Samsung: Lying Liars who Lie

Samsung phone cameras boast of a fancy “Space Zoom,” and they show it off by taking apparently super detailed pictures of the moon from Earth.

Turns out, though, it’s all smoke and mirrors.

Check it out. The long and short of it is someone thought this looked too good to be true, so he captured a deliberately blurry and detail-free photo of the moon, displayed it on his computer screen, and then took a picture of it with his Samsung.

Samsung’s camera identified it as a picture of the moon — and then basically replaced the image with a manipulated high res picture pulled from somewhere else and doctored to look like an actual capture.

Samsung is not covering itself in glory here; they’ve been constantly prevaricating and providing “blurry” answers when challenged, and even at one point said something that seems demonstrably false:

In 2021, Input Mag published a lengthy feature on the “fake detailed moon photos” taken by the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Samsung told the publication that “no image overlaying or texture effects are applied when taking a photo” but that the company uses AI to detect the Moon’s presence and “then offers a detail enhancing function by reducing blurs and noises.”

Except, if you start with a shitty, blurry photo, there are no details to enhance, and no “noise” to remove. If you end up with a sharp picture, then the details have been supplied by the camera, not reality. That’s lying.

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Holiday Photo Tip!

When using your fisheye, be careful about the placement of your hand on the camera body. Just because your hand is behind the lens doesn’t mean it’s not in the shot.

PC250550

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I might need a drone now

Rand has picked up a drone, and in so doing experienced a few “Holy Shit!” moments. Click through, read, and watch. They’re still spendy — the one he grabbed is $700 — but the video footage is just amazing, and it’s a cinch such tech will be half that price in a year or two.

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It’s marketing, but the footage is still great

This short GoPro film documents Kevin Richardson’s relationship with, among other things, wild lions in South Africa. They’re very happy to see him, on the order of the old Christian the Lion videos; they run up to him and want to snuggle. I’m sure his science is dodgy, but the video is still fantastic.

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In these pics: LOTS AND LOTS OF JOY

Of general interest, perhaps, are pictures of The Joy Formidable playing at Fitzgerald’s earlier this month.

Of more narrow interest are deeply joyful pictures of Frank and Hadleigh’s wedding weekend in Jackson, which was SO SOUTHERN.

(Heathen Nation: “How Southern was it?”)

Well, I’ll tell you: It was so southern that the officiant was a blood relative of Flannery O’Connor.

Finally, because if I don’t include this, someone will complain: one more pic of Joy.

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