Are the newest camera racist?

This has been covered quite a lot recently. It is proven that it is a contrast detect auto focus issue (CDAF). With insufficient foreground lighting to illuminate the subject those of a darker skin complexity are difficult to track. Introduce some lighting and it works fine. It doesn't boil down to racism or minorities. The media have labeled it that way, simple as. You can replicate the CDAF issue on those of lighter skinned complexity by removing the light-source.
 
Haha.

A friend of mine tells me the portrait mode on one of his cameras cannot deal with black skin tones at all and gives horrendous exposure results. I've told him he should write to the manufacturer using words like 'equaliy' to see what sort of response he gets.
 
The Matt said:
I've told him he should write to the manufacturer using words like 'equaliy' to see what sort of response he gets.
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He might want to spell check his letter first.

As for its relevance to racism. The media have dubbed it that way because they know it will get more attention. If they said "New cameras struggle with face detection" it wouldn't get as many hits. All it boils down to are technical issues with CDAF and light reading. The camera doesn't know if the subject is dark, light, yellow, red, pink, blue, green or gold.

When the world quits stereotyping and categorizing people it will become a better place.
 
I'm going to be frank here, and I may get shot down in flames (and yes, the media are saying racism for more views, surely that's obvious?) but I once took some photos on a point and shoot of a band playing, hubby was in that band, 4 fairly different skin-toned guys, ghastly white, olive skin, fairly tanned skin and black skin. The room was fairly dark but obviously had spotlights on the guys, the best skin tones on the pics were from the ghastly white guy and the worst were from the black guy - on some of the images of them all, the tanned and olive skinned men looked orange, the ghastly white guy looked somewhat more pink but generally not too bad but the black guy, on most of the pics of all 4 of them, you couldn't really define features very well!

using presets like group portrait setting on a point and shoot aren't exactly great for a group of people whose skin tones differ vastly.
 
It's not just skin tones - the article I posted is also thinks like blinks...
 
Most digicams are developed in Japan and how many black people do you see there? Need I say more? :p
 
what a load of BS. Where will this PC stop? And when will folks stop whining about every perceived insult / discrimination.
 
ujjwaldey8165 said:
what a load of BS. Where will this PC stop? And when will folks stop whining about every perceived insult / discrimination.
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All of the comments mentioned in the article are light-hearted, nobody has whined about anything.
 
robmiller said:
All of the comments mentioned in the article are light-hearted, nobody has whined about anything.
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Oh offcourse. I wasn't suggesting that the comments here were whining; I am sure folks here have more common sense than that.

I was refering to the people quoted in the article.....

(P.S : I seem to recall that Japanese camera manufacturers claimed that they had optimised the light meter in the camera such that the Japanese skin was the 18% grey. Which meant that Indians always had to over-expose by one stop to get the skin tone right; and it was suggested that for north-european under-expose by 1 stop. No one complained, as far as I know.)
 
(P.S : I seem to recall that Japanese camera manufacturers claimed that they had optimised the light meter in the camera such that the Japanese skin was the 18% grey. Which meant that Indians always had to over-expose by one stop to get the skin tone right; and it was suggested that for north-european under-expose by 1 stop. No one complained, as far as I know.)
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Actually most cameras as are set to 12% or 14% (depending on if you are Nikon or Canon)...

... and as for skin tones - photograph a scotsman and you'll find them nearer -2 stops - it takes us 2 days sunbathing to go from blue to white!
 
Thats interesting...I am almost sure I had read somewhere that Japanese skin is 18% grey..may be I am thinking 14%.

Re. Scotman...lol...kind of proves the point....( Incidentally; aren't scots really of North european)
 
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