iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras • Hacker News Board

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#321

Post by jonathantf2 » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 9:37 AM UTC

lifestyleguru wrote: post #303

StrLght wrote: post #65

Photos taken on an iPhone are good, unless you: * zoom in * print them * watch them on a bigger screen Sometimes I compare photos I've taken over 10 years ago with Sony NEX-5 with photos I take today with an iPhone. There's no competition, APS-C from 15 years ago is still solid. Anyway, the best camera is the one you have with you, so in that sense iPhone is great.

I have an opposite experience. Most old photos are made with cheap compact auto focus cameras and always somehow blurry and pale, at that time that was the camera "you have in your pocket". Photos with modern smartphone are always superior.

They LOOK worse but they have a sort of nostalgic, "real" feel about them without all the extra post processing. Maybe it's because my eyesight isn't the best but my friend recently took a little digital camera to a festival and the pictures off of that are the ones we all posted.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#322

Post by nmeofthestate » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 9:39 AM UTC

dialup_sounds wrote: post #313

silisili wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with Pixel, which actually did it years before I'd presume. I'm white as ghost. Pixels are determined to make me looked tan for absolutely no reason. I mean, maybe I look 'better', arguably, but it's not me. Is that what people want? I bought the kid some newfangled Polaroid type thing, and she uses that way more than phones anymore for photos. Maybe the kids will be ok.

Google made an publicized effort to better represent darker skin tones, which may explain the tan. It probably thinks you're overexposed and desaturated instead of pale. https://store.google.com/intl/en/ideas/real-tone/

"What we need is a great big melting pot

Big enough to take the world and all it's got

Keep it stirring for a hundred years or more

And turn out hot-dog-coloured people by the score"

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#323

Post by nmstoker » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 9:42 AM UTC

The colour corrections are also annoying when you're trying to take photos of things like cuts and bruises as you want an accurate record (eg to show a doctor) but instead it effectively says "let me clean that up for you" and you're left with the blemishes you wanted diminished!

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#324

Post by sheiyei » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

hopelite wrote: post #290

neya wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I thought the article highlighted the differences beautifully. I'm on a professionally color calibrated 27" monitor that came with one of those color calibration "certificates" at the time of purchase. The second I loaded the article, the differences were just stark. The skin tones alone were a dead giveaway. It is no secret that Apple does a lot of post processing on their mediocre photos to make them lo…

You and most Apple obsessed curmudgeons are not really any better by ignoring what all this comes down to, choices and trade-offs. Apple’s primary objective is clearly related to taking photos that provide a positive impact on the user while being as easy to do so, not accuracy. They want the most number of users to be satisfied, not accurate reproduction of an image. I would not be surprised if they don’t actually w…

Could say, the goal is an OK photo every time, even if it means you only get really good photos by accident.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#325

Post by todotask2 » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

I would framed it up with the photos taken with Halide P0 app.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#326

Post by Lanrei » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 10:04 AM UTC

patrakov wrote: post #311

Regarding the focal length difference, which is very well illustrated by the first two photographs, I would frame this point differently from what the article does. Disclaimer: I don't have an iPhone 16, but my Poco X4 Pro 5G suffers from the same "fisheye" issue with its 25mm-equivalent lens. And I am not a professional photographer. It is not a "bad camera" issue, but a composition issue forced by the short focal l…

Focal length wouldn't even be an issue if the photographer was taking the photos from the same position. The fish-eye effect is literally because the photographer is closer. Cropping a photo with a different focal length will give the same composition and difference will be the distortion introduced by the camera and the image processing.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#327

Post by amelius » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 10:06 AM UTC

Quarrel wrote: post #316

prox wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without hyperbole I could give people a badly calibrated CRT from the 90s and it doesn’t matter to some. Some people just don’t see anything wrong with pictures, and don’t even know what to look for or what it’s called. The inverse are the professional photographers who work with pictures day in and out, they see everything.

I am amazed at the eye professional photographers have. A shot of a building that is suddenly really interesting, versus my shot of that building. Colour. Angle. etc. I just don't have the eye for it, despite having a decent amateur setup. BUT, yes, lots of people might look at a random photo on their phone and not notice skintones, or the fisheye etc. If you then give them a pile of 10 photos from a pro, versus 10 f…

Perhaps the amateurs have an internal network in their brain that corrects for badly shot photos.

The professionals have learned to shut off that network.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#328

Post by wisty » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 10:06 AM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #38

The points really boil down to: 1. Difference in focal length/ position. 2. Difference in color processing But…the article is fairly weak on both points? 1. It’s unclear why the author is comparing different focal lengths without clarifying what they used. If I use the 24mm equivalent on either my full frame or my iPhone, the perspective will be largely the same modulo some lens correction. Same if I use the 70mm or…

Um, I'm pretty sure a 24mm shot on a full frame camera will look the same as an iPhone shot, but only if you crop the full frame shot (ignoring pixels counts).

Yes, you could get the same photo of the guy in the centre on the iPhone, but only by zooming in and cropping out everything else. I guess if you REALLY wanted you could run back, and zoom in. Better get a tripod to hold it steady since you're zooming in then.

So anyone but an expert will shoot with a much shorter lens when using the iPhone.

This is how crop factors work unless I'm really mistaken.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#329

Post by barnabee » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 10:09 AM UTC

shakow wrote: post #269

Ancapistani wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go so far as to say: if you're using in-camera JPEGs, you would probably be better off with a cellphone.

That's a very contemptuous thing to say. Even if one is using in-camera JPEG and does not want to spend 1hr/picture in Darktable, they can still play with many more objectives, exposure, shutter time, physical zoom, aperture, etc. I'd even go the other way around: if you just bought a camera, just use in-camera JPEGs for the first months and familiarize yourself with all the rest (positioning, framing, understanding…

Totally agree!

Photography for me is about the physical and optical side of things. Choosing a lens for a situation, framing the shot, aperture, shutter, etc.

When I switched to digital I was seduced by post-processing, partly as a substitute for the look I could achieve with different films, but mostly I suspect because all those sliders and numbers and graphs are naturally attractive to a certain type of person :)

I eventually pretty much stopped taking photos.

Changing my workflow from post processing RAW photos (and barely ever looking at them again) to using in-camera JPEGs that I can immediately share, print, or whatever was enough to start me taking photos again regularly as a hobby.

More unexpectedly, in addition to the obvious time saving of removing the post processing step (aside from occasional cropping), the satisfaction benefit of the immediacy with which I can now print, share, display, etc. my favourite photos has been huge. It’s so much more rewarding getting photos right after you took them and actually doing something with them!

Now I’m not even sure I’d call all that digital image processing “photography”. Sure, it’s an art in its own right, and one some photographers enjoy, but the essence of photography lies somewhere else. I’d encourage everyone to try a camera with decent in camera JPEG production. You can always shoot Raw+JPEG if you’re scared to go full cold turkey.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#330

Post by jiggawatts » Wed, Jul 30, 2025, 10:10 AM UTC

FredPret wrote: post #33

My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water. Add a nice lens and there's no comparison. However: - The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone) - The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a gr…

> Looking back at travel and family pictures, it has been very much worth it for me to have a dedicated camera.

I got myself a Nikon D800 over a decade ago when they were first released, and left it in 14-bit RAW mode since then. Technically these are "SDR" photos, but the captured dynamic range is closer to 1000-nit HDR. For a decade, I had to crush these to fit into sRGB SDR JPGs, which is throwing away most of the goodness.

A few months ago I took all of my 5-star pictures in Lightroom and used its new HDR processing mode to export them as 16-bit PNG files. I then turned those into a 2160p HDR video and played it on an OLED 75" television.

It blew my tiny mind!

The quality was simply jawdropping. It was like travelling back in time to all of those holidays and looking out through a window at reality itself.

This is why I go on regular online rants about how frustrating it is that the only way to share the full output quality of a modern digital full-frame camera is by uploading a HDR "movie" of the pictures to YouTube.