Dvlee

Isn't this just a variation of the technology that Fujifilm/Sigma cameras have been using for years? It sounds similar to the techniques of using individual sensors for each color and luminosity and then combining the data for a lower file size.

In any case, I like the concept of pixel bining to reduce noise and I can see this being of great use in APS-C and full frame DSLRs. But does it necessarily have to be built into the camera? I could see a process like this as part of Photoshop or Lightroom that could be applied to any high megapixel image.

I've been doing a process something like that just by using the conventional features in Photoshop in which I apply some noise reduction, which blurs the image slightly. Then I downrez and sharpen resulting in a smaller but less noisy image.

What I think is most interesting is they squeezed that many pixels into a small chip. I'm not at the least interested in a better cell phone camera.

You're correct. The issue is not limited to facebook. Being on the top of the heap, fb gets alot of attention regarding privacy policies and user terms. fb users are more aware that they are not its customers, they are the product, and that is making them more wary of how fb uses the information. But any site that gathers information or allows content to be posted, probably has similar terms and condtions as fb. Because they are less well known they can fly under the radar and escape scrutiny.

But I truly believe that ambiguous terms are intended to confuse the user. But to what ends? The stated terms give away more rights than are needed to perform the operational functions of the portal. Although fb is not openly in the stock photography business, it could at some future date offer the creative content on its servers up for sale. We have all granted them permission to do so and would have no legal recourse because we agreed to those terms.

I attended a seminar by an intellectual property rights attorney. He related this:

A pro photographer posted a photo he had taken of a celebrity on his facebook page. A few weeks later the image appeared in a celebrity magazine. The attorney contacted the publisher who claimed they purchased the image from an agency and had the right to publish. The agency acknowledged it had sold the image and claimed to have the right to "relicense" (sound familiar?), that it had acquired the image from an undisclosed third party. Rather than face an expensive copyright infringement suit, they paid a generous settlement. How the agency acquired the image was left undetermined. All one can do is speculate.
But this underscores the importance of actually registering the copyright.

@ Graybalanced- Ususually the devil in the users agreements is hidden withen reams otext that few people read throughly. For facebook, the devil is in the lack of details, as you mentioned above.

When I fisrtjoined facebook the term that concerned me was "re-"relicense." That has now been changed to 'sublicense." What concerns me is that it does not provide any terms or details on how it could be sublicensed.

When I license an image to a client, the terms of usage are very specific. I might, on rare occasion, sell the right to relicense an image, but I won't just give it away. Some clients insist upon a transfer of copyright or exclusive/unlimited rights and when they do, I insist upon the transfer of additional payment to me. The wording to do this is very simple...it's much easier to give rights away than it is to protect them.

facebook does not need the right to a sublicense in order to put the image on their servers.

(Con't. below)

The images I place on facebook are mostly teasers or giveaways for promotional purposes. I often post a single image and a link to the photog gallery on my Zenfolio page.

The Zenfolio slideshow displays a full screen image, is download protected but also enables one to sell prints, digital files or photo-merchandize .

The slideshow is full screen with a choice of background tones. Image DATA may be displayed or turned off for a clean display.

Last time I looked FB still had in place its rights grab policy in the user agreement. While they have a disclaimer stating that FB does not claim ownership of the copyright, it claims all the rights that are afforded to the owner of the Copyright, including the right to use, distribute and even relicense the work without permission, notification or payment. They claim the right to any works that are put on their servers. This means that if someone else places a link to your work on FB, they will access the RSS feed to generate a thumbnail. That recides on their server so they claim usage rights to the work.

I only place expendable images that have no monetary value on facebook. For other photos I place a link to my online portfolio and I am watermarking the image that will be used to create the RSS feed thumbnail so that the image that recides on FBs server is unsaleable.

I put my photos on my Zenfolio website, where the slidewho is displayed full screen and the imagare not downlaodable. Then I post a link to the slideshow on facebook.

The added feature of Zenfolio is that if someone REALLY likes the picture..they can order a print and I can make a profit.

@wlachen..Gold does not really have any special properties that make it intrinsicly valuable. Its value is that it's rare and it's pretty. Same is true with diamonds...Iron on the otherhand is one of the most common elements of Earth and it's not particularly pretty but it's valuable in that it is incredibly usefull. Millions of tos of it are produced and sold every year. You'll spend much more money on iron in your lifetime than you will on gold,even though much o fit will sit out in your driveway,slowly degrading into rust and losing value. It's true value is in it's usefullness.

The value of GOOD wedding photography is not in it's usefulness but in it's scarcity and beauty.

I like the way a long lens compresses the elements of the scene making them look like they are much closer...orif one backs up and uses a long lens the more disatant objects are larger in proportion to objects in between. This is a good way to make a far away object more proanant in the image.

A panoramic shoot comprised of a series on vertical images shot with a long lens will make the stant object fill more verticle space instead of a pencil thin line with too much foreground or sky as one would get from a full frame wide angle shot.

There are many ways to use long lenses for landscape shots!

While quickly scrolling through the DP main page, as I scrolled past the entry for this article I noticed how in the image of the rocks in the water, the rocks look like a pair of eyes peering out of the water and a big bulbous nose. Now I cannot look at the photo without seeing that. LOL

This is not something that is unique to Korea or China, I see this all around me in America. It seems that the youngsters are pointing their camera's at themselves more than anything else and they change their facebook profile picture practically every day.

But I'm afraid this social netoworking has made teens very self centered. They aren't photographers interested in taking good pictures, it's just a new part of the teenage social culture.

When I was a teen I shot at least one roll of 35mm film everyday, yet I hardly ever pointed the camera at myself.

This habit of taking pictures of themselves comes from the technology and the culture of online social netwrking and is not unique to Asian or any othe culture. I've seen the same thing going on in Africa, the middle east, Russia, Europe....pretty much everywhere.

The people who comment are not a bunch of ignorants, rather they are serious photographers who find this sort of thing to be frivolous and silly.

Ha! My old dumb phone displayed the timeall the time, but my new smart' phone goes into power saving mode and shuts off the display! I have top touch the power button to see the time!

I've started wearing a watch again because it's always there, always on and I don't have to put things down or take off my gloves to activate it.

But I agree, people don't want to be carrying around a bag full of gadgets that do the same thing. I asked a bunch of teenage girls if they would like one of those cameras and they said no..they already have smart phones and it;s already enough carrying one around and keeping an eye on it and protecting it...they don't want another gadget to potentially get lost, stolen or broken or just another thing to clutter up their handbag.

I'm the opposite...i now have a smart phone, a watch and a DSLR camera with me at all times. There's a difference between something that does everything and things that do fewer things but do them well.

If they can use the EXIF DATA to track pictures taken with a stolen camera, how about a service that tracks the unauthorized use of copyrighted photographs?

But the kind of person this sort of 'innovation' is intended for is the person who already has a cell phone with a camera...they don't really want to carry around another device that duplicates what they can already do with their smart phone.

Since Samsung is already well entrenched in the smart phone market, they don't really need to create a new product to capture that market segment. But I could see Nikon or Canon doing this.

Eventually there will be a merging of smart phone and point and shoot technology. Samsung is well positioned to lead that segment but other phone and camera companies will have to acquire new technologies.

These hybrid point and shoots are of little use to most of us. When most of us have cell phones that can do more than these kinds of cameras could and DSLRs and ILCs that have image quality and finctions far beyond what can be crammed into a point and shoot, these kinds of cameras are redundant.

Spot on! One could just as easily stick a mirror on the camera side of their smart phone.

The first thing I teach young enthusiasts is to know which end of the camera has the lens and which has the viewfinder and which way they should be pointed.

While there are a few artists that have made a name for themselves by doing self portraits, generally speaking, whether one is a fine artist or just a rank amateur, the best photography happens when the photographer points the lens away from themself!

Yes, I know that cameras like these are intended for teens and youngsters who are only interested in posting pictures of themselves on facebook. They can get satisfactory results with their smart phones, they don't really need a camera specially designed for the purpose.

The camera companies are trying to hang onto the point and shoot market that is losing ground to smart phones by cramming them full of gimmicky functions. As a result point and shoots have become too complicated for the market they are intended for.

An 18 mpx APS-c sensor would capture exactly the same image magnification as a 10 mpx.

If you make an 8 x 12 of the full frame at 300ppi, both prints would yield exactly the same magification. The 10mpx will yield an 8 x 12 at 300ppi without uprezing. To make a print from the 18mpx you will have to toss some pixels away by downrezing the file size.

The 18 mpx will yield a print up to 11 x 17 without uprezing. The 10 mpx would have to be uprezed slightly so there would be some loss of details but would yield a print of exactly the same magnification.

Beyond 11 x 17, both files will need to be uprezed to maintain 300ppi, so both files would be suffering a degradation of image quality at larger sizes.

While a higher resolution sensor might capture more detail per mm, that may not translate into more details in the final output.

Resolution of detail is a seperate charactoristic than magnification.

As I mentioned in an earlier reply, in macro photography perspective is very important. Just blowing up an image shot from a distance does not give the same result as actual close up photography.

And while longer focal legnth macro lenses allow a longer working distance they do not provide the same perspective as a shorter focal legnth macro used very very close.

I always make the distiction between in camera magnification and post production magnification by refering only to the former as magnification, the latter is more appropriately described as "enlargment"

Some may question why this information is even relevent. Well it's relevent in deciding which lens or accessories to buy to achieve the degree of magnification desired.

Once the equipment is in hand, you're not really going to think about it, your just going to use what you've got.

Of course it''s really handy to know exactly how much magnification a so called macro lens is really delivering. It might be that the so called macro lens really isn't delivering the goods. I know I've got a few of those. I never purchased them with macro in mind. If macro capability were something I was looking for in a lens then I certainly want to know exactly how much magnification the lens is really delivering before making my purchase decision.

I use a number of different close up photography tools including reversal rings, extension tubes, etc. By using the methods described in the article I can determine the exact magnification that each method is capable of delivering.

Last words....Using the same lens at it's closest focusing distance, the size of the subject at the focal plane would be the same on both the full frame and APS-c . If the subject fills the frame at 1:1 on the APS-c camera, the full frame will capture a wider field of view and have more space around it, but the magnification will still be the same.

Macro photography is more than just a matter of magnification, it is also a matter of perspective. Just enlarging a piece of an image that was shot from a distance will not yield the same kind of image as on that was shot close up. Likewise using a longer macro lens that allows a greater working distance from the subject will not yield exactly the same image as using a shorter lens very close to the subject. It's a matter of perspective.