913 Epic Episcope

As Chris is on his way to Transylvania (you can follow him on his vlog), he talks about face fixers, an amazing photo and headline combo, re-dubbing movies and if your job as a photographer is safe from our new A.I. overlords.

(Episode artwork: DALL-E 2)

Topics:

  • [NEWS] Scouting Eastern Europe : As you hear this episode, Chris is on his way to Transylvania, crossing Eastern European borders and exploring Prague, Budapest and places in Central Romania for the upcoming 2023 Eastern Europe Photo Road Trip. Follow along on the Scouting Tour Vlog.
  • [PHOTO, AI] Face Fixers : Generating photorealistic faces in DALL-E can be hit or miss. They generally look really good, but sometimes the eyes are a bit mismatched or misshapen. Face Fixers to the rescue.
  • [PHOTO] Autofokus : What a wonderful example of storytelling using photography. And meta levels involving the headline too. This photo shows a German politician who just had a bit of a scandal regarding his mingling with parts of the German auto industry, specifically the CEO of Porsche. So the German paper ZEIT ran a story about this scandal. So what did the photographer do? Focused on a car behind the politician, with really shallow depth of field. And then they titled the article “Auto-Fokus” – Simply brilliant!
  • [PHOTO, AI] The Champion re-dub : In some countries, movies in a non-native language are subtitled. In some they dub movies to the local language. Germany is one of those and while the majority of Germans seem to be just fine with it, some people (including Chris) find it quite jarring because either lip-sync isn’t perfect, the voice doesn’t fit the actor or the voice performance doesn’t feel right. Here’s a new (and a bit mind-blowing) AI-based method that solves at least the lip-sync issue.
  • [AI] Tipping Points – Ash Jafari : Since DALL-E can now be used commercially, and as it’s improving, you will see more and more businesses wonder if they want to a) pay a graphic designer or photographer for 3 hours of work or b) write a prompt, iterate a couple of times and end up with a good enough result for their purposes. Within minutes and for just a few dollars. Ash Jafari makes the convincing point that we will see those tipping points sooner rather than later.
  • [COOL] Episcope Lens : Back in the 90s, the small-sensor DV cameras had the issue that all small-sensor cameras have: too much depth of field. There were several adapters on the market that allowed 35mm lenses to be used on DV cameras by means of projection. Here’s a DIY project that does the same but on a totally new level.

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