iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#371

Post by Lord-Jobo » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 12:29 PM UTC

A decade of "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd have clearly highlighted what is happening here.

1: In a/b testing, nearly everyone including pixel peepers prefer a more vibrant photo.

2: the traditional perspective of "a photo should look as close as possible to what my eyes see if I drop the viewfinder" is increasingly uncommon and not pursued in the digital age by nearly anyone.

3: phone companies know the above, and basically all of them engage in varrying degrees of "crank vibrance until people start to look like clowns, apply a skin correction so you can keep the rest mega vibrant" with an extra dash of "if culturally accepted to the primary audience, add additional face filtering to improve how people look, including air-brushing and thinning of the face"

This is rightfully compared to the loudness wars and I think that's accurate. It really became a race to the bottom once we collectively decided that "accurate" photos were not interesting and we want "best" photos.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#372

Post by bayindirh » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 12:29 PM UTC

lonelyasacloud wrote: post #348

bayindirh wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll kindly disagree with you. Like the other commenter, I'm on a 27" HP business monitor comes with color calibration certificate, and the differences are very visible. Moreover, I'm taking photos as a hobby for some time. The angle, different focal lengths doesn't matter in rendering of the images. The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing…

> The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Is nothing new. When film was mass market almost no one developed their own photos (particularly colo(u)r). Instead almost all printing went through bulk labs who optimised for what people wanting to show to their family and friends. W…

Personally coming from the film era, I don't think it's as clear cut as this.

Many of the post-processing an informed person does on a digital photo is an emulation of a process rooted in a darkroom, yes.

On the other hand, some of the things cameras automatically does, e.g.: Skin color homogenization, selective object sharpening, body "aesthetic" enhancements, hallucinating the text which the lens can't resolve, etc. are not darkroom born methods, and they alter reality to the point of manipulation.

In film days, what we had as a run of the mill photographer was the selection of the film, and asking the lab "can you increase the saturation a bit, if possible". Even if you had your darkroom at home, you won't be able to selectively modify body proportions while keeping the details around untouched with the help of advanced image modification algorithms.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#373

Post by Lord-Jobo » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 12:38 PM UTC

KempyKolibri wrote: post #254

The new(ish) Adobe Project Indigo attempts to rectify some of these - it generally captures pictures in a more SLR-ish manner, even when it outputs HDR. It does RAW capture and has decent control options if you want that. However, it's a battery hog and can be a bit sluggish to get going, and there are some weird interactions with the built in photos app (if you crop the photo after the fact in the Photos app it push…

Im grateful I can still shoot raw on my pixel 8 and edit myself from there. But at that point I will just grab the dslr. A used canon eos 100d is like, startlingly cheap on eBay, I think I picked mine up for $150 a few years ago with a decent lens and it still demolishes any smartphone without much effort.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#374

Post by stego-tech » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 12:41 PM UTC

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #371

A decade of "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd have clearly highlighted what is happening here. 1: In a/b testing, nearly everyone including pixel peepers prefer a more vibrant photo. 2: the traditional perspective of "a photo should look as close as possible to what my eyes see if I drop the viewfinder" is increasingly uncommon and not pursued in the digital age by nearly anyone. 3: phone companies k…

I fully agree with your observations, and would add the irony of such a pursuit by phone makers is that serious hobbyist/amateur/professional photographers and videographers understand that cameras are inherently inaccurate, and that what we’re really capturing is an interpretation of what we’re seeing through imperfect glass, coatings, and sensor media to form an artistic creation. Sure, cameras can be used for accuracy, but those models and lenses are often expensive and aimed at specific industries.

We enjoy the imperfections of cameras because they let us create art. Smartphone makers take advantage of that by, as you put it, cranking things to eleven to manipulate psychology rather than invest in more accurate platforms that require skill. The ease is the point, but ease rarely creates lasting art the creator is genuinely proud of or that others appreciate the merit behind.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#375

Post by petre » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 12:44 PM UTC

bayindirh wrote: post #256

petre wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And then came iPhone X. They started changing the colour of Sky and sharpening a lot of things. To the point of a lot of Photos taken by my camera looks great but also looked fake. The phone processing is lagely shaped by social media culture . Camera makers also started to incorporate in-camera editing features on vlogger targeted models.

> Camera makers also started to incorporate in-camera editing features on vlogger targeted models. DSLRs had in camera lighting correction during shooting and post-processing since 2016 or so [0]. [0]: https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?articleNo=0000...

This is about skin smoothing anf other stuff. See under filter and self shot:

https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lum...

Star filter is especially funny since it's used in k-drama opening/closing sequences.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#376

Post by TorKlingberg » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 12:51 PM UTC

marcus_holmes wrote: post #187

I got interested in photography during my travels, and my wife is very interested in it. I bought a decent camera. I really enjoyed playing with it, and spent some happy hours learning about it. I even took some decent photos (well, I liked them anyway). But in the end, carrying it became a chore and trying to take off-the-cuff photos during adventures took too long. I found that we needed to go for specific "photogr…

> the camera photos were stuck on the camera

I'm surprised no camera manufacturer has created an easy way to get all your photos to Google Photos / iCloud/ Dropbox / etc. They have some wireless photo transfer things, but they're clunky and unusable. Just connect the camera to WiFi and auto-upload everything to the service of my choice. I'm guessing it's a mix of:

* Camera manufacturers are hardware companies and can't do software and cloud stuff.

* It wouldn't interact well with swapping SD cards, which is what all the pros want.

* The camera would need to stay powered when off to upload photos. Current cameras have a hard power switch.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#377

Post by bayindirh » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 12:53 PM UTC

petre wrote: post #375

bayindirh wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Camera makers also started to incorporate in-camera editing features on vlogger targeted models. DSLRs had in camera lighting correction during shooting and post-processing since 2016 or so [0]. [0]: https://www.nikonimgsupport.com/eu/BV_article?articleNo=0000...

This is about skin smoothing anf other stuff. See under filter and self shot: https://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/cameras-camcorders/lum... Star filter is especially funny since it's used in k-drama opening/closing sequences.

G100 is introduced in 2020, and is a mirrorless camera with significantly higher processing power. D-Lighting and other similar post processing stuff came at least half a decade before.

Modern cameras like Nikon Z6/III can also do similar processing on camera during shoots to reduce post-processing load after the shoots to accelerate the production pipeline.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#378

Post by mcny » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

stego-tech wrote: post #374

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #371

A decade of "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd have clearly highlighted what is happening here. 1: In a/b testing, nearly everyone including pixel peepers prefer a more vibrant photo. 2: the traditional perspective of "a photo should look as close as possible to what my eyes see if I drop the viewfinder" is increasingly uncommon and not pursued in the digital age by nearly anyone. 3: phone companies k…

I fully agree with your observations, and would add the irony of such a pursuit by phone makers is that serious hobbyist/amateur/professional photographers and videographers understand that cameras are inherently inaccurate , and that what we’re really capturing is an interpretation of what we’re seeing through imperfect glass, coatings, and sensor media to form an artistic creation. Sure, cameras can be used for acc…

I don't spend too much time thinking about cameras or lenses but this kind of conversation makes me wonder... when I take photos of receipts or street signs or just text in general, is it possible that at some point the computational photography makes a mistake and changes text? or am I being paranoid?

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#379

Post by retinaros » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

I stopped reading at the first picture comparison. Iphone has a portrait mode that blurs the background. you wouldn't be able to tell the difference at the first photo or any photo of a beginner photographer that has blurred backgrounds.

anyway the major differentiator in photography is not the device but light.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#380

Post by ticklemyelmo » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 1:02 PM UTC

markhalonen wrote: post #4

woah I am the author. I don't even have analytics set up on this site, but hope everyone enjoys it!

Much of the criticism of the Iphone photos is the fisheye effect. This is exaggerated, because you took the photos from different distances. If the Iphone photos were taken at the same distance, a cropped version of the Iphone photo would have identical perspective.