As technology evolves and improves, more and more innovations take shape in the photography world. From boosting colors and brightness in photos to vast improvements in DSLR designs, the collective of photographers and photo-enthusiasts are constantly finding success through new inventions and upgrades.

As such, consumers and photography professionals alike are well aware of the latest trend in photography, HDR, or High Dynamic Range. HDR offers an immersive experience for viewers, as it allows for a wide range of details and colors to be captured in a singular photo.

However, there is a new camera controversy that outlines a unique development that could create a potentially challenging future for photographers. This new innovation comes in the form of computational photography- a combination of computer vision and artificial intelligence that allows cameras to make decisions traditionally made by photographers at the time they take the picture. While this offers the potential to make photographers’ lives easier and to eliminate manual work, it also could pave the way for a possible dark future in the industry.

Essentially, computational photography can give cameras the power to decide what is acceptable in a photograph- such as choosing between a certain amount of details or intensity with lighting. This technology could become so powerful that it could overshadow the human eye in terms of photography. This directly affects a photographer’s artistic vision and could remove the human element of photography from the creative process. This could have a potentially disastrous effect on the ability of photographers to make their own creative decisions in the development of a piece.

It is important to note that this camera controversy does not necessarily necessitate a negative end result. It does, however, open the doors for a revolution in the world of photography- and caution should be taken to ensure that the creative ideas and artistic freedom of photographers is respected. Ultimately, computational photography could be a great step forward for the industry in offering more convenience for photographers- but there is still a risk that it could set us down a dicey path, and strong oversight and appropriate measures should be taken to ensure the potential negative effects do not materialize.