917 Are Starlink the Good Ones?

09/14/22 • -1 min

A look at exponential growth (it’s the smartphones), an update about the state of satellite streak mitigation to keep the astro photographers happy, two history lessons (hello Lytro, hello Magnum) and a ground-breaking photo of a planet.

Topics:

[PHOTO] Have the Smartphones Won? : Here’s an interesting animation that shows various cameras since the 1950s and how many were sold. We start with sub-million numbers and take it from there. Have the Smartphones won? Oh well...
[SPACE, PHOTO, NEWS] Starlink and Astro Photography – an Update : Chris talks to astronomer Meredith Rawls about low-earth-orbit satellite light pollution in astronomy and astro photography. Meredith is involved in the CPS, the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky From Satellite Constellation Interference and has a lot of really interesting insights. Including new information about how Starlink plans to mitigate satellite streaks coming from their constellation.
[PHOTO] Video Tip: The History of Lytro : Remember Lytro? Here’s a great video taking a good look at the history of a really interesting technology and how it ended up with Google.
[SPACE, PHOTO] JWST Images the First Exoplanet : Back in ep 912 Chris talked about how JWST finds exoplanets. One of those methods is direct imaging (e.g. taking a photo of it) – JWST hast done just that for the first time.
[PHOTO, NEWS] Happy Birthday Magnum! : It’s Magnum’s 75th anniversary and Chris takes a minute to talk about some of the key moments in their long life.

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2025 Photo Tours with Chris Marquardt
ONLY 3 SPOTS
May 2025: Eastern European Electric Photo Road Trip, 10 days drive and explore with Chris (Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Transylvania)
German workshops:
» HS Mensch
» HS Licht
» HS Sehwerkstatt
» Großformat (analog)
» Analog Einstieg
» Discover the Top Floor - Photo Tours and Workshops with Chris Marquardt

Topics:

[PHOTO] Have the Smartphones Won? : Here’s an interesting animation that shows various cameras since the 1950s and how many were sold. We start with sub-million numbers and take it from there. Have the Smartphones won? Oh well...
[SPACE, PHOTO, NEWS] Starlink and Astro Photography – an Update : Chris talks to astronomer Meredith Rawls about low-earth-orbit satellite light pollution in astronomy and astro photography. Meredith is involved in the CPS, the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky From Satellite Constellation Interference and has a lot of really interesting insights. Including new information about how Starlink plans to mitigate satellite streaks coming from their constellation.
[PHOTO] Video Tip: The History of Lytro : Remember Lytro? Here’s a great video taking a good look at the history of a really interesting technology and how it ended up with Google.
[SPACE, PHOTO] JWST Images the First Exoplanet : Back in ep 912 Chris talked about how JWST finds exoplanets. One of those methods is direct imaging (e.g. taking a photo of it) – JWST hast done just that for the first time.
[PHOTO, NEWS] Happy Birthday Magnum! : It’s Magnum’s 75th anniversary and Chris takes a minute to talk about some of the key moments in their long life.

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Previous Episode

916 12K to the Moon

Image style transfer, 12k motion picture scan, a different kind of photo bomb, the moon photo conspiracy and of course the new iPhone 14 with its new 48MP camera.

Topics:

[AI, PHOTO] Stable Diffusion: image2image : Stable Diffusion has just added Image 2 Image functionality to their web interface. So you can drop in a crayon drawing and make it into a stunning photograph, just by giving SD a text prompt.
[PHOTO, ANALOG] 12k motion picture scan : A cutting-edge stroll down memory lane where we combine motion picture film (which is still used by many of the greats in Hollywood) with state-of-the-art 12k motion picture scanning in the lab. A great look behind the scenes.
[PHOTO, AI] : The iPhone 14 has been announced the other day, of course with updates to the cameras. The pro version will come with physically even bigger cameras, a larger 48MP sensor (all usable in ProRAW, otherwise pixel-binned to 12MP), a new 2x zoom mode that’s not digital zoom, but cropped from the sensor, better low-light performance, 24 fps for cinematic video, better anti shake, a new selfie-camera with autofocus and of course it’s filled with a ton of AI and neural processing.
[OTHER, NEWS] Photo Bomb : Don’t say the B word at an airport. Or, apparently, don’t bring a complicated-looking camera on an airplane. Here’s a weird story of a woman being convinced that a guy with a camera was in fact a terrorist, making the pilots do an emergency landing and leading to the photographer being detained for hours. He’s now suing.
[OTHER] S21 moon debunk : Remember the stories about the Galaxy S21’s 100x zoom that could take sharp images of the moon where other phones just produced a washed-out blog? Pretty soon the story emerged that Samsung used AI to detect the moon and replace it with better imagery. Well, someone went down the rabbit hole to figure out if that rumor was true.

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Next Episode

918 Getty Bans AI

Chris is catching up on the latest developments in the world of camera makers (Nikon goes 3D printing?!), new papers (awesome noise reduction), a train set with 10 miles of tracks (and photography thereof) and of one big question to Getty: is it really just about copyright questions? Really?

Topics:

[PHOTO, NEWS] Nikon vor 620 Millionen Euro Übernahme : Nikon is planning take over SLM technologies, a German company that specializes on 3D printing. The 620 EUR acquisition seems to be going forward. Nikon going into modern manufacturing seems like an interesting move.
[AI, PHOTO] RawNeRF : Denoising technology has been developed to near perfection over the last 20+ years. From simple pixel averaging to more recent AI-based detail restoration techniques. Now a paper about RawNeRF (NeRF standing for Neural Radiance Fields) outlines a new technique that uses multiple photos to achieve some pretty stunning results.
[PHOTO] Miniatur Wunderland, Laowa und Cybertruck : Miniatur Wunderland is located in Hamburg, Germany. Not only is it a huge train set with over 10 miles of tracks, they also have moving cars, planes, landscapes and it’s become quite a visitor attraction. They are also the perfect use case for both versions of the Laowa probe lens.
[PHOTO, AI, NEWS] Getty bans AI art : This one is not really surprising. Getty Images being one of the biggest commercial photo agencies has now banned AI-generated art from their library. This includes StableDiffusion, DALL-E and of course Midjourney. They claim it’s because of unclear copyright, but Chris suspects something different to be real reason behind the decision.

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