I am not a very tech savvy person and so am constantly being surprised by what modern technology can do. Take for example, the current kerfuffle over the doctored photo released by the British royal family. I am amazed at what could be gleaned from the photo.
David McCoy, the imaging manager at the Guardian, said: “The first step in analysing this image is reading through the file’s embedded metadata to determine the photographic settings of the base camera image. In this case, we can see that a Canon 50mm f1.2 lens was used for this initial image, set to an aperture of f3.2, which will give moderately shallow depth of field.
That is pretty impressive, to me at least, but the article goes on to describe all the other things that were inferred.
The whole thing is a minor puzzle. I am not sure why the photo needed to be doctored at all and why, given their resources, they could not have hired a professional to do a better job that would not have aroused suspicions in the first place.
Michael Kosta of The Daily Show joked that he knew at once, even without any forensic analyses, that the photo had been doctored because you can never get three children to all smile at the same time for a photo.
Finding the camera brand, lens, aperture, etc. is actually less impressive than it seems. Cameras regularly embed this info into the image file. Its pretty much just written right there, as long as you have the software that reads it.
Actually Windows has the ability to read the metadata built in. Just right-click the file, click properties, and look at the details tab. Sometimes that data gets stripped out along the way. Phones will often include GPS data of where the photo was taken, which can useful for organizing picture (find all of the pictures taken in Bermuda) but can also be a privacy concern. If I remember right, Facebook will strip out GPS data when you upload a photo there, but they didn’t always. People were able to figure out where celebrities lived.
Indeed. Some cameras will embed the latitude and longitude the photo was taken at too -- anyone remember something called “privacy” from the olden days?
It is indeed a puzzle. You’re talking about a family who have been all about PR for well over a hundred years. A family who are in a situation where there is a LOT of public scrutiny of their family dynamic, due to Diana’s two sons’ apparent feud (I don’t refer to them as the King’s sons as one of them bears such a striking resemblance to his father and the other one bears a similarly striking resemblance to the King…). And in a situation where there was already a ridiculous amount of public speculation as to why Kate hadn’t been seen for months (the public not able to simply accept that she’s had an operation and is getting over it, and exactly what it is is none of anyone’s business) -- they don’t put Kate in front of a camera crew or wheel her out to wave at a crowd. Oh no -- they release a photo of her, and specifically a photo so clearly doctored that I wouldn’t even call it “amateurish” -- I could do better. It’s certainly baffling. Anyone born since about 1965 should have been able to advise “the Palace” that releasing THAT photo would backfire massively and just spark more “she’s DEAD!” rumours.
I mean, she’s obviously dead, right? Like Paul McCartney. But NOT Elvis.
Has there ever been a portrait of the British royal family that was not staged?
There is a difference between “staged” and what is effectively “faked”.
If you stage something, peoole who are there can see it. No human eye ever saw in the flesh what that photo shows.
Whether that matters depends on whether you give a monkey’s if Kate is dead. My only question is -- when it’s confirmed she is, can we get another Bank Holiday?
My reaction to this story is, “Why should I care?”
A former newspaper columnist in my home town, Bill McClellan, once wrote that the two really important families in St. Louis (and presumably other places as well) are the Bornwells and the Marriedwells. One of the Marriedwells wants to look good in a photo. Why is that even news?
But then I have no interest in the lifestyles of rentiers and the infamous, so maybe I just don’t see the danger to society.
There is no ‘should’ there.
But yes, the story is about the Royals, not about the sort of photoshopping that might have been done 15 years ago.
OT (typical faked space journey, it is done in a Hollywood studio!)
Starship 3rd launch attempt today. The launch window begins at 1200 GMT / 7 am local time.
Part of me is intrigued at what insane conspiracy theory sonofroj is hinting at.
Fortunately, most of me knows it’s going to be on the same level as Hilary’s sex trafficking pizza shop. (Which I’m sure sonof totally believes in). X-D
There are also ways to edit the metadata. It’s just data after all. Fun things to do is to put in weird camera types and gps locations. I used to use a modified Cambo legend to shoot ambrotypes, and stamped that into JPEG scans of plates.
It’s hardly an “insane conspiracy theory” -- he’s referring to the well-known fact that Harry is the spitting image of Maj. James Hewitt -- with whom his mother publicly admitted to having had a lengthy affair, over the relevant time period -- and looks absolutely nothing like Charles. It’s so startlingly obvious, it’s become a standing joke.
OP: “That is pretty impressive, to me at least”
Shouldn’t be. Most image sources and manipulation applications support the Exchangeable image file format. Go to settings and search for EXIF. There’s quite a lot of stuff there. You can even add your own things, e.g. copyright info. You may also want to remove some or all of it for security reasons.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif
Dunc #11
You’ve fallen for a media conspiracy, sadly. The gutter press would so love it to be true, but red hair alone does not a spitting image make. Compare noses, ears, and receding hairlines, and I think Harry is more than likely fathered by the inbred.
Well, I don’t agree, but I’m not invested enough to argue about it.
I admit being surprised by all the publicity around Kate’s photo. Personally I’ve long since reached the point of “seeing is no longer believing” when it comes to stills, and we’re on the cusp of that being true for video as well. So Kate’s image was photoshopped using bits of other photos, and that is bad… why? Because nobody else does it (ha)? Or because she didn’t construct it sufficiently well?
f13, again, it’s about the Royals, not about the photoshopping per se.
cf. https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/03/kate-middleton-news-photo-prince-william-instagram.html