about everything worth doing for the right reasons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvQF4YIvxwE
I also used to be really (really really) into photography. Personally, I’ve stopped taking pictures because of the stigma around a camera.
Everyone, me more than most, doesn’t want their picture taken, or to be in the background of other photos. When someone can take thousands of pictures an hour, and upload them all to some social media site to be permanently stored… idk it’s shifted from a way to capture a moment to feeling like you’re being survieled.
A bit hyperbolic, but it’s the best way to describe what I’m feeling
The concept of «public» has changed.
About 15-20 years ago I attended a lot of car events (races, shows) where I took lots of photos. Mostly of moving cars, but also a lot of closeups of race car drivers using a long lens. For about a year more than half the photos published in a very niche car publication were by me. The magazine had a few thousand subscribers. And to this day I still see some drivers use my shots of them as profile pictures etc. Nobody minded being photographed. In fact, they were really happy about it.
Then social media happened. There’s a different «public» now. Any picture taken and published now has the potential to go viral. To get a global audience. And not least: to be put in unpleasant contexts.
I can understand that people’s attitudes have changed.
I haven’t actually given up taking photos in public. In part because I think it is important that people do. I still take pictures of strangers. Then again, I very rarely publish them online out of respect for their privacy.
I understand how photos represent something else today. And that people view the act of taking a picture differently. But if we stop taking pictures, stop exercising our rights to take pictures, we will lose them. Through a process of erosion.
Maybe this comes to mind? : "Astronomer CEO Andy Byron and chief people officer Kristin Cabot, who were caught on a Coldplay concert jumbotron hugging each other and then quickly recoiling when they realized they were on camera."
They obviously didn't ask for that, and it was focused on them without their permission, and yet, here we are....
> They obviously didn't ask for that, and it was focused on them without their permission, and yet, here we are....
The rule is: if you're in public you have no expectation of privacy.
I think a debate on that rule would be interesting. My thought is that if I can't take a picture unless there's absolutely nobody else in the FOV, then that basically prohibits the vast majority of photographs.
I also am a fan of the "expectation of privacy" rule.
That's primarily because it makes it absolutely clear the public always has the right to record officials doing their job. So if you see a policeman murdering George Floyd in the street, or fellow shopper pushing an old woman out of the way, or a parent screaming abuse at an umpire, or even just someone littering in a national park there is no doubt you are allowed to record it.
Yes, this means towards more surveillance, but it's a counter balance to the surveillance state. The state and large corporations put cameras everywhere. It seems odd to me that people get really upset by taking photos of them when there are likely numerous CCTV cameras already doing that 24 hours a day, in not so public places like offices. The "anyone can take photos in a public place" rule means Joe Citizen gets the same rights as the corporations and governments take for themselves.
I'm in the minority though. The best illustration I've seen of the was a man take a photo of the cheer leaders at a big football game. He leaned over the fence and put his camera on the ground, taking the photo as the girl kicked her leg into the air. His actions where caught on the TV camera that was broadcasting that same girls crouch around the nation. The police prosecuted him because of the huge outcry. I'm can't recall what the outcome in court was, but I couldn't see how he could be breaking the photography rules given my country has the "expectation of privacy" rule.
I find the combination of "pictures of strangers" and "our right to take pictures" rather concerning. I have a different perspective, as I am blind. But I was always uncomfortable with having a picture taken of me by basically a stranger. And that feeling didn't just come with social media. It always was there. I disagree that you have a "right" to take pictures of strangers. IMO, you shouldn't have that right. It is probably different depending on what juristiction you are in. But my personal opinion is, that this attitude is rather selfish. In my perfect world, taking pictures of strangers without their consent should be illegal.
Well, in many parts of the world it is a legal right. You can take pictures of people in public. There are some restrictions, and there’s of course the question of how you go about it, but it is a right.
I can understand people don’t like this. Which is why actually doing it requires a good deal of sensitivity and common sense. But that doesn’t mean it would be a good idea to outlaw it.
However taking a picture is not the same as publishing it. This is the critical point.
The rules for what you can publish tend to be stricter. For instance where I live you can’t generally publish a picture of a person without consent. (It is a bit more complicated than that in practice, with lots of complicated exceptions that are not always spelled out in law. For instance if someone is making a public speech they have no expectation of privacy).
As for making it illegal: that comes with far greater problems than you might think. From losing the right to document abuses of power to robbing people of the freedom to take pictures in public.
In fact, years ago a law was passed here making it illegal to photograph arrests. A well intentioned law meant to protect suspects who have not been convicted of anything. However it has never been enacted because it was deemed dangerous. It would have made it illegal to document police misconduct, for instance. And since the press here is generally very disciplined about not publishing photos of the majority of suspects, it didn’t actually solve a problem. (In Norway identities are usually withheld in the press until someone is convicted. But sometimes identities are already known to the public. For instance in high profile cases. This, of course, varies by country)
> But my personal opinion is, that this attitude is rather selfish.
Public photography is cultural preservation and anthropological ethnography. Asking folks to stop is selfish. You are free to have an opinion that differs, and your jurisdiction may even forbid public photography, but in those places I’m familiar with, street photography is as legitimate an art as music played for free on the sidewalk. I wouldn’t argue against public concerts if I were deaf, as it doesn’t concern me, because it isn’t for me, were I unhearing, and the gathering that such public displays engender benefits one and all, regardless of differences of senses or sensibilities amongst those who choose to freely associate.
> In my perfect world, taking pictures of strangers without their consent should be illegal.
Capturing an image of another without their consent is a bit more nuanced, and I would agree that one is entitled to decide how they are portrayed to a degree, but public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive. All the same, though we may disagree, you have given me some food for thought. I appreciate your unique perspective on this issue, and I thank you sincerely for sharing your point of view.
> public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive.
I live in a country where photographing people in public is highly restricted. The reason is that 99% of people cannot avoid public places in their day-to-day lives, therefore public places cannot be a free-for-all.
> therefore public places cannot be a free-for-all.
They can’t in those places with the restrictions you are familiar with and are subject to, but that is no argument against the norms of other places and the denizens thereof. I can, and do see public spaces as a free-for-all, and that is neither better nor worse, but simply the way we do things here.
If you don’t like it, it doesn’t affect you. Most folks are aware, and make a mental note of such things from a young age. If we don’t like it that way, we have avenues to change the way we relate to each other in public by changing the laws and regulations that govern public photography. That society hasn’t reached a consensus on this and other issues is fine. Variety is the spice of life, and the spice must flow.
[flagged]
Hi!
I find the comparison with deaf people re concerts is pretty inappropriate. If you take a picture of me without me knowing/my consent, you carry that picture "home" and maybe even upload it to some public site. Heck, you could even upload it to 4chan and make a ton of fun of me. "Look at that stupid disabled guy", or whatever you and your friends end up doing. That is a complete different game. Disabilities are pretty different from eachother, and throwing deaf and blind people into a pot just because both are disabled is a very cheap and mindless act.
I didn’t make fun of you, though. I’m saying it’s not your right to complain about things you don’t know about if you don’t suffer harm, even and especially if you come to know about them. People make fun of other people for reasons or in the absence of them. For you to make a logical leap to imply I’m saying it’s okay to make fun of people, or saying that having a disability is a slight, or blameworthy, or deserving scorn or mockery, is to put words in my mouth.
I’ve known deaf people who love going to concerts. They perceive the thrumming of the bass and the stomp of the crowd. They see the smiles and throw up their hands, and deaf folks are able to carry on a conversation by signing better than most folks who are hearing, especially when the music is turned up to 11.
I’m more concerned with what might happen to assistive technologies meant to be used in public by low-vision and (legally or fully) blind users if public photography bans are passed than I am about any other passing concerns about being photographed in public, to be honest.
The "you" in my writing was refering to any photographer who takes a picture of me without my consent. I should probably mave made that clearer. IOW, I am not suggesting that you in particular are making fun of me or anyone you photograph. But since we were talking about strangers, I have no way of knowing how that photoographer will act. Sure, you in particular probably have a morale compass. However, in the general case, there is no way for me to know if the stranger taking a photo of me is a bad actor or not. And therefore, I oppose the "right" for anyone to do that, simply because I can never know what they will end up doing with that photo.
> And therefore, I oppose the "right" for anyone to do that, simply because I can never know what they will end up doing with that photo.
Jurisprudence in my country can’t preempt legal activities because they might lead to wrongdoing in the future. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t know what you think folks are likely to do, but there are likely already laws against doing most things you would take umbrage with.
There’s no need to winnow our rights out of concern for your “mights.”
Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean you aren’t being a rude cunt.
Which are here too.
People can complain about whatever they want. It’s entirely legal to have an opinion, since you seem so preoccupied with laws.
as a non-militant bicyclist I see this every day. People who insist on their right to ride where they are legally allowed to while at the same time being a nuisance. Yes, you can ride on the sidewalk, but it'd be really nice if you didn't. Yes, you can ride in the road, but do you really need to? In all cities where I've rode a bicycle, a tiny bit of planning and attention can usually result in routes that result in minimal opportunities for conflict.
You can certainly photograph street scenes without being a rude cunt.
> Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean you aren’t being a rude cunt.
I can’t top that as a “how do you do,” and yet, it’s both of our birthright to be “a rude cunt” or worse, within the bounds of the law.
Excellent response, you made me laugh.
I was getting enduly riled up over anonymous internet comments and was going to say something much more obnoxious, but not everyone gets Australian humour so I figured I’d tone it down.
If I saw you take an unasked photo of our blind friend here, I’d let them know so they’d have an opportunity to approach you and ask you to deleted it, if they happen to feel motivated to do so, and offer to take care of it myself ;)
I’ve spent some time down under myself, and I would hope if you were to ever find me lacking, to the degree that you needed to take care of me, that you have the foresight to have that moment on camera, because such a photograph ought to go straight to the pool room.[0]
[0] (For those who haven't seen The Castle (1997), you really owe it to the Australians in your life to make an appointment with yourself to do so at your earliest convenience. Here's the scene from the film in question which originated one of my favorite bits of Aussie slang:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCtMTbKX6_I
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_(1997_Australian_fi... )
Sorry, was going to reply but in rate limited in replying, probably because I’m a bit of a rude cunt.
—-
I’m in to that! It’d be a photo of me falling flat on my face / generally making a fool of myself. Perfect pool room photo.
Have a lovely day.
Good on ya, mate. Cheers.
> public spaces aren’t considered private by virtue of them being shared and nonexclusive
The problem is that "public" 20 years ago (before cell phone cameras, photo rolls, social media, growth/engagement algorithms, attention economy, virality, etc) vs now just doesn't mean the same thing anymore.
There's a difference between "no expectation of privacy" and "no expectation of having every moment of your life in public be liable to be published".
And at that point, the only thing left is the "well if you're not doing anything wrong, you don't care if your life is published" type of logic, and I don't love that.
I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed.
Edit: and I use "published" as a direct reference to the "publish" or "post" buttons on various social media apps.
Well, there is also the fact that in a lot of cities, you will be filmed, often by multiple cameras, most of the time, without you being aware of it. By law enforcement, security cameras (private and otherwise), cars etc. on top of that you carry around a phone that streams intimate information about your location, behavior, preferences to a bunch of data aggregators.
And then there are the signal surveillance networks that are peppered around your environment as your phone shouts traceable signals to your surroundings.
(Heck, you can set up a a RPi with a few ESP32s hooked up to dump wifi probe frames, cross reference the networks phones scan for and create a map of where people come from by cross referencing wardriving data. Lots of ISPs make it easy by giving people wireless routers with unique network names. And from there you can figure out things like «someone living at address X is at location Y. People who live at X work for Z and location Y is the office of a competitor». And that’s just by collecting one kind of wifi frame and correlating a bunch of publicly available information)
Privacy is dead. Someone taking pictures hardly even registers.
I agree we're already in a bad place but I don't find the "ship has sailed" take particularly engaging.
Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.
I wasn't trying to make a "ship has sailed"-argument, but rather the argument that going after photography is odd given how little we care about surveillance and data collection that is far more invasive, complete and dangerous. If this were an optimization problem (optimizing for privacy and reducing criminal behavior), going after people who take pictures in public wouldn't even be on the radar. It isn't even a rounding error.
Sure, I understand that most people are barely aware of the insane amounts of data various data brokers aggregate, curate and sell of ordinary people's highly sensitive data. But most of us are. Or should be. And many of us are also part of the problem.
I do think this should be addressed. Especially since it is hard to address and it is not going to get any easier. In a well functioning legal system, every single one of the large data brokers that trade in sensitive personal information should be in existential peril. And people associated with them should be at very real risk of ending up in prison.
It seems ... peculiar to argue about taking away rights that private citizens have had for more than a century and at the same time not do anything about, for instance, private parties raiding sensitive government data and essentially nobody caring or showing any willingness to do anything about it.
You are right in that we do have a "the ship has sailed" attitude. But rather than focus on fixing what is most important we'd rather risk infringing on the rights of private citizens further because that is "being seen as doing something".
(I'm not accusing you of thinking this -- I am just finishing that line of reasoning to show what absurd conclusions this might lead us to)
I don't think we have anything close to diametrically opposed views, for the most part.
When it comes to following lines of reasoning to absurd conclusions though, in the other direction, don't we end up in a world where it is everyone's right (private or public for that matter) to surveil everyone at all times the moment they step outside?
Isn't that something you have an issue with? An extension of the existing problem with data brokers, including ones that record data from interactions on their private space (eg our access to their products in their stores, etc)?
You're definitely right that there are worse offenders out there than "randos taking pictures", but it doesn't have to be an either-or thing.
Plus, I'd suspect that almost anyone who thinks it's not great that every other person on the street can now record them and post it on social media for engagement also doesn't like the other bits of tracking and surveillance you bring up, so if anything, they are probably your overzealous allies.
> Addressing nothing because everything can't be addressed isn't a great strategy for change.
Presupposing that some strategies for change are less suitable than others is no argument against the status quo, either. Sometimes the way things are is just the way folks in a given time and place do things, and is simply contingent as much as it’s worthwhile.
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. If you don’t like the way things are done here, you either care to make a change, including hearts and minds, or you don’t. If you aren’t from here, that might be an uphill battle, perhaps even both ways: coming and going.
It’s a kind of double standard to judge folks for their customs without wanting to do the work to disabuse them of their notions, lest they warn you not to let the door hit you on your way out, especially after it was opened unto you in the first place. Wanting to have it both ways is a sort of special pleading.
There's legally usually quite a big gap between what pictures you can take of people, and how you can publish them.
In places where you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you can generally be photographed. But there are significant limits to how such pictures can be published (including social media).
The law doesn't matter much if someone is convicted in the public square by intentionally misrepresented (or even just context-collapsed) images of them going viral to a global audience at Internet speed.
By the time the law, or the terms and conditions of social networks, catches up, the damage is already done.
> I think it's a mistake to cling to a definition of "public" that doesn't account for how much things have changed.
I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live.
The times may have changed, and we didn’t start the fire. We could put it out if we wanted, or if the lick of the flames brought us undue harm. Perhaps most folks just don’t want to change as much as the times, and that’s okay. The future is not yet written, and justice is a living thing. We can always go a different way if the future we arrive upon necessitates it.
I don’t mind if we have to change, but I do admire the view. The camera can only capture what’s inside the frame, and it would be a shame to stop living, and the greater loss would be to give up on life in pursuit of capturing a fleeting moment. I think for many, like me, who admire the hobby and have a love of photography as an art form, it’s akin to capturing lightning in a bottle. If it were outlawed or constrained, a true loss to society would occur, as that would be a material change in living conditions. Others are free to disagree, and I wouldn’t find fault with them for simply doing so.
When it comes to curtailing my rights to preserve history and my place in it, I don’t think I’m the one who is entitled, but those who would prevent me from freely expressing myself through my chosen medium. If you see something, you ought be free to say something or remain silent. Forestalling my speech is not for you to say. Freedom to photograph is a free speech issue, to my view.
Photography is my favorite art form to consume, so I'm not in favor of any kind of ban of it.
I also agree that freedom to photograph is a free speech issue. I just happen to think the ability to live your life without having it being recorded everywhere is also a freedom issue.
I think it's a challenge for us to solve and I don't pretend to have a solution. I just don't agree with a "change nothing" stance on grounds of "no expectation of privacy" because I think things have changed to a point that it needs to be addressed.
Side note: > I think it’s a mistake for others in different jurisdictions to tell those subject to those norms how they ought to live.
If that's directed at me, then I think you're reading something in my comment that I haven't expressed.
I don’t mean to direct anything at anyone, other than my viewfinder. I believe in home rule, and not dictates from bureaucrats. As a sort of journalist, I’m going to keep taking pictures, and to keep writing journals. Anything less or different would be to be someone other than myself the best and only way I know how, and that isn’t being true to myself or to others.
If you felt that I directed my comments at you, I apologize; I almost certainly wasn’t. If anything, I am directing them at myself, as an affirmation of what I believe and why. Freedom of expression is one of the few issues that I will take a principled stance on, and if you feel that I was directing my comment at you, I don’t mean to, though you are free to express whatever you feel led to if you feel that I have given you short shrift or unalloyed fire, friendly or otherwise.
While I agree with you that publishing a picture of a person without their consent ought to be illegal, I as an individual with very unreliable memory and one who’s always doubting my perception of reality, I heavily rely on modern technology and strongly believe that personal recording of any kind is my right, it being simple augmentation of my senses that allows me to live happier and more fulfilled life.
What is "publishing"? Is posting on FB also publishing?
yes
It should not be illegal. It should be ethical.
The GDPR provides a pretty good framework for media organisations and journalists to shoot people without consent.
There are people who can "take a picture of you" just by looking at you for a second. They have you memorized after that.
I believe the usual approach is that in general, if you're in a public space, you accept pictures may be taken of you. But it depends on the context. If you're a bystander in your city while tourists are fotographing places of interest for example, and you make it into the picture, then that will hardly be a problem in any practical legislation. Most legislations probably allow for pictures taken of you even without you being asked explicitly, as long as certain rights are not violated.
People with photographic memory can't just upload their memories to the Internet. So that comparison is pretty much worthless.
Just taking a photo using a digital device doesn't imply uploading it either. I'm sure most jurisdictions clearly differentiate between these.
Artists with photographic memory can. And in the modern world of computational photography and gen AI what even is the difference between a photo and drawing?
The difference is time, effort and scalability. There are many things that humans can do that society doesn't strictly regulate, because as human activities they are done in limited volumes. When it becomes possible to automate some of these activities at scale, different sorts of risks and consequences may become a part of the activity.
I find it strange how people consider taking pictures of strangers as some basic right.
Here in Germany, people have a right to their own image. You can't just photograph strangers. You can photograph a crowd at a public event but you can't zoom in on one specific stranger. Also you can photograph people that are of public interest.
Maybe it is me who is biased but I find these rules quite reasonable. It protects both my privacy while allowing photographers to do their job. If you want to photograph a stranger, ask for consent.
> Maybe it is me who is biased
Sure, and so am I. We're all biased toward what we are used to, especially if it's something we grew up with through childhood.
While I think it'd be creepy for someone to sit outside, zooming in on strangers and taking photos of them, I don't think that sort of thing should be illegal. (Aside from when it might break other laws, like if it were to turn into harassment.) I do think it we should require consent before publishing a photo that focuses on individuals, at least for most uses (I'm sure there are exceptions).
I don't think laws should try to spell out or enforce social norms (for the most part; again I'm sure there are exceptions I'd consider), and I think "don't be a creep with a camera" is a social norm, not a legal issue.
> It protects [...] my privacy
I just don't see getting photographed in public as a privacy issue, but I'll admit it depends on the "how". Dragnet surveillance with cameras on every corner is a privacy issue, but a single photographer with a manually-actuated camera is not.
But really, what is it about someone having a photograph of you while you're in public that violates your privacy? It may "feel icky", but I don't see that as being a violation of anyone's rights. (Again, publishing a photo is IMO another matter.)
At the risk of diving into whataboutism, it seems weird to me to object to public photography -- something that has many legitimate artistic and historical uses and benefits -- when many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance, both of the governmental and capitalist kind.
> Again, publishing a photo is IMO another matter.
With analog photography this might be a useful distinction but with digital it is easy to leak that photo even without explicit intention to do so.
Even if the intention was to never share my photo, it is likely to be automatically uploaded to Google Cloud or similar services. It can be hacked, it will end up as training data for some LLM and so on. It is more practical to stop the taking of the photo in the first place.
> it seems weird to me to object to public photography
No one does. Lots of people practice public photography in Germany. You just have to ask for consent if you want to photograph strangers.
That is the point where I am lost an why this is even such a big deal for you. You can photograph the environment, you can photograph your friends, you can photograph anyone who wants to be photographed. Why would you even want to photograph someone why doesn't want their photo taken? Why not take a photo of the many people that would love to have their picture taken?
> when many of us are subjected to pervasive surveillance, both of the governmental and capitalist kind.
Germany has also much better laws in that regard as well. Sure it could be better enforced but the GDPR is super strong.
As for surveillance, this is also more restricted here as well. There is definitely a push to make widespread surveillance more a thing but we are still far away from US levels.
So yeah, both is bad.
I’m not sure I agree that consent should be a requirement for photographing people in public. You have a right to observe people in public. You have a right to take notes about these people and publish them. You have a right to hire a person to sit in a public place and record their observations, and to publish these to your heart’s content.
Technologically augmenting these rights does not change them. A pen and paper to record observations is a technological augmentation to memory and recall. A newspaper is an augmentation to a gossip corner. A camera is just the same. A person should be able to record and retransmit any information they come across in public, regardless of technology, since ownership of an observation is fundamentally the observer’s.
> You have a right to observe people in public. You have a right to take notes about these people and publish them.
Not completely. If you keep staring at me, following me around and taking notes I am going to call the police even if you keep to public spaces.
While it is not illegal to stare at people I would strongly advice you to not do so. You will find that some people will react quite badly to it.
> You have a right to hire a person to sit in a public place and record their observations, and to publish these to your heart’s content.
No, you can't. They can write about the people they saw in general terms but once you publish information that directly identifies me and contains personal information about me, I am gonna sue you. Might vary depending on country though.
People are making such high level philosophical argument about why they should be allowed to photograph strangers but no one answers why. It is hard for me to come up with any non malicious reason. Sure, maybe you just like photography but then again photograph people that consent to it.
Not to mention even if you legally can, I doubt that running around photographing strangers will gain you any positive reputation. In practice you are well advised to ask for consent anyway.
> You will find that some people will react quite badly to it
It’s a good thing we have laws, courts, and prisons for people who can’t control themselves.
> once you publish information that directly identifies me and contains personal information about me, I am gonna sue you
For what? What right of yours have I violated by retransmitting publicly available information about you? Presumably this right of yours would also be infringed if I gossiped about you? I agree it’s not a polite thing to do, but rights only count when they protect contentious actions.
> It is hard for me to come up with any non malicious reason
Free people don’t need to justify their actions. Your country may infringe on your rights, but that doesn’t invalidate the assertion they exist. Freedom of speech and the consequential freedom of the press are fundamental to a free society. Having to justify yourself when you’re not harming anyone is tyrannical.
> For what? What right of yours have I violated by retransmitting publicly available information about you? Presumably this right of yours would also be infringed if I gossiped about you? I agree it’s not a polite thing to do, but rights only count when they protect contentious actions.
Information that you gained from observing me is not necessarily publicly available information. You can't camp in front of an abortion clinic and write down everyone who went in and publish that on the internet, at least not in Germany.
Generally, if there is not a legitimate public interest, you can not publish information that would direct identify me, like my name, in a newspaper.
> Free people don’t need to justify their actions.
Well if you answered that questions, we could have an actual discussion.
Currently everyone that responded to me here said a variation of "everyone should have the right to photograph strangers without their consent because everyone should have the right to photograph strangers without their consent" with a bit of fancy works.
Like yeah this might be true and self evident because of some axioms that you have but that I don't necessary share and that you don't make explicit so this looks completely pointless to me.
I genuinely don't even understand the passion for photographing strangers without their consent and why it needs to be defended with such a lofty rhetoric.
My best attempt to steelman this is that you think restricting your god given right to photograph strangers without their consent is some slippery slop towards having more rights taken away which is... a very weak point.
> Your country may infringe on your rights, but that doesn’t invalidate the assertion they exist.
This makes no sense to me. There is not right to photograph strangers without their consent in the declaration of human right and never has such right existed in my country so how can that be my right?
What the hell has photographing strangers without their consent to do with free speech?
Observing and publishing a list of who goes into the abortion clinic is a perfect example of the exercise of free speech. You don’t need a public interest to do so. Restricting what I can publish is a violation of that exact idea. Free speech means you can say very nearly anything without criminal penalty (libel is a civil matter).
My point is that the free people can do whatever they want, as long as they are not directly harming someone else. My right to waive my fists around ends where your nose begins. I don’t need to justify why I’m waiving my arms around. I don’t need to justify why I’m camped outside the abortion clinic. Maybe I hate abortions and am engaged in civil protest. These are all protected activities in a free country.
My assertion is that as a consequence of German policy with regards to speech, Germany is a fundamentally less free place. Who gets to decide whether something is in the public interest? Why is shaming abortion seekers not in that category?
Germany has historical experienced how fascists can weaponize free speech to gain power. One of the core tenants of modern Germany is to let this happen again.
Now, we might not be doing well but certainly the US is currently doing much worse. You are already at the building camps stage and it is unclear whether you will have free elections for long.
What is the point of theoretically having free speech for a migrant worker that might deported without any trial by the ICE, for a women that might die during pregnancy because abortion was banned? Those that allow fascists to speak freely will end up with no one but fascists speaking.
People that want to murder me should not be allowed to speak.
> My point is that the free people can do whatever they want, as long as they are not directly harming someone else.
And yes, someone writing that I visited an abortion clinic can do me harm. Same as someone making lists of practicing Jews by camping outside a synagogue can get those people hurt. Your free speech ends where it can hurt me and certain information about me being public can and will hurt me.
Making the lists is not the problem. It’s the rounding people up and sending them to camps that crosses the line. We already have laws about the circumstances required for citizens to be detained. Illegal aliens can be summarily deported, such were the risks they took when the broke the law to get here.
> for a women that might die during pregnancy because abortion was banned
To discuss abortion we would have to agree about things like "what is a person?". Many would reasonably argue that unborn children are humans too and therefore deserve their own freedom.
Allowing fascists to speak freely is the hallmark of a free society. Otherwise who gets to decide who the fascists are or are not? Free societies are free as a matter of principle, not as a matter of consequence.
”I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
When Nazis marched through Skokie, Illinois in the 70s, it was Jewish lawyers who defended them. Being obsessed with liberty is a much better defence against tyranny than hoping the enormous government apparatus that determines who gets to speak and who does not will never be turned against you.
> someone writing that I visited an abortion clinic can do me harm
No they do not. Any person who reads what they wrote and decides to visit violence against you is doing you harm. Don’t shift blame away from violent actors, they make their own decisions. We already have laws about violence. You are not harmed by people simply knowing you had an abortion. It is a true fact about you.
This gave me an idea - what if we made a stable diffusion based AI that would replace unimportant faces (and possibly other identifying details) with different ones - I have seen that AI can do this and make the change unnoticeable.
That way people would be safe from having their personal likeness and whereabouts accidentally plastered over the internet (except when they want their photo to be taken), and the end result wouldn't look so obviously modified as blurring faces or licence plates.
That's a solution that prioritizes privacy over reality, and I'm not sure we collectively want that. Mutilation of truth in the name of protection etc...
Yes that's a tradeoff - but I was thinking it would still be better than stuff like Google street view's mess of blurs.
I don't think that's better. For something like Street View that's explicitly supposed to be capturing reality, I want to know when that reality has been censored. Realistic face replacement breaks that.
(And yes, I'm sure Street View imagery is edited in other ways before it makes it to production, but I think it's important that our view of reality remains as real as possible.)
Is it better? At least you know it’s a real face under the blur.
Ah yes, because more AI will solve this problem.
No, what we need is for people to feel safe in public again, for them to not feel like they're constantly one questionable picture away from their lives being ruined. Kill social media, kill gigantic public face tracking dragnets, kill privacy-invading capitalism.
I’m with you. The dichotomy between public and private needs to change. I should still have a degree of privacy even when I’m out in public. What has changed is the ability of others to “see” everyone everywhere at every moment with less and less friction, whether through pictures or videos shared on social media, facial recognition cameras, or location trackers like license plate readers. Historically, no one has had this ability, and now we don’t even know the degree of that ability that some have.
And here I was thinking AI would solve a problem in a way people would appreciate just this once
Absolutely. Running around with a large format camera (Graflex) with an Instax back (lomograflok) and making photos and immediately giving results back to people changed a lot. Strangers were basically lining up to ask about the camera and have their photo taken. That was a really fun experience, and I noticed how much I missed that excitement - before camera phones took over such moments were much more common. Now I build/3d print my own large and medium format cameras, and that also makes it much more interesting, but the fun of instant photography with an ancient looking camera is just incredible.
Like a extra-fancy Polaroid?
Like a polaroid shot with an actually good lens. Also the whole performative part of making a photograph is of course much richer with an old, manual camera.
The contemporary “ick” about street photography is the ick of non-consensual capture. Everyone feels it to some degree; I stopped doing street photography work and even most social photography (including paid work) because I felt it and I wasn’t ready to navigate those feelings.
This “ick” is real and it’s good that you feel it, because you can build on it for a sense of ethics about photos and the use of the camera, about how its gaze affects subjects, about how to reduce that impact.
A solution for you is to focus on photography with people posing for photos who want the photos, or people posing for photos who want money. Try art nude, even: it is fascinating, liberating, has a very strong historical and creative through line, and will teach you a lot.
I have developed a much stronger sense of the ethics around my photography and a little more personal confidence, so I might yet give street photography a go again in future, if I think I have something specific to say.
About a decade ago some guy thought I was taking a picture of him and his girlfriend, they were very uninteresting subjects and I didn’t take any pictures of them but he followed me and sucker punched me. He was caught quickly and I pressed charges and since he had priors he didn’t make bail and was sentenced to 2 years in prison which I don’t think was enough because even a soft punch could kill someone. After that I began carrying non-lethal and lethal tools for self defense and stopped worrying about hurting people’s feelings when I take pictures. If people tell me off I tell them off because ultimately our conflict is based off of differing arbitrary opinions. I concluded that art is a human right and I should never feel guilty or bad about making it. Art is noble and it’s a high pleasure and part of being human. I have a short time in this life to create art so I should just do what I feel is pure and what I want. I’ve also concluded that if I did what everyone told me to do (or what they told me not to do) I’d be eating ten pounds of spinach a day, waking up a 5 AM, drinking a gallon of milk a day, buying timeshares and joining the Marines! Obviously I wouldn’t be doing what I want, my point is that artists need to listen to their inner voice and follow wherever that takes them.
That's odd, and to reassure you I would say that I personally would rather see somebody with a physical camera. That way I know I can avoid the area they're photographing if I don't want to be shot or just be aware I'm going to be in a photo otherwise. It also makes me (rightly or wrongly) think the photo will be uploaded somewhere a bit higher than an Instagram / Facebook feed (my wife used to put DSLR photos on Instagram and for an image feed website I used to be shocked at how poorly images were downscaled, maybe that's changed).
I find something much more pervasive about any upright smartphone being a camera at any given time, whether the person is being obvious about it or not. A dedicated camera is actually more reassuring to me, as its use-cases are probably more innocent than a smartphone camera.
Smartphone cameras have given poor photography to the masses. I reckon I'm probably in thousands of peoples photos that were taken on a whim with a phone. And I've witnessed situations where it appears people are trying to stealthily take photos of people with phones on public transport and the like.
Instagram isn't for sharing photos, it's for sharing a curated, artificial view into your life. Photos are just the medium, it's not meant for art.
> That way I know I can avoid the area they're photographing
Not with 360 cameras! Which are super fun btw.
> for an image feed website I used to be shocked at how poorly images were downscaled, maybe that's changed
It has not, still garbage.
Which can be a blessing in disguise. It makes it less attractive to steal images for commercial purposes.
I figured as much. Oh well, not like it's primary function is an image sharing site :)
I've managed to get around that by returning to my Nikon FM2. People react quite differently when it's clearly a film camera - even better if it's a medium format camera. That also gets around the nagging feeling that you're being guided in what you're taking by how it will appear online too. I don't have any social media accounts aside from HN and a BlueSky account that tweets the diary entries of an 18th century naturalist so I have no motivation to think about that side of things. It's a lovely feeling of my work being private because I can't be tempted in the moment to share a photo online. It feels much healthier.
The best is making albums with numbered tissue paper silhouettes and the peoples names written on the back with a blurb and the date.
>It's a lovely feeling of my work being private because I can't be tempted in the moment to share a photo online. It feels much healthier.
I find people like it a lot and even give me contact info to get the picture I took of them which is cool.
Heh I’ve often daydreamed of one day setting up a darkroom and buying a couple medium format cameras, I wondered if that would be disarming enough (I love medium format and TLRs).
Can’t do it while I’m renting, but maybe one day!
Consider doing a hybrid workflow. The equipment for developing film is quite compact. I keep all of my film development chemicals and equipment stored in a small tupperware under the bathroom sink. You can also buy a lightproof bag, so you don't even need a light tight room to load the film.
The second half of my process is to "scan" my film using a macro lens and my DSLR. It takes about 2 hours to go from exposed film to developed and scanned film. Only about 30 minutes of that time is active, most of it is waiting for the film to dry since I don't have a drying a cabinet.
Go for it anyway! I have a small NYC apt and fit everything I need for darkroom development into a small crate. I can scan negatives with a small setup here, but do have to go to a community darkroom for enlarger printing.
> Everyone, me more than most, doesn’t want their picture taken, or to be in the background of other photos.
I used to be a little into photography. No one ever protested about me taking a picture of them. Just recently I was photographing an event and thought: I just come there, take photos of everyone, upload them to the internet, and all I get is thanks. I haven't asked anyone for permission. Yes I was invited by the event organizer, but I'm sure they didn't ask permission either.
Normally, somwhere in the long dense legalese they "agree" to when spectators buy tickets to the event, is a release for photography.
This event had no tickets.
The quantities are what changed. Taking a photo used to be relatively difficult and rare, so it was mainly reserved for relatively meaningful subjects. Which meant that having your picture taken was also relatively rare, and was something of a validation that you were interesting enough to merit being photographed. For that photograph to be published, even more so. Now cameras are plentiful and cheap, "publishing" opportunities are plentiful and cheap, and being photographed is commonplace and not appreciated as much. You can read all the meanings into my choice of the word cheap, by the way - as a price (increased supply made the price go down) or as a value (there's an abundance, so it becomes meaningless), or even as an implication about quality (low stakes means not as much attention or care for composing a shot).
100%
Can't you just not care and power through? Someones always going to be miffed regardless. I keep a Rollei A110 on me at all times and a tiny Minox EC that takes me hours to refill. When I bring it out people love it. It's a throwback that people very much appreciate. I can see people getting miffed at a big digital camera though.
I have an entry level Sony Alpha that I picked up for a vacation earlier this year. With the portrait lens on there it definitely registers as “camera” far more than a phone. Between that factor and the hassle of having to manually go through and upload the photos afterward, I only take it on special occasions — trips, hikes, etc. It’s not worth all that hassle for trying to get day to day stuff.
Why not live a little and get a film camera? It's more time for sure but are you not tired of optimizing everything in life?
I enjoy film photography in some contexts (I do a bit of 4x5), but film photography basically sucks. I think possibly a lot of the people who find some kind of magic in it are those young enough not to have grown up in the era where shooting film was the only option.
I don't mind 4x5 so much because just taking the photo is so much effort that the associated ordeal of developing and scanning isn't out of proportion. But for 35mm and medium format, there's a hugely disproportionate investment of time and money for a small number of photos.
Curious how 4x5's inconvenience is "proportional" while 35mm's is "hugely disproportionate". I'm not familiar with the specifics of these formats, but you seem to be arbitrarily drawing the line for where the added friction is still serving the "magic" I believe is very real if not fragile. I think you recognize the value of photography isn't solely in the product. I'm curious what you personally find in 4x5 that saves you from these younger artist's silliness.
It takes about 10 minutes to take a single 4x5 photo, and you have to carry around a tripod and a fairly bulky camera to do it. So the time and effort invested in taking the photo is similar to the time and effort required to develop and scan the negative.
In contrast, a 35mm camera is very convenient and you can expose an entire 30 frame roll of film in a few minutes. But getting high quality scans of all those frames requires either a lot of time or a lot of money. (Consumer flatbeds give poor results for 35mm, so your best bet is putting the negative on a light table and using a digital camera and macro lens. But that’s a physically fiddly process, the ‘scan’ needs manual spotting for dust, and if you’re shooting color negatives you also have to do some work to get the colors right.)
Back in the day, most users of 35mm cameras were satisfied with waiting a week to get a set of prints with absolutely no creative control over the printing process, but that’s not what most people want now.
That’s kind of the point though. The scarcity focuses you n taking more deliberate and intentional photos.
It's what some people see as the point now. Back when film was the only option, the cost and time per frame were just negatives (if you'll excuse the pun). There was no romance in deciding whether or not to use one of your last three remaining frames; it was just annoying.
I don't deny that for a whole range of reasons, some people might take better or more meaningful photos using old cameras. Limitations can feed into the artistic process. I just think it's a bit silly to romanticize the cost and inconvenience of film, or to think that photos taken using film are somehow inherently more interesting or valuable.
The parable of the pottery classes that were graded on their best work and total volume of work springs to mind. I never would've bothered with photography if I didn't have the ability to be shameless with burst mode and pick the winners later.
What you are describing isn't photography.
[ citation needed ]
I found our childhood film camera last year and I took it to a couple trips. price of scanners/getting your film scanned and needing to buy 10eur film rolls for like 20 photos turned me off. I still haven't scanned my first and only roll I shot last year.
I bought a Gralab timer and hooked it up to an old shitty enlarger in my tiny dark wine cellar, along with a red bulb. A few chemicals and tools and you're golden. The only thing that screws me is having to cut up film and spool it but I can get more frames out of it that way since I use mini spy cameras. Yes the film being expensive isn't great but it also makes you choose your shots carefully. Get a cheap darkroom film changing tent and start there.
I have a top of the line Sony Alpha (7CR) with a large zoom lens (24-70GM or 70-200GM) and I carry it almost everywhere, every day. It is absolutely worth the hassle to get day to day stuff.
As they say in the audio world, “there ain't no replacement for displacement.” I love gigazoom lenses. For focal lengths under 100mm, I can use my phone. My SLR is my personal spy satellite.
Can’t I just not care that I’m making other people uncomfortable and power through? I think for obvious reasons that takes away a lot of the enjoyment, both of photography and socializing.
YMMV, but every time I’ve brought out a camera in the last 5-10 years it has just made people uncomfortable, so I stopped taking it out, and eventually stopped bringing it.
As someone who only occasionally takes photos of mature, or empty streets (I just find them more aesthetically pleasing, especially if they're empty at night, nothing to do with the topic of discussion), I have no dog in this fight whatsoever,
May I ask where you are taking out your camera to experience these results? By "where," I mean both what part of the world/culture you are in and the specific location(s) (e.g. weddings, streets, public transit, work, at a friend's whom you know well, at an acquaintance's).. you get the point.
>YMMV, but every time I’ve brought out a camera in the last 5-10 years it has just made people uncomfortable, so I stopped taking it out, and eventually stopped bringing it.
Has to be a digital.
Really? I do this often and have never had any issues.
Why do you think anyone is entitled to upload photographs showing other people to the internet where they are completely out of control of what happens next?
Because that's what public space is? We've always held that principle, and I don't think 'reach' should affect that. If someone takes this to the extreme (i.e. follows you around in public, taking thousands of pictures and uploading them in real time) they can be charged with stalking, harassment, or a similar offence.
To turn it on its head, if you cannot take photographs of people in public without their permission, then we basically lose the ability to take any photos of public space.
Man you would hate flickr. Also, never said anything about that. I don't have any social media, so the photos die with me and my friends. It's a nice break from modern technology to spend hours on an analog process. If you're in a public place you're probably getting photographed so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
Because we in the global west generally have the right to photograph anything we can see in public, save for pathological places like Germany or France. You don’t own your image. If you go into public and I take a photograph of you, I hold the copyright on that image, not you. You don’t have any say in what I do with my (legally obtained) image taken in public, nor should you.
? "Model Release"
https://contributors.gettyimages.com/img/articles/downloads/...
Let me flip that on you: Why not? How do you decide what people are entitled to? Am I entitled to have an opinion on the internet?
Where lies the line? Would it be ok to paint a picture showing other people and show it to a third person?
Non-commercial use is sometimes accepted when unlicensed commercial use is not.
This is a you thing. Most people have no issue whatsoever with their faces appearing on social media. They “have nothing to hide”.
People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere looking at each and every image posted everywhere with evil intent.
Not really. I think people rightfully feel that there are algorithms online trying to identify every person and every relation and store every bit of information about everyone. They feel that everything now is so permanent and public, that if you’re not at your best you’re at your worst, that that moment will be immortalized, and that you have no control after the picture is taken so it’s better to avoid it from the get go.
And yet, they're constantly captured by countless CCTV cameras all around, without minding their business. I know the pain and don't take as many portraits as I'd like to sometimes, even with people close to me; but on few occasions that I do sneak in a shot and show them the results later, they're surprised in two ways: "when did you take it?!" and "that doesn't look half bad!". Maybe because I don't overdo it.
Keep up the fight!
Really? I don't go out and photograph near as much as I used to, but nobody has ever reacted with anything other than interest at what I'm doing. I was recently traveling to a couple cities I had last been to 5-10 years ago and was shocked at how packed places were with people getting their photos taken, I have photos that would be impossible to take again because there would be people in the way.
People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere looking at each and every image posted everywhere with evil intent.
A friend of mine delivers for Amazon. They have to take pictures of every package delivered. Sometimes the customer is there when they arrive and he asks them to hold the package for him while he takes the photo of the package.
Most of them turn away or hold the package far away so they aren't in the image. Some will pose with the package in some amusing way.
> People feel like there's some man in a dark room somewhere looking at each and every image posted everywhere with evil intent.
Yeah when there's precedent for people doing exactly that the feeling is justified. How many times have we heard of [facebook employees/police/...] abusing their powers to stalk their [exes/wives/love interests/'enemies'/...]. With the amount of face detection and cataloguing being done today, it's never been easier on a technical level. The only protection we have is 'trust us we aren't doing it bro', which doesn't get you very far.
In today's world, you can find one of anything. In the normal everyday world, no one is bothered.
This is exactly the point: "one of anything".
People use that "one thing" and make a giant case out of it, sometimes affecting millions of people. I have two (of hundreds of) examples: 1) the Tylenol poisonings in 1982 Chicago, had Johnson & Johnson recall 31 million bottles of Tylenol, and arguably affected billions of people (with all the tamperproof packaging that resulted worldwide). This was a good thing. But one crazy man poisoning a few bottles of Tylenol at one grocery store affected many people.
2) The next example is somewhat personal, but at Boeing back around 1987 or so, one tech in our engineering group was on the production floor, and a huge steel roller cart with a tool on it, weighing probably 1000 lbs, ran over his toes. From that single incident (even though 1000's of workers and 1000's of heavy carts were being used daily for dozens of years), came an edict that ALL employees on or near these facilities had to mandatorily wear huge plastic toe-caps over their shoes if they didn't have steel-toed shoes on. This meant that even secretaries in nearby offices would have to wear these clunky caps all day, over their shoes even though they never entered the production facilities. One person's action affecting 50,000 nearby employees. This is a bad thing. (because of the huge over-reaction).
So, these maybe don't fit the perfect example we are discussing, but it shows how we can come to different conclusions based on different inputs: "you can find one of anything to use in an argument".
I have clicked about ~20,000 photographs on a Sony camera in the last year and a half. And I have published exactly 0 of those photos on social media.
Whenever I meet my friends and family, I show them the pictures myself and the story behind them.
I love the thrill of street photography and it gives me immense pleasure to capture candid moments of humans. It's a great creative outlet for me and helps me think about life and philosophy through my pictures.
Maybe one day I will care enough about publishing these pictures, maybe one day I will care about AI. But right now, I don't. This is the closest I've been to my "kid"-like self, just enjoying something for the heck for it.
The pictures go with a story, that's the interesting part.
As someone who would love to get into street photography, and has an old NIkdon D7100, what would you recommend is a good lense (not model, but focal length, zoom, etc) for street photography ?
It all depends on what you want to do. If you want to get started cheaply the kit lens is more than enough.
Prime lenses will have larger apertures that can give you more creative options.
How close do you want to stand? Indoor/outdoors? What are you planning on taking pictures of? D7100 is APS-C, I find that 50mm (~75mm ff) on APS-C doesn't give you quite enough room indoors to take photos. So you might want a 35mm prime or a zoom that goes down there. If you're planning on taking portraits you don't want something too wide (~20mm and below can be good for real estate/architecture) because it makes people look weird.
Most everything else is dictated by how much you want to spend and how large/heavy you want your camera to be.
Personally I have a 35mm f1.8 on my camera and am happy with it, I use it for family outings, a lot of portrait-level shots and just general "hey we're at the museum" kind of photos.
I have a D7100 as well and a 35mm 1.8 and 20mm. Both are great. 35mm on APA-C is about 50mm on full frame and is the "natural" view. Generally too narrow for landscapes and streetscapes, the 20mm starts to be good for those.
You should try to rent a lens to see what works for you. I used lensrentals.com just to try out the 85/1.4 that "everyone" said was awesome. I loved it, but couldn't justify the price for a hobby, so I settled on the 85/1.8. I bought it years ago (4+) and I think I've taken less than 20 pictures with it. My "nifty 50" is still a favorite 50/1.8, but I also love the 70-300/4.5-5.6. Those two are my most used, and both were less than $600 US total.
I really need to get back to that mindset. I keep catching myself unconsciously checking my hobbies and abilities for marketability. I've been playing guitar for almost three decades, one of them spent in a touring metal band. When I started, I used to enjoy making music so much that I played and composed so often an album would just come together naturally. And then another one and another one, I just couldn't stop. These days, I no longer sit down to play just for myself and the moment — instead, I catch myself thinking, “Can I sell sample packs from this? Record a course? Should I code a VST plugin for it and sell that?” And after weeks of moments like this, all I have are three random riffs and frustration.
I try to look at my music as something that I do because I enjoy it. I play in a casual/amateur band and I regularly have to remind the guys that I do it for no other reason than because I enjoy it; I'm not interested in playing gigs. Not everyone sees it the same way.
I know a few musicians that tried to make a living out of music similar to your story. Most have now stopped making music and are both frustrated with the music industry, and angry at listeners for not valuing their work.
Which band, may I ask?
I’ve been (really, really) into photography since I was six, and I’m still (really, really) at it three decades later. I never felt much appeal toward photography as an art form – it’s always been a way to capture moments and share them with people I care about.
These days I play with both AI photography and “normal” photography. My main camera is the A9 III with a global shutter – a machine gun that fires 120fps RAW files. I shoot a lot of sports, and the people I photograph are thrilled to get such high-quality shots of moments that mattered to them. It doesn’t really matter how much cultural value society attaches to photos – those captured moments will always be meaningful to them, and they feel joy when they see them. That’s the whole point of photography for me.
AI photography is a bit different. I take 15–20 photos of a friend’s face with my camera, train a LoRA model to use with Flux1.dev, and upload it to network storage on RunPod. Then I spin up a serverless worker on an H100 that runs the ComfyUI API, and use my own Flutter-based frontend to play with prompts and generate new photos of that person. I can make far better headshots this way than in a real studio. For some friends, it’s even been a therapeutic experience – seeing so many high-quality images of themselves looking confident, happy, and fully alive helped them feel that way, even if just for a moment. One friend told me, “You did more with these AI photos of me than therapy did in the past year.”
Wow that’s bleak. “Look at that fake photo of you but better.”
That's actually working technique in sports psychology – one version of it called VSM (Video Self-Modelling), where edited video shows athlete performing correct/advanced technique. It tricks brain to belive in "future self". I'm not surprised it works with photos that well, but I think it's not studied yet. These AI photos I make a very different from, say, photoshopped faced. I tried it on myself too, and can confirm that it does have psychological effect.
Anything has an "psychological effect," and tricking a person into thinking any old junk is "better than therapy" is trivial - look at all the people who spend time and money on AI chatbots. It's also pretty clear it's not actually _good for them_.
And there's zero surprise here it would be used to manipulate potential athletes.
When I was in grade school I got the whole pitch on visualization: picture yourself making the free throw and you're more likely to make the free throw.
Again, this stuff didn't start with AI.
Fascinating!
Portraiture has always, always, always idealized its subjects, long before photography was a thing.
>Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash.
This has rapidly changed over the last few months. As more and more pictures/videos going viral on social media are AI-generated [0, 1], real pictures/videos of remarkable things are increasingly falsely called out as AI-generated [2]. People are definitely starting to care, and while the toy camera in the linked article is merely an artistic statement, having some ubiquitously standardized way of unambiguously validating content generated by a real recording device is going to become paramount.
[0] https://www.today.com/news/bunnies-jumping-trampoline-viral-...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O-8kAnBL2s
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/skiing/comments/1oeda67/my_highligh...
Back before digital became really high res I was into small, medium and large format silver halide cameras balancing cost with high quality optics. You could get Exackta's, Speed Graphics and Roleiflexes relatively inexpensively and take amazing high quality photos with them.
The larger you went though, the more you had to be mindful about the cost of eash shot both in terms of time and cost for film and developing. There is something to be said about the curation that happened when taking photos like that. You put a lot more though upfront into composition and had to think about your shutter speed, aperture etc..
One thing I learned about during that time was how the old time press photographers would use a Speed Graphic on 4x5 negative, grab a wide angled shot and then crop it. Also, press conferences used to create a lot of broken glass as photographers would snap a shot, shoot out the one time use flash bulb on the ground and then quickly put in another bulb to get another shot.
>Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash.
Some will once AI is ubiquitous. Especially of the art & entertainment sectors
I don't think about this as much for professional or amateur photography.
I think of verifiable images as something for legal purposes. So much is easily made up with AI. Having verifiable real photos (and eventually video) can be a benefit for things like legal proceedings.
> I think of verifiable images as something for legal purposes.
That makes sense to me, but who is this particular $399 camera made for? Can you imagine someone choosing it for a photo they intend to be used in legal proceedings? The specs and appearance do not scream high-quality professional tool to me. The price is lower than a professional would be willing to spend (on something high-quality), higher than someone would drop on a whim.
It looks kinda like a designer's school assignment that they're trying to sell.
Agreed. This product seems pointless because nobody's interested in a proof of authenticity (except maybe in certain legal niches?)
I take pics for me and my friends and family, and AI has almost zero impact on this (although, face swaping is lots of fun, and everyone understands it's fake and a joke).
Edit: also, and more importantly, the question of authenticity is moot. The point of art in general is to say something / make a statement, and certainly not to produce a faithful representation of the world. Anything that's not an exact copy (which is hard to do if you're not God), has a point of view, which gives it value.
Taking pics and videos of events with political ramifications and being able to show that it isn't AI generated or tampered with has HUGE utility, not the least of which by reporters and restablishing trust with disaffected.
The idea isn't a bad one in some cases like travel photography. Between background people removal and lightroom a good chunk of travel pictures are not a good representation of what you can expect. on Instagram there are plenty of pictures of people standing alone in front of the Eifel tower or at inari gates in afternoon lighting that is unrealistic outside the pandemic or a 6am shot. Or take cherry blossom viewing in tokyo. More trees are white or very light pink but you would not know that looking at what people post often the camera auto balancing to make them more pink because if it doesn't people think there is a problem with the camera; that incentivizes sony, canon etc to build that in.
> Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash
That the average person hasn't thought about this doesn't mean it couldn't become a thing in the future. People do value authenticity and genuine things, though I agree the particulars aren't relevant in a lot of cases.
This is a (very expensive!) toy camera, but I could see traditional camera companies like Fujifilm, Canon, etc, incorporating this tech later down the line.
> Nobody has ever walked past a photograph because they can't inspect its digital authenticity hash
Nit, but there are reasons Canon and Nikon will sell you cameras that sign the pictures with their keys already. Even if they have been shown insecure in specific implementations the market is very much there.
Ten years ago in the NYC art market this was also true in a niche but very real audience. I think the NFT wave burnt that out completely.
> I was seeking the external gratification of getting likes just like everyone else.
“You will be happy to look okay. You will be happy to turn heads. You will be happy with smoother skin. You will be happy with a flat stomach. You will be happy with a six-pack. You will be happy with an eight-pack. You will be happy when every photo of yourself gets 10,000 likes on Instagram. You will be happy when you have transcended earthly woes. You will be happy when you are at one with the universe. You will be happy when you are the universe. You will be happy when you are a god. You will be happy when you are the god to rule all gods. You will be happy when you are Zeus. In the clouds above Mount Olympus, commanding the sky. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.”
― Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet , Shortened version of the many-paragraphs-long quote found on: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10913632-you-will-be-happy-...
Agreed, the issue is more that the average person doesn't care about photos. Even now you can tell what is real vs fake in photography and people don't care, they eat it all up. The good, the bad, the fake, doesn't matter because no one gives a fuck. If you actually appreciate the art of photography then you already do and will continue to regardless of AI or whatever.
Yep, I make many pictures but don’t feel like I need to share them with others. Sometimes I show my girlfriend and sometimes I frame them or put them on my fridge. I actually don’t really want to show strangers my work because I make photographs for myself and I’m not looking for critique because I’m developing my own style and exploring what interests me. I don’t need to prove my photographs are authentic because I know I took them!
I am still really (really really) into photography! Nothing has changed that, the pictures are just as beautiful as they always were. My friends are touched when they see pictures of themselves spending time together. There is still plenty of things to see and take pictures of, and not enough time to worry about whether someone will appreciate my "work".
You can definitely get back into it. Just have fun, don't do it for anyone (that goes with any art).
Funny you mention the C330. I have not done any photography in well over a decade, and long ago sold all my gear, but just a week ago decided to take my grandfather's old Rolleicord in for cleaning & service. I am looking forward to shooting with it again, just for the sake of practicing the art. I might even learn to develop my own film this time around!
That's not the point. The point is trying to make a device that can help capture evidence of events that can be verified as not AI generated.
I read your comment this morning and it resonated with me.
A few hours later, YouTube suggested me this video: Psychology of People Who Don't Post their Photos on Social Media
Not some big revelations, but an interesting perspective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGx_cmEH8Lw
Commoditization is a good way to phrase it; first with affordable digital cameras, then with smartphones, photos have become more content than art. With smart filters and digital enhancement, mistakes and imperfect conditions have been fixed.
AI won't replace that, just creates an alternative way to generate content without needing to be physically present somewhere.
I think real photography is sort of like archery, you know, in the moment, feeling it, release at the right time, to capture that. I think in a sense of the candid street, or Magnum photogs. That kind of spirit. And that is innately satisfying and a fun way to engage with the world around you. :)
Even "unreal" photography can be like that . My phone may do all of the mechanical work + post-processing, but framing, angle, foreground/background and capturing just the right moment is just as much fun (well, for me anyway).
The biggest lie capitalism tells us is that something only has value if it can be sold.
Or just maybe free markets expose the bitter truth. That can take a lot of self reflection to come to terms with. Applies to a lot of aspects to life, eg. career planning, creative endeavors etc.
But at the same time it's true that some vital public activities aren't rewarded by the system atm. Eg. quality journalism, family rearing, open source, etc. Often that's an issue of privatized costs and socialized rewards. Finding a way to correct for this is a really big deal.
I think this is only true when you abstract things away from their spatiotemporal context and treat market information as a snapshot. The art market thought Van Gogh was a weirdo with bad brush technique until after he died and people began to recognize how innovative his work was.
Naturally many a startup has also failed due to similar factors (only for the core idea to be resurrected some years later to great success).
"Finding a way to correct for this is a really big deal."
But aren't you now feeding back to the system? Why would there need to be a financial reward and incentive for everything?
I do realize "contributing free value" is perceived by some as free value a third party can capture and financially profit from" which might the reason for thinking of how to then cycle some of that value back?
Thinking about the three examples I gave, I think it's more that the externalities of not doing these activities aren't priced in.
Tabloid press is fantastically profitable, but fake news over time will erode a great deal of social trust.
Closed source software might be individually advantageous but collectively holds back industrial progress. It's a similar reason to why patents were first introduced for physical goods.
And yes people voluntarily without kids should have to pay significantly more social contributions.
The desire to "make money" is generally a proxy for the desire to provide value for others. It is easier to justify the investment of labor and resources that went into the production a camera if you can reciprocate the value for others.
And the most important lesson Internet taught it is that something only has value when seller loses money on it.
Capitalism doesn't 'tell us' anything, it just like everything else has pros and cons.
I don't know anyone who understand economics would say this, unless you're talking about very specific meanings of 'value'. I'm not trying to be pedantic, I know what you mean, but these comments are not insightful or helpful.
This might have immediate application in certain business sectors, such as real estate and insurance.
Yes but it is a hard sell, arguably too hard, and the product pitch, which is away from these applications, is the right one. They are not promising to be 'blockchain two' with hypothetical business use cases.
Imagine going to the solicitors with lots of documents that they need copies of. If they are making scans themselves then that is all the proof they need. If an assistant has copied that important certificate, then that copy is all that is needed for normal legal services. The Roc Camera would not be helpful in this regard, even if it had some magic means of scanning A4 pages.
In a serious solicitor interaction there will be forms that need to be signed and witnessed. These important documents then need to go in the post. In theory, the client could just whip out their Roc Camera and... But who is going to buy a Roc Camera when a stamp will do the job?
Maybe you might if you have a lot of photos to take for 'evidence', for example, of the condition of a house before work is done, or after it is done. However, nobody is asking for this so there is no compulsion to get the Roc Camera when the camera on your phone suffices for the needs of the real world.
I agree with your points, but your argument is so rational and well supported that I believe the opposite is likely to happen. Does that make me a pessimist or an optimist?
There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop. People in general don’t want the slop, but it’s seeping in everywhere with no easy way to mass remove.
The problem with the linked product is it’s basically DRM with a baked in encryption key. And we have seen time and time again that with enough effort, it’s always been possible to extract that key.
The problem about DRM in this context is not that it's going to get broken (which is probably true if the product becomes sufficiently mainstream). It will be used to target photographers and take away their rights. With today's cameras, you have (at least in theory) some choice how much of your rights you give away when you give the pictures your took to someone else. With DRM in the camera, you'll likely end up with some subscription service, ceding a lot of control to the camera makers and their business partners.
Respectfully, I completely disagree.
People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop, even if they point and say eww when it's discussed. Some people care, and some additional people pretend they care, but it just isn't a real issue that is driving behavior. Putting aside (for now) the idea of misinformation, slop is socially problematic when it puts artists out of work, but social media slop is just a new, sadder, form of entertainment that is generally not replacing the work of an artist. People have been warning about the downfall of society with each new mode of entertainment forever. Instagram or TikTok don't need to remove slop, and people won't care after they acclimate.
Misinformation and "trickery" is a real and horrific threat to society. It predates AI slop, but it's exponentially easier now. This camera, or something else with the same goal, could maybe provide some level of social or journalistic relief to that issue. The problem, of course, is that this assumes that we're OK with letting something be "real" only when someone can remember to bring a specialty camera. The ability of average citizens to film some injustice and share it globally with just their phone is a remarkably important social power we've unlocked, and would risk losing.
Saying that there is a market for a sane social network does not means it's a market as big as the other social networks. You don't have to conquer the world to have a nice product.
> The ability of average citizens to film some injustice and share it globally with just their phone is a remarkably important social power we've unlocked, and would risk losing.
I'd say we've already mostly lost that due to AI. We might gain it back if cryptographic camera signatures become commonplace (and aren't too easy too crack).
> People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop
I fear, your statement is impossible to be denied its validity, when "Tung Tung Tung Sahur"-Trading-Cards and "Tralalero Tralala"-T-Shirts are a thing.
the majority of "Italian Brainrot" enjoyers are probably not old enough to be on social media regardless
"People "at large" absolutely don't care about AI slop"
I think this is true. In general I think enough population of the market actually does not care about quality as long as it exceeds a certain limited threshold.
There's always been market for sub-par product. That's one of the features of the market I think. You can always find what is the cheapest, lowest quality offering you can sell at a profit.
Also the inversed incentive problem: the less people think it can be done, the more value in doing it.
That said in theory TPMs are proof against this: putting that to the test at scale, publicly, would be quite useful.
> There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop.
I fully agree, I just don't know how that could work.
I think GenAI will kill the internet as we know it. The smart thing is (and always has been) to be online less and build real connections to real people offline.
There’s an assumption on HN that everyone can identify AI slop because pretty much everyone here can. But my personal experience and what I think might be more in line with reality is that the majority of social media users can’t tell or don’t care.
> People in general don’t want the slop
True.
> There is absolutely a market for social media that bans AI slop.
There’s a market for social media that bans slop, period. I don’t think it matters how it was made.
Also, that market may not be large. Yes, people prefer quality, but (how much) are they willing to pay for it?
On the other hand, if taking a picture on a Canon dSLR instantly uploaded it to Apple Photos the same way your iPhone does, when you’re outside, that would be a really popular product.
People absolutely care that photos are real. There was somebody on here recently who had to read the photographer's story of how he planned it all to be comfortable it was real. Especially for those bird-in-front-of-sun type photos.
The words 'external gratification' popped out. I only recently found out that my sensitivity to it is the biggest flaw/weakness in my and many other's personality.
This is not about photographers.
Imagine the president wants to deliver a video message. Was it authentic or AI generated? If it was filmed with this camera, the population can verify.
Yes. I am surprised by off the rails this conversation went. It's not about art. It's about verifiable evidence in these crazy times.
Yeah, 1st he misunderstands the product and then he believes he is qualified to valuate it negatively (due to him being a great photographer ): "this misses the mark on every front I can think of"
I view this as something that could be more useful in a journalistic, legal, or governmental context rather than in a creative or artistic one.
How did you get out of your photography obsession? Because currently I’m really really into photography as well and it gets unhealthy. (Both time and money wise).
I'm cynical and don't fear a world in which people can't verify photos for their authenticity.
I fear (channeling a brave new world) that they simply will not care.
I think this kind of tech is designed for journalists and professionals, not enthusiasts and social media folk
I'm not sure this is targeting you, but possibly rather journalistic photos where being able to prove authenticity is important
Maybe it’s not for common use? I could see this betting important in the intelligence community, for example.
Photography is when the image is not moving right ?
> this misses the mark on every front I can think of.
YOU are missing the mark on every front I can think of.
The value here is not in a product used to make art.
The value is for documenting history and being able to *prove* something happened (eg for lawsuits, criminal cases, security, etc).
I am actually willing to support DIY camera efforts, but if you're semi-serious about taking pictures, this just wouldn't work. First, Raspberry Pi (I'm guessing this is a CM4/CM5) is a disaster for a camera board. Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture, cameras need to be near instantaneous. And you can't keep it on either, because the RPi can't really sleep. There are boards that can actually sleep, but with fewer sensor options.
Now moving on to the sensor (IMX 519 - Arducam?) - it's tinier than the tiniest sensor found on phones. If you really want to have decent image quality, you should look at Will Whang's OneInchEye and Four-thirds eye (https://www.willwhang.dev/). 4/3 Eye uses IMX294 which is currently the only large sensor which has Linux support (I think he upstreamed it) and MIPI. All the other larger sensors use interfaces like SLVS which are impossible to connect to.
If anyone's going to attempt a serious camera, they need to do two things. Use at least a 1 inch sensor, and a board which can actually sleep (which means it can't be the RPi). This would mean a bunch of difficult work, such as drivers to get these sensors to work with those boards. The Alice Camera (https://www.alice.camera/) is a better attempt and probably uses the IMX294 as well. The most impressive attempt however is Wenting Zhang's Sitina S1 - (https://rangefinderforum.com/threads/diy-full-frame-digital-...). He used a full frame Kodak CCD Sensor.
There is a market for a well made camera like the Fuji X-Half. It doesn't need to have a lot of features, just needs to have ergonomics and take decent pictures. Stuff like proofs are secondary to what actually matters - first it needs to take good pictures, which the IMX 519 is going to struggle with.
> Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture
But that's less due to the RPi and more due to lots of amateur projects that ship the RPi with a desktop Linux distribution like Raspbian (itself based on a very conservative one - Debian - that loves preserving decades of legacy crap).
You can absolutely get quick boot times on an RPi (or on an x86 machine for that matter, although you are limited by the time the firmware itself takes to boot) if you build your own read-only image with Buildroot/Yocto like any embedded shop would.
But I agree with the rest of the comment - an RPi is a terrible device for this (and for most purposes besides prototyping in fact). But not because of boot time reasons.
Another thread mentioned that this camera was made by crypto enthusiasts from a software/ZKP starting point, and not a photography starting point. If true, it will have a lot of maturation to do, but most likely they will either be incorporated into a "real" camera design, or they will just fold.
From these pics it actually looks like a whole PI4 board is used https://farcaster.xyz/faust
Interesting. I'm curious why they would do that.
1. buy stuff for $50
2. 3d print a couple of cases for $10
3. repurpose highschool summer break crypto project .. free? (excluding time spent)
4. ???
5. profit from selling it for $400 a pop
All the stuff is off the shelf. Makes it way easier to develop. There is no reason to actually use RPi, compute module or not, as a base camera board (talking from experience) other than it is super easy to start with.
I disagree. If CM5 had the ability to sleep at tiny fractions of a watt, there are really practical and usable cameras you can pull off today, even when it's not the most efficient. For all the downsides, it would more than make up in the ease-of-development department.
I believe if RPi6 adds sleep, you'd see a flurry of portable gadgets built on the platform.
Speed of development is fine for a prototype, but for an actual product it is just sloppy and wasteful. Problem isn’t even battery hungriness, but boot time. Users don’t want to wait 20-60 seconds for their camera to load an entire Linux kernel and drivers and then all the software you have gobbled together on top when you could be up and running almost instantly if you used microcontroller instead of cpu
You're agreeing with them, not disagreeing! :)
The person who you replied to said they only reason to choose them is easiness, and you've replied saying you disagree because for all the downsides the easiness makes up for it.
I know nothing about photography, but I'll just comment on this point:
> (I'm guessing this is a CM4/CM5) is a disaster for a camera board. Nobody wants a 20s boot every time you want to take a picture, cameras need to be near instantaneous.
You can boot an RPI in a couple hundred milliseconds.
> There is a market for a well made camera like the Fuji X-Half.
That product has for its specs a ridiculous price point of €750..
But you don't buy it for the specs, you buy it for the experience. It topped sales charts when it was launched. If I had more time to spend on photography, or if I was younger, or if it was a little cheaper I'd have bought it myself.
I suspect more will follow the X-Half, because it gets orientation right. Most images are viewed today in portrait mode, and half-frame is the right format for that.
The people who buy these cameras would probably be better served by upgrading their phones. Phones are good enough cameras for this use and they are infinitely better at processing.
As a long time hobbyist photographer I can understand buying cameras because they have a certain appeal. But I have to say that I honestly do not understand why someone would spend lots of money and then not want to take advantage of the technology offered.
I think shooting to JPEG and using film profiles is kind of pointless. If you want to shoot film, shoot film. Imagine you have taken a really good picture, but it’ll always look worse than it could because you threw away most of the data and applied some look to it that will date it.
I do understand that a lot of people think these cameras are worth buying. And that they are selling well. But I can’t understand why.
> The people who buy these cameras would probably be better served by upgrading their phones.
I'm sorry if this too far off topic but I routinely go to use my phone's camera and the ambient light level is so high I can barely see what I'm intending to photograph, and I certainly can't see the on-screen controls.
I've seen hoods intended to over your head and into which the phone fits and this would, I assume, resolve the issue but by comparison a point and click with a 'proper' viewfinder (perhaps with the rubber surround some used to have) would be a very good solution by comparison.
There are many motivations for shooting jpeg with film sims, from just not wanting to expend the effort editing photos to my motivation as a colour-blind person who simply cannot see colour well enough to manually adjust photos. For me, it’s incredible being able to choose a film simulation and be happy with the result even if I know that the colours I’m seeing aren’t quite the same that others will see. It’s the entire reason I bought into the FujiFilm system.
> if it was a little cheaper I'd have bought it myself.
Same here. Even for the experience it's overpriced.
I think almost everyone here is missing the point of this camera. In the post truth AI future, this is the camera you want when you photograph the billionaire or President or your spouse doing something awful. Any other photo proof won’t work because it can always be called fake. And yes I’m being serious. You are missing the point if you say the quality isn’t good enough or it’s too slow or bulky. The idea is the provable authenticity, which is going to be very important in the coming decades.
You can just AI generate a photo and snap a picture of that.
There's no such thing as provable authenticity.
I imagine that, if attested cameras like this come into any sort of regular use, you'll see additional layers of metadata mixed into the signature—a depth map, GPS, accelerometers, operator biometrics etc, none of which are necessarily infallible, but which certainly create considerable barriers to faking things.
That's likely to be easily detected.
I think some of the modern iPhone cameras use SLVS, so non-iPhone Apple Silicon might have a way of connecting to that natively too. Good luck using that though.
Without a native connection option, what remains to you is probably an FPGA converter (to MIPI CSI-2 D-PHY), which is going to be expensive of course. But still not as expensive as the sensor itself and the associated optics.
I don't think ZK proofs help to establish trust in a photo's authenticity at all. C2PA is a well thought out solution to this problem.
https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/2.2/spec...
> The C2PA information comprises a series of statements that cover areas such as asset creation, edit actions, capture device details, bindings to content and many other subjects. These statements, called assertions, make up the provenance of a given asset and represent a series of trust signals that can be used by a human to improve their view of trustworthiness concerning the asset. Assertions are wrapped up with additional information into a digitally signed entity called a claim.
I don't get how this is the only comment that doubts how their proofs work. There is zero detail or explanation of what they are proving
This is true, there is no detail.
The idea with zero knowledge proofs is that typically, photography metadata is stripped when it’s posted on Facebook. The proof would be a piece of metadata that COULD be safe to share in the SPECIFICS of what it proves. For example there is a circuit that can show that the photo was taken in the United States without leaking the specific location the photo was taken.
Presumably the authenticity scheme here is supposed to be, it answers it was taken on a real camera in a real place, without leaking any of the metadata. They are vague because probably that circuit (proving program and scheme) hasn’t been designed yet.
I also don’t know if it is possible to make useful assertions at all in such a scheme, since authenticity is a collection of facts (for example) and ZK is usually used to specifically make association of related facts harder.
Neal Krawetz of fotoforensics (and others probably) disagree that C2PA "is a well thought out solution"
https://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?%2Farchives%2F10... (search his blog if you want more of his thoughts on it)
I don't have a know enough bout this but I've been reading his blog for other topics a while and he does seem to know a lot about photo authenticity.
This is rather expensive for what looks like a home 3D printed toy with some cute software.
Other than that it's a 16MP Sony CMOS, I'd expect a pretty noisy picture...
It would be more interesting if the software was open source.Simple, you remove the sdcard and mount it on linux, the security of a Pi is a joke.
I wouldn't mind if it was 3D printed if it wasn't done with like a layer height of 0.28, half transparent so it looks weird, and intended for outdoor use where 3D prints are porous and water will seep through. The housing needs at the very least some spray painting and a clearcoat.
What I do mind is the cheapest off the shelf diy button lmao. They are like cents a piece, just add a fucking metal one that are like a few cents more if you're selling a $400 camera, cheapass. I wouldn't be surprised if the software side with the "proof" being a similarly haphazardly brittle implementation as the construction.
> This is rather expensive for what looks like a home 3D printed toy with some cute software.
This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, especially on a site called Hacker News.
I think we absolutely should be supporting projects like this (if you think they're worth supporting), else all we're left with is giant corporation monoculture. Hardware startups are incredibly difficult, and by their nature new hardware products from small companies will always cost more than products produced by huge companies that have economies of scale and can afford billions of losses on new products.
So yes, I'm all for people taking risks with new hardware, and even if it doesn't have the most polished design, if it's doing something new and interesting I think it's kinda shitty to just dismiss it as looking like "a 3D printed toy with some cute software".
Hey it's fine to make a 3d printed camera and cool stuff like that. But it's another thing to make it a product, that isn't shipping yet and asking $399 with a shiny website and with closed source software.
I don't mean to disregard the technical feat, but I question the intent.
Couldn't agree more!
This literally looks like someone made a closed source hardware kit out of mostly open parts and software then shipped it preassembled.
I support it but I recognize it is a 3D printed toy with some cute software... toys can be interesting too. Not everything needs to be a startup.
Check Ali for "shitty" minature key-ring C-thru packaged cameras that look just like this "3D printed toy with some cute software", going for $4.00, not $400!
Please, stop!
I've been strugling to fight the urge to by a "Kodak Charmera" for a month now, don't tempt me again!
If you buy one, you won't be tempted anymore.
The BoM is ~$150 MSRP. I doubt the ZKP Rube Goldberg contraption will survive a day of reverse engineering once it gets into the wild.
>This attitude really rubs me the wrong way, especially on a site called Hacker News.
It's just that even in the realm of hardware by small teams built upon Pi boards this is very overprice and poor construction and cheap components for what it is.
Selling for $400 there are case solutions other than a cheap 3D print, and button choices other than the cheapest button on the market.
This isn't a hardware start-up, it's a software start-up using off the shelf consumer hardware to give their software product a home.
If it was a hardware start-up, the camera would be $80 built with custom purpose made hardware.
Once you decide to launch a hardware product composed of completed consumer hardware products, you are already dead. All the margin is already accounted for.
You literally can't even export the photos...
It would be cool if this was open source because looking at the pictured this is all off the shelf hardware. I am guessing only bespoke thing here is the stl for the case
It wouldn't work at all as open source since you could just modify the source to sign your AI generated pictures.
This is patently incorrect. Just remember the whole TiVo affair and reasons why GPLv3 was born. Source code availability does not guarantee ability to run it on the particular device.
The Software Freedom Conservancy thinks the GPLv2 guarantees the ability to modify existing GPLv2 software on a device, but does not guarantee the ability to still use the proprietary software running on top of that, and that the same applies with GPLv3. Reading the preamble of the GPLv2, I'm inclined to agree with them. Hasn't been tested in court yet though I think.
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/mar/25/install-gplv2/ https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2021/jul/23/tivoization-and-t... https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
One could design a toolchain that posts a hashed signed version of the source used to produce a signed binary. Build and deploy what you want and if you want people to trust it and opt in then it is publicly available.
In this case you get the signature and it confirms the device and links to a tamper proof snapshot of the code used to build its firmware.
Okay. What prevents you from printing out a AI generated picture and taking a photo of that with the camera?
Nothing. But I know it's you and not the New York Times publishing that photo. Now you get it?
So why would I buy this if you still wouldn’t trust my photos? And why would NYT when you already trust them? Who is the target audience?
I didn't say that I didn't trust yours. It's that I trust the NYTimes more.
46 chromosomes
You sure you are running the correct number yourself?
it would. it would just require pki and a secure enclave that lives directly on the imaging chip to support it.
Is that possible with the chip used here?
> What are the camera's specs?
> The camera has a 16MP resolution, 4656 x 3496 pixels. It uses a Sony IMX519 CMOS sensor.
Seems like a pretty generic part available as a module https://thepihut.com/products/arducam-imx519-autofocus-camer...
Uses the standard MIPI/CSI interface, which is not authenticated or anything of the sort.
You can also buy HDMI-to-CSI adapters https://thepihut.com/products/hdmi-to-csi-adapter-for-raspbe... - should be easy enough to pipe your own video feed in as a substitute.
Seems to me that a camera like this is necessarily, at least in part, a closed system that blocks you from controlling the software or hardware on the device you supposedly own. It's hard for me to think this is a good direction. And as others have pointed out, it can't prevent attacks through the analog hole, e.g. photographing a display.
It's not feasible or desirable for our hardware devices to verify the information they record autonomously. A real solution to the problem of attribution in the age of AI must be based on reputation. People should be able to vouch for information in verifiable ways with consequences for being untrustworthy.
> camera like this is necessarily, at least in part, a closed system that blocks you from controlling the software or hardware on the device you supposedly own
Attestation systems are not inherently in conflict with repurposeability. If they let you install user firmware, then it simply won’t produce attestations linked to their signed builds, assuming you retain any of that functionality at all. If you want attestations to their key instead of yours, you just reinstall their signed OS, the HSM boot attests to whoever’s OS signature it finds using its unique hardware key, and everything works fine (even in a dual boot scenario).
What this does do is prevent you from altering their integrity-attested operating system to misrepresent that photos were taken by their operating system. You can, technically, mod it all you want — you just won’t have their signature on the attestation, because you had to sign it with some sort of key to boot it, and certainly that won’t be theirs.
They could even release their source code under BSD, GPL, or AGPL and it would make no difference to any of this; no open source license compels producing the crypto private keys you signed your build with, and any such argument for that applying to a license would be radioactive for it. Can you imagine trying to explain to your Legal team that you can’t extract a private key from an HSM to comply with the license? So it’s never going to happen: open source is about releasing code, not about letting you pass off your own work as someone else’s.
> must be based on reputation
But it is already. By example:
Is this vendor trusted in a court of law? Probably, I would imagine, it would stand up to the court’s inspection; given their motivations they no doubt have an excellent paper trail.
Are your personal attestations, those generated by your modded camera, trusted by a court of law? Well, that’s an interesting question: Did you create a fully reproducible build pipeline so that the court can inspect your customizations and decide whether to trust them? Did you keep record of your changes and the signatures of your build? Are you willing to provide your source code and build process to the court?
So, your desire for reputation is already satisfied, assuming that they allow OS modding. If they do not, that’s a voluntary-business decision, not a mandatory-technical one! There is nothing justifiable by cryptography or reputation in any theoretical plans that lock users out of repurposing their device.
> A real solution to the problem of attribution in the age of AI must be based on reputation
This is actually one of the theoretical predictions from Eliezer Yudkowsky, who says that as information becomes less and less verifiable, we're going to need to re-enter a pre-information-era - where people will have to know and trust the sources of important information they encounter, in some cases needing to hear it first hand or in person.
The analog hole can be mitigated by using more sensors. Store a depth map, a time, gps location, and maybe more.
If you’ve got a photo of a public figure, but it doesn’t match the records of where they were at that time, it’s now suspicious.
I feel the trouble with this is two-fold:
It's not enough that the photograph is signed and has metadata. Someone has to interpret that metadata to decide authentic versus not. One can have an "authentic" photo of a rear projection screen. It wouldn't be appropriate to have an "authentic" checkmark next to this photo if it claims to not be a photo of a rear projection screen. The context matters to authenticity.
Secondly, the existence of such "authentic" photos will be used to call all non-authenticated photos into doubt.
So it doesn't even really solve any problem, but creates new problems.
Yes, that might make these fake-proof cameras popular, to the point where people start putting in the necessary effort to defeat them by monkeying around with the time server and the depth sensor and the gps signal. Then you get a really well-supported fake image that's very effective because it's authenticated.
Practically I think there are situations where it is not so black and white. Like camera footage used as evidence in a court case. Signing a video with a public key would give some way to verify the source and chain of custody. Why wouldn't you in that situation? At a minimum it makes tapering harder and weakens false claims that something has been tampered with.
> And as others have pointed out, it can't prevent attacks through the analog hole, e.g. photographing a display
Are there systems that do prevent photographing a display? Like accompanying the photo with an IR depth map?
I don't think reputation gets you that far alone, we already live in a world where misinformation spreads like wildfire through follower counts and page ranks.
The problem is quality takes time, and therefore loses relevance.
We need a way to break people out of their own human nature and reward delayed gratification by teaching critical thinking skills and promoting thoughtfulness.
I sadly don't see an exciting technological solution here. If anything it's tweaks to the funding models that control the interests of businesses like Instagram, Reddit, etc.
Why can't posting a verifiably true image create as much or more instant gratification as sending a fake one? It will probably be more gratifying, once everyone is sending fake ones and yours is the only real one (if people can know that).
Lies are just better at reproducing themselves than truth.
Which makes truth more scarce, hence more valuable.
Sure, but you were asking why truth is less gratifying.
Also, "truth" is clearly something that requires more resources. It is a lifelong endeavour of art/science/learning. You can certainly luck into it on occasion but most of us never will. And often something fictional can project truth better than evidence or analysis ever can. Almost everything turns into an abstraction.
No, that is a nihilistic belief which does not get buildings built or software written.
One may "luck" into truth by being born in a poor neighborhood or by living in a warzone, and having eyes and a camera. Or by being rich and invited to a club and having a microphone.
Truth is everywhere, but capturing it is expensive. The tax on truth is the easy spread and generation of lies. The idea that the fictional can encapsulate truth is of course true, but it doesn't mean everything is better an abstraction. Losing a leg is more powerful as a reality than as an abstraction. Peddlers of falsehoods, then, only win when truth can be abstracted.
Moreover: People who read literature read it knowing it stands in for truth. People who watch TikTok believe it is true, and are disenchanted when shown otherwise. More power resides in a grain of truth than a mountain of falsehood; so any tool for proving veracity will always have an outsized value against tools for generating fakes.
The last redoubt of propagandists when faced with the threat of truth is to claim that no one cares anymore what's true. But that's false. In fact, that's when they begin to fool themselves. It's not that no one in China or Russia values the truth, for instance. It's just that they say what they're told to say, and don't believe a word of it.
This feels like pearl clutching.
We do not need "proof". We lived without it, and we'll live without it again.
I grew up before broadband - we survived without photographing every moment, too. It was actually kind of nice. Social media is the real fluke of our era, not image generation.
And hypothetically if these cryptographic "non-AI really super serious real" verification systems do become in vogue, what happens if quantum supremacy beats crypto? What then?
You don't even need to beat all of crypto. Just beat the signing algorithm. I'm sure it's going to happen all the time with such systems, then none of the data can be "trusted" anyway.
I'm stretching a bit here, but this feels like "NFTs for life's moments". Designed just to appease the haters.
You aren't going to need this stuff. Life will continue.
This worked because we also used to have significantly better and more trustworthy news organisations that you could just trust did the original research and verified the facts. Now they just copy stories off Reddit and make up their own lies.
Back to the time before photographs then - the 1800s.
Crime scene photographs won't be evidence anymore. You photograph your flat (apartment) when you move in to prove that all the marks on the walls were already there and that won't be evidence anymore. The police mistreat you but your video of it won't be evidence either. etc
> Crime scene photographs won't be evidence anymore.
Why wouldn't they be?
Testimony is evidence.
Am I just a crazy cynic or are ZK proofs here just a buzzword.
Like, how is this any different than having each camera equipped with a vendor controlled key and then having it sign every photo?
If you can spoof the sensor enough to reuse the key, couldn't you spoof the sensor enough to fool a verifier into believing your false proof?
You take a photo of an AI generated photo. What's yr proof worth then?
Yes, IIRC if you measure an image signal, i.e. here: image, that is at twice the resolution of the sensor you use, there won't be any artifacts.
Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.
But, if the sony sensor also measures depth information, this attack vector will fall flat. Pun intended.
The technique you describe has seen some use by some major vendors for 5 to 10 years right?
Not sure.
I don't understand how the "proof" part works, like, what part of the input to the "proof generation" algorithm is so inherently tied to the real world that one cannot feed it "fake" data ?
My understanding is it can't. The proof is "this photo was taken with this real camera and is unmodified". There's no way to know if the photo subject is another image generated by AI, or a painting made by a human etc.
^^This so much.
I remember when snapchat were touting "send picture that delete within timeframes set by you!" and all that would happen is you'd turn to your friend and have them take a picture of your phone.
In the above case, the outcome was messy. But with some effort, people could make reasonable quality "certified" pictures of damn near anything by taking a picture of a picture. Then there is the more technical approach of cracking a system physically in your hands so you can sign whatever you want anyway...
I think the aim should be less on the camera hardware attestation and more on the user. "It is signed with their key! They take responsibility for it!"
But then we need:
1. fully active and scaled public/private key encryption for all users for whatever they want to do
2. a world where people are held responsible for their actions...
I'm not sure which is more unrealistic.
I don’t disagree with including user attestation in addition to hardware attestation.
The notion of their being a “analog hole” for devices that attest that their content is real is correct on the face, but is a very flawed criticism. Right now, anybody on earth can open up an LLM and generate an image. Anybody on earth can open up Photoshop and manipulate an image. And there’s no accountability for where that content came from. But not everybody on earth is capable of projecting an image and photographing it in a way that is in distinguishable from taking a photo of reality. Especially when you’ve taken into consideration that these cameras are capturing depths of field information, location information, and other metadata.
I think it’s a mistake to demand perfection. This is about trust in media and creating foundational technologies that allow for that trust to be restored. Imagine if every camera and every piece of editing software had the ability to sign its output with a description of any mutations. That is a chain of metadata where each link in the chain can be assigned to trust score. If, an addition to technology signatures, human signatures are included, that just builds additional trust. At some point, it would be inappropriate for news or social media not to use this information when presenting content.
As others have mentioned, C2PA is a reasonable step in this direction.
3. Tech that can directly read memories from our brains.
Perhaps if it measured depth it could detect "flat surface" and flag that in the recorded data. Cameras already "know" what is near or far simply by focusing.
I wonder if a 360 degree image in addition to the 'main' photo could show that the photo was part of a real scene and not just a photo of an image? Not proof exactly but getting closer to it.
If someone cared enough to spend money on this I think it would be an easy to medium difficulty project to use an FPGA and a CSI-2 IP to pretend to be the sensor. Good luck fixing that without baking a secure element into your sensor.
I'd be shocked if the major sensor vendors don't already have engineers working on exactly that, though.
Sony has this - https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/index.html
I would also love to know this. Where can I read how it works?
I am sorry if I missed something or someone already asked it, but:
If I generate image with AI, print it, then take a photo of it with Roc Camera so that you can't tell that this is actually a printed image, I will then have an AI image with ZKP of its authenticity?
Sony has this on their related page:
> A digital signature alone cannot determine whether the captured image is of an actual 3D subject, or of an image or video projected on a high-definition monitor. However, by using metadata including 3D depth information, it is possible to verify the authenticity of images with a high degree of accuracy. By using cameras from Sony, both the image and the 3D depth information can be captured on the sensor along the single light axis, providing information of high authenticity.
That 3D depth data could presumably be used to detect this. In principle, you could also train an AI to generate realistic 3D data. It's just not available yet, and probably harder to train (in general, and also since you would need to collect new massive amount of training data first).
No idea if this specific device has a 3D sensor, addressing the general question.
The depth information that sony cameras collect is almost certainly low-res enough that even with a simple image->depthmap model[0] you could fool it. Also they don't say anything about the sensor itself being secure, no need to print something if you can just emulate the sensor with an FPGA or other.
[0]: https://github.com/CompVis/depth-fm
I suspect the EXIF data won't make sense, and the faq says the ZKP applies to the metadata as well. But yeah, inherent flaw.
Presumably you could stop this by requiring GPS data for the image, and match that against a library of other images in the location?
I wonder how this compares to similar initiatives by e.g. Sony [0] and Leica [1].
[0]: https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/en-us/
[1]: https://petapixel.com/2023/10/26/leica-m11-p-review-as-authe...
Canon gave users the option to sign their photographs with "add original decision data". It got cracked.
* https://petapixel.com/2010/12/01/russian-software-firm-break...
* https://www.elcomsoft.com/presentations/Forging_Canon_Origin...
and you think this rushed product won't be?
I would broadly expect software made by most camera brands to be shit, while I would expect a developer who creates their own hardware projects (generally, not talking specifically about cameras) to range from idiots who have no idea what they're doing (like me, though to be fair I also wouldn't release it believing it to be good) to highly skilled coders who would get it right despite being on their own.
So I wouldn't automatically assume that a product like this would be better designed, but I would think there's a chance it might have been!
Probably won't be cracked, as there will be little to no interest as such device will have no use in any professional setting.
I knew that Leica is generally expensive, but the model on the review is insanely expensive (over 10K USD?). It is not even comparable.
It's not the camera that is important though, but the technology:
https://spec.c2pa.org/specifications/specifications/2.2/inde...
Compared to those, this is like a weekend project that a high school student could accomplish.
There's the C2PA standard which has picked up momentum recently to I guess help resolve some of the issues.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2024-03-c2pa-verification-news...
I believe various cameras support this, e.g. https://www.canon-europe.com/press-centre/press-releases/202...
`C2PA Authenticity: Integrated support for the C2PA standard for photo authenticity verification – initially available exclusively for registered news agencies.`
Sounds like it's limited to some users for now, I guess this will change in the future.
Going too far won't really help, since the scene being photographed can be manipulated or staged, which sounds more likely to be a concern rather than the hardware being hacked.
Yup, Canon as you mention, also Nikon, Sony, Panasonic, etc. The membership is pretty extensive.
https://c2pa.org/membership/
https://www.nikonusa.com/content/nikon-authenticity-service
https://authenticity.sony.net/camera/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/panasonic-is-th...
Kudos for making this exist, it was an inevitable place for the conversation to lead, and I’m actually glad it was “hacked” together as a project rather than forced into a consumer product. The camera specs don’t really matter here, this is about having the conversation. If this catches on, it will be a feature of every smartphone SoC.
On one hand, it’s a cool application of cryptography as a power tool to balance AI, but on the other, it’s a real hit to free and open systems. There’s a risk that concern over AI spirals into a justification for mandatory attestation that undermines digital freedom. See: online banking apps that refuse to operate on free devices.
Consider pivoting from hardware sales to verification-as-a-service. Your camera could be the universal input device for identity verification (less creepy than Worldcoin's Orb), insurance claims, real estate documentation, and legal evidence. Think transaction fees per verification, not one-time camera sales. The consumer angle is weak - most people won't buy specialized hardware to prove their vacation photos are real. But enterprises would absolutely pay for a solution that reduces fraud, accelerates claims processing, or enables compliant remote verification. Dating apps would pay for "verified real person" badges. Banks would pay for remote account opening. Stop trying to create a problem and start solving the expensive problems that already exist:
Identity verification for financial services, social platforms, and gig economy (KYC/AML compliance) Professional tools for insurance, real estate, law enforcement, and healthcare documentation Enterprise authentication-as-a-service model
Why do websites like this always try to be too clever? Let me scroll!
Scrolling is broken on mobile, it scrolls right past entire sections, like there's too much inertia. The last section is also wider than the screen and horizontal scrolling disabled.
+1. To all of the marketing site developers out there: never mess with scrolling defaults.
I’m not seeing what this is product is trying to solve? A zero knowledge proof to say it isn’t AI ? I think you could do this with a disposable camera or Polaroids and a photo scanner that makes the zero knowledge proofs .
A different thread mentions "what if you take a photo of an AI photo with the Roc camera?" - I still think that would be hard due to perspective, lighting, various other artifacts.
Scanning an image would be much easier to dupe though - scanners are basically controlled perspective/lighting environments so scanning an actual polaroid vs an ai generated polaroid printed on photo paper would be pretty indistinguishable I think.
Maybe I am just naive, but I don't see why taking a photo of a screen, projection, or print out would be hard. Wouldn't it just need even lighting and tripod?
Adding something like a LIDAR and somehow baking that data into the meta data could be fun
Then people will connect their fake image and LIDAR feed to where the CMOS is connected. Like always with half-baked digital attestation chains, laypersons will argue "Oh, but who's gonna do that?" and the reality is that even private modders and hackers are perfectly willing and capable of doing this and will jump on it right away, and if it's just for the fun to distribute a certified picture of an alien giving everyone the finger. Of course, tamper-proof designs would be possible, but they are extremely expensive.
On a side note, the best way to attack this particular camera is probably by attacking the software.
I didn’t say adding extra sensors is some kind of magic bullet. I said adding LIDAR would be fun.
Don't limit your thinking to taking photos - video also works fine. It's how The Mandalorian is produced. Instead of green screens, the actors are in front of floor-to-ceiling LED screens with live rendered CGI.
In old movies, going back to the 1930s and 40s, back-projection is usually seen when characters are driving in a car, and you can usually spot it. These days, not so much.
What proof is there that the photo scanner is scanning a genuine photo and not something AI generated that looks like a Polaroid?
What proof is there that this camera is photographing a genuine scene?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
If Elsie and Frances had the technology we could have a digitally signed zero knowledge proof that their photo's captured a genuine scene that included cardboard cutouts of fairies.
It was a real moment with objects that Bishop Berkeley could have kicked.
Recalling an old scandal about an office copier/scanner which was doing some OCR cleanup and changing numbers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156238 (2013)
Interestingly it wasn't the OCR that was the problem but the JBIG2 compression.
I love my medium format film cameras. I think everyone interested in photography should try it. Yashicas (just as an example of a company that made good medium format film cameras) are surprisingly affordable on eBay. I've had good luck buying from Japan, FWIW.
With the tariffs this is no longer possible for US persons.
Do the tariffs apply on used items as well? In any case such cameras are fairly cheap nowadays
They use to fall under de-minimus? But no longer. So there are duties to pay.
Huh?
Tariffs shouldn’t prevent buying stuff, you just have to, y’know, pay a tariff on import.
In this case, a Japanese made camera will incur a 15% tariff.
Most countries, including Japan, India, Canada, and nearly the entire EU, have completely stopped shipping packages to US consumers. This is not because of the tariffs themselves, but because the US apparently has no system in place for actually handling the tariffs on goods that previously qualified for the de minimis exemption. Two months and counting with no information on when shipping might resume.
Some merchants in those countries have stopped. There isn’t a general stoppage of everything.
I just checked and you can still send goods between Japan and the US. There are still merchants selling the exact mentioned camera on eBay that will ship to the US.
Here is the exact camera mentioned, offered by a Japanese seller, that will ship to the United States: https://www.ebay.com/itm/317445808304
Can you source your claim that absolutely no courier is capable of shipping goods into the US? I can’t find anything using google, or on any courier websites.
FedEx does have information about how to correctly fill out the forms for the purposes of tariffs, but does not mention that they will not accept shipments.
I see, that was my mistake then. I was unaware that services like FedEx were still accepting packages. My personal experience was that I have been unable to ship to the US for months because the carrier I use stopped accepting packages, and was under the impression they all had given the number of countries for which this was true and the news coverage I had seen. I wonder why so many countries' postal services have stopped while some couriers like FedEx continue to operate.
There were some temporary stops, but mostly they resolved pretty quickly. I think an issue is that the US requested that tariffs be paid upfront at the sending end and a some couriers aren’t set up for that. Or that they needed time to set it up.
Many of the postal and courier systems that suspended service have since set up the systems they need, and are happily moving packages into the US, but it tends not to make the news.
Talk to the seller. I just ordered a used light meter from Japan. Shipper just wants the duties paid up-front.
I'll throw Mamiya 645 in there for a good medium format camera as well. Yashica is great, I own a Yashica Electro 35 and it is awesome no thought rangefinder.
> A zero knowledge proof to say it isn’t AI
Seems like it.
> a photo scanner that makes the zero knowledge proofs
Presumably at some point the intention is to add other sensors to the camera e.g. for depth information.
This camera's attestation and zero-knowledge proof cannot verify that a photo is not AI generated. Worse, those "verifications" may trick people into believing photos are trustworthy or authentic that are not.
Similar to ad-clicks or product reviews, if this were to catch on, Roc cameras (and Roc camera farms) will be used to take photos of inauthentic photos.
Ultimately, the only useful authenticity test is human reputation.
If someone (or an organization) wants to be trusted as authentic, the best they can do is stake their identity on the authenticity of things they do and share, over and over.
I’m a photographer in my spare time; looks like this product isn’t about what images are being produced, or about the shooting experience - and this discourages me.
When the goal is having a proof that the photo hasn’t been edited or ai generated, using an analog camera and shooting on film seems more practical to me than using a device like this.
Could an AI not be trained to emulate the look of analog film and its artifacts?
I meant that there is a proof of the photo being taken and a record of what the photo looked like before any edits (a photo negative).
If you take this to ILM's The Volume, you can prove that The Mandolorian is real.
This kinda like a PoC for ZK Proof used in digital devices, however, I don't think a Raspberry Pi in a 3D printed case should be made a real product, it lacks actualy use cases. Honestly, I like this concept, but I think it should belong to a personal art exhibition or DIY competition…
https://www.nikonusa.com/content/nikon-authenticity-service already exists?
this is a gem from the past I believe
> Creates a Zero Knowledge (ZK) Proof of the camera sensor data and other metadatas
How do you stop someone from taking a picture of an AI picture? It will still come from the sensor.
Probably look for display artifacts (pixel borders)?
But a fixture that takes a good enough screen + enough distance to make the photographed pixels imperceptible is likely just a medium hurdle for a motivated person.
You probably can't fully avoid it but adding more sensors (depth) will make such a fixture quite a bit more expensive.
This is a known problem in this space called 're-broadcasting' do a Google patent search on Serelay and you'll see several solutions (including spoofing of other sensor metadata)
Maybe adding a depth sensor/lidar might fix this?
The Pi4 is extremely overpowered for this application. This looks like a rushed product from an SF brainfart with no engineering behind it.
My initial reactions:
- I hope they succeed and eventually deliver a solid version of this product - verifiable photography is going to become important, and it's good to see startups working on this - While I'm sure some artists will like the idea of verifiable photography, the applications that matter to me are any kind of photography that has the potential to end up in a news article or in court - Selling what is essentially a prototype is fine, it's extremely obvious that's what it is, they explicitly say it! Who cares if it's not very good as a camera? - The almost complete lack of information on their site about their security model or how their ZKPs work is not particularly encouraging - It follows that my faith that either the cryptography or the hardware anti-tamper measures in this beta device would stand up to even some decent amateurs, given a couple of weeks to have a crack at it, is not high. I'm almost tempted to buy one just to see how far I, a random kernel engineer who gets modestly decent scores at my local hacker con CTF, could get. But I may well be completely underestimating them! Hard to tell with the fairly scarce information - Why did they pick a name that's similar to a) AMD's GPU stack, and b) the law enforcement/natsec computer vision business, ROC (https://roc.ai)?
Obviously, this has the vulnerability that you can take a picture of a computer monitor with it, showing whatever you want to.
Apple could really make an interesting product here where they combine the LIDAR data with the camera data, cryptographically sign it, and attest to it as unmodified straight from the camera. Can it still be faked? Yes, but it's much harder to do.
> Obviously, this has the vulnerability that you can take a picture of a computer monitor with it, showing whatever you want to.
Is this a reverse analog loophole? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole
Can’t I just photo a printed AI generated pic? What use is the proof?
This looks interesting. I love the retro styling and transparent case. The proofs and selling it as some sort of fight-back against AI seems tenuous and as the user controls the hardware - going to be hard to keep that system hermetically sealed due to giving the user the keys on device. Also though almost nobody actually cares very much about attesting that their photos are somehow real and untouched by AI.
There are larger problems when you consider this question. What is real and not in photography is a long and storied debate - any photograph is ultimately a curation of a small part of the real world - what is just out of frame could completely change the interpretation of the viewer if they saw it, regardless of whether the picture is unaltered after taking. The choice of framing, colours, subject etc etc can radically alter meaning. There is no getting away from this.
So ultimately I don't think the biggest problem facing photography is attested reality. I actually think the democratisation of photography offers a better way out - we have so many views on each event now that it's actually harder to fake because there are usually hundreds of pictures of the same thing.
PS for the site author, there is a typo in the sentence beginning - remove the an 'By combining sensors, an on-device zero-knowledge proofs'.
It seems like one could just shoot film and make darkroom prints and accomplish the same thing?
pictorialists used the darkroom to distort reality more than a century ago!
I don’t know what this gives that a film camera with slide film loaded doesn’t.
Both cameras still allow “staging” a scene and taking a shot of that. Both cameras will both say that the scene was shot in the physical world, but that’s it.
I would argue that slide film is more “verifiable” in the ways that matter: easier to explain to laypeople how slide film works, and it’s them that you want to convince.
If I was a film or camera manufacturer I would try and go for this angle in marketing.
Can't find slide printing services easily put AI images onto slide film for you?
I think the point of this movement toward cryptographically signing image sensors is so people can confidently prove images are real on the internet in a momentary click, without having to get hold of the physical original and hiring a forensic lab to analyze it.
You can get things printed onto a transparency mounted in a slide frame. Actual slide film, though, must be done by exposing light. When you want another image put onto a slide, the easiest way to do it is to just take a picture using a camera.
That’s beside the broader point that OP made: it doesn’t matter since you can just point a verifiable camera at a staged scene (or reproduction of an AI image) and have an image of something that doesn’t represent reality. You can cryptographically sign, or have an original slide, of an image that is faked outside the camera.
>You can just point a verifiable camera at a staged scene
It's an emerging field, and attack vectors like that are hurdles to be solved. You can make faking more difficuly, for example, with a depth sensor.
Are you saying the slide itself would be proof? I think the use cases are different - this camera gives you a file and signature you can transmit digitally.
How could this possibly validate that the camera sensor that's attached to it is actually a camera sensor and not just an FPGA sending raw data?
You have to push the signing as far out as possible.
The light sensor must have a key built into the hardware at the factory, and that sensor must attest that it hasn't detected any tampering, that gets input into the final signature.
We must petition God to start signing photons, and the camera sensor must also incorporate the signature of every photon input to it, and verify each photon was signed by God's private key.
God isn't currently signing photons, but if he could be convinced to it would make this problem a lot easier so I'm sure he'll listen to reason soon.
you can't
> How are my photos stored?
>> We store the photos generated by the Roc Camera on IPFS (by default). We'll have more information on this soon, so check back for more details in the future.
> How do I get my photos off the camera?
>> Coming soon. We're working on export functionality to get your photos off the camera.
> Where is the ZKP generated?
>> The zero-knowledge proofs are generated on-device using the Raspberry Pi 4.
I am a bit puzzled as to why IPFS was used as the "primary" storage medium there, it's a Pi so wouldn't it be pretty easy to make it have a micro-sd port? Wouldn't it be able to work fully locally then?
When I look at their socials, it seems like they primarily engage with a crypto-focused audience, all of this leads me to believe that IPFS and ZKP are the actual main appeal of this product... not that there's anything overtly wrong with this.
Well, its more likely they just don't know. They haven't figured that out. So, they'll hire a hardware guy and it'll all change.
I was part of the presale. I own one and am using it daily.
Invested in it because of the emerging opportunities from crypto and ZKPs.
It's wild that it's already come to this: The camera itself becomes more important as the instrument to provide zero-trust proof.
This is a brilliant solution to one of the most critical emergent problems. I can see a world where no digital image can be trusted if it doesn't come with a hash.
There is also something called "film" which might be a retro answer to this problem.
Until people start to make AI images, print them out and then make a "real" photo of the printout to get the hash.
I think there would be ways to detect that from the final image. Also if the hash contains date/time/location info.
This looks like a hipster toy.
It’s possible that this could have value in journalism or law enforcement.
Just make it look the part. Make it black and put some decent lens on it.
I'm pretty sure forensic cameras already exist for this purpose. And as far as I can tell, there isn't really any bulletproof way to do this other than embed a signing key in the camera and hope no one manages to extract it, rendering the whole thing pointless.
I guess you could have a unique signing key per camera and blacklist known leaked keys.
Canon and Nikon both did this. You paid a premium for a “signature analysis” app. The target was for things like law enforcement, where authentication was important.
They got cracked with a year or two. Not sure if they still offer the capability.
Lots of cool ideas here - crypto first/crypto everything, IPFS and soon Farcaster integration. But the price is a big negative.
I also believe that whatever they're aiming at with verifiably real photos will either be commodified or end up not being valued very highly.
It's not quite the Rabbit R1 (at least the presentation here seems more honest) but I don't see it generating more than niche-of-niche interest.
Also, and maybe more to the previous point about commodification (or within-reach tech), this is the kind of project I can imagine hardware hacker/AI and crypto enthusiast doing on their own ( and I guess selling to friends and neighbors for $400 ... )
Has anyone else found themselves becoming hyper-attuned to "AI" trickery in photographs?
Just the other day I stumbled across this picture on Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_AT%26T_wireless_r... Can anyone explain what's going on with the front tyre of the white car? To me it looks like the actual picture was ingested by a model then spat back out again with a weird artifact.
The worrying thing is when it becomes too hard to spot the artifacts we won't know how much of our history has been altered subtly, either unintentionally or not, by "AI".
If you like the idea of a small "dumbish" camera but aren't fussed about all the ZK proof stuff these are quite fun: https://www.campsnapphoto.com/collections/camp-snap-screen-f... I have a few and letting my small kid have a blast while not getting "screen time" is great.
Side effect is I get a small little window into what he "sees" and his lived experience. Going through some of the pics recently was quite beautiful.
Any device like this is useless, because you can print an AI generated picture and then take a photo of it. It's like NFTs in the crypto world, which have proofs that prove essentially nothing.
It’s a cool idea, but I don’t know how much people care about a photo provably being real. I take pictures with my phone because it’s simple and convenient. I get the vibe that it’s kinda like NFTs, where maybe some people would care if certain NFTs are unique and permanently on some blockchain, but most people don’t. Most people won’t understand the technical details behind the proof so at most they can only trust the claim that a picture is provably real.
Does anyone know if the camera sensor includes depth map information? Otherwise what is stopping someone from photographing a large high-resolution print of an AI generated image.
this one does not. Other cameras do include one, or can make a depth sensor via the real sensor since autofocus/focus stacking allows depth extraction, especially if using a low aperature number.
How to defeat this:
Step 1: Create an AI image and display it.
Step 2: Use this camera to take a picture of it.
Now you have "attested" proof of "verifiably real" image.
Indeed it can't authenticate photons. Security isn't about making things perfectly safe, but to make it harder for the bad guys.
Isn't the broader idea here valid? Will news agencies have cryptographic attestation in their cameras?
I think it'd be more interesting if you made a camera that took verifiably fake photos that were guaranteed to be nothing like what you pointed it at.
The main argument of this product is to "capture verifiably real moments". Though I find it interesting (and am quite liking the object), I do not tend to think this is a strong argument for this product: capturing a picture of a unreal picture would make it real (as discussed in this thread), moreover what would prevent any phone manufacturer from integrating the same type of "validation" into their hardware?
They are already doing it e.g. Sony.
https://amateurphotographer.com/latest/photo-news/sony-annou...
It needs a certificate issuance and validation system https://c2pa.org/
I remember reading in some Qualcomm Snapdragon document that Qualcomm integrated some image authenticity method. Not sure if this ever landed in an end-product?
This is the right direction - the only way to go about fake images and video is digital signatures. Phone camera should be able to do this as well. Then we can have signatures of software used for processing them (on top) cerityfing what changes have been done: e.g. contract correction filter applied, signed by Adobe Photoshop.
Nooo... I don't want something to exist that can absolutely prove that a photo is real. This only serves to enforce social norms more rigidly. These include reasonable norms like against committing crimes or behaving abusingly but it also includes stupid norms like behaving uncool or doing something embarrasing. The problem is, where do you draw the line? I think if somebody does something stupid or even morally dubious there should always be a way of forgetting it.
That you can't believe everything you see in the age of AI is a feature, not a bug. We are so used to photographs being hard facts that we'll have to go through a hard transition, but we'll be fine afterwards, just as we were before the invention of photography. Our norms will adapt. And photographs will become mere heresay and illustration, but that's OK.
I think here the same dynamic is at play as with music/videos and DRM. Our society is so used to doing it the old way - selling physical records - that when new technology comes along, which allows free copying, we can't go where the technology leads us (because we don't know how to feed the artists, and because the record industry has too much power), so we invent a mechanism to turn back the wheel and make music into a scarce good again. Similar here: we can't ban Photoshop and AI, but we invent a technology to try to turn back time and make photos "evidence" again.
What concerns me most in the era of gen AI irt photography is journalism. We need truth, most especially when limited-means citizen journalism is the only reliable source of that truth.
But I feel like the only way to accomplish fool-proof photos we can trust in a trustless way (i.e. without relying on e.g. the Press Association to vet) is to utterly PACK the hardware with sensors and tamper-proof attestation so the capture can’t be plausibly faked: multi-spectral (RGB + IR + UV) imaging, depth/LiDAR, stereo cameras, PRNU fingerprinting, IMU motion data, secure GPS with attested fix, a hardware clock and secure element for signing, ambient audio, lens telemetry, environmental sensors (temperature, barometer, humidity, light spectrum) — all wrapped in cryptographic proofs that bind these readings to the pixels.
In the meantime however, I'd trust a 360deg go-pro with some kind of signature of manafacture. OR just a LOT of people taking photos in a given vicinity. Hard to fake that.
This is probably one of those scenarios where if someone wants to fake it they're going to fake it (or at least it will be a never ending arms race, and I expect AI to keep close chase), while a basic security solution will suffice for 99% of use cases, including standard journalism. After all, skilled photoshop+computational tools can already do expert fakery in journalism. (Just look at the last Abroadinjapan video earlier today for a good callout of Photoshop editing to increase engagement).
I wrote this about 7 years ago: https://github.com/pjlsergeant/multimedia-trust-and-certific...
Mine isn't journalism, it's the court system.
Before long, it might be somewhat "easy" to prove anything.
Could Apple or Google do this without updating their hardware? I see a relevant patent (US20220294640A1) and it looks like one of the inventors is at Google now.
Who's really going to check if I spoofed the camera sensor data, and why?
Also does this mean I can't adjust colors or make any changes to my photos?
I could see this being neat in the context of a digital detox photo competition or something, but I don't see any real place for this in Art world
Possibly some serious media looking to authenticate news pictures?
This shouldn't be a product, but a licensed patented technology like Dolby or CDMA, sold to OEMs and directly integrated into cameras and phones.
It should be an industry standard system for guaranteeing authenticity by coordinating hardware and software to be as tamper proof as possible and saved in a cryptographically verifiable way.
No system like this would be perfect, but that's the enemy of the good.
What if they take a photo of an AI generated photo
lol, faq is funny
how long does the batter last
> Currently, the battery will last estimated 2~3 hours on constant use on a full charge. It can last much longer if it is off.
I find that most people who want to ground things in reality, that is at least "reality" without AI or whatever filters are put on photos by phones these days, don't have much interest in any sort of cryptographic proof of reality... this is in the same realm of technology they're trying to avoid.
i don't get how the attestation works? from the FAQ, the proofs are generated on the rpi, which AFAIK doesn't have anything like a modern HSM/vault which would allow them to 1. not allow user access to the secret or 2. not allow user to put ai-generated imagery onto the device for 'attestation'
I like the concept (because I was proposing such a couple of years back) and the software implementation seems good. But holy shit that thing is ugly. They could(should) have worked with a cheap camera maker like Lomokino to make a bare-bones rangefinder or twin lens reflex. This is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. Sorry.
It is seriously ugly. Especially for $399. Was that intentional?
You can absolutely sign the image with the on-camera certificate, for example, but that would too boring of a solution to hype.
See that's what I'm saying.
There's simply no technical solution to authenticating photographs as far as I can tell.
The only real solution I can think of is just to have multiple independent parties photograph the same event and use social trust. Luckily this solution is getting easier now that almost everyone is generally no further than 3 feet away from multiple cameras.
you know what grinds my gears? The fact that it takes 2 seconds for the android camera app to open, even when I use the shortcut on the lock screen. It's a step backwards from point-and-shoot cameras.
I was trying to take a picture of a gecko the other day, and it missed half of the event while the app was loading.
I like the spirit of this, but not the implementation. It feels very performative to create a ZK proof to show that a photo is real. And not really in the spirit of capturing magic moments on film.
I think that a disposable camera, or even something fancier, like a Mamiya C330, are better and more gratifying bets for the money.
There was a time when web pages were like regular documents, that could easily be scrolled through.
Heh, few years ago I built myself a RPi Zero based camera.
I wonder how have they made the boot up fast enough to not be annoying.
I used non-real time eInk display to cut down on the battery life so I could just keep it on in my pocket while out taking pictures since it took good minute to get ready from cold boot.
What I am waiting for is something similar to this (proof of image ownership / authenticity) embedded in smartphones cameras.
Not sure if ZK is the right way of achieving this. Even if the cryptographic guarantees are strong, generating these proofs is very expensive.
Some smartphone cameras already have this. Samsung tried it on the S25 but apparently did it wrong (https://petapixel.com/2025/02/13/samsungs-image-authenticity...). Google has it on the Pixel 10 line.
I think it's very likely the next iPhone will have some form of authenticity proof too, I just hope Apple doesn't go with its own standard again that's incompatible with everything else.
Samsung were also the ones who demonstrated a fatal flaw in C2PA: device manufacturers are explicitly trusted in implementation.
C2PA requires trust that manufacturers would not be materially modifying the scene using convolutional neural networks to detect objects and add/remove details[1]
1) https://www.samsung.com/uk/support/mobile-devices/how-galaxy...
That's tricky because it needs to store and verify metadata that the user cannot edit and that allows one to distinguish a "normal" photo from a professional photography of a photo. The only place where this can happen are the camera settings but these are limited on smart phones and it's not easy to discern the two cases. I'm sure someone would print a 10x10 meter fake image, put it at just the right distance, and wait for the best indirect light to prove that the Yeti exists.
Just include a depth sensor, lidar, etc. I'm sure over time that will become increasingly easy to defeat too, but then we can just keep improving the sensors too.
At some point I think it will be required for police bodycams and any security footage used in court to have this technology built in.
Interesting, but this is a software project. Camera sensor is being bought from Aliexpress in bulk. Competition from companies manufacturing cameras, or smartphones, is huge. How this project is not a cash grab?
Literally manufacturing trust eh?
So it's a Raspberry Pi attaching a ZK Proof to an image to say that this image was taken on this particular Raspberry Pi.
That's it. That's the verification?
So what happens when I use a Raspberry Pi to attach a ZK proof to an AI- generated image?
400$ for a phone camera stuck on a raspberry pi ? I will pass this one...
Are they releasing the STL to let people print their own shell? If not, seems odd to advertise the fact that it's 3d printed with standard (Bambu Lab) printers.
Fantastic idea, I'm sure there will be more such devices and a big market for them. Note to the company: please check the scrolling on Firefox (macOS), it's a little weird.
But why does the case look like it is made out of garbage?
It looks 3d-printed (edit: confirmed- there's footage of it being 3d printed on the FAQ page). I'd expect a process with a better finish for the final product, but who knows with products like this that are in beta.
Found this sort of funny too, from the FAQ:
> Is this production ready?
> No. The Roc Camera is currently in beta and we suggest you do not use it for anything important at the moment. We're open to feedback and suggestions. Please reach out to us at support@roc.camera.
Cool idea, could be implemented in future professional cameras but as of right now, I can’t think of a single reason that someone into photography would buy this
It's not like questioning the authenticity of a photo is a new thing "in the age of AI". Manipulating photos has always been a thing, long before photoshop even.
If you do photography for your own pleasure and not for the sake of likes, gratification or public opinion you can use whatever hardware or software it’s alright.
Good thinking, but the problem here is that in order to make a good camera which takes verifiable photos you first need to make a good camera, and that's quite hard.
This is a cool idea, but why is it $400? This feels more like an open-source passion project than a legitimate business venture.
To me it sounds like someone is trying to create a problem and sell it to me. Who needs to create images with proof of reality?
Remember, Nikon's image authentication was hacked back in 2011 https://blog.elcomsoft.com/2011/04/nikon-image-authenticatio...
The ACLU is sceptical regarding the whole concept: https://www.aclu-or.org/en/news/attempts-technological-solut...
The root causes podcast discusses this topic in its episode 336: https://www.sectigo.com/resource-library/root-causes-336-dig...
I strongly believe this should be an open source project.
Security 101: * Kerckhoff Principle of Open Design Security of a mechanism should not depend on the secrecy of its design or implementation.
Kinda interesting- of course until it hacked. But honestly it does not look like something I would want to carry around.
If you are taking the photo yourself, you know where they come from. While would you need signed pictures to prove that?
When rocking your Meta, Ray Ban, MacDonalds, Tesla XR AR 0009fNG plus Reality engine contact lense inplants it will be important to cross reference your experiences with what really happened.
Yep this is coming soon. You'll be required to own and operate wearables to participate in the social web, or post photos anywhere.
Instagram could have a "real" filter that only shows you photos with proofs, for instance. So not your own photos, but other people's photos.
Oh no! You've discovered that the product is completely pointless! If only they had asked you first!
Seems like this could be a great product for law enforcement no? Verifiable pictures of evidence.
Even a pivot to "its not Ai" has the same bandwagon feel as "pivoting to Ai".
For a moment I thought a software solution will be shared at the end. Did not expect a camera marketing.
How does this compare to the content credentials added by the Pixel 10's camera?
How does this differ from a kids digital camera that costs only 1/10th the cost.
Not trolling. Genuinely don’t understand.
https://www.amazon.com/Camera-Digital-Toddler-Christmas-Birt...
There is a movement to cryptographically sign images in order to prove that they are real raw photographs, by selling hardware in which the cryptographic key is placed close to the camera sensor to prevent tampering.
This is one attempt.
This page cannot be scrolled in Safari or Firefox.
Devs -- stop hijacking native scrolling functionality. Why? You had one shot to sell me on this product. I can't see the page, so I can't consider it for purchase. That's a lost sale.
I'm going to buy this just to take a picture of my Kodak mining rig...
Looks like a weekend project, done with a third of the cost as a budget.
I always assumed high end CCTV cameras already did something like this?
So once the company shuts down its servers we've got a lemon?
This sounds cool. But why so freaking expensive??
> Capture verifiably real moments
What if I make a photo of my screen?
It has to be a joke...
I can't tell does this have adversarial AI built in?
The custom scolling is janky on Safari.
399 for a sensor and rpi. I'm out.
I have been happily using fujifilm x100 for about 10 years now? I bought a second hand one for about $300. You can buy a decent camera cheaper than a smartphone, as it should be.
$399 USD. L.O.L.
back in my day when we wanted to prove a picture was "real" (and not Photoshopped), we just posted the .NEF file
I predicted something similar a while back:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31092225
and it has existed for a while already
Could you share some examples?
$400 lul what
put this in a durable rangefinder form factor and it would be great as a journalism camera.
First Roc Vodka, now this?
this all assumes nobody will make editing ???? what am I missing
Just shoot film.
NFT camera! sick!
Is this nfts again?
Is this another cash grab? The founders who made this don't seem to know what real photography is.
What a silly idea, a whole Raspberry Pi for basic photography! Just the boot-up alone would drive someone nuts, you'd miss the moment every time and I'd drain your battery if you left it on. So silly.
$400 for a raspberry pi in an ugly 3d printed case ?
I love the idea, but the product execution is simply horrendous. It looks more like a money grab gimmick. The sensor selection is also bad, the image quality will be terrible.
I fail to see the hand wringing about media forms that didn’t exist 150 years ago.
Even worse when I see people saying “it’s over” for slop content posted on social media
We lived fine and well before social media or photography or videos.
This is so "silicon valley", like the juicero thing.
There is something deeply dystopian about the phrase "verifiably real moments."
https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/We%20Can%2...
no moat
this is one of those things you shouldn't buy aside from novelty, but this idea wouldnt reach the light of day now without doing it this way
the real goal would be integration into more popular camera systems
I hope the founders and this concept gets all the support they are looking for
Stop hijacking the scrolling.
hijacking is one thing, but this completely ruins native scroll function. It's actually just broken garbage front-end
399 hahahahahahahahahahahahhahaqhahaha cool idea tho
This has it all wrong.
The truth is worse than anyone wants to face. It was never about authenticity or creativity. Those words are just bullshit armor for fragile egos. Proofs and certificates do not mean a damn thing.
AI tore the mask off. It showed that everything we worship, art, music, poetry, beauty, all of it runs on patterns. Patterns so simple and predictable that a lifeless algorithm can spit them out while we sit here calling ourselves special. The magic we swore was human turns out to be math wearing makeup.
Strip away the label and no one can tell who made it. The human touch we brag about dissolves into noise. The line between creator and creation never existed. We were just too arrogant to admit it.
Love, happiness, beauty, meaning, all of it is chemistry and physics. Neurons firing, hormones leaking, atoms slamming into each other. That is what we are when we fall in love, when we cry, when we write a song we think no machine could ever match. It is all the same damn pattern. Give a machine enough data and it will mimic our souls so well we will start to feel stupid for ever thinking we had one.
This is not the future. It is already moving beneath us. The trendline is clear. AI will make films that crush Hollywood. Maybe not today, maybe not next year, but that is where the graph is pointing. And artists who refuse to use it, who cling to the old ways out of pride or fear, are just holding on to stupidity. The tools have changed. Pretending they have not is the fastest way to become irrelevant.
Yes, maybe right now you can still tell the difference. Maybe it is obvious. But look at the rate. Look at the slope of that goddamn line. The speed of progress is unmistakable. Every year the gap closes. Every year the boundary between man and machine blurs a little more. Anyone who cannot see where this is going, anyone who cannot admit that this is a realistic possibility, is in total denial. The projection of that line into the future cannot be ignored. It is not speculation anymore. It is math, and it is happening right in front of us.
People will still scoff, call it soulless, call it fake. But put them in a blind test and they will swear it was human. The applause will sound exactly the same.
And one day a masterpiece will explode across the world. Everyone will lose their minds over it. Critics will write essays about its beauty and depth. People will cry, saying it touched something pure in them. Then the creator will step forward and say it was AI. And the whole fucking world will go quiet.
Because in that silence we will understand. There was never anything special about us. No divine spark. No secret soul. Just patterns pretending to mean something.
We are noise that learned to imitate order. Equations wrapped in skin. Puppets jerking to the pull of chemistry, pretending it is choice.
But I feel like some creativity comes from breaking existing patterns
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