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iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

candid9.com

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Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#471

Post by twoWhlsGud »

bayindirh wrote: post #372
lonelyasacloud wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Is nothing new. When film was mass market almost no one developed their own photos (particularly colo(u)r). Instead almost all printing went through bulk labs who optimised for what people wanting to show to their family and friends. W…

Personally coming from the film era, I don't think it's as clear cut as this. Many of the post-processing an informed person does on a digital photo is an emulation of a process rooted in a darkroom, yes. On the other hand, some of the things cameras automatically does, e.g.: Skin color homogenization, selective object sharpening, body "aesthetic" enhancements, hallucinating the text which the lens can't resolve, etc…

Which is one reason why I often still shoot with an actual camera and sometimes even with film. I have a lifetime of experience with common film emulsions and a couple of decades of shooting with digital sensors with limited post processing.

When does that matter? It matters when I take pictures to remember what a moment was like. In particular, what the light was doing with the people or landscape at that point in time.

It's not so much that the familiar photographic workflows are more accurate, but they are more deterministic and I understand what they mean and how they filter those moments.

I still use my phone (easy has a quality of its own) but I find that it gives me a choice of either an opinionated workflow that overwhelms the actual moment (trying to make all moments the same moment) or a complex workflow that leaves me having to make the choices (and thus work) I do with a traditional camera but with much poorer starting material.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#472

Post by econ »

Lord-Jobo wrote: post #371

A decade of "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd have clearly highlighted what is happening here. 1: In a/b testing, nearly everyone including pixel peepers prefer a more vibrant photo. 2: the traditional perspective of "a photo should look as close as possible to what my eyes see if I drop the viewfinder" is increasingly uncommon and not pursued in the digital age by nearly anyone. 3: phone companies k…

After taking a photo I adjust brightness contrast etc to make the picture on the screen match that what I see in front of me. Sometimes this really brings the mood into the shot.

This is also why I get much better results on a phone than on any fancy camera with a smaller or different display. The phone matches what those to view the image get to see closely or exactly.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#473

Post by Melatonic »

m463 wrote: post #470
Lord-Jobo wrote: post #371

A decade of "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd have clearly highlighted what is happening here. 1: In a/b testing, nearly everyone including pixel peepers prefer a more vibrant photo. 2: the traditional perspective of "a photo should look as close as possible to what my eyes see if I drop the viewfinder" is increasingly uncommon and not pursued in the digital age by nearly anyone. 3: phone companies k…

> compared to the loudness wars I would like to compare it to "cinema mode" on my television. I sometimes turn on cinema mode, but although the colors have more subtlety, nuance and accuracy... dimness just doesn't compare as well as you think to a much brighter picture. sigh. That said, it's a little annoying that the apple camera app doesn't capture raw out-of-the-box.

You can do raw out of the box - just need to enable it in settings

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#474

Post by Melatonic »

jrockway wrote: post #158
kazinator wrote: post #141

Beginner Photographer's pictures would compare better if they used a wider depth of field so the background objects are sharp, like the iPhone pics. But, conversely, how do you do the narrow(er) depth-of-field in the iPhone when you want it?

The iPhone blurred background is completely synthetic. It uses multiple cameras to build a depth map of the scene, and then blurs whatever isn't at the depth of the subject of the photo. If you're asking "how do you do", you can select "portrait" when taking the photo, or go to the photo in your gallery after the fact, pick "edit", pick "portrait", and choose a fake aperture ("f/1.4") and focus point to use. The resu…

You can also get decent real bokeh by using the main lens and focusing it as close as it can go (place the subject the correct distance) or do the same thing using the 5x telephoto

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#475

Post by lonelyasacloud »

bayindirh wrote: post #372
lonelyasacloud wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Is nothing new. When film was mass market almost no one developed their own photos (particularly colo(u)r). Instead almost all printing went through bulk labs who optimised for what people wanting to show to their family and friends. W…

Personally coming from the film era, I don't think it's as clear cut as this. Many of the post-processing an informed person does on a digital photo is an emulation of a process rooted in a darkroom, yes. On the other hand, some of the things cameras automatically does, e.g.: Skin color homogenization, selective object sharpening, body "aesthetic" enhancements, hallucinating the text which the lens can't resolve, etc…

If a professional had access to darkroom facilities pretty much everything could be done in there right down to removing people and background objects (see for instance https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/stalin-photo-manipulation-1...).

It's just far easier for anyone to do now.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#476

Post by jrockway »

retinaros wrote: post #381
jrockway wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone blurred background is completely synthetic. It uses multiple cameras to build a depth map of the scene, and then blurs whatever isn't at the depth of the subject of the photo. If you're asking "how do you do", you can select "portrait" when taking the photo, or go to the photo in your gallery after the fact, pick "edit", pick "portrait", and choose a fake aperture ("f/1.4") and focus point to use. The resu…

results arent mid they would be equivalent to the beginner photographer in article.

I mean, you can try it. I took a random photo in my library, my self and a friend taking a selfie at a museum. I added the blur and there is no way to make both of us sharp while having the background blurred. Our depths are that different (inches), I suppose. At least with a DSLR you could correct this before taking the picture (by adjusting the composition of the shot). Doing it after the fact with a questionable depth map... not as good.

One could take the depth map and use it to mask off two areas to keep sharp, which would potentially have better-than-real-camera results. The iPhone does not do this, however. You'd have to write your own program to do it.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#477

Post by adkaplan »

aosaigh wrote: post #70

I also think there’s something special about looking through a viewfinder. Even in new cameras (where the viewfinder itself is a tiny screen) something happens when you frame a photo this way, that doesn’t happen when you use the back display (or a phone). I don’t know if it’s down to physically using one eye, or the psychology of bringing your eye to the camera’s eye, but it feels different (and I like it)

I've struggled with this too. I want to only use my phone but the quiet focus that a view finder gives me allows better attention to detail, the edges of the photo, and subtle alignments of parallax objects. I find it much harder on a phone or with live view on a proper camera. It's like -- for a moment, I am the camera and I'm about to make a record of a moment. I don't get nearly that feeling with a phone despite years of trying to convince myself its the same

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#478

Post by 1718627440 »

prox wrote: post #296
dkga wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the point… but I would counterargue, perhaps facetiously, that if one needs a professionally color calibrated screen to notice the difference, then it is really not something that would matter for mere mortals.

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 mean we are used to completely different colour profiles in reality also. You don't perceive the colors compared to the room light, you perceive them relative to the other colors on the screen, so the screen doesn't really matter.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#479

Post by neomantra »

markhalonen wrote: post #409
neomantra wrote: post #337

Has anyone used this Candid9 service or QR code photo sharing workflow? Does it work well? I happen to be making a RPi Camera for Burning Man and was incorporating a QR code workflow into it. With a thermal printer for either a low-res pic or a QR code to print or snap. I devised something along the lines of this service, but dead simple URL generation to filename+hash in an S3 bucket.

I am the creator of Candid9 and I have taken about 290 photos of strangers and distributed them via candid9 QR codes. Happy to chat about it!

Thanks for replying and congrats on releasing your idea to the world. I just signed up to check it out and will use it in parallel with my project. I like your idea of session-based versus photo-based and also the approach of pre-printing QR codes. That is a simple workflow quite accessible to the less technical on both sides.

I don't think I have specific questions now, but I'm excited for the kinds of interactions it can spark. I mostly imagine getting lost in a sea of QR codes if it is not managed well. I was going to try to composite an extra copy for photographer reference.

Re: iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

#480

Post by markhalonen »

neomantra wrote: post #479
markhalonen wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the creator of Candid9 and I have taken about 290 photos of strangers and distributed them via candid9 QR codes. Happy to chat about it!

Thanks for replying and congrats on releasing your idea to the world. I just signed up to check it out and will use it in parallel with my project. I like your idea of session-based versus photo-based and also the approach of pre-printing QR codes. That is a simple workflow quite accessible to the less technical on both sides. I don't think I have specific questions now, but I'm excited for the kinds of interactions…

Awesome! It's a very simple workflow, here's another video that I don't have on the website for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OctwOpaNoJQ
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