I guess that depends on whether you consider the “scene photographed” to be what’s in front of the camera lens, or in front of the sensor …
I think ICE has a definition of “scene”, you can look it up – I don’t bother.
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Thanks will have a look!
Anyhow I was more wittingly than seriously. The main message was that somehow I sometime do love these artifacts.
I wouldn’t call flaring an outdated thing. Even though in photography, it is often not wanted. For cinema production, lens flares are a big thing. And you can buy anamorphic cinema lenses for a ridiculous amount of money, which are optimized to make beautiful flares.
It’s an effect that is not always easy to get under control when taking photos. That’s why I always prefer a lens, which doesn’t produce too much of it. But it’s a photographic effect that in some situations simply makes the difference.
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I can provide a argument for non perfect images: our eyes.
If your goal isn’t to produce a perfect reproduction of the lightfield that would hit you eye at that moment in space-time but rather the feeling of experiencing that moment as a human. Then flares and bloom are important tools to better convey that a light source is super bright compared to the surrounding environment. I would gladly have tools for adding “imperfections” like this in post as my lenses doesn’t always produce the results needed for that particular situation.
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“Computational Photography” and “AI”
We can take Flawless pictures with smartphones. we don’t even have to take them we can uses computers to make them up for us.
So flaws give authenticity…
But fake flaws… 
Or not if it is not there and you generate it
Awesome argument!
my Eyes have quite some Bloom and Lens flares from time to time.
Especially at night with small strong light sources.
Capturing what the eyes see can be a goal of photography
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A goal that is simply impossible, because the process of seeing (the eye is not the most important part of this process) is an entirely different one from what a camera sensor does.
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Our eyes are just a fraction of our vision, and I definitely do not think that creating a good photography is about making a perfect reproduction of the light field that hits our eyes. Our vision is an illusion, as is any picture.
So, yes, we may employ various “tricks” like bloom to convey our idea with a picture. And if you for “flare” are primarily thinking of some more streak-like effect, I can see that this might possibly be useful under certain circumstances - as this may connect with how we perceive very strong light. However, I encounter “flare” mostly in my pictures as “blobs”, which do not relate to anything I experience outside the viewfinder of my camera.
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What our vision sees, is a 3D world with objects.
What we capture with photography, is a 2D plane with marks and fields on it.
Has this Stopped artists from trying?
This depends on if you treat a camera as a measuring device. And photo as a Messurment.
Closes one eye 
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But eyes are not still - they are moving.
Close one eye when you drive a car, you will still see, and be able to maneuver, in a 3 D world.
I’ve yet to meet a photographer who bought his camera for “measuring”.
No, but artists tend to do things in a creative way. There are few of them who tried to replicate exactly what they see. Just to name some, who didn’t try: Monet, Picasso, van Gogh, Anselm Adams…
By the way, I’m wearing glasses, and as a lazy person, I quite seldom clean them. So I see reflections and bloom very often. Maybe I actually want to simulate what I see. 
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Only if we remember to wipe the lens clean first😀
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I often see people taking photos with so dirty lens it makes their room look like it’s filled with dense fog
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Photogrammetry is a whole field. Also see astronomers. I guess you could argue if they are photographers or not.
I don’t think I would use a lens flare module, but if I did, a module which could remove the flare from a lens, then recreate it post cropping could be useful.
People want to put old flaws back again because these flaws can be used creatively. Some of us like lens flare, grain, softness, vignette, blur. All of this used creatively it can enhance a photo. So yes, I would like a lens flare module in Darktable.
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There is nothing inherently “flawed” about older tech. And there is nothing inherently “correct” about modern techniques such as nd filters, highlight reconstruction, creative filters like in GIMP, lens “corrections”, etc.
We can say that new tech moves images towards a more “correct” representation of a calculated, ideally captured reality, but proving that it is a more “correct” version of the art of photography is more difficult.
I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. Your message just made me think of this so I am throwing some thoughts out there into the void to add to the discussion.
My personal take is that I would love a physically modeled lens flare module, so that we wouldn’t all be reusing the same raster/vector flare files hahaha. Also, it would be quite a unique feature. Plenty of softwares have a “paste the flare into your image” feature, but a module that is actually calculating/building a flare based on the image itself and the white balance. Etc would be sweet.
(\me asks for trouble 
)
This is the perfect case in which an ML feature would make a lot of sense. Adding plausible, physically accurate flares (that keep into account obstructions, reflections and what not) requires sophisticated contextual analysis and image understanding, it’s not something that a procedural algorithm working at the pixel level can generally do very well.
This is all a very much “one could” thread
- We have code in GIMP that could be used to implement a flare module
- Someone interested in such a module should start working on it
- The “who” in (2) would certainly get all required support by any of dt devs and i guess there won’t be any hurdles to get such a module merged into dt code.
So - GO for it!
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Hello,
This could be a fun challenge.
Have a nice day,
Christian
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