[HN Gopher] Flipped an element in an old lens and got 'magic' bo...
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Flipped an element in an old lens and got 'magic' bokeh (2018)
Author : colinprince
Score : 136 points
Date : 2021-05-04 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (petapixel.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (petapixel.com)
| supernova87a wrote:
| I would love to know from someone knowledgeable --
|
| How is a new lens design made nowadays, and is there much
| innovation still in lens design? I mean, seems like aside from
| zoom lenses, the designs were done (by hand! and slide rule) 100
| to 50 years ago.
|
| What do you do now? Have a ray tracing linear solver with
| constraints about refractive index, desired weight, number of
| elements, distortions, etc. (and cost!) factor all these things
| in and see what multiple lens stack it comes out with? Or is it
| just small variations on known proven designs now?
| wingspar wrote:
| (2018)
| echelon wrote:
| At some point all of these effects would probably be better to
| produce computationally.
|
| Lens hacks result in lost signal. You're sending fewer photons to
| less surface area, and you're losing readings.
|
| The cameras of the future might look a lot less like the ones we
| have today: stereo and light field capture, explosion of sensors,
| and design that incorporates both advances in optics as well as
| ML-assisted optimization.
|
| edit: -3 :( I've got unpopular opinions as always, I suppose.
| We'll see how it pans out in ten years. I predict we're in for a
| sea of changes. Photogrammetry is going to be huge.
| postalrat wrote:
| Most information is lost when light hits the sensor. You
| mentioned a few ways we might be able to capture more of that.
| But until we get all that we can play with that information
| through lenses.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| As an amateur photographer... can someone smarter/more educated
| than me explain to me why practically I would prefer this over a
| computational solution? This looks really cool, but there are
| dozens of apps and filters out there that do stuff like this, no?
|
| That's not to take away from how cool this is, just asking as a
| practical thing why someone else beside the person in question
| would buy another lease and do this vs use a digital solution to
| get a similar effect.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Because no digital solution can recognize depth correctly from
| a single image, which would be needed for this effect.
| [deleted]
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Granted, but also haven't we done this:
| https://corephotonics.com/products/digital-bokeh/
| tokai wrote:
| It's not from a single image.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| That's from multiple images, and if you look closely it
| looks _really_ bad. Just look at her hand in the "far
| focus" image. A digital method needs to fill out
| information that's just not present in the image.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Why climb a mountain when you can just send a drone to the top?
| Some things are worth doing just because they are.
| geocrasher wrote:
| This. It's easy to get into the mindset that "It's all been
| done" or "somebody already did it better, so why bother?"
|
| Sometimes it's good to just do things for the experience and
| nothing more. This is especially true for many hobbies such
| as Amateur Radio. Guys can armchair quarterback antennas,
| coax, baluns/ununs, whatever, all day long, arguing about
| which is right. Then a guy goes out and just tries it, does
| it all wrong according to the "in" crowd, and has tons of
| fun. <--- this is me. Doing it because I can and it's fun not
| because it's "better"
| DanBC wrote:
| > As an amateur photographer... can someone smarter/more
| educated than me explain to me why practically I would prefer
| this over a computational solution? This looks really cool
|
| People like to play. People like to place artificial
| constraints upon their work, and then see what they can make
| within those constraints.
|
| People get very used to a particular camera and lens, and
| sometimes they get a bit stuck in a rut and want to break away
| from that.
|
| People sometimes like unpredictability, and it can lead them
| onto different ways of working or different ways to present a
| result.
| gopalv wrote:
| > can someone smarter/more educated than me explain to me why
| practically I would prefer this over a computational solution?
|
| Practical effects always feel better over computational ones -
| in terms of feedback.
|
| Which is weird to say because it only really happened for me
| after digital cameras gave instant previews with zoom & I could
| tweak/click while getting to know some new hardware.
|
| I did some digital tilt-shifts and then played around with a
| manual shifted lens once - seeing what you click is so
| "tactile" (& the bar for it will shift was more computation can
| be done in preview).
|
| The thing is that the digital thing is still guessing depth
| with some gradient map, particularly at such a long focal
| length.
|
| The reason a lot of the in-app portrait modes have improved
| massively is because there are secondary depth sensors which
| fill in the data that is needed to compute a good looking depth
| map.
|
| > why someone else beside the person in question would buy
| another lease
|
| I can't think of a single reason except to mess with things
| till you get the photo you want :)
|
| I wasted a bunch of time with a very cheap (but great) Nikkor
| 50mm f/1.8D for different bokehs during a party shoot, which
| turned out to be a fun project "makeable" for a tutorial I was
| doing later.
|
| And eventually turned to a lensbaby bokeh punchable + a lot of
| vinyl clips of random shapes (mostly Om/AUM shapes for temple
| pictures).
|
| I'm sure I could get a digital solution for that, but it
| involved a lot less work to punch a pattern and go nuts with
| it.
|
| [1] - https://www.flickr.com/photos/t3rmin4t0r/4362410419/
| jedimastert wrote:
| Why take pictures at all? Photorealistic renders are at our
| fingertips with things like Blender and Cycles. Just take a
| look at /r/rendered.
|
| It's fun to fiddle and tinker. As much as someone _could_ make
| the image in a render (I actually seriously doubt the picture
| could be recreated with post-processing alone unless there was
| a light field camera involved or something) who would think to
| do so? This didn 't come about because someone was looking for
| the effect, but because someone was exploring and found it.
| cpach wrote:
| Different strokes for different folks.
|
| I've been using computers and digital graphics applications for
| about thirty years now.
|
| If I were to get myself a new hobby I wouldn't necessarily want
| to have one that made me spend more time in front of a
| computer. That's one reason people might want to do things the
| analog way.
|
| I'm currently reading a book written in 2017 by an author who
| still uses a typewriter. A good book, and it might help him to
| avoid distractions when writing.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| A lens shapes a light field onto a sensor. Once light hits the
| sensor, it is flattened into a 2D image, quantized, and
| saturated based on the limitations of the sensor.
|
| You cannot do with software what you can do with a lens. The
| information is lost by the time it's in a raw file. Not just
| depth, but also brightness. Any white highlights are also lost
| information; a lens can shape a highlight to look different in
| a way which cannot be done in software without using HDR (i.e.
| multiple exposures).
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Damn, I wanted to link Lytro's website but they shut down ?
| :(
| jacobolus wrote:
| Making up new bokeh shapes, depth-based special effects,
| etc. are the type of thing Lytro _should_ have done with
| their cameras, instead of just <<focus after capture
| time>>, which is mathematically interesting but doesn't
| enable fundamentally new art.
| taeric wrote:
| Same reason folks generally like kaleidoscopes, but I don't see
| as many of those in screen savers anymore. That is, I don't
| think there is an objective answer. A lot of the fun in this is
| the unexpected and unrepeatable nature of the results.
| udev wrote:
| An extreme version of your question: Why even bother taking
| pictures? Just ray-trace or otherwise render your images.
| LASR wrote:
| It's same reason you've already outlined. It's cool.
|
| With computational capabilities these days, you can really get
| whatever look like purely through software.
| mschaef wrote:
| > why practically I would prefer this over a computational
| solution?
|
| The camera lens has a bunch more information to work with in
| terms of depth. Along the same lines, an iPhone can fake bokeh
| by applying a filter masked by depth information, but it's not
| really in the same league as the real optical effect you get
| from a real lens in the field. (In terms of responsiveness and
| the quality of detail that's captured.)
|
| OTOH, as much as I think legitimate optical effects can be
| useful/special at capture time, I have limited use for
| computational effects at capture time. As long as the 'digital
| negative' has all the information, I'd much rather be able to
| apply the computational effect later. (This is an advantage of
| digital techniques - you can adjust them later.)
| dv_dt wrote:
| Serendipity in the real world can produce effects that you may
| not think to work to create digitally. On the flip side,
| digital processing can do things that would be a pain to do
| with a physical pipeline. Imho more possibilities from all
| avenues makes for a richer world.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why would anybody do anything in camera vs digital? Because
| somethings just aren't the same when done in post. Is this one
| of them? Maybe the person doing something physically isn't a
| software person to make something that doesn't exist now, but
| they have old lenses laying around and are not afraid to
| tinker. Much faster results. The "bokeh" from these smart phone
| cameras are still annoyingly not right, so there's that aspect
| as well.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is cool in two ways.
|
| 1) He is using physical elements to get the interesting shot.
| There is something that is difficult to describe, but innately
| alluring about "real" or physical aspects of our increasingly
| digital world. The bending of light, the crystals in film, the
| feeling of the pages of a real book. There is something about
| the medium itself carrying meaning, even if the actual
| communicated value is the same. Perhaps it speaks to a
| timelessness, or durability of good ideas, beautiful pictures,
| and powerful words that can last thousands of years. Where as
| in the digital realm, my worlds sometimes only last as long as
| the hard drive they live on. I think it is deeper than that.
| Physicality is something we can relate to, touch, smell, taste,
| we experience it far deeper than an abstract concept
| represented by pixels on a screen.
|
| E.g. Why is a book better than a PDF? I have no good answer.
|
| 2) Although being in photography for decades, I was unaware of
| this specific effect when manipulating the elements inside a
| lens. I had no idea this effect was possible. The tinkering,
| the curiosity followed down a path few would bother with, isn't
| that what hackers are all about? I am inspired by His diving
| deep on topics of interest.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense. I am looking at it from the point
| of view of the finished product, the photograph, rather than
| the process of creating it. I personally tend to do things
| "the hard way" at times because I feel like I, for the lack
| of a better term, put my soul into the thing that way. But as
| a practical matter, people viewing a photograph generally
| don't know how it was produced and as such is this particular
| effect unique and/or hard to reproduce?
| platz wrote:
| You wouldn't be able to recreate the exact effect
| digitally.
|
| You could try to approximate a crappier version of it but
| there would be noticeable differences, and sometimes nuance
| in art matters.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Even if it was an exact replica, there is, as the french
| say, a je ne sais quoi about an object crafted lovingly
| in a manual fashion.
|
| Definition of je ne sais quoi : something (such as an
| appealing quality) that cannot be adequately described or
| expressed.
|
| This sounds like fluff driven by emotion and not reason,
| but I encourage readers to embrace the lack of reason for
| some elements of human experience.
|
| We are anything but perfectly rational beings, this is
| one powerful aspect where efficiency and logic are
| sacrificed on the alter of subjective experience.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Maybe they don't know, but there is an unspoken energy to
| things that are real, that have a history all their own.
| Sometimes, for some people, the object itself is part of
| the message, the way it was crafted part of its value.
| Explain sentimentality and you explain this hahahah.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I'm so tired of this arrogant attitude. "Why should I do
| something in the real world when I can simulate it with a good-
| enough-but-ultimately-inferior digital process?"
| sigg3 wrote:
| How is it arrogant? He's honestly asking. There might be good
| reason for using a digital solution, such as keeping valuable
| equipment intact..
|
| We can have both. The world is not boolean.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It's arrogant when seen in a larger trend of technologists
| constantly trying to substitute everything with technology.
| "When all you have is a hammer, everything seems like a
| nail"
|
| I too am an amateur/prosumer photographer who uses an
| entirely digital process. But tech has its weaknesses,
| especially in photography -- digital tech still can't
| replicate a lot of what analog can do, and its important to
| embrace that.
|
| That $4000 mirrorless still can't replicate the dynamic
| range of 35mm film. Photoshop still can't replicate the
| contrasty reds of Velvia film. And so on...
| cpach wrote:
| Your last sentence there made me think of an old Welle:
| Erdball song...
|
| _"Es gibt kein Kompromiss / Es zahlt nur ja und nein / Wir
| sehn wies wirklich ist / Wir denken digital"_
| vecter wrote:
| I don't think the OP is arrogant. I think it's a genuine
| question. I didn't think of the question itself, but after it
| was posed, I didn't know the answer (because I have no
| background in photography or image processing). A few other
| folks have responded with a technical answer, which is that
| rendering this would require depth information which
| obviously isn't available in a 2D image.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I think the many qualifications in OP's question make it
| clear that the intention was not to be arrogant, but simply
| to ask a question and maybe learn something about
| photography. I had the same question, not because I'm looking
| down on people who do this but because I genuinely don't know
| very much about the photography world and think that it might
| be possible that there are some unknown advantages to one
| method over the other.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation
| of what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I in no way meant that as arrogant. I think it's really cool
| that that person figured it out. What I am wondering is in
| what way the effect is different when produced digitally and
| does it matter?
|
| A good deal do photo filters are based on real world optics.
| Sometimes optics that are outdated (Polaroid mode), sometimes
| because the physical setup is really expensive. What I am
| asking is whether this particular effect is hard to
| replicate. I feel like I've seen it before in digital art but
| don't know if it's the same or not and whether the physical
| effect is actually somehow magical or not.
| martyvis wrote:
| I guess in simple terms, if you apply a digital filter to a
| regular image after capture, you can only manipulate
| elements there or maybe introduce artificial effects.
| Special filters or lens adjustments done before capture
| however can manipulate received light before it is normally
| discarded to take that regular photograph
| abraae wrote:
| Chill, it didn't come across as arrogant at all to me. I had
| the same question.
|
| If there is an equivalent way to achieve the effect
| digitally, for many people that is good information and they
| can do that, and don't need to go to the lengths this guy
| did.
| adolph wrote:
| Software is typically immature hardware. To the extent that you
| can do something in hardware the results are more often
| superior, if less flexible.
| ska wrote:
| > This looks really cool, but there are dozens of apps and
| filters out there that do stuff like this, no?
|
| Such filters live in 2D, optics in 3D - part of why most filter
| for things like "bokeh" don't work particularly well is that
| without an accurate depth map you are guessing or ignoring that
| 3rd dimension.
|
| On the flip side - this stuff is aesthetic, so there isn't one
| "proper" way to do it.
| rileyphone wrote:
| Depth information is lost once light hits the sensor. Software
| can attempt to account for this (portrait mode) but it's
| imperfect.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Better title might be 'A "Magic Bokeh" Lens Modification' - from
| the original YouTube video.
| rozab wrote:
| It seems like this type of lens has been available since the
| 1920s, and there would have been nothing stopping, say, the
| German Expressionists from using this sort of technique? I love
| seeing this sort of thing, it's part of why I find modern
| demoscene so fascinating.
| towergratis wrote:
| Magic bokeh? No offense, but it's horrible and nothing magic
| about it.
| [deleted]
| JohnMalkovite wrote:
| How could I recreate this effect with an app/website ?
| vipa123 wrote:
| 1. Buy two of those lenses, modify one to cause this effect. 2.
| Take tens of thousands (possibly orders of magnitude more,
| possibly less) of photographs of the exact same scene with near
| identical lighting conditions. 3. Use both sets to train a deep
| learning algorithm to take input photographs and produce the
| same output. 4. Grow dataset until reached desired look for
| general input photograph.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Seriously cool. I love creative accidents like this. True hacker
| culture.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'd love to see video recorded this way. Looks like it has lots
| of potential for those "characters take psychedelics" parts of
| the script.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I love where your head is at. That instantly reminded me of
| this clip. I adore this song because of it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNHP5Z7RZcA
| mrwh wrote:
| Reminds me of realising years and years ago that one can make a
| macro lens by reversing a normal prime. (Which I know! Everyone
| knows that, you can even get proper adapters for it, but it was a
| genuine discovery for me at the time.) Doing things in camera,
| rather than later in software, just is more enjoyable for a lot
| of photographers. I know I find it more fun.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| So most lens design software I've seen is optimized for a
| "scientific instrument" workflow - optimizing for sharpness
| across spectrum and angle.
|
| Is there software that helps with artistic lens design?
| Sharlin wrote:
| The Zeiss, like the huge majority of ~50mm lenses in existence,
| is a so-called Double-Gauss design [1] (yes, _that_ Gauss [2]).
| The role of the interior doublet is mostly to reduce aberrations,
| so reversing it basically has the opposite effect (at least
| spherical and chromatic aberration appear to go crazy). Would be
| interesting to see some raytrace diagrams of the modified lens.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-Gauss_lens
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Even the most modern "ultra high performance" 50 mm lenses
| still have a Double Gauss lens at their core.
|
| For example, here's the Nikon Z 50/1.8S:
| https://imgsv.imaging.nikon.com/lineup/lens/z-mount/z_50mmf1...
|
| Doesn't take much guessing where the aperture is in this lens.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I'm not seeing any photos on that article. Server load issue?
| gerikson wrote:
| Here's hoping the swirly/crazy bokeh phase is soon over.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Funny... just thirty minutes ago I was giving a sort of guest
| lecture to some UX students, one of my key talking points was
| that old "should designers learn to code?" chestnut. (If you're
| not familiar, and want to see dozens or hundreds of people
| instantly start arguing on Twitter, go ahead and ask.)
|
| I come down firmly on the side of "yes," and started my
| explanation of why with the photographic work of Salvador Dali.
| The guy was an absolute darkroom master. He wasn't just a person
| who had a vivid imagination and could paint, he had an engineer's
| understanding of optics, physics and the chemistry of
| photography. This led into a sort of point about programming not
| being an end to itself, but that programming is a part of of the
| toolbelt of a modern digital designer.
|
| ANYWAY. This guy, not just busting out a camera and photoshop,
| but actually taking apart and rebuilding lenses, more of this.
| Get dirty with your tools.
| paulmd wrote:
| I think coders should learn to shoot and develop film, and
| ideally learn to wet print. not that it's something that you'll
| need at your day job, but it's just such a fun hobby for an
| engineering type person. The basic process is simple and yet
| infinitely modifiable, and there's numerous deep rabbit holes
| you can go down once you master the basics. It's definitely one
| of those "a moment to learn, a lifetime to master" type
| hobbies. And it's really enjoyable for someone who stares at a
| screen all day to work with your hands and do something that is
| completely analog.
|
| I've been meaning to put together a personal blog with Jekyll
| to learn the tool, maybe that would be an interesting subject
| for some posts.
| shahar2k wrote:
| 100% correct, I am an artist working in realtime visual effects
| (previsualization) and it's surprising how often knowledge of
| how realtime 3d works on the hardware and software end enhances
| what I can do with my art! (and how little fellow artists want
| anything to do with anything technical) there's so much you can
| do if you realize how textures are mapped or what gets affected
| by polygon sorting order...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| This is actually probably more useful for video. Many story lines
| contain a dream outer world sequence. Or just a romantic
| interlude of a flower. Lots of applications, this could be use to
| create a certain feelings and emotions.
| techrat wrote:
| My first thought when I saw the images...
|
| Drug sequences in Dredd. Very similar soft and slightly
| haunting quality.
| dusted wrote:
| that's interesting, especially interesting that nobody has done
| it before, considering the amount of money there are in specialty
| lenses..
|
| This is somewhat an example of "if that was a dollar, someone
| would have picked it up already"
| Arainach wrote:
| The money in lenses goes towards more predictability - sharper,
| wider aperture, faster to focus, smooth bokeh for portraits -
| or technical achievements like ultratelephoto lenses. The
| people who can pay are looking for those features, not random
| effects.
|
| The value here is in novelty - it doesn't look like anything
| else. If it was mass produced, demand for the effect would
| likely go down, not up. And it's certainly not without
| compromise - sharpness across the entire frame in those example
| shots is worse than your average plastic 18-55mm kit zoom.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| There are lenses made for unusual effects rather than optical
| quality, but it's more of a niche market
|
| https://microsites.lomography.com/petzval-58-bokeh-
| control-l...
|
| https://lensbaby.com/products/composer-pro-ii-with-
| sweet-50-...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| From the sample photos it seems like the lens is rather useless
| this way. While some bokeh is awesome, this looks more like
| someone applied an LSD-filter and called it a day; nothing that
| you could use for a portrait. It also seems the pictures are
| not too sharp. Therefore, there's probably not too much money
| to be made.
|
| If this could be a bit smoother in the background, on the other
| hand ...
| Applejinx wrote:
| I dunno. I'd buy a micro 4/3 one like a shot. I'm already
| using lenses from SLR magic that aren't THE sharpest possible
| things, but have really good bokeh and pleasing departure
| from perfect focus outside perfect focal distance.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'd be surprised if this is truly the first time. I'm guessing
| that there is someone that was assembling a lens and did this
| by mistake. After seeing the results, saw it wasn't right, and
| then went back in to see what needed to be corrected.
| bdamm wrote:
| Kinda neat. Many of these remind me of observing a solar eclipse,
| where trees cast shadows with zillions of little crescents. Fun
| to experience in person, but distracting to see in an image
| because I get the distinct "something is not right here" feeling.
|
| Now to really make it art, figure out how to say something with
| the effect. A portrait would have been a nice addition to the
| collection. How would it change the feeling of looking at a face?
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-05-04 23:00 UTC)