Culture

Enhanced Supercut of Enhancing Enhances TV's Most Ridiculous Trope

Can you zoom in on that?

by Peter Rugg

Duncan Robson has already stitched together supercuts of tumbleweeds and British exclamations of "arse!" Now he's digging into the well worn trope of characters huddled around a computer monitor, wiping away static and scrubbing pixels until they reveal the clue that will break whatever case it is they're working on wide open.

To be fair, Robson first put together a "Let's Enhance" supercut back in 2009, but he created this HD version for exhibition at the Museum of the Moving Image. I guess he thought the clip needed a…. second look?

While incredibly effective in CSI, in real life image enhancement is far from the case buster it's made out to be. How To Geek has a good rundown of all the reasons it doesn't work, from lack of information available in the image itself to the light cameras can record. It's well worth a read while planning your next daring heist.

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