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Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

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Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#21

Post by LoganDark »

ricardobeat wrote: post #20
LoganDark wrote: post #17

I feel like instead of saying a photo is "in HDR" (which implies you can view it in HDR), they should be saying the camera can capture HDR. None of the photos in this post are actually HDR for me. (Using Safari on macOS 26.3 with an XDR display) (Edit: Oops. A few of the photos are HDR. Just, not most of the comparisons, which are where I was looking.)

They are in HDR for me - Safari on Macbook Air, 26.2. You must have something misconfigured in your display.

I tested again on one of my iOS devices and still can't find any way to get the images to display in HDR. I can tell they were obviously captured better but they don't actually seem to exceed SDR in brightness.

Edit: I actually found that a small fraction of the images do display in HDR: the first cityscape image, the photo of the sunflowers, the second photo of the cityscape right after, and the first photo under "Film Meets HDR". Nothing else in the article is HDR, though.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#22

Post by LoganDark »

mirsadm wrote: post #13
lich_king wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a person who has an expensive phone and a professional camera, let me retort by saying that the difference is larger than you think. On some level, it's basic physics. You get fewer photons, etc. Apple hasn't unlocked the secrets of optics or semiconductor manufacturing that are out of reach for Canon or Nikon. So if they keep making sensors and optics that are many times larger and bulkier than in a phone, there'…

I like to think I have some experience in this area. I have an app on Android that records RAW video (MotionCam Pro). We've compared large expensive cameras to phone sensors many times (you can see it on our YouTube channel if you like).

Not GP, but for me the biggest differentiators of larger sensors are less perspective and better low-light performance. There are probably some other details like f-stop range but I haven't played with those much. I'm just a smartphone shooter (I don't even own a large sensor), but I still prefer to use the telephoto when possible to get squarer-looking shots with less noise, and to me that feels like what a larger sensor should deliver.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#23

Post by sandofsky »

LoganDark wrote: post #17

I feel like instead of saying a photo is "in HDR" (which implies you can view it in HDR), they should be saying the camera can capture HDR. None of the photos in this post are actually HDR for me. (Using Safari on macOS 26.3 with an XDR display) (Edit: Oops. A few of the photos are HDR. Just, not most of the comparisons, which are where I was looking.)

If the sunflower and Osaka photos aren’t in HDR, there’s something off with your system. Make sure you aren’t in low-power mode.

Fun fact: the HDR photos are actually looping videos, because that’s way more reliable for browsers and CMS platforms than actual HDR photos. Hopefully this improves in the next few years.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#24

Post by madeofpalk »

lich_king wrote: post #8

I like the weird arms race here: phone manufacturers develop more and more computational photography techniques to convert the output from potato sensors and optics into what looks like a professional photo... and phone-based photographers put more and more effort into undoing a lot of that work to avoid the look they used to covet. Back in my day, that first baby photo would be widely considered the best. I would th…

Apple makes a pretty strong creative decision in how it 'computes' photos for its camera. In recent years they've got a fair bit of criticism from both tech reporting and regulars I've seen on tiktok commenting that they're just crushing the shadows out of any image (presumably in an attempt to get better low light images), aggressively colour balancing, and over-smoothing to eliminate noise.

If the old man Process Zero comparison is fair, it shows that sometimes this pretty clearly makes the photo worse and there's room to tweak the processing to get a "better" photo. The difference to his skin colour and shadows across his face is astonishing.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#25

Post by layer8 »

LoganDark wrote: post #7
roughly wrote: post #6

Halide is such a great example of how to make a business serving a niche audience with a high-quality product. They very obviously care deeply, and that's reflected in the product, and that makes it a genuinely unique hard to replicate app. They'll never be the most used camera app out there, but they'll always have a market, and they'll always get to explore their passion while doing it. I think this is what a lot o…

> A lot of our economy right now is built on "cheaper, faster, and good enough" And, essentially, price fixing (or, UX fixing, or something?). You make something worse, but not too worse; then, your competitors, seeing it can be tolerated, each become the same worse as well, one by one, until there's nobody left to switch to. Keep doing this, over, and over, and over, and over... People get used to it being the only…

Race to the bottom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_bottom

Related:

Market for lemons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Adverse selection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

Commoditization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commoditization

And, as you say, enshittification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification.

That's why it's hard to have nice things.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#26

Post by gyomu »

ebbi wrote: post #19
lich_king wrote: post #8

I like the weird arms race here: phone manufacturers develop more and more computational photography techniques to convert the output from potato sensors and optics into what looks like a professional photo... and phone-based photographers put more and more effort into undoing a lot of that work to avoid the look they used to covet. Back in my day, that first baby photo would be widely considered the best. I would th…

It's the convenience, for me anyway - why carry around multiple devices, when one can do the job. For travel photography, I went from carrying around a Sony full frame, to a Fuji XT3, to hoping by iPhone 19-20 that I can sell all my bodies and lenses and just rely on the iPhone. The Sony felt like a chore - from carrying around a big camera and lens, through to the editing and photo management. The Fuji was a breath…

What do you expect the iPhone 19/20 to have that the iPhone 17 doesn't?

The tradeoffs will fundamentally be the same. You're not getting a > 100mm^2 sensor (with the glass lens required to image on it) on the iPhone anytime soon (or anytime ever really, unless the form factor of the iPhone dramatically changes).

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#27

Post by lynndotpy »

> Many scenes look better in SDR, such as this foggy, low-contrast morning in Osaka

I have to disagree here entirely. The feeling of that raw light, glowing just out of reach, is well appreciated in the HDR.

One of the big benefits of Halide (and working with raws) is that I'm not beholden to the aesthetic preferences of its creator. It should be built into the phone, but it isn't. So I've been a big fan for awhile.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#28

Post by ebbi »

gyomu wrote: post #26
ebbi wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the convenience, for me anyway - why carry around multiple devices, when one can do the job. For travel photography, I went from carrying around a Sony full frame, to a Fuji XT3, to hoping by iPhone 19-20 that I can sell all my bodies and lenses and just rely on the iPhone. The Sony felt like a chore - from carrying around a big camera and lens, through to the editing and photo management. The Fuji was a breath…

What do you expect the iPhone 19/20 to have that the iPhone 17 doesn't? The tradeoffs will fundamentally be the same. You're not getting a > 100mm^2 sensor (with the glass lens required to image on it) on the iPhone anytime soon (or anytime ever really, unless the form factor of the iPhone dramatically changes).

Hopefully 48MP telephoto lens, with similar aperture to the main lens.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#29

Post by heliographe »

astrange wrote: post #14
mirsadm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. Phone sensors are amazing even without any processing. The difference is not as large as you might think.

Really depends on the environment. Low light and nighttime are much worse than you might think, anything else isn't so bad. (Try taking a photo of the moon with an iPhone. You can't do it, not even with Halide.) The lenses are also different and direct lighting can cause annoying internal reflections. I don't know this area as well, but lenses are more important than sensors for photos.

You absolutely can:

https://mastodon.social/@heliographe_studio/1156653713048409...

(taken with BayerCam.app, not Halide, but Halide can capture the same raw Bayer data)

It's not an amazing photo by any means. But it is a photograph of the moon - the seas are all well delineated, Copernicus/Kepler/Aristarchus/Grimaldi are visible/recognizable.

A test that smartphones did not pass a few years ago.

Re: Looks: A Halide Mark III Preview

#30

Post by gyomu »

ebbi wrote: post #28
gyomu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you expect the iPhone 19/20 to have that the iPhone 17 doesn't? The tradeoffs will fundamentally be the same. You're not getting a > 100mm^2 sensor (with the glass lens required to image on it) on the iPhone anytime soon (or anytime ever really, unless the form factor of the iPhone dramatically changes).

Hopefully 48MP telephoto lens, with similar aperture to the main lens.

The telephoto sensor is already 48 MP on the 17 Pro, so that's a given.

I don't think we're getting a f/1.78 lens on the telephoto anytime soon. The widest aperture the tele's ever had was a f/2 on the 12 Pro, and that was back when the tele was a 2x (52mm equivalent, so not even really tele...). Maybe f/2.4 or f/2.2 (what the ultra wide has)? That'd already be a significant improvement.

The next big upgrades on the ultrawide/tele for the 19/20 generations will likely be larger sensors - they're currently 1/2.55", compared to 1/1.28" for the wide lens. I don't think they can fit three 1/1.28" sensors in there, so plausibly 1/1.7"? But that might mean that effective aperture remains constant.

(and yet none of that will beat an equivalent focal length lens on your XT3)

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