Samsung 'Fake' Moon Shots Controversy Puts Computational Photography in the Spotlight

[Ryankontos]

The thing is, why did Samsung have to lie and make it seem to be purely optical? They should've actually bragged about their ML and used this as an example, and pointed out the science (we only see that side of the moon from here anyway). I mean jeez, so many marketing opportunity. Yet they had to lie.

Huawei would laugh as they already did this many moons ago (sure, not ML, but the end is practically the same, you're faking it).

Because there’s an implication that if the camera system is so good that it can take a detailed photo of the moon, then it must be good at other things too. Who really cares specially about being able to take a detailed photo of the moon? It’s the moon.

 

[rgeneral]

Hmm. Will some folks say the moon landing was fake. It was taken by a Samsung phone 😂

 

[imamacperson]

You take any picture you want and I will make it look beautiful! Don't you worry about a thing.
You won't own anything in the future and you will be happy!
I don't want this kind of future!

 

[fourthtunz]

Samsung being dishonest? Who could have ever seen this coming? 😯

I'm shocked! Shocked!

 

[AlphaCentauri]

Well, Samsung lied again. What else is new?

 

[WWPD]

There is no way Samsung landed on the moon, it was all done on a set in South Korea.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

A while back people said that they wanted Apple to make an SLR, but it would be awful

Not necessarily. An Apple ISP combined with a large, high quality sensor (with far less noise per pixel that has to be dealt with and far more light being captured) and SLR quality optics (less distortion correction needed) is kinda the holy grail. The RAW images captured, alone, would be of much higher quality than the RAW that can be captured in the constrained confines of a smart phone.

 

[MathersMahmood]

A shot of the moon i took with my samsung in 2021.

Haven't tried it on my S23 Ultra because i just don't care about looking up and taking a moon shot but i expect it be better than this. The zooms are truly impressive and i don't think it fakes the images.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

I wonder… if you take a photo of the ACTUAL moon with a plane flying in front of it… would the Samsung phone notice it and overlay their pre-rendered moon with the image of the plane? Or just figure, “Nope, my version of this image doesn’t have a crater there!” and overlay it?

 

[Danfango]

I wish people would make stupid cameras again. I miss stupid cameras. No weirdness, no oversharpening, no muddy artifacts, no completely replaced parts of the image, no filters. It got to the point, even with my iPhone 13 Pro that I would rather use my mirrorless.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Haven't tried it on my S23 Ultra because i just don't care about looking up and taking a moon shot but i expect it be better than this. The zooms are truly impressive and i don't think it fakes the images.

I think the point is, though, that because we only ever see one side of the moon, faking a “full moon” image is the easiest image to surreptitiously fake. I think anyone wanting to show what the sensor is capable of (rather than just capturing a full moon) would have the moon being occluded by a hill, tree, or other object OR a non-full moon.

 

[mjschabow]

This isn't a controversy.

 

[T!mmy_gamer]

Samsung's "Space Zoom" feature has come under fire amid complaints that images of the moon are being artificially enhanced to an extreme extent.

Imagine

 

[mjschabow]

Oh, and this whole conversation is stupid. Funny how Apple fans are so quick to jump all over this.

 

[MrRom92]

Between things like this and the rise of AI-generated art, it’s no wonder that there is an entire generation of people becoming enamored with film again.

 

[Danfango]

Oh, and this whole conversation is stupid. Funny how Apple fans are so quick to jump all over this.

This isn't just Apple fans. It's all over the place. There were people complaining about it all over Reddit and HN before the tech press caught on to it.

The failure here is that there should be a button which is "AI Enhance!" rather than this being the default. There would be no problem if it was an explicit rather than implicit feature.

 

[257Loner]

Next year's Samsung Galaxy 24 will replace your selfie face shots with the face of Cary Grant or Katherine Hepburn. 😂

 

[firewood]

Yup. Computational photography based on ML/DNNs isn't really photography. It's the computer software synthesizing a fake image that it's been trained to infer that a human with a really good camera would really like to see when aiming their mobile device that way.

So far, most of the synthetic computational photo images seem close to "real" photos (raw data from dumb cameras), but that may just be (a) the ML models are still fairly small, or (b) that they are getting really good at fooling us humans already.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Between things like this and the rise of AI-generated art, it’s no wonder that there is an entire generation of people becoming enamored with film again.

For at least a couple weeks. Then, they realize how hard it is to get developed and bemoan digital while using it.

 

[IIGS User]

Perception is reality! So many Samsung fans are going to be disappointed by this. But it's still fascinating AI is being used for photography.

View attachment 2172929

 

[Cameront9]

Well, it's autocomplete, but with pixels instead.

Addendum: without computational photography, everyone would see that emperor has no clothes. Are you sure you want raw smartphone camera photos? Are you really, really sure?

RAW photography is already a thing on the iPhone.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

This isn't just Apple fans. It's all over the place. There were people complaining about it all over Reddit and HN before the tech press caught on to it.

The failure here is that there should be a button which is "AI Enhance!" rather than this being the default. There would be no problem if it was an explicit rather than implicit feature.

Yeah, it literally started with Android fans! It’s got a wide “oh, how interesting” appeal.

 

[Manzanito]

What happens if you capture the silhouette of a bird against the moon? Gets erased? Enhanced? You get a full color rendition of the animal? Depends on the size?

Anyway, this is not photography.

 

[BuffaloTF]

I wonder… if you take a photo of the ACTUAL moon with a plane flying in front of it… would the Samsung phone notice it and overlay their pre-rendered moon with the image of the plane? Or just figure, “Nope, my version of this image doesn’t have a crater there!” and overlay it?

There’s someone that used photoshop to draw a smiley face on the moon in one of its own gray colors. The smiley face was still there but with added depth and changed colors after the “cleanup”. It’s in this Reddit post here.

https://www.reddit.com/r/samsung/comments/l7ay2m

So I think the answer to your question is, the plane would be there… but it’d be shaded differently and added to the surface of the moon.

 

[jaehaerys48]

Oh, and this whole conversation is stupid. Funny how Apple fans are so quick to jump all over this.

If Apple was caught doing this Samsung fans wouldn’t shut up about it for years. This is how fanboy wars work lol.