I was talking to a coworker earlier today about the ridiculous quality of today’s smartphone cameras. He pointed out how it’s becoming more and more difficult for professional photographers to charge what they have been. The parallel here is how the invention of photography. That completely destroyed the value of artists and yet led to the launch of the modern art movements - Impressionism, Surrealism, Data, and countless others. Without photography would these have happened?

The more interesting point to me was how the quality is not solely due to the camera but also due to the software. There’s a ton of computer vision behind the scenes to create the beautiful shots - especially being able to choose the various photo styles, filters, and lighting modes. That’s not just the camera working but the massive investment in the software. It’s difficult to find how much code is built into the operating systems to support the cameras but it can’t be trivial and grows with every new release. I’d love to see a breakdown of the code in stock Android and stock iOS and grouped by the functionality it supports.

Software changed the way we do networking and software is changing the way we do photography.