Exposure Simulator

(andersenimages.com)

81 points | by sneela 6 hours ago ago

30 comments

  • semiquaver an hour ago ago

    I know that modern systems like aperture priority or full auto make things easier, but I maintain that the many photos I took with a fully manual film camera (Canon AE-1) were simply better than those taken with any subsequent DSLR. The simple act of calibrating the shutter speed, aperture size, and manual focus before and during shooting helps you slow down and think about composition and framing, making the end result more valuable. Same goes for the limited number of shots on a roll of film.

    Nowadays it’s easier to just take lots of shots and fiddle with the setting and do bracketing and such. But I maintain something important was lost by the move to automatic cameras.

    • mmh0000 9 minutes ago ago

      Don't worry! We're moving away from automatic cameras, too. Soon, you'll just use ChatGPT to generate your vacation images on demand.

      I'm being a little hyperbolic, but it really seems like, for a non-insignificant portion of the population, that will be true.

  • PetitPrince 2 hours ago ago

    For me it's missing something to illustrate the relationship between shutter speed and motion blur. If the subject was a running fan instead of of lightbulb that would have been ideal.

  • ChrisMarshallNY 5 hours ago ago

    That does a fairly good job.

    I'm sure that image nerds would poke holes in it, but it seems to work pretty much exactly the way it does IRL.

    The noise at high ISO is where it can get specific. Some manufacturers make cameras that actually do really well, at high ISO, and high shutter speed. This seems to reproduce a consumer DSLR.

    • zokier 13 minutes ago ago

      Camera ISO and noise can be really complicated and even contentious topic. One complication is that some cameras are "ISO invariant" and on those cameras afaik it is beneficial to stick to the one or two native ISO values. There is also the whole discussion around ETTR etc

    • JKCalhoun 3 hours ago ago

      I think it is excellent as well—that it also demonstrates aperture and shutter priority is a bonus.

      I do feel (image nerding now) that its shutter/ISO visual for showing the image over/under-exposed is not quite correct. It appears they show incorrect exposure by taking the "correct" image and blend (multiply) with either white or blend with black (on the other end of the exposure spectrum) to produce the resulting image.

      I suppose I am expecting something more like "levels" that pushes all the pixels to white (or black) until they are forced to clip. (But maybe I am too trained in photo-editing tools and expect the film to behave in the same way.)

    • arghwhat 5 hours ago ago

      With the disclaimer that I am comparing to the memory of some entry-level cameras, I would still say that it's way too noisy.

      Even on old, entry-level APS-C cameras, ISO1600 is normally very usable. What is rendered here at ISO1600 feels more like the "get the picture at any cost" levels of ISO, which on those limited cameras would be something like ISO6400+.

      Heck, the original pictures (there is one for each aperture setting) are taken at ISO640 (Canon EOS 5D MarkII at 67mm)!

      (Granted, many are too allergic to noise and end up missing a picture instead of just taking the noisy one which is a shame, but that's another story entirely.)

      • einr 3 hours ago ago

        Noise depends a lot on the actual amount of light hitting the sensor per unit of time, which is not really a part of the simulation here. ISO 1600 has been quite usable in daylight for a very long time; at night it's a somewhat different story.

        The amount and appearance of noise also heavily depends on whether you're looking at a RAW image before noise processing or a cooked JPEG. Noise reduction is really good these days but you might be surprised by what files from even a modern camera look like before any processing.

        That said, I do think the simulation here exaggerates the effect of noise for clarity. (It also appears to be about six years old.)

      • ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago ago

        Yeah, I don't think that it's easy to reproduce noise (if it was, noise reduction would be even better). Also, bokeh/depth of field. That's not so easy to reproduce (although AI may change that).

    • 1e1a 5 hours ago ago

      Video showcasing ISO noise behavior of a few different cameras: https://youtu.be/iiMfAmWbWSg?t=94s

      • ChrisMarshallNY 5 hours ago ago

        That's a pretty good demo!

        Very limited camera choices, though.

        • 1e1a 4 hours ago ago

          Yeah, it would be interesting and useful to see this across many more cameras.

          • ChrisMarshallNY an hour ago ago

            Some of the new Nikon cameras have excellent high-ISO performance. Also, they now own RED, so we should see some interesting stuff, down the road.

    • sneela 4 hours ago ago

      I recently bought a film camera (Minolta X-700) and I wasted a whole roll because I inverted the aperture (i.e, 2 = sharp, 32 = blur)...

      I'm interested to see how the roll turns out - gave it for development the other day, had a good laugh with the employees though.

      I now have a mnemonic for it: Blor - a (somewhat) portmanteau of Blur and low. So low aperture = blur.

      Edit for clarification: I mean low number (2 vs 32) = blur

      • tiagod 4 hours ago ago

        High aperture = Blur

        Unfortunately the lower number actually means bigger aperture.

        • sneela 4 hours ago ago

          And that's what exactly confused me :)

          With my mnemonic, I say low *number = blur

          I should have been more specific

          • Filligree 3 hours ago ago

            The aperture size is usually described as e.g. f/32, where f is a camera-specific constant.

            Denominator, not numerator. That's why larger number = smaller aperture.

            • armadsen an hour ago ago

              To be a little more precise, f is not a camera-specific constant. It's the focal length of the lens. It's a formula that tells you the diameter of the entrance pupil. So at a focal length of 50mm, an aperture value of f/2 means an entrance pupil diameter of 25mm.

              But photographers generally just say "f2", meaning an aperture value of two set on the dial of the camera/lens. It's one stop faster (twice as much light) as f/2.8. It'll give you a relatively shallow depth of field, but not as shallow as e.g. f/1.4.

      • 4gotunameagain 4 hours ago ago

        The larger the entrance pupil is, the narrower the depth of field is.

        The smaller, i.e. the closest to an ideal pinhole camera, the wider the depth of field is. A an ideal pinhole camera has infinite depth of field.

        Unfortunately the aperture f numbers are the wrong way round; larger numbers correspond to smaller diameters.

    • turnsout 35 minutes ago ago

      It needs to be updated to do its calculations in linear light, but it's probably useful for getting an intuitive sense of what the different levers of photography do to an image.

  • trimaster 3 hours ago ago

    Not sure why value on the exposure compensation scale changes in manual mode when ISO is fixed. Shouldn't it be static in that case, unless ISO was in auto?

    • czpl 3 hours ago ago

      That's a light meter, not exposure compensation.

  • pimlottc 3 hours ago ago

    It seems to be impossible to grab the sliders on mobile Safari

    • dahart 2 hours ago ago

      Try tapping on the target value

  • erghjunk 2 hours ago ago

    that's an insane amount of noise at 200 ISO.

    • 10729287 an hour ago ago

      Probably Foveon sensor.

  • ggambetta 3 hours ago ago

    Nice, but I'm going to need some ND filters :)

  • 1e1a 5 hours ago ago

    Changing the ISO appears to scale the noise differently from the rest of the image.

    • dahart 2 hours ago ago

      Yep, just like a real camera.

  • cratermoon 2 hours ago ago

    This is missing a setting for the kind of light falling on the subject. Is it full open sunlight? Open shade? Overcast? Sidelight? Backlight?

    It all matters.