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Comment by esafak | Hacker News Reader

A long exposure by definition means leaving the shutter open longer, causing blurring unless you are using computational photography or, as I said, the object is static. Apple and Google have eliminated the blurring that inevitably came with long exposures, in the realm of consumer photography. Of course, scientists had been able to independently obtain similar results using techniques similar to Google and Apple.

Light painting is not about compensating for low light. On the contrary, it typically involves reducing the ambient light in order to manually "paint" with a light bulb for artistic effect.

Which part of the above are you debating?

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Any one attempting long exposure is not trying to do it in a tracking sense. They are doing it for a static shot. It is a deliberate decision to leave the shutter open. If they are doing that in the day time to add "motion" to the image by having the blurring, it is a deliberate decision. You attempting to take a static picture in low lighting conditions where the camera's auto settings are dragging the shutter and unable to take a proper picture because you can't hold it still long enough for that shutter is not the same thing. At all.

I like your "reducing the ambient" to really let me know you have no clue what I'm referring to, but that's okay. this whole thread is just wasted energy

"Except if the subject is static" is most of long exposure photos.

Blurring is frequently the goal. Blurring waterfalls is a popular technique. As is blurring the ocean. Or streaking of light from cars. Searching for "long exposure" shows these techniques.

They use tripods to keep some things static. Smartphones can make those photos just as well as cameras with the computational photography turned off. The limitation is using neutral density filter to make exposure work.

Yes, historically it is most of them, and I am saying that is now no longer a technical necessity, but an artistic choice.

long exposures don't inherently mean blurring. The camera or mount can move to track a moving object, keeping it sharp. Astrophotography has been and still is done without computational photography.

> and still is done without computational photography.

um, ackshully, lots of computational editing is being done now. The image of Sag A* was heavily computed. They are now having to use computed images to remove all of the made on earth objects in the sky from Starlink to planes. There's a lot of stuff done to astroimages now and computational editing is making its way there.

when i said that it is still done without computational editing, i didn't mean that all astrophotography is done without it. i means that some is done without it

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