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iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

lux.camera

221–230 of 340 posts

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#221

I am still not understanding why my iPhone 13 landscape photos look as good as those from my $900 Nikkor Z 24mm f/1.8 S prime lens with its superior optics on a $2k DSLR body. If the reason is fancy post-processing, then why can't Nikon have a tiny lens like the iPhone 13 and just add fancy post-processing to it?

Mine don't (iPhone 13 Pro Max, Fuji XT-2 and various lenses). They do in daylight, sure, but things like sunrise/sunset or unusual colors throw them off like crazy. Textures can also throw them off - "amplification" of the texture effect, almost. They also suffer a bit zoomed in. The post-processing fixes a lot of problems of older phone cameras but it has its limits. On good camera hardware there's very little that…

I used to use a phone as my backup camera when I was out doing bird photography. After a while I gave up. In variable light and high dynamic range conditions phones just don’t hold up (they do a better job with video). If you’re taking snapshots, nothing better than a phone.

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple has always been about making the choice for it’s users. Jobs always thought giving users too many options was problematic.

While in training at my first restaurant job I asked a party where they would like to sit in the dining room. The owner pulled me aside and said to never give people a choice. They'll get confused and think that there's a "best" table and that their dinner could suffer if they feel like they didn't get it. I don't know if it's "real" or not but between work and my personal life I've got decision fatigue. Help make de…

There is obviously better tables. Near the windows. Away from busy traffic.

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#223
post #192

> “I think the 12 MP shooting default is a wise choice on Apple’s part, but it does mean that the giant leap in image quality on iPhone 14 Pro remains mostly hidden unless you choose to use a third party app to shoot 48 MP JPG / HEIC images or shoot in ProRAW and edit your photos later.” This, 100%. The massive difference in image quality is when shooting in RAW. That’s when you actually get the 48MP & the images are…

Why would you need more than 12MP if the photo is only going to be displayed on a 6 inch screen?

What?? You never moved a photo off your phone?

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#224

The 48 MP bayer mode is indeed impressive, but it does not increase the spatial frequency response. I recently used it to document some color transition errors on LG OLED displays and even with the 48 MP "RAW" mode there are artifacts from the limited spatial resolution. One of the images properly captures the display sub-pixel layout, but that is taken closer to the display. Enabling/disabling "RAW" did not change t…

I've been using the Halide app to take most of my daylight shots in 48mp HEIC mode (which has the benefit of being 5-15kb per photo). The main advantage to me is that the result is much less affected by Apple's always-on edge-sharpening processing. The effective "resolution" of the processing artifacts is higher. In previous iPhones if you take a photo of a bunch of leaves on a tree it's almost like it tries to draw…

> which has the benefit of being 5-15kb per photo

Unlikely. You mean mb not kb.

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#225

I am still not understanding why my iPhone 13 landscape photos look as good as those from my $900 Nikkor Z 24mm f/1.8 S prime lens with its superior optics on a $2k DSLR body. If the reason is fancy post-processing, then why can't Nikon have a tiny lens like the iPhone 13 and just add fancy post-processing to it?

The Nikon does minimal post processing. The iPhone throws a metric shit ton of algorithms at the image data to make it passable. For normal people the iPhone output is good enough - though it often looks very over-processed. Nikon just expects you to handle that post processing part that your iPhone is doing for you. In exchange you get way more control over the final image. Both devices are aimed at different people…

I wouldn’t have gone on the hiking trip if I had to lug fullsize camera with me ;)

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#226
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the laws of physics dictate that smaller lenses/sensors can't capture as much light as bigger ones of similar quality. This is not really true to a very great extent once you take depth of field into account. At least, it would be helpful if you could indicate what it is exactly that you take the laws of physics to imply in this context. I made a comment here that's relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=334…

If the size of the lens wasn't important, we wouldn't have built a 100" mirror on Mt. Wilson followed by a 200" mirror at Palomar Observatory. A 14mm wide-angle lens with a primary opening of 2mm is never going to let in the same amount of light as a 14mm wide-angle with a 114mm primary opening will. Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens. There are some adapt…

>Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens.

I'm aware of that – that's the point I made in my post that I linked. But DoF considerations entail that you can't just keep arbitrarily increasing the size of the opening.

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#227

Lol, nothing is better about the dark skyline image. It's a blurry noise canceled mess with bad white balance.

That picture doesn't have a single correct white balance; no photo does if it has more than one light source in it. It's all to taste.

But it does look like it was shot through a window without a polarizer filter.

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#228
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP didn’t say it was technically superior as a camera - they said it produced better photos. Which you can argue it does, with all the fancy post processing. The statement was only about the final result, which for the eyes for whom most peoples photos are presented to are excellent.

Idk man. If I zoom out from parsing word by word... ...feels like I'm saying a Keurig "rivals and surpasses espresso machines" because it can produce a better espresso than an arbitrary espresso machine in arbitrary hands. Yeah, true. Not very meaningful though. There's probably a McDonald's hamburger analogy here that's better, but, here we are. My challenge to an ambituous reader looking to comment: make that one w…

A lot of restaurants do use Nespressos when you order a coffee at the end of a meal, I think.

…McDonalds isn't bad either these days. It's just too salty.

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#229
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Nikkor assumes that you would use software to do the post processing. It gives you something a lot closer to what's coming from the sensor, so you can choose which $XXX image editing suite you want to run it through. The iPhone knows the vast majority of people won't do that with their photos, so they can go all-out, but you're stuck with their specific result baked in to your photo.

By the way I know this is not your point, but there are excellent editing options for zero dollars! Which, I suppose X=0 is valid for your comment. https://www.rawtherapee.com/

Ehh...RawTherapee (and also Darktable) are certainly capable of editing, but I've found that in practice they require far more effort to get results comparable to Adobe or Capture One's RAW processing.

Re: iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

#230
post #152

The funny thing is that for all the amazing technological improvements discussed, all the pictures in the article actually show that A. having a photographer who knows how to frame things, and sees the right moment to capture an image, and B. having a subject worthwhile photographing, are way more important than having a top tier quality camera.

A photographer friend of mine always used to get comments like you can take such awesome shots because you are using a DSLR (this was 10 years back). So he started taking two pictures one with DSLR and one with a mobile cameras at that time.

He would still get the awesome shots comments even with the pics he took with the basic mobile camera and shared them on social media.

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