Eric Rosenthal's Lecture

I really enjoyed Eric Rosenthal’s lecture. He seems like he’s going to be one of those people we have been reading about in the New Media Reader, and one day there will be a Wikipedia site for him and his accomplishments. He’s one of those professors that blow you away with their intellect and research. I really admire how he’s pursuing his research and making actual innovations in the digital world.

He was a very good speaker, and even though he was very smart, he knew how to convey his information in a rational way that we could understand. I always heard that the camera sees differently than us, and we have to take that into consideration when taking photos, but I never knew why that happened. I didn’t realize that our eyes had a 1:1,000,000 contrast ratio, and cameras only have a 1:1,000.

The main problem with contemporary digital photography is that it is based on a very outdated theory that we see with red green and blue rods and cones. His research indicates that that is not true, and his new cameras are being produced that are based on an entirely different theory, one that is a more accurate representation of how we see things.

Another problem is that JPEG and MPEG files are based on a compression algorithm based on mathematics, which takes out lots of information and creates artifacts into the image. I’m very intrigued about the layered compression he was talking about. I wonder where it is in its stage, and if it will ever go commercial. One of the main problems is the amount of space large photos take up, the new compression formula would negate that problem.

I am very interested to see where his research goes, and if it will ever become commercial (I’d want to pick up some of that stock as soon as I can). It sounds like it would completely revolutionize the photographic community; in research, fashion, and overall documentation.