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iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap
- simlevesque 4y agoWhy is "huge" not in the title ? edit: it's fixed now
- mastax 4y agoThe HN game: - Was it editorialized by the submitter? - Was it changed by dang to de-clickbait it? (probably not in this case) - Did one of HN's title filters remove some words?
- atarian 4y agocharacter limit is my guess
- m348e912 4y agoProbably unintentional, but enough to get flagged for "editorializing" the title.
- xeromal 4y agoThat is strange. lol
- dang 4y agoBecause it's huge in clickbait. I've put it back in the title above.
- m348e912 4y agoThe iPhone 14 has a fantastic camera. It's a noticeable improvement from previous models and takes fantastic photos that rival or surpass many SLR cameras on the market. If Apple had taken another leap and included usb-c port it would have been enough for me to upgrade. For now, I wait.
- sbierwagen 4y agoEvery iPhone release since the 11 I've been waiting for them to add support for Wifi 6E. So far not yet...
- Mikeb85 4y agoPhones don't rival or surpass DSLRs or any proper digital camera. They just have lots of fancy processing that makes quick snaps look better than the same amount of effort on a camera.
- mc32 4y agoYeah, it's hard to compare 35mm full frame sensors with miniscule camera sensors. As you said the magic is their processing which compensates for that.
- scrumbledober 4y agoit is hard, but it's getting a little easier with the larger cameras
- mkaic 4y agoUntil that same fancy processing is available on a DSLR, I think the comparison OP is making is valid. At the end of the day, what I as a consumer care about is "is photo look 1. pleasing, 2. accurate to my perception, and 3. easy to create?" and in those regards, the iPhone absolutely outperforms every DSLR I've ever used.
- Mikeb85 4y agoI didn't say a phone camera isn't better for the average consumer... I use my phone camera far more often than my actual camera... But there's no world in which it's technically superior to a real camera, especially one with in-camera processing or in the hands of a professional with access to and skill with professional post-processing software.
- stingrae 4y agoComing from a iPhone 12 to the 14, the aggressive switching between lenses is pretty annoying in close and far shots. The lens shift screws up framing and hits at unpredictable times.
- rootusrootus 4y agoYeah the first time it did that to me when I was trying to use magnifier mode, I nearly threw the phone against the wall. Who the heck thinks it's a good idea to change cameras when trying to focus close-up? -poof- the thing you're pointing at disappears from the screen.
- simondotau 4y agoWhen the current lens is physically unable to achieve focus at the required distance?
- kooshball 4y agocan't you turn that off?
- zimpenfish 4y agoNot in the stock Camera app, no, but other apps let you specifically control which lens is being used.
- CharlesW 4y agoYou can turn off automatic macro switching: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210571#:~:text=You%20can%20control%20automatic,turn%20on%20Macro%20Control https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210571#:~:text=You%20can%2....
- zimpenfish 4y agoUsing something like Halide[1] gives you more control - once you pick a lens, it stays picked. [1] Other camera apps are available, etc.
- 4y ago
- willis936 4y agoThe 48 MP bayer mode is indeed impressive, but it does not increase the spatial frequency response. I recently used it to document some color transition errors on LG OLED displays and even with the 48 MP "RAW" mode there are artifacts from the limited spatial resolution. One of the images properly captures the display sub-pixel layout, but that is taken closer to the display. Enabling/disabling "RAW" did not change the spatial resolution of the photos. https://imgur.com/gallery/amP2lR4 https://imgur.com/gallery/amP2lR4
- NavinF 4y agoWhy does that happen? Is it because there's a physical antialiasing filter in the lens?
- coder543 4y agoQuad Bayer: https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/4088675984/Quad_Bayer_diagram.png https://www.dpreview.com/files/p/articles/4088675984/Quad_Ba... The 48MP sensor still has 48MP of monochromatic resolution, but it only has 12MP of effective color resolution. You'll still see fine details, but the colors are not as high resolution as the details. This is rarely a problem, given the way the human eye processes color.
- willis936 4y agoI'm not an optics expert, but I expect that the physical system's spatial bandwidth is much higher than the sensor's bandwidth. That is to say, if there were more light sensing elements I think the spatial bandwidth would be higher. I don't think the artifacts are directly from aliasing but rather an artifact of software interpolation. It anyone knows better please correct me.
- sudosysgen 4y agoThis is generally not the case here, if the lens was physically perfect it could not resolve two points closer than two pixels as per the Rayleigh criterion.
- 4y ago
- 2c2c2c 4y agoi did a point and shoot picture of a cat while a group of friends and I were sitting on the floor of a halloween party bathroom later, when sharing the photos, i realized we could distinctly see my partner and I in the reflection of the cat's eye. the CSI enhance memes are real :-)
- chasd00 4y ago> sitting on the floor of a halloween party bathroom i feel there is more to this story
- brookst 4y agoWell this detailed camera review conclusively proves that I am a mediocre photographer who doesn't go anywhere interesting. Thanks a lot, lux.camera. Thanks a lot.
- pj_mukh 4y ago"To review this camera we went to these most interesting, most beautiful places." Okay...but how does it perform taking pictures of my toy dog in suburb-town USA?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nicolashahn 4y agoThese pictures are fantastic. For anyone but professionals the reasons to buy a DSLR or mirrorless are virtually gone.
- nop_slide 4y agoI disagree and as a n00b/amateur I recently picked up my first "real" camera, a Fujifilm x-t20. I've managed to take some amazing photos that simply wouldn't have turned out as good on my iPhone 12. I was sick of the smudgy look that happened often on the iPhone when the lighting wasn't perfect, and also there is a unique "look" that the Fuji mirrorless cameras spit out due to their x-trans sensor[1]. In my short 2 weeks with the camera I've had a ton of fun and gotten some great shots. While no doubt the 14 pro is amazing, your statement isn't true. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X-Trans_sensor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X-Trans_sensor
- emkoemko 4y agothat smudgy, painting look on phones is the phone trying to remove noise in the image
- nop_slide 4y agoYes I’m aware, and my point is that it doesn’t happen with a better sensor/camera and the lack of “smart” processing. Even my small compact point and shoot would take sharper photos in the same lighting than my iPhone 12. As mentioned in the article the processing the iPhone does has seem to become more aggressive as well.
- Krisando 4y ago> I disagree and as a n00b/amateur I recently picked up my first "real" camera, a Fujifilm x-t20. Welcome to the hobby! The X-T20 is a great camera. > also there is a unique "look" that the Fuji mirrorless cameras spit out due to their x-trans sensor[1] The performance of the Fuji sensors aren't the main reason behind the processing, for sensor type comparison, there's a great article here: https://medium.com/@nevermindhim/x-trans-vs-bayer-fantastic-claims-and-how-to-test-them-475b4f1b7fae https://medium.com/@nevermindhim/x-trans-vs-bayer-fantastic-... Fuji cameras have built in post-processing that allows it to render images closer to film stock. Fuji has spent a lot of time refining their post-processing to match how it would like across their own film stock and really the only manufacturer that achieves such a great out-of-camera processed images. If you are working and shooting in RAW, you'll find the output from Fuji when processing the RAWs yourself are not much to look at when you look at a RAW file in RAW processing tools like DarkTable etc. They're fairly similar really to any other camera mirrorless or DSLR. You'd really have to be pixel peeping most of the time to really see a noticeable difference (assuming lens etc. is very similar). When working in RAW, you can often get similar processed colours and images out of most cameras so really this shouldn't be a limting factor. From my Android phone, I can save RAWs and generally achieve similar colours and overall appearance etc. Although, due to the sensor size, it will be notably lower quality if you start pixel peeping and generally the colour depth is usually less to work with on mobile sensors. Edit: Had the wrong link for the article.
- anotheryou 4y agoLol, nothing is better about the dark skyline image. It's a blurry noise canceled mess with bad white balance.
- astrange 4y agoThat picture doesn't have a single correct white balance; no photo does if it has more than one light source in it. It's all to taste. But it does look like it was shot through a window without a polarizer filter.
- anotheryou 4y agoJust because it's taste doesn't mean there is not objectively bad white balance. It's just green XD. I do agree the other pics are great though (and own an iphone (because the company paid for any phone and I wanted the best camera...)). I'm not 100% happy with the "iphone look", too much fine contrast for my taste, but it's of course great cameras.
- keepquestioning 4y agoReality Distortion Field.
- rootusrootus 4y agoPerhaps, but whose reality is it distorting? Apple enthusiasts, or haters?
- gigatexal 4y agoSince my wife bought a Canon 90D for shots that matter I have since "meh"d about camera phones. I wish I could just have a simple dumb phone with a calendar, GPS, and texting, and it doesn't cost 1400 bucks.
- pigtailgirl 4y ago-- anyone else find it annoying how protruded the lens is? --
- MBCook 4y agoYou’re not wrong at all. My 12 Pro was much better, but still a bit annoying. But optics can’t beat physics. Better cameras need more space for lenses and sensors. They could make the whole phone thicker, but haven’t done that yet. The trajectory seems unsustainable. We’ll see what happens I guess.
- EA 4y agoYes, it is a minor annoyance and actually seems to be counter to Apple's historical product design
- oblio 4y agoApple? The company that added a notch to a laptop? :-))
- chasd00 4y agoyeah not a fan, my iphone12 mini is bad enough. I get that taking a photo and posting it to instagram is 95% of the use case for the iphone but i still don't like the way the camera lenses protrude.
- SebastianKra 4y agoSince the iPhone 11, the primary stated purpose of the Pro variants has been photography. For users less interested in photography, the regular iPhones have a more subtle camera array.
- bydo 4y agoOnly marginally. The iPhone 14 non-Pro has the (also enormous) camera system from the 13 Pro, only with the telephoto lens removed.
- k2enemy 4y agoThe author clearly knows a lot about photography, so I don't think this is a mistake in the article... When did "depth of field" begin meaning the opposite of what it traditionally meant in photography? For example: A nice side benefit of a larger sensor is a bit more depth of field. At a 13mm full-frame equivalent, you really can’t expect too much subject separation, but this shot shows some nice blurry figures in the background. For as long as I can remember, depth of field referred to the range of distance that is in focus. So more depth of field would mean more things in focus and less subject separation. And "distance to subject" and "field of view" equal, a larger sensor results in less depth of field. But in the article it is clearly the opposite. This isn't the only place I've noticed the change in meaning either.
- formerly_proven 4y agoBecause “depth of field is when blurry”
- Tepix 4y agoYou're right, he should have written shallow depth of field.
- thfuran 4y agoI'd guess that Photoshop et al. are the cause, with virtual depth of field effects.
- numlocked 4y agoPerhaps it’s technically inaccurate but seems easy to read it as: “ A nice side benefit of a larger sensor is a bit more depth of field effect”. Eg referring to the visual effect of shallow DoF, not the DoF itself. Because the following sentence is unambiguous about his intent, I’m inclined to not be overly pedantic here and let us slide.
- namdnay 4y agoI think it stems from the "depth of field effect" tool in post-processing, which then caused people to call the visual effect "depth of field" (instead of "shallowness of field" i guess)
- sys32768 4y agoI am still not understanding why my iPhone 13 landscape photos look as good as those from my $900 Nikkor Z 24mm f/1.8 S prime lens with its superior optics on a $2k DSLR body. If the reason is fancy post-processing, then why can't Nikon have a tiny lens like the iPhone 13 and just add fancy post-processing to it?
- ska 4y agoThis is probably the wrong way to think of it. Especially at screen sizes, there are certain photos your iphone 13 can take that are comparable to what you would get with your nikon gear. However there are photos you can get with that 1.8 that won't work at all on your phone.
- pb7 4y agoDo they look the same when zoomed in/at 100% zoom? Phone photos look great on small screens but show weaknesses on desktop.
- pcurve 4y agoYep. Dslr and large sensors count when it comes to making every pixel count without introducing artifacts
- astrange 4y agoIt's rarely the case that you want to look at a camera or a phone photo at 100% zoom unless you're cropping a smaller image out of a larger one. Of course, sometimes it's useful for things like reading text, but that's limited by the lens and focus abilities as much as the sensor resolution. You'd be surprised how little megapixels are just fine for putting up on a wall or billboard. It's all about how far away the viewer is.
- foldr 4y agoI wouldn't necessarily assume that the optics are superior. Smartphone lenses are pretty sophisticated. Also, their smaller size and far greater production numbers open up manufacturing techniques that wouldn't be practical for DSLR lenses. Edit: Apologies for commenting on downvotes, but I'd be genuinely curious to see some objective evidence that the optics of a typical DSLR lens have a superior design. Of course it is true that larger lenses for larger sensors tend to be superior because they do not need to resolve as many lines per mm and they do not need to be machined as precisely (all else being equal). But does anyone know of any actual lab tests that make relevant comparisons? I am a bit tired of people just assuming that DLSR lenses are higher quality than smartphone lenses, even though the cost of modern smartphones, and the enormous disparity in the number of units sold, makes it far from obvious that this should be the case.
- jeffbee 4y agoI guess the physics of the problem are really against these tiny cameras, but even so the bokeh on the caterpillar macro shot is surprisingly painful. Is there anything they can do about that, optically or computationally?
- MBCook 4y agoA real macro lens on a DSLR is like that. You could stop the lens down for more to be in focus, but then because you’re getting close to a pinhole camera you need a TON of light. Maybe the iPhone would do better in studio conditions, I don’t know. But it’s a very tough problem.
- jeffbee 4y agoNo? If I took that photo with my 100mm f/2.8 EF macro, everything behind the caterpillar would just be vaguely green. There's be no structure to it at all. I mean it would be way out of focus. The DoF even at f/11 would be ~1cm. The problem with the photo in the article is the structure of the background is quite apparent and all the details in the background have been multiplied into hexagons which is very distracting. Directly comparable macro photograph of a moth. https://www.slrphotographyguide.com/images/butterflymacro.jpg https://www.slrphotographyguide.com/images/butterflymacro.jp...
- MBCook 4y agoOh, I thought you wanted more depth of field. My mistake.
- foldr 4y agoThe size of the sensor isn't as important as people think it is. What really matters is the diameter of the aperture (the absolute diameter, not the f number). Consider a cone of light for a given angle of view hitting a small sensor close to the aperture and a large sensor further from the aperture: o < aperture of a given diameter /\ / \ ---- < small sensor (less area, more light per unit area) / \ / \ -------- < large sensor (more area, less light per unit area) If you compare typical shooting apertures for DLSRs and camera phones, they're not radically different. Say you are shooting a 50mm lens at f8 on a DSLR. That's an aperture of 6.25mm. A typical smartphone camera will have an aperture of around 3-4mm. In this scenario, then, the DLSR is getting about 3 times more light (or ~1.5 stops). Of course you can use much wider apertures on DSLRs, but their use is more limited given the shallow depth of field that results. If you're shooting e.g. landscapes, then you're probably not going to use apertures much wider than f8 anyway.
- azalemeth 4y agoThis is related to the conservation of Etendue [1] in an optical system, which is basically a statement of conservation of power: you rightly point out that radiant flux is determined by the source and constant – and for that reason, the primary numerical aperture or f-number of the lens is ultimately what really matters – assuming, as you point out, that you want to use the narrower DoF that arises (in which case SNR scales as the square root of sensor area). However, sensors get noise from different sources: and while you're right to point out that you might be up against photon shot noise, read noise goes down with pixel area: so, as long as pixel area scales with sensor area, and that scaling is performed by uniformly scaling the pixel, the larger sensor is intrinsically "a little bit better". Quoting shamelessly again from wikipedia [2] > The read noise is the total of all the electronic noises in the conversion chain for the pixels in the sensor array. To compare it with photon noise, it must be referred back to its equivalent in photoelectrons, which requires the division of the noise measured in volts by the conversion gain of the pixel. This is given, for an active pixel sensor, by the voltage at the input (gate) of the read transistor divided by the charge which generates that voltage, CG = V_{rt}/Q_{rt}. This is the inverse of the capacitance of the read transistor gate (and the attached floating diffusion) since capacitance C = Q/V. Thus CG = 1/C_{rt}. As capacitance is proportional to area, pixel area matters here – read noise is proportional to it linearly. In low-light conditions, read noise dominated most cellphone sensors (mostly for the above). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format#Read_noise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format#Read_noise
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- oldstrangers 4y agoWould be curious to see what they think of the Pixel 7 Pro camera. Video is still worse, but picture quality overall seems to be slightly (but noticeably) better than the iPhone 14 Pro.
- beezle 4y agoYou won't see one. All their past postings appear to be iPhone/pad camera reviews and they make two apps for the same. As a result, I am a little queasy about their objectivity too.
- anamexis 4y agoI don't see an issue, given that they don't intend to do an objective comparison to other (non-Apple) smartphones.
- dont__panic 4y agoI believe the Pixel Pro phones also recently migrated from 12MP to 48MP, between the 6 Pro and the 7 Pro. I wonder if this blogger is already looking into the Pixel? They mentioned that it takes a couple of months to come to a conclusion on a new phone camera, and the Pixel 7 has only been out for a month-ish.
- kllrnohj 4y agoPixel 6 switched to the 48MP. I don't think the Pixel 7 changed much of note.
- umeshunni 4y agoDxoMark is always good for comparing cameras: https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-camera/device-Google%20Pixel%207%20Pro https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-camera/device-Goog...
- cthalupa 4y agoUnfortunately, it still takes crappy concert photos. The combination of low light, crazy lighting, etc., still wreak havoc on the images. Fortunately, most of the venues I go to for shows generally have a "No detachable lens cameras" rule, which means my Fuji X100 is allowed. Unfortunately, security at the venues often ignores the policy and I don't want to be That Guy holding up the line arguing with them about it. (I'm also not one of those people that is taking pictures [and I never record video] the whole show, I just want a handful of high quality shots to help me remember the show)
- jibbers 4y agoWhat is the thinking behind the "no detachable lens cameras" rule? I can't wrap my head around that choice.
- adrr 4y agoNo professional photographers. I was told at a hotel that i couldn't use my mirrorless camera on their property by their security and that was the reason.
- cthalupa 4y agoNow THIS makes no sense to me. In the Before days, I used to travel extensively for work, and would frequently bring my a7r along, and never once had any issues taking photos at a hotel across dozens of cities and a dozen countries. (Not doubting it happened, just think that's a very weird line of rationale from them)
- adrr 4y agoMiami at a trendy hotel known for celebs.
- MBCook 4y agoI would guess to prevent professionals from taking pictures “for free” instead of getting contracts with the bands/venues and paying fees for the privilege. Or maybe they just annoy other patrons.
- solardev 4y agoComing from a Pixel 5 to the iPhone 14 Pro, I gotta say I'm pretty disappointed. The pictures are mediocre at best, and just plain bad in dim light especially. Google's computational photography is years ahead. The latest Pixel has better sensors too.
- saiya-jin 4y agoOne problem that Apple actually considers a hard won feature is color inaccuracy. They like to do default images look very instagram-ish, which may be what many folks like to see but they are pretty far from reality, more than most. Skin smoothing is another topic on its own. Maybe I am very biased by almost a decade of full frame shooting basically everything, but I like photo representing what I actually see with my own eyes at that moment. When talking about Pixels, when I saw some non-ideal light samples from latest one, it was pretty clear neither Apple nor ie Samsung (which I own and love, S22 ultra) are in same league in many aspects of photography. But Pixel 6 had some pretty annoying issues from user reports. On the other side it costed (and v7 still does) significantly less from day 1.
- nurblieh 4y agoComing from the Pixel 6 Pro, I feel the same. The camera is comparatively very slow with even daytime indoor lighting. Half the photos I take of a child at play end up in the trash due to blur. Hoping to find out that I'm just "holding it wrong".
- fumar 4y agoDo you have examples to share? I am interested as I shoot with film, mirrorless, and on iPhones.
- solardev 4y agoNot my gallery, but a good side by side: https://imgur.io/a/vG6Yskx https://imgur.io/a/vG6Yskx Other comparisons: https://www.phonearena.com/news/Pixel-7-Pro-vs-iPhone-14-Pro-vs-Galaxy-S22-Ultra-Camera-Comparison_id143102 https://www.phonearena.com/news/Pixel-7-Pro-vs-iPhone-14-Pro... https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/iphone-14-pro-vs-google-pixel-7-pro-camera-test-comparison/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/iphone-14-pro-vs-google...
- Kukumber 4y agoTo me that's a downgrade, it should be smaller, not bigger
- city17 4y agoThe funny thing is that for all the amazing technological improvements discussed, all the pictures in the article actually show that A. having a photographer who knows how to frame things, and sees the right moment to capture an image, and B. having a subject worthwhile photographing, are way more important than having a top tier quality camera.
- belfalas 4y agoKim Jung Gi (the artist) once said that the question he got most often was: what kind of brush pen do you use?
- bitexploder 4y agoIt’s like asking Feynman about magnets.
- lethologica 4y agoRIP to Kim Jung Gi. He could have drawn with a stick in sand and still produce brilliant art. But the tool is the thing that is most visible to admirers, and the thing that they can most easily replicate with their own work, so it doesn't surprise me that that's what most people misguidedly ask about. It's also much easier to buy a pen than it is to put decades of hard work and dedication into your art on a daily basis. Instant gratification.
- xdfgh1112 4y agoWell yeah but it doesn't hurt to make photography more accessible to everyone.
- ska 4y agoIt was always pretty accessible, at least since 35mm was developed.
- sumedh 4y agoA photographer friend of mine always used to get comments like you can take such awesome shots because you are using a DSLR (this was 10 years back). So he started taking two pictures one with DSLR and one with a mobile cameras at that time. He would still get the awesome shots comments even with the pics he took with the basic mobile camera and shared them on social media.
- Wolfegard 4y agoVERY disappointed there is no 48MP RAW available. The iPhone cameras are superb I think, but the "Apple Image Processing" renders stock camera photos useless for me. The watercolor smear and color smoothness that the article talks about. I like noise, don't smooth away the reality of life. ProRAW is confusing because it is not RAW at all, instead it's an uncompressed image that has had a milder "Apple Image Processing" applied. I've tested the iPhone 14 Pro, and the ProRAW files are too processed for me. They are not "reality". This is a philosophical concept. Do I want to capture what I see, or a smoothed watercolor ideal of what Apple think I should see? I want a 48MP genuine RAW file that I can post-process in Lightroom or Photoshop. Here's looking forward to the iPhone 15 Pro!
- alberth 4y ago> “I think the 12 MP shooting default is a wise choice on Apple’s part, but it does mean that the giant leap in image quality on iPhone 14 Pro remains mostly hidden unless you choose to use a third party app to shoot 48 MP JPG / HEIC images or shoot in ProRAW and edit your photos later.” This, 100%. The massive difference in image quality is when shooting in RAW. That’s when you actually get the 48MP & the images are fantastic. But that’s not the default. The default is 12MP. That’s why reviewers are so torn on this camera system. If the default was a 48MP picture/quality, everyone would be praising it. But when the default is 12MP, it’s par for the course.
- acchow 4y agoWhy would you need more than 12MP if the photo is only going to be displayed on a 6 inch screen?
- tourist2d 4y agoBecause you can make a pinch motion to zoom into photos.
- LASR 4y ago> if the photo is only going to be displayed on a 6 inch screen If you use photos as a way to preserve memories, then who knows what these photos are going to be displayed on in the future? Maybe in the (near) future, we start adopting VR headsets, and then the 12MP vs 48MP difference is going to matter a lot. On the low-tech end of the spectrum, maybe you want a larger poster printed out. If you need to crop some part of the image at all, the difference in resolution is going to be very noticeable.
- 9935c101ab17a66 4y agoSpeculative and tenuous hand-wringing about distant, unlikely use cases is not a compelling rebuttal. We know 12mp photos look good on 6 inch, high resolution screens. They even look good on desktop computers and TVs. Why would you view 2D images in a stereoscopic 3D headset designed for video? Do existing photos look bad in current VR headsets because they lack resolution? I haven’t used any of the modern VR headsets but I’m willing to bet that there isn’t a significant difference between a 12mp and “48mp” iPhone 14 pro photo on a VR headset. You’re also ignoring the context — of course higher resolution is better in isolation, no one would argue otherwise. But it comes with significant trade offs, like the FOUR SECOND capture time and the enormous file sizes. If you want to print a cropped photo from an iPhone on a large poster (be honest — do you know anyone who currently prints iPhone photos on posters on a regular basis? I’d argue that hardly anyone prints iPhone photos at all nowadays, and especially not at large poster sizes), 12mp vs “48mp” isn’t going to make a difference, it’s going to look bad either way. Anyone seriously concerned about their ability to print large format posters from cropped images is going to be using a full frame or medium format camera. We know current iPhone photos look fine on 6inch high PPI displays (displays that already exceed the resolution of the human retina) and when printed at common sizes (4x6, 8.5x11). That’s never going to change. Making the iPhone camera workflow significantly worse for users now is not an acceptable trade off for vague, hypothetical future use- cases.
- amelius 4y agoThese relatively cheap tiny cameras would be so useful in so many other products, from medical to sports. It is really a shame that most new consumer tech is locked behind the doors of large corporations these days, that will keep the tech from reaching its true potential in a myriad of products.
- hengheng 4y agoI've been looking to buy "portrait focal length" cameras. You can get the AliExpress equivalent of a standard phone camera, dressed up as compatible to Raspberry Pi, and somebody even brought wide-angles to that market once, but no-one seems to have the long focal lengths. Optics is weird. Either a device becomes a thing and then it's immediately a huge product, or the availability is straight up zero.
- kllrnohj 4y agoAre you sure these cameras are cheap? Regardless, these are regularly off-the-shelf sensors that "anyone" can buy (such as the ISOCELL GN1 https://semiconductor.samsung.com/image-sensor/mobile-image-sensor/isocell-gn1/ https://semiconductor.samsung.com/image-sensor/mobile-image-... ).
- earth2mars 4y agoI still thinks Pixel camera is much better than iPhone . I guess this lux apps play a niche role in iOS as Android have many competitors
- prawn 4y agoI upgraded from an Xs Max to a 14 partway through a road trip this year. The massive difference between these phones is in video (and particularly stabilisation) but I’ve also enjoyed the 0.5 and 2-3x options on the camera. I haven’t had enough wifi to backup to iCloud and free up space to work in raw/48MP, but you can see the sorts of shots here with the stock app and 12MP. http://instagram.com/isaacforman/ http://instagram.com/isaacforman/ I am carrying a GoPro, an Osmo Pocket, an Insta360 Go 2, two drones and the two phones - the 14 is the one I used as a priority because the quality and options were so good.
- b0ner_t0ner 4y ago> And yes: 48 megapixel capture is slow. We’re talking up to 4 seconds of capture time slow Pretty disappointing that a US$1000+ flagship device still can't batch capture at high resolution. Even entry-level DSLRs/mirrorless cameras can do 15+ fps in RAW mode.
- yread 4y agoHell, my Nokia 1020 was faster with the 48MP resolution
- virgildotcodes 4y agoI just can't help but notice how soft so many of these shots look. The composition and lighting is beautiful, the immediate impact of the photo is great, but then if you start to really look for more than a few seconds on desktop, you see how smudgy so much of the detail is. I recently gave up my mirrorless in favor of my iPhone because the latter was just so much more convenient and largely good enough. I wonder if it is physically possible, however, for these smaller lens and sensor packages to ever get to the point of eliminating that phone camera smudge?
- chobytes 4y agoA bit of knowledge of optics and photography is enough to know that little sensor with miniature glass cant compete with a dedicated camera. (Eg regardless of 'equivalent' field of view via crop factor, a 50mm and 10mm are going to produce a very different depth of field.) You can definitely take nice photos with it given the right variables and/or some creativity (as you could with a point-and-shoot a decade ago)... but don't be taken in by their marketing if photography is a goal for you.