imaging

4.2 Gigabytes, or: How to Draw Anything – ⌨️🤷🏻‍♂️📷

4.2 Gigabytes, or: How to Draw Anything – ⌨️🤷🏻‍♂️📷:

4.2 gigabytes.

4.2 gigabytes.

That’s the size of the model that has made this recent explosion possible.

4.2 gigabytes of floating points that somehow encode so much of what we know.

Yes, I’m waxing poetic here. No, I am not heralding the arrival of AGI, or our AI overlords. I am simply admiring the beauty of it, while it is fresh and new.

Because it won’t be fresh and new for long. This thing I’m feeling is not much different from how I felt using email for the first time – “Grandma got my message already? In Florida? In seconds?” It was the nearest thing to magic my child-self had ever seen. Now email is the most boring and mundane part of my day.

There is already much talk about practical uses. Malicious uses. Downplaying. Up playing. Biases. Monetization. Democratization – which is really just monetization with a more marketable name.

I’m not trying to get into any of that here. I’m just thinking about those 4.2 gigabytes. How small it seems, in today’s terms. Such a little bundle that holds so much.

How many images, both real photos and fictional art, were crammed through the auto-encoder, that narrower and narrower funnel of information, until some sort of meaning was distilled from them? How many times must a model be taught to de-noise an image until it understands what makes a tiger different from a leopard? I guess now we know.

And now I suppose we ride the wave until this new magic is both as widely used, and boring, as email. So it goes.

[I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff created with the new AI art tools. Remarkable stuff.]

The “fractional horsepower” http server joins the Nikon D4 party.

[Emphasis is mine -Ed.]

Nikon D4 overview: Digital Photography Review:

WT-5 Wireless Transmitter with web-browser camera control interface 

With the D4 comes a new WiFi transmitter, the WT-5, which is a neat little unit that screws onto the side of the body and draws it’s power from the camera’s battery. Its real party trick, though, is a built-in web browser-based remote camera control interface that doesn’t require you to download or install a specialized app. Essentially, you can log into your camera (with a username and password) using your laptop, tablet or smartphone and its standard web browser, at which point you’re presented with a camera control panel with live view feed. You can adjust a wide range of parameters – exposure mode, shutter speed, aperture, exposure compensation, ISO, white balance and so on, and initiate remote shutter release or video recording.

The WT-5 connects to the socket on the lower left of this image. In the center you can see the microphone and headphone sockets. On the lower right is the Ethernet port.
The web interface also allows you to control multiple cameras simultaneously, including the ability to release their shutters simultaneously. You can even autofocus anywhere in the scene, simply by touching your iPhone or iPad’s screen. Because this is all web-based, you don’t have to physically close to the camera either – in principle you could operate it from a different continent. 

Nikon has clearly paid attention to professional photographers’ workflow requirements when shooting, and has tried to set the camera up so there’s no need to use a laptop alongside it any more. To this end the D4 allows photographers to add full IPTC data to all of their image files as they shoot, and can store 10 data presets each containing 14 fields. There’s a new network setup wizard to configure the camera for use over wired LAN, or WiFi in FTP and HTTP mode. The camera can even use the GP-1 GPS receiver to automatically set its internal clock, so multiple cameras can easily be synced and specific events from a shoot identified by the time at which they occurred.

[I’m so glad to see this begin to happen. And the number of ports on this thing is impressive. Allez!]

Gadgetbox – The Nikon D4

nikon D4

Gadgetbox – The Nikon D4: This DSLR camera makes the pros drool:

Inside the D4’s magnesium alloy body, there’s a 16.1MP FX format CMOS sensor, a 91,000 pixel 3D Matrix Metering system, support for an ISO range from 100-12,800 (expandable from 50-204,800), the ability to shoot 10 fps with full AF/AE (or 11 fps with AF locked), a place for CF or XQD memory cards, and everything it needs to spit out full 1080p video.

[Smokin’ Details here. Look here for some of the more significant “newness”.]

The best American wall map

The best American wall map: David Imus

The best American wall map: David Imus’ “The Essential Geography of the United States of America”:

By contrast, David Imus worked alone on his map seven days a week for two full years. Nearly 6,000 hours in total. It would be prohibitively expensive just to outsource that much work. But Imus—a 35-year veteran of cartography who’s designed every kind of map for every kind of client—did it all by himself. He used a computer (not a pencil and paper), but absolutely nothing was left to computer-assisted happenstance. Imus spent eons tweaking label positions. Slaving over font types, kerning, letter thicknesses. Scrutinizing levels of blackness. It’s the kind of personal cartographic touch you might only find these days on the hand-illustrated ski-trail maps available at posh mountain resorts.

[snip -Ed]

This object—painstakingly sculpted by a lone, impractical fellow—is a triumph of indie over corporate. Of analog over digital. Of quirk and caprice over templates and algorithms. It is delightful to look at. Edifying to study. And it may be the last important paper map ever to depict our country.

[Beautiful, and loaded with visual information. If you love design, maps, or geography this is amazing. Available here, and there’s a downloadable explanatory text here. The index and other stuff are available as well. Wishlisted.]

Fred Blunt’s heartening work

This time of year is rife with Pagan rituals “According to this pagan tradition the mistletoe dart was plucked out of Balder’s fatal wound and given to the goddess of love, Freya. From this, came the custom that a man may kiss a woman if he sees her under the mistletoe.” Seems like as good a reason as any.

Dig Fred Blunt’s work:

Christmas kiss

Jamie Chung Captures the History of Apple

Jamie Chung Captures the History of Apple:

Jamie Chung photographs the history of Apple products for Bloomberg Businessweek. The magazine’s latest issue pays tribute to the late Steve Jobs and his visionary legacy at Apple. Chung’s photographs chart the history of Apple products, from the very first computer Jobs created to the iPhone and the iPad. The slideshow includes commentary from Jobs, the company’s history, and product information.

Chung captured the new and old Apple products in a computer archive in New York City. The shoot was a nostalgic for Chung as he’d once had one of the company’s older models. He says he is “glad to participate in the tribute to Jobs’s legacy.”

See more of Jamie Chung’s photographs of Apple products here.

[Beautiful.]
Source: The Bernstein & Andriulli Blog