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iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

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Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#91

Post by FredPret »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #83
FredPret wrote: post #33

My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water. Add a nice lens and there's no comparison. However: - The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone) - The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a gr…

Curious what camera model you have. I've been meaning to get into photography and I'm looking for a decent starter camera.

I bought a Canon RP which came with a 24-105mm zoom. I think it was CAD 1000 a couple of years ago, but it looks like that has inflated to around double now.

I went with the recommendation of Ken Rockwell who is both experienced and opinionated, and said to buy that one at the time. https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm

He was right!

- small, especially if you put a 50mm prime lens on it (which costs ~ CAD 150 by the way)

- light

- full frame sensor (fundamentally better photo quality, but need bigger lenses to zoom)

- battery life is OK but not great. You can easily get through a full day of touristing with one spare battery though.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#92

Post by FredPret »

PaulHoule wrote: post #90
FredPret wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the idea of that 90mm prime. But usually when I have passers-by take photos, the context is that we are posing in front of a church in Europe or something, and space can be limited. I can't very well ask people to take a photo and but first to take 20 paces back and then do a crouch! My wife wants to see our shoes as well as the church spires in the same photo. Maybe a 35mm or even 28mm would work well in our…

Definitely thinking of getting another prime but a ‘normal’ one with autofocus doesn’t really do anything I can’t with my zooms, I like 7artisans primes and might get one that is crazy wide but those are manual focus and take more skill —- I was so happy to get home and see I nailed this one https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114042752203552070

I find that photos from a prime look better in some undefinable way. Maybe it's because there's more light coming through, or maybe it's just easier for them to make a prime with great optics than a zoom with great optics.

I shoot on manual with auto-ISO straight to JPG (I don't have time for RAW editing), so my prime photos tend to have lower ISO's and I end up with a faster shutter.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#94

Post by Sayrus »

sturza wrote: post #25
Sayrus wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my Pixel, I'm always torn with using GCam or another camera app. GCam photos are definitely better on small screens, but every time you zoom in, you get AI artifacts, letters that shouldn't be here. It basically reconstructs the image from the original and blurrier photo. The other apps without these transformation lead to better quality on zoomed photos but the overall preview looks less good. This is especially…

Like this or worse? https://yager.io/comp/comp.html

Way worse. At least here the text looks like the original.

Here is an example of what that looks like: https://imgur.com/Q4J5BHi

In case it isn't obvious due to the zoom and lack of context:

- The texture on the top and windshield don't exist, it's plain gray.

- The letters on the card actually read something, here it's gibberish. Sometimes half a letter, sometimes a texture that doesn't exist.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#95

Post by scottapotamas »

FredPret wrote: post #92
PaulHoule wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely thinking of getting another prime but a ‘normal’ one with autofocus doesn’t really do anything I can’t with my zooms, I like 7artisans primes and might get one that is crazy wide but those are manual focus and take more skill —- I was so happy to get home and see I nailed this one https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114042752203552070

I find that photos from a prime look better in some undefinable way. Maybe it's because there's more light coming through, or maybe it's just easier for them to make a prime with great optics than a zoom with great optics. I shoot on manual with auto-ISO straight to JPG (I don't have time for RAW editing), so my prime photos tend to have lower ISO's and I end up with a faster shutter.

There’s a lot more to it, but I attribute a lot of ‘better in some way’ to microcontrast followed by how the lens handles the transition to out of focus detail.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#96

Post by PaulHoule »

FredPret wrote: post #92
PaulHoule wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely thinking of getting another prime but a ‘normal’ one with autofocus doesn’t really do anything I can’t with my zooms, I like 7artisans primes and might get one that is crazy wide but those are manual focus and take more skill —- I was so happy to get home and see I nailed this one https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114042752203552070

I find that photos from a prime look better in some undefinable way. Maybe it's because there's more light coming through, or maybe it's just easier for them to make a prime with great optics than a zoom with great optics. I shoot on manual with auto-ISO straight to JPG (I don't have time for RAW editing), so my prime photos tend to have lower ISO's and I end up with a faster shutter.

Yeah, back when I had a Canon my only lens was a wide angle prime. I really like that Sony 90mm prime, DxO says it is Sony's best lens and I think it is.

Ever since I started shooting sports indoors (often w/ that 90mm prime or a 135mm prime) and started to depend on noise reduction I process everything with DxO and tend to use a lot of sharpening and color grading. One day I went out with the kit lens by accident and set the aperture really small and developed the "Monkey Run Style" for hyperrealistic landscapes that look like they were shot with a weird Soviet camera.

The lens I walk around with the most and usually photograph runners with is the Tamron 28-200 which is super-versatile for events and just walking around, I used it for the last two albums here

https://www.yogile.com/537458/all

but for the Forest Frolic I used my 16-35mm Zeiss but it was tough because it was raining heavily -- I was lucky to have another volunteer who held an umbrella for me, but I couldn't lean in. The last one (Thom B) was not color graded because I'd had some bad experiences color grading sports when I got the color of the jersey wrong but now I use color grades that are less strong -- at Trackapalooza the greens just came out too strident and I had to bring them down.

To give you some idea of how powerful noise reduction is, this shot

https://bsky.app/profile/up-8.bsky.social/post/3lv32zudu2c2d

was done in ISO 80,000 with that Tamron -- I wouldn't say it looks perfectly natural for a picture of cat that was not standing still in a room in a basement that is amazing.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#97

Post by FredPret »

PaulHoule wrote: post #96
FredPret wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that photos from a prime look better in some undefinable way. Maybe it's because there's more light coming through, or maybe it's just easier for them to make a prime with great optics than a zoom with great optics. I shoot on manual with auto-ISO straight to JPG (I don't have time for RAW editing), so my prime photos tend to have lower ISO's and I end up with a faster shutter.

Yeah, back when I had a Canon my only lens was a wide angle prime. I really like that Sony 90mm prime, DxO says it is Sony's best lens and I think it is. Ever since I started shooting sports indoors (often w/ that 90mm prime or a 135mm prime) and started to depend on noise reduction I process everything with DxO and tend to use a lot of sharpening and color grading. One day I went out with the kit lens by accident an…

Incredible, in the 90's I could barely take a picture of my dog in broad daylight, and it cost money for the film, and I had to wait forever to get the photos back, and then the dog was blurry.

BTW your yogile album is private.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#98

Post by PaulHoule »

FredPret wrote: post #97
PaulHoule wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, back when I had a Canon my only lens was a wide angle prime. I really like that Sony 90mm prime, DxO says it is Sony's best lens and I think it is. Ever since I started shooting sports indoors (often w/ that 90mm prime or a 135mm prime) and started to depend on noise reduction I process everything with DxO and tend to use a lot of sharpening and color grading. One day I went out with the kit lens by accident an…

Incredible, in the 90's I could barely take a picture of my dog in broad daylight, and it cost money for the film, and I had to wait forever to get the photos back, and then the dog was blurry. BTW your yogile album is private.

See these

https://www.yogile.com/forest-frolic-2025#21m

https://www.yogile.com/trackapalooza-2025#21m

https://www.yogile.com/thom-b-2025#21m

I have no nostalgia for film, I could not afford to take 1500 film photos at a sports event -- even a photo like this which doesn't seem that remarkable

https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114401857009398302

wouldn't have come out that good handheld with a 35mm back in the day.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#99

Post by nomel »

FredPret wrote: post #33

My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water. Add a nice lens and there's no comparison. However: - The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone) - The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a gr…

Has the HDR workflow improved? I'm not talking about the ugly tone mapping, I mean proper bit-preserving HDR, out of the camera.

All the displays I own are HDR, and something like a picture of a sunset, or even landscape, is so much better on my phone than my older Canon DSLR.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#100

Post by rainsford »

FredPret wrote: post #33

My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water. Add a nice lens and there's no comparison. However: - The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone) - The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a gr…

I agree with your iPhone camera advantages, but to that list I'd add that I'm already going to buy an iPhone, which means any comparison of value for the price is effectively between the price of a camera (which for even an entry-level mirrorless isn't exactly cheap) and literally zero dollars. You could argue that the phone would be cheaper without the nice camera to make for a fairer comparison, but such a product doesn't really exist.
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