Glass to Silicon - Bonus Content Unlocked
Bonus content. 🙂
Wasn't planning on this tiny section, but I wasn't even prepared for the prelude to next either... so here goes.
On that note: I'm running thin on multi-week major topics and will have to start writing out my minor ones. I started this blog hoping for a weekly cadence, so let's see if there's enough... content left to at least run this till early next year, excluding year-end vacations. 🤔
Focal lengths
See more with wide-angle lenses, good for 'landscapes' - architectural vibes of a code repository.
See in with telephoto lenses, 'zooms' in without shifting position, changes perspective through lens compression. Background appears bigger and closer relative to foreground.
At equivalent aperture, the longer focal lengths also make the out-of-focus area bigger, so they produce a stronger bokeh effect.
Controls the composition of the photo - what is a photo of a code repository about? A bug fix root cause analysis? A plan for the new feature?
What about playing with composition through negative space? What is the equivalent of that in a code repository?
Aperture
Wider apertures allow more light (information) in and produces a stronger bokeh effect.
Narrower apertures allow less light and produces a weaker bokeh effect. More information remains in-focus.
Sensitivity
Lower native sensitivity of the sensor produces higher quality of light. Dynamic range is strongest at this end.
Higher sensitivities make the sensor perceive more light with trade-off: noise increases and dynamic range decreases. Better hardware mitigates this, but it's hard to fight physics. In this sense, frontier models might allow users to 'crank up' the thinking to infer more from less, to some extent.
Shutter speed
Final piece of the exposure triangle, perceiving more light with shorter exposures or allowing for longer exposures due to less light capture?
Shorter exposure: The current version of the code repository.
Longer exposure: Going back in time, picking up change history.
Exposure
The deep cut: What can be considered a balanced exposure of a photo of a code repository?
If we let a frontier model think deeper from deeper history, does that over-expose the photo? Is over-exposure hallucination?
When will it be appropriate for a model to skim the current version of the code repository at a short exposure: with a wide aperture that also gives a stronger bokeh effect?
Is the ideal combination to use a narrower aperture (keeping more information in focused) with the longer exposure, always?
Artistic merit of controlling the shadows and highlights of a photo - does this translate to a code repository's photo?