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‘Zoom and Enhance’ Is Finally Here
And its surveillance implications are scary
We all know the scene. Two detectives on a cop show stand in a dimly lit room filled with monitors, reviewing surveillance images. A tech guy (yes, it’s almost always a guy) queues up image after image as the detectives look on, squinting at the screen in concentration. “There’s nothing here!” one detective insists. They’re about to give up, when the other detective (our hero) shouts, “Wait!”
Everyone stops. “Zoom in there!” the detective says. The tech guy obligingly zooms in on a grainy corner of the image. “Enhance that!” the detective intones. The tech guy taps some keys, mutters something about algorithms, and suddenly the image comes into focus, revealing some tiny, significant detail. The case is cracked wide open!
This scene is a crime drama cliché so pervasive that it has inspired its own meme video with nearly a million views.
Scenes like these drive real tech people bananas, because “zoom and enhance” has always seemed like an impossible fantasy. Until now. Thanks to two recent innovations, zoom and enhance is finally here. It has the potential to radically change police surveillance, often in concerning ways — or at least help you bring back your photos from the early ’00s.
The first innovation behind real-life zoom and enhance comes from the world of photography. Until recently, photographers had two primary options for digital cameras: professional DSLRs like the Nikon D series, or cheap compact consumer cameras, like the kind you’d use for birthday or travel snapshots. DSLRs take great photos, but they’re bulky and conspicuous and can be hard to operate — not a great combo for surveillance work. Compact cameras rarely have the quality necessary for surveillance professionals.
That all began to change around 2015, with the rise of mirrorless cameras. These cameras have the tiny form factor of a compact camera, but thanks to advances in imaging chips driven in part by smartphones, they pack…
