
iPhone 7 Plus Depth Effect Is Legit - jmiserez
http://prolost.com/blog/deptheffect
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oliwarner
There are already enough people saying how good phone cameras are getting.
They're right. Software tricks like this help overcome _some_ of the physical
hard-limitations.

But let's not be too silly. They still don't hold a candle to high-end DLSRs.
Not really.

What this really drives home for me is how lazy Nikon and Canon really are in
their markets. There's almost no innovation and when there is —assuming we can
really call adding wifi connectivity is innovative— it's awfully executed.
It's easier to take the SD card out of my camera and stick it in an adaptor in
my phone than it is to turn on the wifi, connect via my phone (which
disconnects it from its wifi) and then slowly copy files out. The idea that
you might want to take a photo and use it immediately is completely foreign to
them.

One day somebody's going to notice this, make a pro-lens-compatible system
with modern interfaces and connectivity and completely displace Nikon and
Canon from their own pro-sumer market.

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foldr
I have a feeling that this is going to lead to a reduction of the use of
shallow DoF effects in the long term. Shallow DoF is for sure sometimes
creatively appropriate, but a big part of its popularity is that it's an
effect that you can only get with relatively expensive camera systems. There
is a natural tendency amongst photographers to overestimate the creative
benefits of effects that can only be achieved with expensive equipment.

In large format photography, a $150 Crown Graphic can give you extremely
shallow DoF, whereas it takes a camera with tilt and shift and a wide coverage
lens to get an image that's sharp throughout the frame. Inevitably, large
format photography forums are full of people obsessing about what expensive
equipment they need to achieve deep focus.

