[lukeschlather]

In circumstances where it really matters having a prettied up image might be worse than having no image at all. If you rely on the image being correct to make some consequential decision, you could convict someone of a crime, or if you were trying to diagnose some issue with some machine you might cause damage. While if the camera gave an honest but uninterpretable picture you would be forced to try again.

[TeMPOraL]

Couple other common cases:

- Photographing serial numbers or readouts on hard-to-reach labels and displays, like e.g. your water meter.

- Photographing damage to walls, surfaces or goods, for purpose of warranty or insurance claim.

- DIY / citizen science / school science experiments of all kind.

- Workshops, auto-repairs, manufacturing, tradespeople - all heavily relying on COTS cameras for documenting, calibrating, sometimes even automation, because it's cheap, available, and it works. Well, it worked.

Imagine your camera fighting you on any of that, giving you bullshit numbers or actively removing the very details you're trying to capture. Or insurance rejecting your claim on the possibility of that happening.

Also let's not forget that plenty of science and even military ops are done using mass-market cameras, because ain't anyone have money to spend on Dedicated Professional Stuff.

[wizzard0]

Photo copiers replacing digits on scanned financial reports with digits that compress better are a decade old already :)

http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_...?

[quesera]

Can people taking documentary photos can disable the feature? Obviously casual users won't be aware of the option, if it exists at all.

I've often wished for an image format that is a container for [original, modified]. Maybe with multiple versions. I hate having to manage separate files to keep things together.

[nucleardog]

Man, I just wanna take pictures of my kid when she's sleeping and looks super adorable. It's sucks that me doing so is going to send people to jail and delay machinery diagnostics and cause insurance fraud, but I'mma keep doing it anyway.

[kaba0]

That’s a pretty hand-wavy argument. You can just frame a picture however you want to give a very different image of a situation, que that overused media-satire picture of a foot vs a knife being shown.