What is computational photography?

To everyone who’s ever schlepped their heavy equipment on a trip, shot RAW and spent hours post-processing, only to have your significant other whip out their smartphone, take one perfect image, and upload it to Instagram without needing any post-processing, this talk is for you. 

How does the emerging field of Computational Photography allow smartphones to take pictures that look like how our eye and brain perceive the scene?

We are entering a new era in photography, one in which “lowly” smartphones are taking pictures that look as good as if you had shot in RAW and post-processed. Sure, nothing beats a big camera for image quality, resolution, and control, but for everyday use normal people are getting great results without any knowledge and without spending time at the computer. What tricks are the smartphone manufacturers using that the big camera companies aren’t? How do they get great results in Night View mode without needing a tripod? Why do they create a 3D map of the image in the phone? And how quickly might your traditional big camera become obsolete?

In this talk, renowned photographer and writer Gary Friedman (of FriedmanArchives.com) explains the clever secrets being employed behind the scenes, and offers impressive examples demonstrating that the quality gap between smartphones and traditional cameras continues to shrink.