The limits of "computational photography"

This is an interesting edge case, and the author makes some instructive observations on the physics side.

It would be really interesting, though, to see an image signal processing expert weigh in on what the algorithm(s) are actually doing in this case.

My $0.02 as some one with an expensive full-frame DSLR and and the latest iPhone Pro:

There are entire categories of image quality that only Apple seems to bother even trying to improve — and then they leapt past everyone.

A few years ago if you wanted to make a HDR, 4K, 60 fps Dolby Vision wide-gamut video…

That would have cost you. Tens of thousands on cameras, displays, and software. It would have been a serious undertaking involving a lot of “pro” tools and baroque workflows optimised for Hollywood movie production.

With an iPhone I can just hit the record button and it does all of that for me, on the phone!

Did you notice that it also does shake reduction? It’s staggeringly good, about the same as GoPro. Just setting up the stabilisation in DaVinci is half an hour of faffing around.

The iPhone just has it “on”.

I could go on.

A challenge I give people is to take a still photo and send it to someone else that is wide gamut, 10 bit, and HDR, any method they prefer.

Outside of the Apple ecosystem this is basically impossible in the general case. Everything everywhere is 8-bit SDR sRGB.

Heck, even professional print shops still request files in sRGB!

So yes, the software in the Apple ecosystem does have a big impact on the end result of photography.

I can take a 14-bit dynamic range picture with my Nikon, but I can’t show it to anyone in that quality because of shitty Windows and Linux software, so what’s the point?

I take pics with my Apple iPhone instead. All the people I want to show pictures to have iDevices, so I can share the full HDR quality that the phone camera is capable of, not some SDR version.

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking for here. In my experience (and as seen in the article) the image processing in most digital cameras will already blow an iPhone out of the water.

As far as I know, iPhone and Android aren't doing anything that isn't already done by digital cameras. They ramp up the settings on things like noise reduction and sharpness to balance out their tiny sensors, but it's more or less the same algorithms that the cameras are using.

Good cameras even allow you to tweak the settings and control RAW conversion right on the camera. The author could have botched the noise reduction on his Fujifilm to match the iPhone if he wanted to. [0]

[0] https://www.jmpeltier.com/fujifilm-in-camera-raw-converter/

"Real" cameras do a lot of postprocessing too, but it's generally oriented at producing faithful results. They might remove unambiguous and correctable issues such as vignetting or lens distortion, but they don't cross the line of inventing new details to make the photo look good.

Computational photography techniques on smartphones, on the other hand, were always designed around squishy "user perception" goals to make photos look impressive, details be damned.

Exactly like it was explained. People who speaks French or German (I'm just referring the language. No offense please), could only talk to people who know that language. While the majority is English speaking (Hypothetically!), it might make sense to speak that and also, whatever 10bit or 8Bit, the sensor size and capabilities matter. Most of the perception is seriously overrated with the iDevices (the displays and the sensors etc.,etc.,) while I may not able to articulate it technically, it's just 0.00001% of the appealing population (who might be using it in the intended way and might require that in that format!!)

When it comes out of the ecosystem, it has to understand and speak English. No matter how good it might in French or German.

So, the argument is pretty subjective and no point in continuing as no one knows what is under the hood and how it appeals to the eyes. It's subjective and it may or may not have all the required details for it to survice outside of the ecosystem. It's what one calls in vendor lock-in. One needs all idevice and isoftware ecosystem to function and survive in the iworld. And that world is mostly controlled and directed by the company!

This might look like too much of deviation from the topic, but it is how the idevices are portrayed to the world and how the ifanbois take it. It's is just overrated.