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Epstein Files: X Users Are Asking Grok to 'Unblur' Photos of Children (www.bellingcat.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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In the days after the US Department of Justice (DOJ) published 3.5 million pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, multiple users on X have asked Grok to “unblur” or remove the black boxes covering the faces of children and women in images that were meant to protect their privacy.

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[–] 28 points 9 months ago (8 children)

Won't work and if it does work, the resulting image has little to nothing to do with the original.

Source: I opened a badly taken .raw file a few thousand times and I know what focal length means, come at me.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Do you have a good way to remember which way fast and slow f. stops go? I always have to trail and error when adjusting camera settings to go the right direction or especially listening to someone talk about aperture.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Wider open you let in more light, and want faster shutter speed, more closed you get less light and want a longer shutter speed.

    And f stops work backwards. Think of it as percent of sensor covered. The bigger the number the more covered it is and the smaller the hole/aperture.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    So Wide open = low coverage = small f stop -> lots of light -> "fast" shutter speed. And then the other way around. I think you finally worded it in a way it can stick in my brain! I like thinking about the f value as how much you're covering the lens.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    To add more specifics here for you, note that the f-stop is usually shown as a fraction, like f/2.8, f/4.0, etc.

    So first of all, since the number is on the bottom of the fraction, there's where you get smaller numbers = more light.

    It's also shown as a fraction because it's a ratio, between your lens's focal length (not focal distance to the subject) and the diameter of the aperture.

    So if I'm taking a telephoto shot with my 70-200 @ 200 with the aperture wide open at f/2.8, that means the aperture should appear as 200/2.8 = 71.4mm. And that seems right to me! If you're the subject looking into the lens the opening looks huge.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (2 children)

    What does focal length means?

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    It's the distance from the lens to the focal point, as in where the picture focuses on the sensor behind the lens. If you have a very long focal length like a telescope, you can see things further away but the range you can see is very small. With a short focal length you can't see as far but you can see a much wider view. Check out this chart:

    If you get very close to something with a short focal length or far away from it with a long focal length you can get essentially the same picture of a main subject (although what you can see in the background will be different), but even then a short lens will sort of taper your subject closer to a single point and a long lens will widen it. You can see this effect easily on faces: see this gif or this gif or this picture for an example.

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