Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lux.camera

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 340 posts

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

#321

Post by appletrotter »

foldr wrote: post #319
appletrotter wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have you ever used a 35mm film camera? Yep. > The amount of light that’s let in depends entirely on the aperture diameter, not the size of the sensor. That’s wrong. The size of the sensor, the aperture size (and of course the distance between the two) are all factors that together on this. Saying the sensor size is the reason is also wrong, but the size of the sensor is a factor in the equation - and the sensor bei…

>That’s wrong. The size of the sensor, the aperture size (and of course the distance between the two) are all factors that together on this. For a given angle of view, the amount of light incident on the sensor depends solely on the diameter of the aperture (the absolute diameter, not the f number). You can see this visually in the comment I made here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540 If you really want…

I agree on your first point, it is the amount of light coming in through the aperture. A wide open aperture lets more light in.

The point is just that they have to balance DOF and brightness in their designs. It’s a multi-variable equation, and sensor size is one of the factors that constrains the options you have available all things considered.

Like you said

> once you fix the angle of view.

And of course they’re limited to relatively small apertures anyway.

> Because films with higher ISOs are unacceptably grainy for most uses.

Not in my experience! This is just nitpicking now.

We can keep getting more and more technical, but I think you understand how it works.

You’ve made your point. You don’t like gatekeeping. I’m not gatekeeping.

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

#322

Post by foldr »

appletrotter wrote: post #321
foldr wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s wrong. The size of the sensor, the aperture size (and of course the distance between the two) are all factors that together on this. For a given angle of view, the amount of light incident on the sensor depends solely on the diameter of the aperture (the absolute diameter, not the f number). You can see this visually in the comment I made here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540 If you really want…

I agree on your first point, it is the amount of light coming in through the aperture. A wide open aperture lets more light in. The point is just that they have to balance DOF and brightness in their designs. It’s a multi-variable equation, and sensor size is one of the factors that constrains the options you have available all things considered. Like you said > once you fix the angle of view. And of course they’re l…

Sorry, there’s something about discussions of the relative merits of camera systems that seems to get everyone very hot under the collar. Indeed, I think we have both made our points based on our own experience.

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

#323

Post by mirsadm »

Xcelerate wrote: post #304
mirsadm wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not take hundreds of exposures. That is impractical and above all not a good idea. In low light the shutter speed is likely slow (1/10th of a second for a example). Even 16 frames is more than a seconds worth of frames. At that point the differences start to become too high for stacking to be worthwhile, especially because it is hand held. Secondly, the reduction of noise by merging is at best the sqrt (numbe…

> Secondly, the reduction of noise by merging is at best the sqrt (number of frames) This assumes the (typically Gaussian) noise is applied to a static image. Arguably, one could exploit the slight shakiness in a handheld shot to create an image with even less noise. As a thought experiment, consider thousands of shots of a perfectly static scene made with an idealized, noiseless camera that is moved a very tiny amou…

Yes what you are referring to is implemented already by Google and probably others. The Google camera uses it to skip demosaicking by shifting the image by a pixel using OIS. Still the original post was under the impression that hundreds of exposures are merged which is just not the case

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

#324

Post by kaba0 »

GoToRO wrote: post #165
astrange wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t do that unless you turn on vivid photographic styles. It’s tuned pretty much like a dedicated camera. This does annoy many people who then switch to Snow/BeautyCam to actually take their pictures since they want to look prettier.

By default, the pictures they take have nothing to do with reality. You can check it yourself by comparing the picture on the screen with the scene you pictured. Try it with some clouds f.e. This was my experience.

Every camera does that to a degree pretty much by definition. I don’t think iphones would fair worth to their adherence to reaity than a “proper” camera does on auto.

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

#325

Post by Kye »

appletrotter wrote: post #269
speedgoose wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sensors are small but the software is good. Night photography is easy on a recent smartphone and you don’t even need a tripod.

Yeah as other commenters have pointed out, it’s night and day (no pun) between dark shots on DSLRs and phones.

The only catch is, at least on the iPhone 14 Pro, you can't do stuff like light trails with the included camera app. Its very smart, fancy processing carefully removes the trails as it combines exposures so you end up a very well-lit picture of traffic rather than pretty lines and no cars.

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

#326

Post by unethical_ban »

appletrotter wrote: post #270
mkaic wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was exactly the point I was trying to make. If a "real camera" manufacturer like Canon, Nikon, BlackMagic, etc. stepped up and added Apple-tier processing as an option to their cameras, I'd choose that over an iPhone any day. It frustrates me that the best computational photography in the world is being done using small sensors and tiny lenses, but since no DSLR manufacturer has matched Apple's computational wit…

That’s because the professionals do all this “computational photography” on a laptop or something. That way they get to have a little more creative input into it too. There’s like a billion desktop apps to get any sort of processing you want done on a shot. DSLRs aren’t good if you want “point and click,” and that’s okay.

>DSLRs aren’t good if you want “point and click,” and that’s okay.

I disagree, that's my point. I completely understand your point that most DSLR users are pros who have tools to make things pop. What I'm suggesting is that there is a market for people who want really high quality photos that are achievable through larger lenses and sensor sizes, with the simplicity and intelligence in realtime of a phone camera.

Would it be a billion dollar market? Maybe not. But with "computational photography" being far from science fiction these days and with mobile chips being so powerful, it would seem like a strong way to stay relevant in a mainstream market to market a DSLR with phone-like usability.

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

#327

Post by 1123581321 »

city17 wrote: 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.

That’s a good observation so far as it motivates people to learn photography skills. As soon as you know how to take photos, though, you resume appreciating what the right equipment lets you capture, or have a better chance to capture.

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

#328

Post by stetrain »

megablast wrote: post #224
stetrain wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, you’re right.

Looking through my recents I am seeing 5-20mb for 48mp HEIC as opposed to 60mb+ for 48mp ProRAW images.

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

#329

Post by cthalupa »

foldr wrote: post #314
cthalupa wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long since lost or sold my F100, but you can go to Flickr or 500px and search for F100 photos - it's still relatively popular among people that want to shoot on film. Doing a quick side by side comparison of the 'selfie in the woods' shot with a shot of a person with a beard on 500px ( https://500px.com/photo/89633601/ge-by-nika-topuria ), the F100 shot has similar levels of detail in the facial hair, despite be…

Without side by side comparisons it's hard to draw any conclusions from some random photos on Flickr. The concert photos you link to are good photos (which is the important thing, of course) but they're hardly excellent from a pure technical perspective. Look at e.g. the blocked out shadows here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ginandsake/32014019777/in/phot... I guess you're just using the F100 as an example, but it's…

>Look at e.g. the blocked out shadows here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ginandsake/32014019777/in/phot...

There are tradeoffs, for sure. Even in that photo, the details you can see look better than the weird mess that iPhone 14 Pro produced at a concert the other night. I think that's largely due to whatever computational garbage is happening, but that's what the camera app gives me.

>I guess you're just using the F100 as an example, but it's worth pointing out that the camera body is almost completely irrelevant to image quality with a 35mm film camera. It's all in the lens and the film. (Autofocus might be better on the F100 than on earlier SLRs.)

Sure, though the body determines what lenses you can use, ergonomics, features like autofocus, etc. There was a lot of solid Nikkor glass available for the F100. We could also point out that the developing process is also important to quality, etc.

>You want the same color balance regardless of time of day or lighting? If you want to get accurate color balance with film you have to use color balancing filters to adjust for lighting and conditions.

I'm not sure how you get that from my statement. I think that the iPhone's color grading and computational stuff looks pretty awful, and think that Fuji made quite a few excellent films. I don't see where this says I wouldn't use a filter when needed for an SLR... I certainly make use of CPLs and NDs on my cameras today.

Though, I was misremembering when my go-to film was introduced - looks like the FujiColor NPH 400 came out in '02. I'm not sure what I was using prior to that as my standard film.

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

#330

Post by password1 »

shaklee3 wrote: post #259
password1 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from a Pixel 4a to the 14 Pro I'm really impressed instead. Like it's the much needed upgrade that I felt I needed (I'm really passionate about photography). I'm seriously considering selling my DSLR now. I think google computational might be better in some edge cases, but it comes at the cost that sometimes it over-processes things: some textures look painted on my pixel photos, some night shoot feel "cool" b…

you're comparing a phone from 3 years ago to one from today. The pixels continue to be far better at HDR and low light images. iphone is still better at video.

OP was comparing it to the Pixel 5, that's why I chimed in since it's not much different to the 4a. I can't imagine myself being disappointed by it like OP and between 4a and 5 there wasn't a huge leap in performance.
Post reply on HN