Apple's crop / digital zoom with the 1x camera vs using the telephoto camera has been pretty annoying with the new iPhone 13 pro. It fails in many cases it's not supposed to, like zooming in at 3x in a bright day trying to take a picture of a flying bird or similar in the sky.
iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
81–90 of 152 posts
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just not how lenses work, fundamentally. Bokeh is determined by two things, and two things only - the diameter of the aperture and the distance to the object. That's it. Also yes, the wide angle of the iPhone 13 is much smaller. Just stop down even further then. Cheap macro lenses in 2021 are typically around 24mm. I'm talking about the Mitakons and the Laowas of the world. Focus stacking is needed when you're…
"That's just not how lenses work, fundamentally." Go to the wikipedia page on depth of field and see how it is calculated. "Cheap macro lenses in 2021 are typically around 24mm" You claimed they were the norm. Now it's that they simply exist . "Focus stacking is needed" Focus stacking is needed when the depth of field is so small that the resulting photo would be unpleasant. This is the case for almost all macro phot…
24mm is a normal focal length for entry level macro lenses nowadays, yes. They don't just exist, they are very common in the entry level market. If you want to get those kinds of macro shots that's what you'll get.
If your goal for macro photography is to take a picture that is reasonably sharp at 12MP 2cm away with a magnification of less than 2, then yes, getting acceptable depth of field is a solved problem. Set your wide angle macro lens to F/22 and there you go.
If you have higher standards, then the problem is not fixed on DSLRs. But the iPhone doesn't do it either.
If you don't understand why using the CoC criteria for depth of field is incorrect on two cameras with vastly different sensor sizes, I can't help you. The only measure for depth of field that works across cameras with two different sensor sizes is the ratio of distance and aperture diameter, which determines the solid angle of light capture. You're the one that brought up physics, so actually look at the physics instead of using photographer's ready-made formulas without actually understanding them and where they break down.
As for the image that you replied to, it doesn't look any worse at all to the images in the post technically. If you look at the image of the lightning connector, it doesn't even have 2mm of depth of field at a pretty low actual resolution. You can say whatever you want as for the composition and artistic value, that's not what we're talking about.
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#83My problem with smartphone cameras(including iPhone) is that they completely misrepresent the scene. They try to make the colors of your photos as punchy as possible even when that's not actually what you're seeing. Older iphones used to capture accurate colors (which is why I preferred iphone cameras in the past) but now they produce the same over-saturated, over-sharpened images as every other phone these days.
If I want to make my photos punchy, I can do that in lightroom. For those who don't use lightroom, you can do that in the built-in photos app. My old iphone 6s produces much accurate colors than my iphone 11. On the iphone 11, colors are way off and images are so over-sharpened that I can see severe haloing around high-contrast areas.
And those awful noise-reduction watercolor textures... I wish they would just leave some noise as-is. Get rid of chroma noise (which is relatively easy), and leave some luminance noise around. I mean, luminance noise are actually quite nice as they are similar to film grain.
I can get pretty close to what I want with raw(not ProRaw), but you know, I can't even capture raw with their default camera app even when they are bloating it with useless(IMHO for a stock camera app) features like portrait mode, cinematic mode, photographic styles, filters etc.
I mean, I get why they are doing it; obviously because people like over-processed photos for their instagram. But it's my pet peeve...
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to replicate the effect in the article, you'd be using a 24mm macro lens, yes. Mitakon makes multiple, and laowa makes multiple for all mounts.
I didn't argue that 24mm macros don't/can't exist, I'm arguing that they're vanishingly rare in the grand scheme of 355mm photography.
I really don't think they are. The 24mm "probe" lens is pretty famous and widespread, and it's actually the #2 item for the query "macro lens" on Google shopping and it's the first macro lens you'll see on Google images. Beyond that, there's a whole plethora of ~24mm macro lenses and they're pretty dominant in the budget side of macro lenses nowadays.
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I usually work around f/22, at 1/250 and of course with flash. I shot this handheld, about a year ago: https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/DSC1250-1.jpg It's a fixed issue.
Do you think that photo demonstrates that it's a fixed issue? You seem to have around 3mm of depth actually in focus, and even with a very, very shallow subject, parts are unpleasantly out of focus. I don't think that is the demonstration you think it is. Most macro photographers would not rack that up as a successful photo. And again, focus stacking is what everyone does to compensate for the DoF weakness.
I don't see anymore than 3mm in focus in the images of the post.
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
"That's just not how lenses work, fundamentally." Go to the wikipedia page on depth of field and see how it is calculated. "Cheap macro lenses in 2021 are typically around 24mm" You claimed they were the norm. Now it's that they simply exist . "Focus stacking is needed" Focus stacking is needed when the depth of field is so small that the resulting photo would be unpleasant. This is the case for almost all macro phot…
24mm is a normal focal length for entry level macro lenses nowadays, yes. They don't just exist, they are very common in the entry level market. If you want to get those kinds of macro shots that's what you'll get. If your goal for macro photography is to take a picture that is reasonably sharp at 12MP 2cm away with a magnification of less than 2, then yes, getting acceptable depth of field is a solved problem. Set y…
"I can't help you"
No, you can't, because you are painfully ignorant on this topic.
Literally, spend 30 minutes with an iPhone and an SLR and you'd be illuminated. Instead you seriously argue that I need to look at the "physics" (which is farcical when you ignore the most important part of a camera, which is the focusing from the lens to the sensor. Dismissing that betrays a complete misunderstanding of optics).
This conversation is clearly futile, but again - spend 30 minutes and actually test your theories. Or, you know, read any single article on the tubes.
Or how about simply ask yourself "why does the iPhone need to do computational bokeh"? 65mm equivalent lens, f/2.2...should be the easiest thing in the world. In SLR world that is bokeh gold.
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a fixed issue in cameras. Stop down to F16, and use a ring flash, there you go, fixed.
i assume fixed at 24mm because at 90mm, stopping it down to f16 won't do you much good?
Yes, somewhere around 24mm. You'd need to step down a bit more at 90mm.
However, at 90mm the object would also be farther away, so you wouldn't need to stop down a lot more than you'd expect.
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#88Here's the thing about iPhone photography (and Android too, I suppose): if you know what a DSLR is, or the difference between DSLR and mirrorless bodies, you are not the target audience . Apple isn't trying compete with a $3500 Sony A7R4 with a $1000 90mm macro lens. They're aiming for people who see the example "macro" photos and say "neat! I want to try that". Or the people who have already bought a Moment macro le…
> if you know what a DSLR is, or the difference between DSLR and mirrorless bodies, you are not the target audience.
I disagree. I have both a dslr and mirrorless bodies and love that my 12pro also takes great pictures. Anyone who enjoys taking pictures should be excited about the cameras improving on an always with you device.
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The focal length input is squared, but the CoC impact is linear. The iPhone has a small CoC compared to SLRs, but its input on the calculation is undersized relative to focal length. The iPhone is widely assumed to have a CoC of 0.004mm (this actually increases on the most recent iPhone, though it's tough to get precise numbers). A Nikon D5000 (going with an equivalent resolution -- larger pixels -- on an ASP-C camer…
Holding constant the target resolution, you need a smaller CoC in proportion to the difference in focal lengths (assuming the viewing angle is also held constant). That removes one of the factors of f. I think it makes sense to assume the same target resolution for the iPhone and the DSLR, even though this isn’t true in practice. The DSLR user is obviously free to downsample their photo to a lower resolution and ther…
"I think it makes sense to assume the same target resolution for the iPhone and the DSLR, even though this isn’t true in practice"
It yields a practically perfect comparison of focus. This isn't a trick or handicapping, and the degree of focus/defocus is identical whether that SLR had 10x the resolution. There is utterly nothing arbitrary chosen here, and the amount a tree 10 feet outside the focus is out of focus will be identical on a 12MP SLR or a 24, 48, or 96MP version with the same focal length / f / sensor size.
Re: iPhone Macro: A Big Day for Small Things
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
24mm is a normal focal length for entry level macro lenses nowadays, yes. They don't just exist, they are very common in the entry level market. If you want to get those kinds of macro shots that's what you'll get. If your goal for macro photography is to take a picture that is reasonably sharp at 12MP 2cm away with a magnification of less than 2, then yes, getting acceptable depth of field is a solved problem. Set y…
"I can't help you" No, you can't, because you are painfully ignorant on this topic. Literally, spend 30 minutes with an iPhone and an SLR and you'd be illuminated. Instead you seriously argue that I need to look at the "physics" (which is farcical when you ignore the most important part of a camera, which is the focusing from the lens to the sensor. Dismissing that betrays a complete misunderstanding of optics). This…
I have a phone with a macro lens. I have a mirrorless camera. As I told you, what matters for bokeh is the distance to the object and the diameter of the aperture. The iPhone needs computational bokeh because the aperture is 2.4mm wide, whereas one of my lenses has a 40mm aperture. That's why my camera produces more bokeh - the aperture has a wider diameter while the distance to the object is the same.
That is literally the one and only thing that matters. The diameter of the lens, and the distance from the object. Take a piece of paper, draw the lens as a slit, draw the object as a point, and make a line from the two edges of the slit to the point, that continues furhter back. You'll get two triangles. Everything that is contained in those two triangles will be focused to the same point on the sensor. That's why the ratio between the two is what matters. That's why closer objects produce a more out of focus background than objects farther appart. That's what I'm trying to explain to you.
The DoF formula that photographers use does not work for comparisons across two different film sizes.