Timeline for Are questions about scientific photography on topic?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
19 events
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| Aug 2, 2018 at 18:54 | comment | added | scottbb Mod | ... useful or on-topic here. Questions about designing a camera, or a camera body to minimize sensor heating issues, etc., should also be off-topic. It's tempting to use a dictionary or first-paragraph-of-Wikipedia definition of photography to define what's in-bounds — that's certainly the engineering-minded or rules-lawyer approach. But that's just an appeal to external authority. We are not constrained to be defined by external sources what is or isn't photography, in the sense of what we consider to be on-topic for this subset of photography Q&A sites on the internet. | |
| Aug 2, 2018 at 18:49 | comment | added | scottbb Mod | I push back at the concept that if it involves a camera, it is photography and hence on topic. Video involves cameras, and we have decided video is off-topic. Historian (i.e., Photo.SE graybeards) will have to let us know if video is off-topic because video.se exists, or if video.se exists because video is off-topic here. But my point is that not all questions about, related to, peripheral to, or mentioning cameras are on-topic. For instance, coded-aperture X-ray imaging, while at its core is fundamentally about pinhole apertures, is so far from the common idea of "camera" as to not be ... | |
| Aug 2, 2018 at 18:45 | comment | added | scottbb Mod | IMO, the ideal solution would be either for a scientific imaging Stack via Area 51, or perhaps at Signal Processing. Unfortunately, I don't think Area 51 would be viable, because I don't think there's enough population to support its existence. And not all scientific imaging questions would be welcome at dsp.se. While that is unfortunate, it is perhaps a possible reality that scientific imaging questions in the large don't have a home at Stack Exchange. | |
| Aug 2, 2018 at 18:39 | comment | added | scottbb Mod | Sorry for not getting back to you for a couple days. The reason I don't prefer scientific imaging to be on-topic here is because, in my observations, the majority of the questions in that area that tend to get asked here are about designing or engineering a product or experiment. Many of those questions tend to be XY problems, so we spend a bit of time answering the wrong question, then asking questions of the OP to determine what their real question is, which often doesn't really involve an on-topic question. | |
| Aug 2, 2018 at 5:36 | comment | added | Rob | @PhotoScientist - Great example: Nick Veasey, recipient of many photographic and design awards including IPA Lucie Awards, AOP, Graphis, Communication Arts, Applied Arts, PX3 and awards from the D&AD also being nominated for the IPA Lucie 2008. He claims to be responsible for realising the possibly largest X-ray to date, a life size Boeing 777 jet, which currently resides upon a hangar at Logan Airport, Boston. | |
| Aug 1, 2018 at 14:27 | comment | added | Peter Taylor | If both of those comments are addressed to me, I said sufficiently different rather than wholly different. Obviously the physics is the same. In fact, the X-ray example was inspired by spending several minutes on Sunday afternoon staring up at one and wondering about exposure times (how long do I need to hold my breath?) and apertures (that was just idle curiosity) and how they compare to visual photography. But I wouldn't dream of asking those questions on this site, because there's no reason for anyone here to know the answers and I don't see any long-term value to this community. | |
| Jul 31, 2018 at 14:25 | history | edited | PhotoScientist | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 31, 2018 at 14:09 | comment | added | PhotoScientist | As to the topic of scientific imaging being wholly different, I completely disagree. My Undergrad degree is from a photo school not an engineering school. We were taught together and collaborated frequently to everyone's benefit. IMO, the division has arisen as pure engineers have become more involved in the design and assembly of imaging systems. Oskar Barnack was a photographer who designed cameras and his gestalt flows through cameras to this very day. It's a shame that modern camera designers may have never even used one in the field. I hope that discourse can help fix that. | |
| Jul 31, 2018 at 14:01 | comment | added | PhotoScientist | The X-Ray example is interesting since even if you ignored all of my platitudes, that would be included in the wikipedia definition of Photography. I'm inclined to agree that X-Ray imaging is off topic here, though I could see limited cases for it to be relevant (E.G. Nick Veasey.) So we need a new definition of photography. Suggestions? | |
| Jul 31, 2018 at 11:58 | comment | added | Peter Taylor | With reference to the aside in your first comment: there's a difference between "your craft is worthless" and "your craft is sufficiently different to that covered by the primary expertise of this community that you'd be better off making a proposal in Area 51". And with reference to the answer per se, but on similar lines: as it stands, this would permit questions about such topics as operating medical X-ray machines, which are again sufficiently different to what's covered by the primary expertise of this community that they belong in a different stack. | |
| Jul 31, 2018 at 3:19 | comment | added | PhotoScientist | @scottbb I'd love for the answer to simply be yes but things get complicated when you try to make everyone happy. What is your reasoning for disallowing such questions? | |
| Jul 30, 2018 at 22:03 | comment | added | scottbb Mod | I am in general not in favor of scientific imaging questions being on-topic at Photo.SE, and have kept out of this subject for a bit. But after your edit, I firmly disagree with this answer. It reads very much like legalese jargon. | |
| Jul 30, 2018 at 19:36 | history | edited | PhotoScientist | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 30, 2018 at 19:16 | comment | added | PhotoScientist | What if I instead said "regardless of the purpose of the images" That way any use of a camera to make an image is on topic even if that image is never viewed by a human and the question is about the camera not the computer. Fair compromise? I agree with you that the question you've referenced is off topic. discussions of editing notwithstanding, If that OP had asked how many LED's to illuminate a subject for ISO 200 from 6 feet away, for example, IMO its on topic, despite being about electronics (though the burden may be on answers to stick to making an image not designing a circuit) | |
| Jul 30, 2018 at 18:08 | comment | added | mattdm | I like most of this answer, except for the "regardless of purpose" part. That's just going to attract more and more questions like this one, and the site will be less and less hospitable to people actually wanting to learn about photographs. I don't think "yes, I actually am interested in photographs here" is such a high bar. | |
| Jul 30, 2018 at 14:18 | comment | added | Him | This was precisely the answer that I wanted to get. | |
| Jul 30, 2018 at 14:00 | vote | accept | Him | ||
| Jul 30, 2018 at 13:51 | comment | added | PhotoScientist | An aside not entirely germane to my answer: I've actually been quite disheartened by the frequency with which technical and scientific photo questions are dismissed. I love photography, I've been behind a viewfinder since I could walk, and I'd run into my burning house to save my hard drive just like many of your would. It makes me sad to be told my craft is worthless just because I take pictures that have utility rather than beauty. It could just be me though. Maybe I just need to grow thicker skin to deal with internet mindsets. | |
| Jul 30, 2018 at 13:46 | history | answered | PhotoScientist | CC BY-SA 4.0 |