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iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

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Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#231

Post by sib »

wlesieutre wrote: post #203
nicoburns wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people have special lenses that they attach in front of the iPhone camera lens to get a macro / wide angle view To be fair, one of the things highlighted in this review is that the new iPhone has this functionality built in. Everyone (with this phone) has a wide angle view now.

To nitpick a bit, the standard iPhone lenses have always been wide angle. The new ones are ultra wide.

True, but only by the standards of traditional photography...

The standard iPhone lens (26mm) has always been pretty much normal for phone camera lenses. When Apple introduced the second lens (51mm), they called it "telephoto," even though that focal length is pretty much dead-on the traditional definition for a "standard" lens. No traditional photographer would call a 51mm lens a telephoto lens.

So, for people who grew up with phones as their primary cameras, the new 13mm lens really is the first thing that they'd call a "wide angle" lens.

/end_nitpick ;)

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#232

Post by stordoff »

todipa wrote: post #54

I have the Nikon full frame D850 along with the holy trilogy of lenses (14-24mm + 24-70mm + 70-200mm f2.8 zoom lenses). in 2018, for every picture I took with the D800/850, I took +200 iphone pictures. I still believe there is room for a high caliber camera but I don't want to own it anymore, I just want to rent whenever I need it.

There's a common saying that the best camera is the one you have with you. We're getting to the point where the one you have with you is more than good enough for many situations anyway.

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#233

Post by jodrellblank »

Frondo wrote: post #197
jodrellblank wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would literally know nothing about any product or service without marketing. We can hardly imagine such bliss. Pop quiz: does anybody imagine marketing or advertising would exist in a) paradise, b) utopia, c) Heaven? > A farmer buying billboard space with a photo of his tomatoes is advertising. There isn’t anything unethical about either practice. Plastering every available surface by a road or in a common area…

People wouldn't need to spend significant portions of their precious life making, moving, and selling things to others in paradise, utopia, or Heaven. Of course there would be no advertising, there'd be no treadmill of consumerism to necessitate such a thing. Now, what that says about how far we are from paradise, heaven, or utopia here...

After writing that, I wondered about how we always portray "paradise" as a desert island, beach, tropical exotic location far from civilization and 'unspoilt', and portray a dystopia as a heavily urbanized and dirty city full of neon signs and billboards and industrial pollution.

Then the we talk reverses that, as if industrialization and capitalism as if bringing more products into our lives is making life better (read: closer to paradise), and so advertising and marketing are the heralds of all that's good about the future - if only you'd simply concede to stop whining and pay attention - it's for your own good after all.

I can't deny the short-lived excitement of novelty, but perhaps if we overall stopped making daily life so dystopian and unpleasant, we'd have fewer dreams of escaping it. What would a country look like if tens of millions of people didn't spend decades looking forward to retirement and gambling to get there quicker and dreaming of travel and products as temporary escapes from such unpleasant daily surroundings as need escaping from?

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#234

Post by elicash »

tyri_kai_psomi wrote: post #30
elicash wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a photo guy -- I have like 4 photos on my phone total (one for each of the people I care the most about -- but it seems to me like Apple should just create a DSLR camera. It doesn't seem any more out-of-place for them as the HomePod, the idea of which is to have a bigger device just for listening because there's a physics limit to just using a tiny device for outputting sound. They then combine that with supe…

Because it is much more lucrative for them to have a phone with the best camera in the world.

In some ways, this reminds me of the debate over whether it's "worth it" to make the Mac Pro. As a percentage of sales it's tiny. But there are other reasons they do it that aren't about the profit they get from that single device sold, other ways it impacts the company.

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#235

Post by ansgri »

fock wrote: post #124
ansgri wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still such thing as physically correct image reconstruction, i.e. removing technical limitations via computational means. Super-resolution, focus stacking, HDR (proper one, without fake colors), highlight color preservation (try to photograph light source while preserving color while not underexposing everything around). Basically, make images that are currently possible on $3000+ hardware, on $600 hardware.…

And you can do all of this with an ILC too and will profit from the fact that it has far less technical limitations. Basically most of the really "cool" applications center around using the electronic shutter which up to 2-3years ago none of the ILC-companies dared to offer for the masses because it has some shortcomings which the "hey I can finally shoot in the dark"-crowd might not notice/care about, but people buy…

I was talking of compact ILCs specifically, that they would profit from this to become comparable with bulky 'pro' gear.

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#236

Post by _ph_ »

ricardobeat wrote: post #228
sh-run wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have always questioned the usefulness of smaller sensor cameras (Ie M43) with the improvement in cellphone cameras, but it looks like I'll still carry my Olympus EM5.2 when I travel. The iPhone 11 gets great social media photos, but I wouldn't want to get any of those printed (at least not larger than 4x6). Of course the best camera is the one you have with you so I am still happy to see the improvements over…

I moved back to aps-c after I noticed my EM10 was giving me nearly zero benefit over the iPhone in terms of quality or resolution. The 16MP vs 12MP is barely noticeable, and the iPhone was actually sharper and had better tone in side-by-side shoots. That was with a 6S!

It would be interesting to know which lenses you used on the E-M10, but while I made good photos with the 6s, in general they wouldn't compare to what I consistently get with mFT. The size difference between mFT and APS-C is neglible compared to the difference to the smartphone cameras.

Where the iPhone shines is getting nicely automatically post-processed pictures. Olympus has an iAuto mode, which also aims for that. There are also a lot of in-camera settings where you can tweak the produced jpegs, if you don't want to post-process. The best quality you would get though by post-processing raw images on your computer.

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#237

Post by bt848 »

sib wrote: post #231
wlesieutre wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To nitpick a bit, the standard iPhone lenses have always been wide angle. The new ones are ultra wide.

True, but only by the standards of traditional photography... The standard iPhone lens (26mm) has always been pretty much normal for phone camera lenses. When Apple introduced the second lens (51mm), they called it "telephoto," even though that focal length is pretty much dead-on the traditional definition for a "standard" lens. No traditional photographer would call a 51mm lens a telephoto lens. So, for people who g…

Can we please speak in terms of angle of view? Converting everything to "35mm SLR equivalent" focal lengths is tiresome and misleading.

The main camera on an iPhone has a 70-degree field of view, which most people consider wide.

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#238

Post by prolepunk »

charrondev wrote: post #32
ansgri wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DSLR manufacturers already have compact mirrorless to catch up with. Now only if the mirrorless moguls would recognize the potential of ehnancing their comparatively giant APS-C sensors with at least half the computational photography wits of modern camera phones, now that would be magnificent. Also, for me personally, the next waypoint for the phones should be the development of compact telephoto lenses -- it seems…

I’m not sure how it is at APS-C (I use a full frame DSLR) but I don’t think there’s much room in the workflow of a lot people using DSLRs for more computation I’m the camera itself. I know if I want a _great_ picture I - shoot raw. - shoot on manual mode (often still with auto exposure). - put the photo into Lightroom. With a huge sensor and a fast lens there’s no need for a lot of the computational photography phone…

Panasonic has really good image stabilization for MFT systems where lens stabilization and sensor stabilization system work in tandem allowing to take shots with up to 1 second exposure handheld. Basically it's like having gimble inside the camera.

Panasonic 25mm f/1.7 (50mm f/3.5 equivalent full frame) is under $200 and is an excellent portrait lens.

With initial release of GH5 autofocus was pretty bad, but with the last firmware upgrade apparently it's quite good now.

I however cant yet justify upgrade from GH4, which doesn't have sensor stabilization.

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#239

Post by Diederich »

overcast wrote: post #31
jonlucc wrote: post #4

The photography in these kinds of reviews is amazing, and the camera looks pretty stellar compared to the XS, but I find myself reading them wondering if it will make my pictures any better. I'm a mediocre photographer at best, and I'm certainly not going to be able to capture many images like the ones in this review.

The key elements to these photos basically come down to dramatic lighting(dawn/dusk), leading lines(look at the bridge and waterway shots, your eyes are guided to the mountains and the horizon), and the rule of thirds(dividing your image up into quadrants, and keeping important subjects at their intersections). Basic stuff, but as always requires LOTS of practice and experimentation.

Over 20 years ago, my wife and I were driving up highway 395, just east of the California High Sierras. At the time, we were only using disposable cameras. She suddenly asked me to pull over, which I did, and backed up a bit, to right around here: https://goo.gl/maps/dh4gyRPi71ZQmy4b7

She got out of our 1996 Saturn SL, walked around a few minutes, snapped a single picture, and got back in the car.

A couple of months later, she gave me slightly blown up print of that picture, developed in black and white, in a simple frame, and asked if I'd like to put it on my desk at work.

The photo was stunning, and so I took it to work.

Over the year, a number of people came by and commented on the striking beauty of that picture. In fact, two different people (at different times) came, looked at the picture very carefully, and said that they were quite surprised that there was an Ansel Adams photo they had not seen before.

At my suggestion, she entered it into various local and state photography competitions, and won all of them.

Alas, it was lost in a fire many years ago.

My wife has no training, formal or otherwise, in photography. But she has a naturally keen eye for graphic design and layout.

Equipment is good and important; location, timing, and an eye for composition is, in my opinion, far more important.

Re: iPhone 11 Pro Camera Review

#240

Post by overcast »

jtmarmon wrote: post #125
overcast wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key elements to these photos basically come down to dramatic lighting(dawn/dusk), leading lines(look at the bridge and waterway shots, your eyes are guided to the mountains and the horizon), and the rule of thirds(dividing your image up into quadrants, and keeping important subjects at their intersections). Basic stuff, but as always requires LOTS of practice and experimentation.

And when following the rule of thirds, how many quadrants should one divide their photo into?

3x3 grid
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