Archive for the 'ai' Category
Wednesday, December 13th, 2023
Decision of Power or how to chose between Windows or a Mac
Why did I do this project?
I was interested to work with ai on a local system instead of all these cloud solutions, where you often don’t know what happens with your data. My first contact with local ai solutions was pinokio, a system that automates localized ai installations. Pinokio runs lots of python scripts locally and I have lots of respects of these scripts, because they could do anything on your system. That’s one reason why I wanted to run them on a non productive computer of mine. The second reason is, that lots ai models rely on Nvidias Cuda cores and wont even run on a Mac. The third reason is that I thought that I can speed up my workflow with very large scans with a system that has more ram (I was wrong on that one).
Reasons for the hardware I chose
For the reasons mentioned above, I wanted a Nvidia card. Nvidia are producing cards that are made especially for ai work (Nvidia A series), but these cards are very expensive. The high end gaming cards like the RTX 4080 and 4090 are also pretty expensive and are as well very energy hungry. So my decision went to the RTX 4060ti with 16 gigabytes of ram. The internet is full of hate for this card, because it’s too expensive for what it delivers on gaming. But gaming is not an important part for me. The 16 gigabyte of ram are essential for ai models and the low power (compared to 4070 and above) consumption is another thing that made it more compelling for me. My CPU choice, the i7 13700kf was done because of a great offer I got. I hoped the new Intel 14th generation will consume less power, but that was not the case. Maybe AMD would have been a better choice for less power consumption…
Mainboard wise I went for ASUS, because I had good experiences with this brand many years ago. I think hardware wise, they are still great, but software wise I am not sure anymore (I dont want to go down in that rabbit hole today).
To make the system as silent as possible I went for an aio (al in one) water cooling from Artic / the Artic freezer 240 and the Be Quiet pure base 500 case. Both brands I know from back than and they are still great today. For the power, I went for the Corsair RM750x Shift Fully Modular ATX Power Supply, because the plugs are all on the side and much easier accessible than on usual power supplies. I calculated the needed power supply here. https://www.corsair.com/us/en/pc-builder/psu-finder/psu
Here is the full list with my Amazon affiliate links. I always think it’s great to have also a look at local stores, but as an overview it’s easier to link to Amazon.
Intel i7 13700kf
International: https://amzn.to/41iT0m5 Germany: https://amzn.to/46MAFPu
Iceberg Thermal FUZEIce Plus High Performance Thermal Paste
International: https://amzn.to/41iUL2F Germany: https://amzn.to/3t3fHOF
ASUS Prime B760-PLUS
International: https://amzn.to/48eovjF Germany: https://amzn.to/3uTHJws
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Graphics Card 16GB
International: https://amzn.to/3NlgMYN Germany: https://amzn.to/46MBkAs
Crucial Pro RAM 64 GB Kit DDR5
International: https://amzn.to/3RBk4K0 Germany: https://amzn.to/3NnYdU2
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240
International: https://amzn.to/3tlln6x Germany: https://amzn.to/3TiTS8s
WD_BLACK SN770 NVMe SSD 1 TB
International: https://amzn.to/48cLuLE Germany: https://amzn.to/41emhOR
Crucial P3 2TB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD
International:https://amzn.to/489Hrjw Germany: https://amzn.to/48cLCe6
Corsair RM750x Shift Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
International: https://amzn.to/485SHxP Germany: https://amzn.to/3RE1z81
be quiet! Pure Base 500
International: https://amzn.to/3NijfU3 Germany: https://amzn.to/3NlVESy
How did I do the tests?
As mentioned in the video, all my tests are not scientific in any case. I just wanted to see for myself how much of a difference such a machine makes to my workflow.
All recordings were done remotely. That means, I connected with Microsoft Remote Desktop to the Windows machine and with the Apple Remote connections to the Mac Mini and MacBook.
With that I wanted to make sure, that I don’t use to much computing power for the recording on the tested device.
For the Lightroom tests, I used the images of my award ceremony where I saved all the changes to xml files, so all clients have the same work to do. I chose Lightroom for testing, because lots of analog photographers will do their scanning with a digital camera.
As an analog photographer, especially with the wet plate process I work often with huge scans that I use for my talks, like my last one at the 8K Deep Space experience in the Ars Electronica Center.
With that big scans I experienced sometimes some slowdowns on my MacBook (So I thought). To make it more fair, I tested it with a 180 megapixel scan and 1.12 gigapixel scan. This test was for sure the least accurate one of them all. Because I did every step manually. That’s why I said the test times will vary up to 10 Seconds because of my click and work speed. But you will see that does not change anything on the results.
Why did I measure power consumption?
I think this is a part that lots of tests are not taking care of. I understand that time is money, but energy is as well. With the energy costs going up every year, it is an important topic to me. And when a device needs 5 or 20 times the power than another device, it makes a big difference. I think saving energy is an important task for everyone. I understand compared to big corporations (see my article here) this is nothing, but I still think we all can make a difference.
And yes, my power consumption measurements aren’t scientific as well, but you get an idea about the difference. I used the same power plug on all computers, to avoid differences. And yes the power plug was called Windows computer, even a Mac was plugged in :). One more thing I closed the lid of the MacBook to only measure the consumption of the computer and not the display. With the display turned on at medium brightness it was only 2 to 4 watt more.
The results
I am still surprised how well the base M2 Mac Mini with 8gb of Ram and a 256gb ssd held up. For under 600 Euros this is a great deal (also power consumption wise). If you invest 100 Euros on an external ssd, you can easily work with bigger scans in photoshop and will avoid the scratch disk is full message.
The second competitor to the windows machine is a MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro CPU. It has 16GB of ram and a 1TB ssd.
Please be aware that the power consumption is only a snapshot from the time when the task was finished. But overall it reflects the consumption that was used.
My thoughts
The new installed Windows machine was faster at every single task. On some tasks it just killed it.
I am not sure if it would have made a difference to use a new installed Mac, because I work with the same backup on my MacBook since 2016, but I don’t think so.
For a final conclusion the question should be, how much benefit would I get from a faster machine. How important is the time I saved with the faster machine. I think there are always tasks you could do while Lightroom is exporting or photoshop is saving. During my work on the huge scan in photoshop, only the Mac Mini kept me waiting for some seconds when I duplicated the layer or applied the filter. Also the loading time took much longer. But otherwise, I was surprised how well it held up against the two others.
I know I went a little overboard when I compared the Windows machine with my heat pump. But sometimes the computer needed 350 Watts and much more. And when it’s about 15 degrees outside, my heat pump has a similar power consumption to keep my house warm. Let this thought sink in for a moment. Luckily I am can create my own energy and will try to limit the use of the windows client to the sunny days.
I hope this comparison showed you a different view of how powerful a computer must be.
The question is now, was it a good idea to build this computer for ai and scans. Honestly I am not sure anymore.
It’s fun to play with ai models locally, but I will limit the use for Lightroom or Photoshop. I guess I will use it for huge scans where I need to work with more layers, but for my usual workloads, my 16gb MacBook is more than capable.
Also the noise it makes is something you should think about. Even this machine is pretty quiet (it just sounds loud in the video, because I went very close with my phone) I dont like listen to the fans all day long, that’s why I put it in a different room and only connect remotely to it.
At the end it’s always a decision what operating system you prefer and how much money you want to spend.
Friday, July 21st, 2023
My Podcast Interview with Silvergrain Classics magazine about my Wet Plate Work and AI
iTunes | Spotify | Deezer | Castbox.fm | TuneIn | Stitcher | RSS Feed
Ep. 13: Hofstätter’s Intensely Personal Portraits vs. AI
by Erik Schlicksbier, Marwan El-Mozayen
Wet plate collodion portrait photographer Markus Hofstätter is our guest in this episode. He creates particularly individual, intimate portraits by collaborating closely with the persons he portrays. This human aspect is especially important to him despite all the virtuosity necessary to create wet plate collodion images. We were also interested in Markus’ view of current developments in the field of AI. Join us in this podcast for an exciting conversation about the present and future of photography.
Markus online:
mastodon.art/@mhaustria@flipboard.social
Your hosts:
Marwan El-Mozayen from Silvergrain Classics magazine (https://silvergrainclassics.com/en)
Erik Schlicksbier, photographer (https://www.schlicksbier.com) and host of the German language Studio Kreativkommune podcast (https://studio.kreativkommune.org/podcast).
Wednesday, April 5th, 2023
Upcoming wet plate talk in Graz, progress and the moon on a space zoom smartphone
In today’s video there is a little preview of my current project, info about my wet plate lecture in Graz and how smartphones change images.
For “non-photographers” some features are really great and very helpful. But then I ask myself why are these features not called by it’s name. Other functions, like changing or even modifying facial features, are almost creepy. What do you think?
In the gallery underneath are a few examples of my moon photos and the equipment. Of course you can take pictures of the moon with small cameras/lenses nowadays, but I was a bit skeptical about the pictures from smartphones back in 2021.
Here the link to my lecture about wet plate photography in Graz. https://www.fomograz.at/veranstaltungen-2023/
Wednesday, March 29th, 2023
Thoughts to my video about ai
Ai needs to be addressed by all governments to make a change. And they are already to late. The result will be, that people need to adjust. Like painters did when photography was invented. There will be new jobs created because of ai. And for sure some of these jobs will earn less money than the job that was needed for the same task without ai. I have the feeling that this new technology can not be stopped anymore. To many people have invested to much money. Microsoft is already using chatGPT parts in Outlook, Teams and much more, like it’s own search Bing(Google stock crashed on that day when they did the first demo) For example, mails are created automatically because of the communication you had before – its learning to become you. Most companies use ai already for their business. Politicians who should have done something, will not do anything because the world is ruled by money and when there is a technology that can easily make you more money, not many with the power to stop it will stop it. I also think there are lots of areas where ai will help us. To fight diseases for example. So it’s more about regulation than to stop ai.
As said, ChatGPT consumed one Gigawatt in January and I can imagine that all images based AI will consume much more. There you have another reason why this can be bad for us. And still the governments all over the world will tell the people to save energy with electric cars and alternative heating solutions and so on. Nobody talks about power consumption of ai or other internet services.
And chatGPT is just starting. They needed two month to gain 100million users. Instagram needed 30 months, Google translate 78months and Facebook even longer. While Meta consumed already 9.4 Terrawatt in 2021, with all ai growing faster, the power consumption will grow as well. I would love to find more articles about that.
But there are also companies that think ahead. I am testing Adobe Firefly for a magazine right now. This ai was trained by licensed images only. That means artists were paid in some way and that is a good thing (It’s not as good as I thought it will be, I wrote another article about it and will link to it here, as soon as it is online). There is a different way to do things, but I don’t see anybody regulating ai these days for the reasons mentioned above. It’s all about money and I am not a fan of it.
I think there could be a chance to regulate image ai for commercial use these days. It is the fear of people who use ai images commercially. Regulation will start if another ai detects copyrighted images were used to create your image or when lawyers get their first case where they can sue somebody who sold a generated image that looks similar to an existing one from a client. Both cases are again about money. This could be also a chance to regulate Midjourney, but I don’t see anything that can regulate ChatGPT.
With the wet plate process I see myself in a different position, because people get an experience that can not be replicated that easy with ai. I also don’t see my self being a huge fan of ai generated images, but it can be useful in some cases. I don’t like to just talk bad about ai, I am more a fan of finding solutions. As mentioned in a previous post, ai based images should get digital copyright baked into the file, so these created images can be tagged easily on all platform as “computer generated image”.
If you want to learn more about that, then check out these links about digital watermarks:
Wikipedia article about digital watermarks
Image tag, a company who offers digital watermarks as a service
An Article on science direct.com about digital watermarks
Digital Watermarking Techniques and Security Issues from Jordi Nin and Sergio Ricciardi
As far as I understand, you even can screenshot/photograph such an marked image of the screen and the digital copyright still remains. Let’s hear your thoughts about it. I added a gallery underneath with portraits. Let me know which one you think are generated and what gave it away? Maybe you see similarities to existing images…
There is also an easter egg “symbol” in the video that shows how ai caught us “over night”. here is a little hint: “don’t feed them after midnight”
A new update just came up today and its worth a read: https://time.com/6266679/musk-ai-open-letter/
Monday, January 9th, 2023
How to load Analog FIlm into a Sony A7 – An Analog Portrait Photographers view of the upcoming year 2023 and why AI is not the End
My own prediction about what will photography be in the future and what I will do about it
I am not doing a rewind or recap this year. I think there are too many of these out there and I have mostly the feeling it’s only a fill-in. You can watch my “end of 2022 studio tour” video or my recent scanner renovation video if you want to watch something instead of reading this article.
The pink elephant in the room
It’s there, and everybody is seeing it (Also non photographers). Some people are scared, some are angry and others ignore it. What I am talking about? AI, like Midjourney, Dall-E or the text focused chatGPT. This will not change our world, it changed it already. The ai integration in our lives started a little sneaky, with some cool filters for example, google recaptcha, or enhancements for our phone cameras. Text-wise, we had chat bots that were mostly bad and voice assistants that were somewhere inbetween. Close your eyes and paint your own picture about how you felt about ai at the beginning of 2022. And now face reality and think how much it has improved in the last 5 Months and how much it improves now on a daily bases. For me it’s crazy how great these generated images/portraits look like and how they get better by the hour. It gets harder and harder for me to identify these generated images. I think these “calculated” pictures can be very useful sometimes and many of them look great.
I wrote a German article for c’t Fotografie (online pay or paper magazine) about this topic, you can read it here: https://www.heise.de/select/ct-foto/2023/1/2219314550220514230 This includes also an interview with an portrait artist that uses ai: Klaudia Ratzinger
But I also think that all these generated images should have a digital watermark, so social media and websites can tag them as generated. People need to know if that image they are looking at is real or generated. I know that there is Photoshop as well, but these ai tools can be operated form a 5 year old and the results will fool you. Ai affects already so many business, not only photography, but also writers, lawyers, translators, book authors and many many more. I recently saw an article that a guy used chatGPT to create a children’s book. He also asked chatGPT to write down descriptions for pictures, so other ai picture generators can create imagery for the book from this description. He is selling the finished product now on Amazon. I also read a reddit thread where there was the need for a letter from a lawyer. Somebody asked chatGPT to write a letter and the user asking for a lawyer letter had success with it. You don’t have any programming skills? just ask chatGPT to write a script/program for you.
“Words can be powerful” gets a totally new meaning these days.
Talking with chatGPT can also be hilarious – more at the end of this posting
Does that mean we need to be scared as a photographer? I don’t think so. Let me explain:
- At the beginning of photography, painters were upset because photographers had no idea about posing and light. Of course it was much easier to get a portrait from one day to another. That changed crime scene documentation totally.
- Later black and white film photographers were upset about color film photography.
- At the beginning of 2000, film photographers were upset about digital photography
- And later digital photographers were upset about phone cameras
- And now the same discussion starts with ai generated images. Even we use ai already for many years in our phones (or how do you think it was possible to capture a detailed moon photo with your phone?)
And today all these mentioned techniques are still coexisting. That’s why I think they will also coexist in the future. I think good photographers must be “stage managers” these days. They need to sell an experience. Something the customer will remember for a very long time. For example, when somebody gets their wet plate portrait taken in my studio, they for sure will remember that forever.
This kind of photography is so different in our fast moving world. Sure, people could use a tintype filter. But that is like seeing a great dinner on a photograph instead of going there and enjoying it. Or think of a wet plate workshop, or any other kind of photography workshop. Creating something by yourself is always exciting and fun.
This works also for digital. I just had a business shooting for two days and this can be a great experience as well. People were excited and happy.
I think that may be a different story for non portrait photographers, like food, architecture or product photographers. But a lot of companies are working already with generated (3D renderings) images for their catalogs. And as far as I know, these generated images are directed by photographers.
Please comment how you think other photography business will be affected by ai.
Relax
That is something I am not very good of. I have so much in my mind and want to do everything at once. But I try to go for walks every day to relax. Instead of my camera, I bring my new binoculars with me. I got myself some cool ones for Christmas (US click here – German click here for the ones I bought). So why I am telling you this? Because I felt the need sometimes to bring my camera to my walks, to capture deers, swans and other wildlife scenes. The binoculars are a great substitute for that. They will calm you down, because you can not use them to take pictures. I use them to watch wildlife and enjoy it a lot.
My new year resolutions for 2023
Don’t seek for perfect wet plate portraits all the time, accept the one you did and appreciate it. Look for more assignments that you enjoy and less that you don’t. Work more on your own projects you love.
How to load analog film into a Sony A7 digital camera?
Let’s end this post with something fun. I asked chatGPT some questions about wet plate and analog photography. And at the end, chatGPT ended up explaining me how to load film into a Sony A7 camera and why medium format film would not fit in. And no worries, the sensor cleaning and the ibis of the Sony A7 will not destroy your film either. And if you ever looked for a film rewind button on your digital camera, chat GPT got you covered. In that case chatGPT acts like a little child that made a mistake and makes up more facts to cover it. Please be aware that all other answers about the wet plate process and so on contains also false information (I won’t explain everything, but for insiders it’s fun to read). As always, if you are interested in that process, take a workshop or read a book (chatGPT tells you the same). Enjoy the answers guys (You need to open some screenshots in a new browser tab to be able to read them):
How does a digital camera that loads analog film look like?
I asked that question Midjourney and got these results 🙂