Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

Looking back on the days when we stayed at home, we all had a wonderful feeling: before we knew it, our cooking skills had greatly improved. Although the ingredients are still those ingredients, and even the choice of ingredients during the house is relatively scarce, but we spend more time, cost and thought in cooking, the same ingredients have changed a different taste.

This is like mobile photography, the area we pay most attention to when we buy a mobile phone: we all want a good picture, just as we all want a delicious food. But where does this visual delicacy come from? Parameters? A camera? Or chips and systems?

In fact, when light and shadow flow into a mobile phone, it is like some fresh ingredients are sent to the kitchen. The quality of the ingredients determined by the hardware is of course important, but the calculation provided by the mobile phone for photography is the cooking skill of the chef and the beginning of giving the photo a beautiful soul.

The importance of computing for mobile phone photography was actually determined when the smartphone form was born. Compared with professional photography equipment such as DSLRs, mobile phones do not have the upper hand in hardware such as lenses. However, mobile phones have chip computing power, software stack, cloud collaboration and multi-camera arrays that cameras do not have. So the only answer for mobile phones to compete with cameras or even surpass them is computing.

Under this logic, a cross-research field called computational photography has long sprung up in academia, which integrates computer graphics, machine vision, optics, sensors and other technical systems, and is an absolute frontier discipline.

The food must be in accordance with the season. When Huawei's P40 series is released in China on April 8, this should be the best time to explore computational photography. Because the P40 series integrated XD Fusion and hardware / software synergy not only push mobile photography to a new commanding height, but also demonstrate Huawei's complete understanding and unique thinking in the field of computational photography.

It's like a mysterious and delicious restaurant that suddenly announces that diners can visit the kitchen one day. For a long time, we have always thought that the photos taken by Huawei P-series are so different, but it seems not clear where the difference is. It's like going to a high-end restaurant and you'll find it delicious but it's hard to figure out how the food is done.

The details shown in P40 are suitable for talking about the origin and logic of the "culinary art" of computational photography.

We hope to discuss the following questions in the story of the P40 series: what on earth is computational photography? Why is it that apart from Google and Apple, only Huawei explicitly proposed computational photography?

Behind the image peak achieved by Huawei's P40 series, there are some questions about the ultimate value of mobile photography.

Stanford Salon

The history of computational photography is not long. But looking back at its history, it may subvert many of our perceptions of mobile photography.

In 2010, some "fantasists" at Stanford University got together and began to wonder whether photography equipment could program the captured images like computers in photography, so that photography is no longer the world of photographers and refiners, but open to all ordinary people.

But at that time, all SLR, card machines and smartphones could not meet this demand. So Stanford's team teamed up with Nokia Research Center and Disney researchers to develop FCam, which combines programming, computing and photography.

Later, the team was quickly poached by Google and became the founder of the Android camera framework.

The core idea of computational photography is that mobile photography is not just a mobile phone + a camera, but hopes to mobilize the computing power, algorithm power and hardware collaboration ability of the mobile phone when shooting. Combine the intelligence of the computer with the ability of the camera.

After ten years, computational photography has gradually broken out of the academic circle and become a new direction for industrial giants to focus on. For example, at last year's iPhone 11 launch event, Apple focused on the concept of computational photography, which has become the protagonist of the photography section since Google's Pixel 3.

It is no exaggeration to say that computational photography has become a required course and main battlefield for world-class mobile phone manufacturers. Fortunately, Huawei is still not absent this time, and even came up with a more systematic and comprehensive computational photography solution than Google and Apple.

The essence of cooking

Let's look at computational photography from another perspective: if the quality of the camera determines the "food grade" of photography, then the comprehensive ability to calculate photography determines delicious cooking.

Before we understand the computational photography system of Huawei P40 series, we need to understand that there are two concepts that must be clarified in the field of mobile photography. One is the supreme theory of pixels, that the bigger the pixel, the better photography is, this judgment is like as long as the meat is fresh enough, then simply eat raw, which is tantamount to ignoring the existence of cooking; the other is the "Dwarf General Theory", which ignores the overall effect of mobile phone photography, but infinitely enlarges a certain technical detail as a selling point, just like a restaurant with a bad taste, so focus on promoting our pepper is very good.

Looking back on the image shock brought to us by the P series, we often find that what surprises us is the photo itself, rather than some technology and parameters. This is the true face of mobile photography as a culinary skill: what mobile photography really competes with is no deficiency, co-innovation of software and hardware, and reverse understanding of technology based on goals.

It's like a good cook can't screw up in any way; he must choose ingredients as well as cook and decorate, and be judged by the taste of the diner.

So we can see that what Huawei P40 series brings is not some technology or hardware innovation in photography, but the systematic improvement of hardware and software co-operation. The P40 series is equipped with the largest image sensor, a 1.28in CMOS; and a global debut with full-pixel 8-core focus, and dark light can focus quickly. The 10x optical zoom on Huawei P40 Pro+ contains many original patents, such as reflection periscope ultra-long focal structure, nanoscale high precision reflector, chute AF long life motor and so on.

And these hardware breakthroughs are not the whole of P40 photography, but the beginning of it.

Three tones of calculation

The story of computational photography has just begun when the new camera matrix, outsole sensor and focus technology send the sweetest visual ingredients to the "kitchen" of the P40 series. How to present this visual delicacy to the eyes of users is the work of the whole XD Fusion.

Unlike Apple's computational photography, the XD Fusion in Huawei's P40 series does not treat computational photography as an ability to appear in a particular scene or time, but a systematic way of processing all photos into the computing board. All photos involving post-processing algorithms, multi-camera fusion, machine vision recognition or pixel-level image optimization will enter the XD Fusion system, and Huawei has included video shooting in computational photography for the first time.

This is a new answer given by Huawei in the field of computational photography, and it can also be said to be the most cutting-edge and complete solution in the field of computational photography. Behind it is Huawei P series in the image step by step to adhere to the exploration.

XD Fusion is not a completely new capability, but a combination of Huawei's long-term efforts in night shooting, telephoto, AI, and image optimization. For example, Huawei put forward the hand-held super night view for the first time in the industry, and put forward the master of AI photography for the first time, these capabilities are retained and integrated into XD Fusion.

To some extent, the final meeting of XD Fusion with users is the coronation of an excellent chef to "God of Food" and the exploration of Huawei P-series images that vary from year to year.

Let's turn on the XD Fusion image engine and see what kind of taste this celebrity chef is good at. XD Fusion has a lot of algorithms and capabilities. To sum up, Huawei's computational photography is a lingering three tones:

First, coordination.

How to coordinate multi-camera image acquisition is the first task of XD Fusion. For each extra camera, there is an extra data input source and a series of superimposed task processing programs. At this time, XD Fusion should control the fusion relationship between the main camera and wide-angle, TOF lens, telephoto lens, and even the fusion of P40 Pro+ binocular telephoto. It's like a chef, the first thing to do is to combine different ingredients into one dish.

Second, nature.

The taste of Chinese food is natural. But if you want to pursue nature in photography, you must first understand what nature is. The second function of XD Fusion is to segment, understand and process image semantics based on machine vision technology. Through high-level semantic analysis, let the phone know what the object is, so that it can be targeted and optimized, especially to ensure the landing of the new P40 series AI capabilities, such as removing passers-by, removing reflection and so on.

Third, exquisite.

High-end gourmet taste often competes with the final details. The same is true of computational photography. Behind each photo, there are problems such as signal-to-noise ratio, full well capacity, and so on. The ability of XD Fusion is that it will deal with picture quality, color, light and shadow, dynamic range, virtual degree and so on through the neural network system, so that the final image is instantly refined without leaving any defects.

In fact, you don't need what XD Fusion looks like to open it, just like we don't have any motivation to visit celebrity chefs' kitchens other than curiosity. All we need is taste and enjoyment, satisfaction and smile when we press the shutter and browse the photos.

P40 series grand proposed computational photography at the same time, but to remind users do not need to explore professional algorithms, open the XD Fusion box, complex calculation is precisely to make taking pictures easier.

The P40 series will eventually produce the only image flavor that users can remember.

The taste of time and space

Let's go back to the original place of the problem. over the years, photography lovers have remembered a taste-the unique photographic flavor of the P series.

But how can the smell be described logically? The key to this problem is that the focus of the P40 series is not on XD Fusion itself, but on what it achieves: to get through all the obstacles and take a good picture.

In the multi-camera combination adopted by Huawei P40 series, each camera has its own strengths and can work closely together, which are combined with the computational photography system to form the most complex and sophisticated mobile image system today. But these abilities are not developed for the sake of parameters and performance, but for the goal of taking better pictures. Just like a good cook will not buy food casually, but first have the dishes and the pursuit of taste, and then return to nature to choose ingredients.

From the journey of the Huawei P series to the new height of the P40 series, the goal of this road has always been the same, that is to make mobile photography possible to travel through time and space.

Time and space are the basic elements of our universe, but they are also the core obstacles to photography. The change of time brings the shuttle between the sun and the moon, which brings us the problems of dim light, weak light and backlight; the proximity and distance of space are out of reach, which brings eternal hindrance to photography.

To this end, we have witnessed the P20 series of super night scenes to break the light limit; the P30 series 50x zoom to break the spatial imagination. Today, the P40 series combines the advantages of dark shooting and telephoto, and increases the rapid focusing ability of full-pixel 8-core, making time and space a delicacy of photography.

On the Huawei P40 series, we can see the largest bottom sensor, RYYB algorithm, computational photography in dim light, hand-held super night view, a series of new capabilities to explore full-time ultra-definition, 5x optical zoom, and 50x digital zoom full-focus HD resolution. With the breakthrough of the boundary of time and space, the image definition of the P40 series ranks first among all objective indicators.

At the same time, AI brings the elimination of passers-by solo photo, reflection elimination; perfect action capture ability to fill the photography needs of special scenes; panoramic HD portrait, 3D camera brings a new experience of portrait shooting; the industry's highest video sensitivity, ISO 51200 ultra-HD night shooting, 40 million pixel movie camera brings the improvement of video shooting.

All these make the image capabilities of the P40 series superimposed on the software and hardware system. Just like a chef's mastery of ingredients, cutting, heat, and seasoning, different skills merge everywhere and lead to breakthroughs.

In the end, what is left to the user is that the boundaries of time and space do not exist, leaving only photos that allow everyone to say the "truth".

Give it a try.

Mobile phone photography is an extremely complex and simple thing.

The complexity is that it is in the middle of the angle between photographic equipment and computational design, playing games with the ultimate human propositions such as light and shadow, space, chance, and so on. There are never good photos, no ultimate image algorithm, and no perfect image system.

But mobile photography is so simple that it only needs to do two things: to improve the quality of the picture so that users can get what they want.

If you do these two things right, stay; if you do wrong, start all over again. So mobile photography is not the art of parameters, performance and algorithms, but the art of doing the right thing for users. There are many explanations for how good the imaging ability of the P40 series is, but in fact, only "try to know" this explanation.

It makes you feel the uniqueness of shooting, makes you sentimentally attached to the photos in the album, and gives you a deeper memory of a sunny or rainy day than in your mind, which is probably what the P40 series is really looking for.

The real taste of mobile photography is to make every moment worth staying.

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