For the past few days, the Internet has been abuzz with Glitch in the Matrix: an iPhone photo that raised so many questions that it could now be called the mystery of 2023. Fortunately for us, redemption is at hand.
The year 2015 still feels like yesterday to us. Especially when you think about it being the year of the dress. You know, that photo that caused confusion online because it was blue on one person and gold on another.
Such issues have since become less unusual, although Glitch in the Matrix managed to make things very, very bad in recent days. The photo was shared massively and seemed to completely rock the usually already pretty insane Internet.
Insane iPhone photo causes amazement
Back for a moment to four weeks ago. Tessa Coates shared a photo on Instagram taken with her iPhone 12. In the photo, she stands wearing a wedding dress in front of two mirrors that both put her arms in a different position. Pretty peculiar, as it turned out.
Over the past few days, the Internet wondered en masse what exactly was going on. Along with Tessa herself. The photo came right out of the iPhone and thus had not been edited in any way. So what is going on?
Instagram is not loading because you didn’t give permission.
View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Tessa Coates (@wheatpraylove)
Needless to say, the Internet suddenly featured over 7 billion tech experts and the craziest theories came to pass.
Although there was one theory that managed to attract quite a bit of attention.
Does the iPhone have problems with mirrors?
The iPhone 12 is a smartphone that features computational photography. In this way, it processes certain parts of a photo. One theory points to that support and the fact that the software may have problems with mirrors.
So, without getting very technical, it comes down to the fact that the iPhone had trouble with two reflections and in that way, with the help of software, gave each mirror its own interpretation.
Uhm…Computational Photography?
Computational Photography is a technique that uses software processing and algorithms to enhance digital photographs and achieve creative effects. It combines multiple exposures, applies image enhancements, and uses advanced technologies such as HDR, panoramic photography, and artificial intelligence to produce images not possible with traditional photography.
The problem with that theory is that Tessa must have changed her pose. Given that the photo was taken during the day with an iPhone 12, a shutter speed of 1/100 second must have been used at a minimum. Should she actually change her pose, she would have to use the speed of light to get this result.
So what exactly is going on with Tessa’s photo, then?
The mystery solved
We find that answer in iPhonedo’s YouTube video. This video shows that Tessa, despite claiming not to have done so, accidentally took a picture using the iPhone’s panorama mode.
The photo’s metadata shows a resolution of 3028 x 3948. A resolution that the iPhone 12 does not use by default. So combined with the lack of the standard 4:3 aspect ratio, that raises some question marks.
Why the Genius Bar at the Apple Store didn’t realize this was the case has everything to do with the fact that there was no panorama mark visible in the info section of the photo. And so this is due to the fact that the photo was not taken long enough in this mode. As a result, it was not labeled as such a photo.
So for a moment there are no errors in the matrix, there is no portal to a parallel universe. We are simply dealing with someone who accidentally clicked a wrong button.
How we can have been dealing with that for days is downright hilarious as far as I’m concerned.