I'm a bit fed up with "computational photography". The image reconstruction on the iPhone 13 is super fascinating from a technical perspective - crazy what can be achieved with the given constraints - but I do prefer less of it like it was still the case with my old "more honest" iPhone X. I should probably finally test the Pro Raw mode, I guess it will give me what I'm missing?
Still, I'm wondering if anyone has a rec for a slightly less handy yet purpose built and somewhat comparable modern "snap & shoot" camera? Even after reading this well done review / comparison the iPhone 14 Pro upgrade is just not worth it to me at this point.
When I had my Pixel 2 XL I was constantly amazed at how clear, sharp, and non-muddy the computational photos came out. It was astonishing. I now have a 13 Pro Max and wish that I could just shut off the “water color effect”. I don’t know if it’s just me being picky, but I swear to god the Pixel 2 XL had a better camera in every way. More zoom, higher quality color, sharper pictures, WAY BETTER IMAGE STABILIZATION, and the computation stuff like Google’s night mode is leagues ahead of iPhone.
I created an account just to recommend shooting ProRaw with the Pro Camera app on an iPhone. There's even a setting to turn down some of the computational photography features (under 'Capture Quality'). Makes a world of difference!
The RAW images from the iPhone have been processed. From my limited testing they're not really RAW anymore. They've been demosaiced and noise reduction has already been applied.
I bought the RX100m3 from Sony for this reason with the birth of our first child. It worked amazingly and was exactly what I was looking for in what I was buying. Shooting RAW was nice, and all the Sony tech from the larger bodies makes it way down into the RX100 line. They are not cheap though.
I currently have a small digital point and shoot that’s about 5 years old and notice it still manages to take better photos than my iPhone 12 mini due to the crazy processing the iPhone does.
I also am a relatively recent new dad and this comment resonated with me.
What’s your quick review on it? I’m a pretty amateur photographer, but is this camera worth an upgrade over my current setup and amateur experience?
I'm quite an amateur as well (although with some work experience on vision systems). The latest Sony RX100 is $1600 CAD so it's quite a different level than the one you currently have. Like they say, and it's true, the best camera is the one you have with you... I really liked the RX100, and my favourite thing with it was actually taking it to events. Concerts and hockey games, it did OK with low light with it's RAW processing, and it was small enough to bring in a pocket.
The G9 X has a "one inch" sensor, which is about as big as you can get in this size, like the RX100. The bigger sensor and the bigger / nicer the optics, the better your pictures. Like you are saying, when you get it right these small point and shoots can easily out perform the phones.
Honestly for the family shots, even though the camera was nice and small, I didn't end up getting it into the diaper bag or backpack as much as I thought I would, I ended up with my phone a lot of the time. Then, I got back into prime lenses on an old Nikon and then new Fuji, and there's no comparison (for me) between a fast prime and a point and shoot, no mater the number of fancy features on the latest RX100. The Fuji 56mm spoiled me.
I think I might have overstated my amateur status, I had to look up what a prime lense was :) I mostly just used the "auto" setting on my Canon heh.
Anyways the only things I really dislike with the Canon are the lack of viewfinder and no auto-transfer photo to phone which the Sony has.
It sounds like the image quality of the Sony isn't that dramatic of an upgrade as my Canon?
Thanks for the info though, maybe I just momentarily got excited at the prospect of upgrading as that Sony looks really sweet. There also might have been hint of "I'll get even more into photography if I upgrade" so I'm going to sleep on it.
I think all the tech that's in those Sony's would probably allow for some more shots to turn out, you'll get really good Auto Focus as well as a crazy number of pictures in burst mode - great for chasing kids around.
If you are looking to get more into photography, and honestly it's a hobby that can pay nice dividends as a parent, I might suggest looking at a used body for an interchangeable lens camera and a prime lens to get some of those nice family shots. With another point and shoot, while the option is there to go full-auto, I never found that I did.
The X100 line has a fixed lens, it does not swap out. It’s a bit of a larger, fancier point and shoot that does not zoom. They look really nice and I’ve always wanted one!
I have an X-T2 and have started a collection of lenses. The 56mm F1.2 is a bokeh monster with the autofocus speed of a slug! But when it hits it is beautiful. They just came out with a new version of the 56mm lens that might do better in Auto Focus, and they are up to the X-T4 which has a bunch of features that are nicer too, like IBIS.
Note that the Fuji cameras are unique in that they use a custom colour filter, not a Bayer filter on the sensor. This can affect the RAW processing depending on how you might want to do it. Honestly I got into Fuji cause a friend shot with it, lent me the body when he was out of country for a while, then I just got used to it and that was that. The XT line has more dials than a lot of other makes, some people like that.
I’ve decided on suggesting this to people who ask what camera they should get:
1. Pick your budget first
2. Pick the type (point and shoot, mirrorless interchangeable lens)
3. Go to a camera store and pick up some of the models you might be interested in. See what you like the feel of and the interface of. Between all the big companies, you can’t really go wrong.
4. Don’t go all out on the body (go used!) and get nicer lenses. Once you pick a make with a certain mount, you can have the lenses for life and upgrade the body as you go along. Try 2 lenses to start a prime portrait lens and a zoom in the normal to telephoto range to be able to be a bit away from your kids but still get a tight shot.
You can take a look at my Flickr account and see that a lot of the pictures up there are with a Nikon D40 and a $200 prime lens. In good light, it still takes fine pictures! My son and daughter now runs around with it and get some great shots from their POV.
I went down a small rabbit hole yesterday, checked out fuij's line and read quite a few review and spec pages, I'm definitely captivated. I think I'm getting drawn towards the fuji x-t20/30 or one of the older x100 series as a start, but I'm def going to go to a few camera stores next week to see how they feel in person!
Thanks again for all the info, where can I find your flickr? Tried looking in your HN profile but couldn't find it.
I pulled the trigger on a GR IIIx about a year ago. It's mind bogglingly amazing and several orders of magnitude better than anything my iPhone 13 Pro nor my Pixel 6 XL can muster. It goes everywhere my smartphone does as it is very pocketable.
The GR III/IIIx does not have HDMI out, however it does support the DisplayPort protocol where you can solve video output in various ways with adapters, do note the max video resolution output is 1080p. The main problem is that eventually it will overheat and turn off (within minutes). Video was and is not a strong suit with Pentax/Ricoh products unfortunately.
I'd recommend shooting in ProRaw and then using Affinity/Darkroom/Pixelmator-Photo to edit it.
Photos shot in ProRaw still display the opinionated high-clarity [1] version in the photos app. Only editing in a third-party app will override that.
Unlike Raw, ProRaw will still do much of the good (IMO) processing, while allowing you to avoid Apples color-grading.
[1] I believe clarity, not sharpness, is the reason why iPhone 13 photos look so bad. It clears up parts of the image that are supposed to be foggy, thus removing an important depth queue and making the image look flat.
In the following examples, notice how minor details are blown out, making the image almost look like a mosaic.
I want to know the answer to this also! Total photography noob contemplating getting a new iphone here, is it possible to use a different camera app to disable a bunch of the computational magic?
Yes, and https://halide.cam/ is an excellent choice if you want more than the native RAW mode offers.
I only shoot RAW, it does require post-processing to get social media looking photos if that's your bag. (Normies want the pop, not the accuracy; nice it has both.)
I've been learning to take "real" photos with a Sony A6400 over the past few months, with a couple of Sigma prime lenses. I've been super super happy with the photos I've managed to get out of it and definitely recommend a similar setup!
a6400 is mighty powerful indeed. I upgraded to it from a5100 (which I still have for its compactness) and was amazed by its customizability. Also with mirrorless you can adapt pretty much any old cheap manual-focus lens and get creative bokeh or fast telephoto for under $200.
It feels limited for video though — a lot of options but no way to get beyond 8 bits per channel, so iphone hdr videos win in most cases.
Sure, my use case involved a black dog among sunny landscapes, that stretches the need for dynamic range and color grading flexibility. Maybe with better shooting technique it’s less of a problem, but I’ve got used to post-processing flexibility it gives with stills.
Seems a strange omission not to evaluate the ProRAW capture. I can understand having the rankings being in the typical/regular mode (as competitors may not have comparable modes), but surely there's value into evaluating what the enhancement offered by the top-quality mode offers?
It's a bit like evaluating the drive characteristics of a sports car but not once taking it out of comfort mode.
Knowing little about photography all of these photos look like an obscure combination of fake and dull. Like over saturated HDR-era style photos with too little depth.
It's like those voice compression algos where at a certain threshold "the character" of the person talking has just completely disappeared then magically reappears at a high enough bitrate.
These photos seem compressed in a way that takes away the "soul" of what's photographed.
Mirrors the way heavy loudness compression and autotune has become standard in pop music, and audiences now prefers "metallic" voices and very little dynamic range - so people will probably prefer this ghostly aesthetic to actual reality going forward.
The photos are intentionally dull. It's just a product of comparing cameras in a controlled environment.
You can go to product pages for the iPhone 14 Pro or Galaxy S22 and see photos with a bit more soul... though still with a forced feeling that comes from marketing.
You can look at professional photos taken with phone cameras circa 2015 and they still look good.
I’ve always felt that my eye handles high dynamic range scenes much better than cameras. In the past I would shoot a photo and the shadows in the photo would be much darker than they appeared to me in person, and the sky would be blown out with no color.
These compressed images feel closer to me to the way I actually perceive the world. The colors do sometimes get a little funky though.
> I’ve always felt that my eye handles high dynamic range scenes much better than cameras.
Depending on what you mean by “eye handles”, yes, you have far more dynamic range than most cameras. The reason I caveat is that just like how modern smartphones with their “computation images” are really combining multiple shots together, so is your brain. I forget the exact numbers, but I think the retina itself is around 5-8 stops of dynamic range and what your brain “sees” when you are looking around is something like 15-20 stops.
> Knowing little about photography all of these photos look like an obscure combination of fake and dull. Like over saturated HDR-era style photos with too little depth.
That's what you get when not a single artistic soul is present during the development, they maximise everything for pure raw """performance""". "see in the dark", "maximum amount of dynamic range HDR", "improve faces", "improve colors" &c.
So yes, the camera can see in the dark, see 20 stops of dynamic range, add fake depth of field, but it looks like shit because they fundamentally don't know what makes a good image.
You have the same thing with photographers:
- the "technicians" who have the most expensive and advanced gear and often produce lacking results
- the "artists" with limited funds taking breathtaking pictures on prehistoric hardware
>So yes, the camera can see in the dark, see 20 stops of dynamic range, add fake depth of field, but it looks like shit because they fundamentally don't know what makes a good image.
Or it looks that way to faux-artistic purist sensibility, but actual users have managed to create awesome pictures with it just fine for over a decade...
You can take good picture with a toy camera from 1990
These crazy HDR, face smoothing and fake background blur are objectively ugly, but sure you can take good pictures with them, the pictures would be better with proper tools though
E.g. fake blur most would find bad only when it's badly done - when it exposes edges and so on. If it's done right in a image, they'd have no issue with it, nor find it "objectively ugly".
Phones now consistently/always outperform high-end cameras in brightly lit conditions involving the sky, water, snow etc. It's nearly impossible to get the same results with camera gear on account of them still having not figured out how to merge multiple exposures milliseconds apart.
If camera makers don't radically alter image processing on their bodies, they'll soon find themselves in a place even smaller than what's already a niche.
About "there is so much more to photography than...": a guy I met in a vacation years ago was taking pictures with a low cost phone with at best an average sensor. Nevertheless his pictures were always more memorable than the ones that other people in the party were taking with 1000+ Euro cameras. OK, he couldn't zoom into the eyes of birds on branches (my cheap 30x compact camera could) but he had enough talent to make me wish he had one of those cameras.
Sometimes I go back and look at my camera phone pictures from 2016 and before, and regret so much that I didn't buy a more expensive camera phone. Some really good pictures are marred by noise and blur because of the cheap lens and sensor of the phone.
No doubt here. Just watching a few videos on youtube about composition and similar stuff can improve your photos greatly.
Sometimes people just don't have "a feeling" on why professional photos look like professional photos. It is all about composition, angles and stuff. Sensor size is not so important if you are taking a photo of landscape and showing it on instagram.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that some measurable percentage of "official person tasked with photographing a wedding" are just using phones. These are not professional wedding photographers, but they are acting as a wedding photographer while using a phone camera. (And they are friends or family doing the task for free.)
Surely many weddings are not high expenditure events. An average person with a modern phone who takes a LOT of photos at each moment or scene will produce some good images. They may not be of the quality where you could print large poster size, but most people probably don't print larger than 11x14.
There's no doubt that a skilled photographer with good gear that is suited for the environment can do better. Phones are not a replacement for this if final result is the only criteria. But not only are not all "professional" photographers great, but a lucky amateur with a good phone cam and lots of snaps may end up with output that a layperson, including the subjects of the wedding, might not be able to see the difference of.
There is no doubt my mother-in-law barely notices a difference when I take a photo of her grand children using phone and using camera. And this is for one simple reason - she looks at how much fun her grand children are having. Not the quality of HDR or anything else.
So your point really stands here.
However for anybody just a little bit involved the difference is huge. Simple things like depth of field can only be faked on small sensor because if physics.
HDR on phones also often look fake, imperfect and artificial. To the point that I think in 50 years people will try to fake it to get that "2020 look" as nowadays we try to get "film look of 60s".
I know I'm a weird person, but I never got the whole depth-of-field/bokeh thing. While I understand that some people want the "focus" to be the sharp center of attention, and perhaps other things to be less sharp, I never liked the "everything except the main object is super blurry" effect. In many cases, I want everything to be in focus so I can choose what to look at and enjoy.
As for HDR look, it's a bit difficult to say what neutral/normal is since it depends on SO many variables (including the brain of the viewer). So I would argue that your perception of the "fakeness" of phone HDR is because your mind is trained on images which look different. Even if there is a formal correct definition of ideal, in cases of relatively small differences it's kind of moot.
Plus, at my basic understanding I believe photogs shooting in raw are choosing to some degree how to interpret the data when they convert from RAW. Maybe they let the default converter choose, and maybe (probably) they make some choices of their own. So at this point there is no truth. There is just the subjective choices of the operator.
Even between camera/lens/software choices the results can be quite varied from what I've seen reading many camera tests, reviews, and comparisons.
Ultimately a human with a little training or some intuition/luck can make choices of how and where to shoot which probably have the greatest overall impact on the likeability of the image.
In many cases, I want everything to be in focus so I can choose what to look at and enjoy.
At the end of the day all these choices boils down the argument of photographer as artist vs photographer as documenter. The artists goal is to essentially decide what part they want you to focus on and how you should experince the scene so that they can elicit the emotional response they want. The documenter wants to show you as accurately and neutrally as possible what the actual scene looked like when the picture was taken. Which one you prefer is entirely dependant on what you think the purpose of a photograph should be.
We use a limited depth of field for a few reasons. One is that even at f/8 on a decently long lens with a large sensor it’s still going to happen, and you’re not going to be at f/8 in a dimly lit environment.
The main reason is to draw your eye to the subject instead of the background. It’s also how our eyes work.
The third (related) reason is that the background often isn’t super controllable. If I’m taking portraits of someone in the woods I don’t want branches “coming out” of their heads, and those branches being blurry helps with that. At weddings if I’m photographing candids of a group of people blurring out everyone but the subject(s) is handy because people often make stupid faces. And don’t get me started on how messy bridal suites are where the girls are getting ready…
I agree. Bokeh has come to be the standard because a) it used to be difficult to achieve, you needed expensive lenses and b) all the photographers said it is great. No layperson I have taken pictures of really liked the background blur effect. Most of them wanted the background to be in the shot.
> If this would be the case every wedding photographer would just use an iPhone.
As a POC, some have. Here's Peter McKinnon [1], and Tomorrow's filmmakers [2]. The wedding is also a very controlled lighting scenario, allowing the dedicated camera to maximize its advantage. Shutter-speed matters too, which Phones have closed in on but not yet eliminated. (In my post, I called out brightly lit conditions.)
Large camera bodies are also about looking "professional". Like most people don't wanna go to banks where staff is dressed in t-shirts and shorts.
Some weddings I have gone to have the photographer with a big flash and an assistant, who has an even bigger light. With predictable results - everyone looks startled and you can tell that all the red eye has been photoshopped out.
To take candid photos in a dimly lit environment (evening, church, outdoors at night etc) you need a big honking flash or a lens that captures more light than the Hubble.
Every good photographer (almost) always bounces their speed light off the wall/ceiling or uses an off camera flash. I’ve taken hundreds of thousands of wedding images and never once had red eye to remove. People also don’t “startle” faster than the speed of light.
Speedlights aren’t “big honking flashes” and as long as you know what you’re doing you’re still usually at a high ISO as you don’t want the background to be super dim compared to the foreground.
Anyways, phones are especially ill suited for that environment compared to modern cameras. At f/1.4, 1/200th of a second shutter at ISO 6400 you can freeze everything but super fast motion with pretty good image quality in very dim environments. Phones absolutely cannot do that. Even pictures taken outside just after the sun sets are a smeary mess after the built in noise reduction.
Yeah I use a flash during the dinner and party at a wedding, but during church is a big fat no :p Indeed, you're stuck with big telephoto lenses and high iso.
Your last point is so wrong I don’t know where to start.
I don’t like carrying god knows how many pounds of weight on my shoulders with two cameras, 3 lenses, and often two speedlights on me all day. I also bring two Pelican cases of lighting equipment, a camera bag full of batteries and lenses, and an “oh shit” bad with backup cameras and lenses. That’s what I need to do a good job in any condition.
Phone camera photos look good on your phone. If you have absolutely perfect lighting they may even look good blown up to a somewhat reasonable size. Good luck getting anything useful in a dim church, on the dance floor, etc.
It’s pretty often that a mom comes along to a senior photography shoot and takes photos with their phone of me at work and then sends them to me. The quality is utterly laughable compared to what I’m capturing at the time when actually viewed on something that’s more than 6 inches diagonal.
Photographers might make silly YouTube videos trying to get clicks where they use phones on a pro shoot but that’s where it ends.
Even if the iPhone was better, you couldn’t show up to the job and use an iPhone because people would feel ripped off and assume they could do the same with their phones.
So they are paying for skills. Which are used Whether the photographer uses an iPhone or pro gear. That was the entire point I made. It make no sense for people to think they could do it themselves. If they hired a pro in the first place.
You assume people are thinking this many steps forward. Wearing a button up shirt and tie doesn’t make your brain work faster in the office, but people do it anyway for the show. It doesn’t have to be rational, it’s just how people think. Taking photos with phones looks casual/unprofessional regardless of how good the phone is at taking photos.
I’ve seen wedding photographers where they have the assistant taking photos with the phone as a backup. And sometimes the customers prefer the phone shots.
That is just plain wrong. No later than a month ago I was in vacation and took several picture with a regular mirrorless (Fuji x-e3) and a new pixel phone, while others in the group had iphones. The mirrorless picture quality was just miles ahead. In bright conditions the pixel were pretty good for the light parts but not for any shadow, and it lacks nuance. iPhone photos are just not that great, with colors all over the place, and bad shadows. Sure it may look fine on the iphone screen for instagram but put that on a bigger screen or print and it's just not good.
I wish someone just made an SLR with Android and Google Photos and the Google Camera, ie good lenses paired with good computational photography and easy sharing.
Sony tried a few years back, but then Sony got it the way...
I just want Sony to release updated versions of their QX10/QX100 external cameras for smartphones- it was such a good concept, just slightly ahead of its time. I'm sure they would sell lots of them nowadays.
Yes. I still don’t get why none of the camera makers outfits their camera with something on the level of the iPhone. Maybe there is less to be gained in dSLR because of the mirror. But mirrorless with the constant exposure should be a ready match.
I have a pixel 6 with the same kind of 50 mega pixel sensor that the new iphone has (might even be the same sensor?). It's good. I also have a Fuji x-t30, which is a 26 megapixel camera from a few years ago. The Fuji is what I grab if I want to take a nice photo. The 12.5 megapixel photos that Apple and Google take by combining pixels in a 4:1 ratio from the 50 mega pixel sensor are alright and the resulting raw files that I can get from my phone are quite OK. But the Fuji raw files are way nicer. Just way more detail and dynamic range.
People confuse the post processing that Apple and Google do in the phone with the quality of the camera. It's impressive what they do and the quality of the raw images is actually not as bad as it used to be on most phones. But it's still a noisy mess compared to any decent pro-sumer camera of the last ten years or so. You don't need the same trickery to make those photos look good.
It's amazing what Apple and Google can do with the relatively limited form factor, sensor, lenses, etc. that phones have but when it comes to sensors, bigger is simply better and bigger requires more distance between the lens and the sensor. It's not the number of pixels that counts but their size and noise level.
My Fuji is fine as an entry level camera but the real deal here is full frame sensors and expensive lenses. It makes all the difference. Some of the lenses on the market today are so good that it's pointless owning them unless you can pair them with a very high end camera and sensor. Phone lenses are comparatively not really worth talking about. Owning such a lens almost automatically means you probably want to have full creative control. So, typical owners of such cameras and lenses are not looking for point and click cameras but are deeply into controlling all aspects of their photography.
Most manufacturers have put dslr development on halt or at least on the back-burner. The high end stuff is almost exclusively mirror less at this point.
This is all true, but having a camera that’s even vaguely comparable which is in your pocket most the time, with functional software and near seamless upload/offload/sharing makes it vastly more desirable.
In the same way a tractor is vastly more desirable than a sports car. Which is to say that, while they may share a passing resemblance, they are different tools that don't compare well.
I think mostly because they don't need to have that much processing power compare to a smartphone, due to their bigger lens/sensor - so they don't need to use higher end processing unit. You can delay the postprocessing to a dedicated (external) software so to say.
One big advantage you have with dedicated hardware also is the reduced need to have a virtual interface (though UX is quite often in dire need to be improved on them, especially for advance configuration). A bit like knob are better in a car in a general way.
But to be honest, at the end, it's clearly a difference of philosophy. I'd wager that the smartphone maker have better understood the market than the camera maker for a while.
Because of sensor readout speed. Phones do what they do by shooting dozens or hundreds of very fast frames, then combining them into the finished picture.
Cameras can't do that, because their bigger sensors take longer to read out. There'd be too few frames, and too much gap between frames.
Big sensors are slowly getting faster, too, with stacked sensors and the like. But they're not quite fast enough yet for phone-style computational shenanigans.
If only the Samsung Galaxy NX that looked like a DSLR and had interchangeable lenses running Android took hold almost 10 years ago and evolved we would be here. For now I guess we can only dream.
Its not Android, its the algorithms and the ISP. Pixel phones have their own ISP chip and their own algorithms. The fact that they take good photos has nothing to do with them running Android.
This summer, I was in the US desert with a friend (AZ/UT). He had an iPhone 11 pro (maybe you consider this old?), while I had a 6 yo m4/3 Olympus (never was particularly high-end).
His pictures would systematically look "flatter", almost cartoonish. They were lacking a certain nuance in the colors, especially on larger swaths of similar colors (think the buttes in Monument Valley).
Its saving grace was that, out of camera, my sky was a tad lighter than you'd expect. The camera does have an HDR mode, but I basically never bother with it.
The day I bought my Samsung S22 ultra is the day I stopped lugging around my full frame Nikon. And I took it everywhere, all hikes and skitours, many climbs, got with it to 6000m altitude on Aconcagua too. Last time I took it to vacation to Egypt and literally didn't take it out of pouch for 2 weeks. Good pictures as it does, the pain of carrying 2.5kg camera around all the time, looking weird in small public spaces and all the freakin time wasted post-processing ain't worth it for me.
I have phone camera with 16x zoom range altogether, small kids and I strongly prefer making (sometimes) sub-ideal pics of almost all situations rather than a bit better pics of few of those. Often it does properly great photos. And much much much better videos. While weighting 200g and fitting (so-so) in my pocket.
I literally couldn't care less about mirrorless cameras, for me cameras are over.
Fuji x100v is the way to go for travel, 450gr, fits in a jacket pocket, miles ahead of any phones for portraits, printings, &c. you can shoot jpegs and never edit the files thanks to their inbody presets
That being said I also just bring my pixel 3 for hikes and sport in general even though I own a few leicas, nikon, &c. weight is king sometimes
This is not a bad approach as long as you only look at your photos on a phone. If you ever print them, or look at them on a monitor, they won't measure up. But for convenience, you can't beat a phone.
> This is not a bad approach as long as you only look at your photos on a phone. If you ever print them, or look at them on a monitor, they won't measure up.
And you never really know which photo will turn out so nice you later want to print it. Someone taking photos only on their phone won't have that option.
In the wall behind me I have a 4-foot wide print of a photo I took on vacation. It's a crop of a section of the photo that later (a few years later) I realized would make for a great print on the wall. Glad I took it with the DSLR, so a cropped section printed out to 4 feet looks stunning.
They only look better if you're not a photographer and/or don't know what you're doing. As soon as you dig in the files they absolutely fall apart, plus you don't have any control whatsoever on the camera unless you use some extremely clunky third party apps
There’s an empty parking lot near my house that is pitch black at night. One morning early, I took a photo of it, on a lark - with a new Canon at high ISO and slow shutter.
It was unreal, like someone had switched on the sun for a second. It’s grainy from the high ISO, but you can see full details in full colour and with the naked eye it’s as dark as a pool of black ink.
I used to do a similar thing many years ago. Since my then DSLR was atrocious above ISO 1600, and barely usable at 800, I had to learn to be patient.
But the results of minutes-long exposures in the dark were absolutely crazy. Colors were very deep, and there was an incredible nuance in the tones of even the darkest corners.
Highly recommended to anyone not used with taking pictures in such conditions. This could even be tried in one's home at night. All the random LEDs shining around in the dark actually create an eerie atmosphere if you look long enough.
dslrs can use a similar technique that phones use—exposure bracketing—with good or better results depending on a variety of factors.
It does make you wonder if fullsized camera bodies will figure out better bracketing. Exposure time is really important, and you need good computation to align the images and correct for stability.
it's better to get it right during shooting than in post.
> dslrs can use a similar technique that phones use—exposure bracketing—with good or better results depending on a variety of factors.
This. My 2016 Olympyus Pen-F does this (a small m43 mirrorless body). It takes 4 captures at different exposures and combines them in-camera. I don't usually use this mode, but the results aren't bad at all for snapshots.
It can also take up to 7 different exposures, but the user needs to combine those manually. This is the mode I use most often, since it allows me to tweak the result how I want.
Right, my camera even goes as far as offering in-body HDR, it's just not as good as what I get in my iPhone, especially when the scene has moving elements, the camera isn't on a tripod, etc. Phones can paper over a lot of things with "AI" which means that you can get a serviceable shot without trying, but it doesn't really correspond to reality and sometimes (especially with the moving elements case) has artifacting.
Anyone who has little kids often needs to shoot erratically moving subjects in a dimly lit environment. Low light is where most progress in imaging is made, I’d say perhaps over the last 7 years, ever since outright resolution stopped mattering (the others are dynamic range and focus performance). Everything that happened since like OIS, new generations of image sensors, computational photography etc came to serve longer shutter exposures to get more light into the sensor.
Anyone with kids also takes vastly more photos with the camera that’s readily accessible and has good sharing capabilities. Would the nice camera with big lenses take even 1/100th as many images as the phone?
I'd say 90% of the photos I've taken of my kids has been with a dedicated camera and big lenses. It is definitely nice also having a camera that is readily accessible for certain situations, but I don't find its use generally compelling as unless photography is what I want to do with that time I'd rather spend that time enjoying life with the kids, not watching them live their lives behind a screen. When photography is what I want to do, I can have the dedicated camera at the ready.
Phones don't need to be good at every situation, just in most of the situations an average consumer finds themselves in. As another poster alluded to, photographing kids is a big reason people buy cameras and before, camcorders. Families also have more money so it makes sense to target them.
Right now, phones kick the butt of compact cameras when it comes to versatility, dynamic range and using AI to make photos appealing and sharp. If the quality can only be rivalled by a dSLR with a 2 kilogram $1500 lens, then that is a big plus point for the phone.
The highly processed images are instantly identified by the artificial lighting / HDR look, ringing around subjects. Adding that to a DSLR is not going to do wonders (mine already has native HDR and it looks exactly as you’d expect).
What you should be looking at as a benchmark is cinema sensors with wide dynamic range like RED. You can get slightly better range from the iPhone by shooting RAW, but still far behind.
Look to the Fuji GFX 100S for the future of digital cameras. Large optics + a medium format surface area sensor at 100MP is not something phones can rival anytime soon (or perhaps even ever, given the physics at play and the form factor phones require).
Right now you need to drop ~$6k to get started with digital medium format, but hopefully that’ll be sub $1k a few years down the line.
I'm not so sure about that. Phones are already touching 1" (almost), about 1/12 the size of the sensor in the Fuji. Those sensors are going to advance faster than the Fuji in almost every way, and it's possible that software will make up for the remaining.
> Right now you need to drop ~$6k to get started with digital medium format, but hopefully that’ll be sub $1k a few years down the line.
I think this is fairly unlikely. It's a niche market, and there'll be no money to be made in selling $1k medium format cameras. For those who are buying high-end cameras (professionals mostly), the sensor size is just one of the factors determining the purchase. They care about build, weather-sealing, buttons, ports, write-speeds, battery etc - a $1k camera would have to compromise on all of those.
They are barely 1/2" in actual size. The iphone 14 pro sensor for example is 9.8x7.3mm.
When they call them "1/2 inch" or "3/4 inch", they refer to the diameter of a glass tube (ultra old measurement from the CRT days), not the physical size of the sensor. They only continue to name it like that to make people think their sensor is somewhat close to the Full-frame or APS-C that you get in a professional camera.
A top of the line mirrorless from 5-10 years ago will destroy an iphone in 90% of situations. You can get a sony a7II for 400 euros, add a cheap manual focus lens and you're set.
Yes, it is another example of software eating the world. Sony, for example, makes most of the sensors that find their way into smartphones the world over, but their own phones with the same sensors are not at the top-level at all.
Google really kicked off the computational photography space, Huawei made some leaps and bounds improvements to it, and now Apple is following up. Unfortunately thanks to US policies we don't have real competition to Apple since Huawei was kneecapped. Other Chinese companies learned their place.
I would love a versatile camera in a phone like what I have in my Chinese phone that cost under $500 - a 108mp camera with a large sensor, 3x and 5x telephoto zoom, and an ultrawide.
Never heard of the #1, Honor Magic4 Ultimate, but it looks like it aims for camera quality at the cost of everything else. iPhone looks like a much better set of tradeoffs at #2!
But when you look through the detail photos in the post the Honor phone is miles ahead in every category. I don't know how the overall rating ended up so close, maybe the video quality makes the difference.
Honor used to be Huawei's budget brand. They then split it off and now it's making flagships. I personally think it was the response to the sanction war waged against Huawei, but of course they deny it.
This iPhone review left me thoroughly impressed with the “Honor Magic4 Ultimate”. The dynamic range is wild and it has almost a film look. Why cant Apple have this!?
Mostly off-topic, but I love the scale used for score bars on this site. Each category has a scale from 0 to {highest score of all devices of this class}.
So every category where the current phone is the best has a 100% full bar. Where it’s not, you can immediately visualize if it’s 70% as good as the best device or 99% as good - even if the high score for that category is, say, 136.
A lot of stricter review sites will say something like (made up example) “no phone gets above a 4/10 score for zoom; only a DSLR/mirrorless exceeds that.”
Which is totally valid! But I want to know how the device I’m reading about scores within its category. Those smaller bars make it look like this gadget has one major weakness despite its other high scores, when the reality might be that it actually has the best - or close to the best - zoom ability out of all devices in this class.
Among the most reputed. They've been rating cameras and lenses forever, and also make software for post processing and corrections (https://www.dxo.com/). I think they're now different companies, but the site is quite credible.
Yes. It is the gold standard test for phone cameras.
However, they do take payment for conducting tests on prerelease hardware, and there have also been controversies when they adjusted the test methodology to advantage certain new features - for example when they added a 'zoom' category just as apple added in a zoom lens, making that years iPhone win.
It is a fairly reputable one, but it had become so "reputable" at one point that there was some weird possible conflicts of interest with them working with camera manufacturers/phone manufacturers to improve their cameras which kind of brings into question the neutrality of those reviews. For a while on a yearly basis there'd be some new smart phone that would pass all the other ones and get a new all time high DXO mark.
With that being said, they do pretty good coverage at least with regards to camera lenses and sensors, including the ones in phones. It's quite a thorough review and they provide a lot of sample images for you to peruse through to make your own judgements.
I know by scores the iPhone 13 Pro is just slightly below iPhone 14 Pro, but the 14's telephoto is way sharper than the 13s. It's a bit of a letdown that the 13 got a 3x (too tight) and less sharp lens as an "upgrade".
> Please note that throughout this article we compare the Apple iPhone 14 Pro to both the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max, which achieved identical results in last year’s tests.
I don't know how to parse that sentence. Are they saying that the two iPhone 13 perform the same as they did last time they were tested (why shouldn't they?), or are they saying the 14 Pro performs the same as the two 13s?
Still, I'm wondering if anyone has a rec for a slightly less handy yet purpose built and somewhat comparable modern "snap & shoot" camera? Even after reading this well done review / comparison the iPhone 14 Pro upgrade is just not worth it to me at this point.