With the iPhone 7, Apple Changed the Camera Industry
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
I think the author here got a few things slightly wrong (he's a writer in a 2016 newsroom - give him a break), but he's right that Iphones have totally changed the camera industry. Sure, there's a small percentage of people like me who need gear that is higher calibre that give the extra 10 percent, but you can really get exceptional images with an Iphone. I really don't see why people would buy a consumer level camera anymore.
With my iPhone 6s I was slightly disappointed that the ultra aggressive noise reduction ruined some of my shots in very good lighting (other from the same series were fine, some were just totally destroyed though), but it seems the new support for raw images will solve that issue too.
It's a camera that is always with me, and considering the technological constraints and limitations, it works exceptionally well.
The shot that you make with the camera that you have with you is always better than the photo you don't get with the camera that you left at home. Having paid my dues learning to operate a 4x5 view camera, I grok that fully.
As I once told a friend who was berating my closet full of Canon lenses because "everyone knows Leica makes the best lenses" I said: "Take a look at your last vacation photos. Now take a look at any randon issue of National Geographic. Ask yourself: Am I really being limited by the glass?"
Somebody that understands composition and light can make better photos with a phone than a hack with the best "big boy" camera.
The big advantage of the 7 Plus to me is that the 56mm lens is better for portraits so it's pretty exciting.
There are other things that go into making these images more "realistic", like adding chromatic aberration, barrel distortion and halation, but by and large these things are affectations borne of nostalgia and not actual improvements to image quality.
The problems with phone cameras (and small sensor cameras more generally) are (1) hitting the resolution limits of the optics, (2) noise, (3) lack of dynamic range, (4) lack of choices in quality lenses, (4) fixed aperture, which means no creative focus effects, and poor performance in low-light settings, (5) software based (and therefore slow and sometimes inaccurate) manual controls over shutter speed, focus, flash, etc., (and more generally, a much less efficient or adaptable physical user interface than a dedicated camera) (6) often limiting output formats, with lots of in-camera processing wiping out data from the raw image.
Any 6+ megapixel DSLR (e.g. the ones from the early 2000s) with a nice lens easily outclasses the iPhone or any other phone camera, in the hands of a photographer with basic competence.
On the other hand, phone cameras are amazing for their ridiculously tiny size, and their cost is obscenely low after the economies of scale kick in. They take much better pictures on average than the <$50 35mm film cameras from the 1990s, especially when the photographer is a complete beginner (those are the cameras I think of as their spiritual ancestors).
So, it's hilarious to me that today the number one statistic quoted by Apple fans is about how much money Apple makes or how many units they've sold.
It's almost as if many of the people who lived in the 90's are still alive today, including the Apple fans. I personally have many friends who were Apple fans then and now.
It also applied to original iphone.
But now, other phones are on par regarding quality and accessibility with iphone and they've had this feature for long. Your comparison simply doesn't apply.
Apple, at this point, is only a marketing gimmick.
Unfortunately after several years of using Android phones, I got an iphone (6s) this year. It's simply a bad phone. I'm getting a new Android device this week.
So I guess if you're looking for a marketing gimmick in all this, you might say Apple's engineering dominance is a pretty good marketing gimmick. I mean, I can't really think of a better 'marketing gimmick' than designing better core technology, patenting it, and using it as a platform for launching other new tech that also contains better core technology. I'm even hesitant to call it a gimmick. It's more like... the actual way capitalism is designed to work.
How does iphone compare to other phones in a bigger picture?
It's hard to zoom out and compare peripherals and overall design without getting into personal taste and preference. To measure personal taste empirically, you could look at profits. Higher profit means people aren't buying on price but on perceived value and personal preference.
iPhone is a huge winner here. Apple actually books a majority of the smartphone industry profits every quarter -- more profit than every other company combined (in 2015 it was 91%). It's hard to charge high margins when you don't have some proprietary unfair advantage like faster CPUs.
Samsung et. al sell more phones and have more revenue, but they make a fraction of the money because their value prop competes on price. In fact, Samsung is the only other company that made a profit selling smartphones in 2015, everyone else lost money or broke even. CPU performance is a huge part of that story. Samsung has the second fastest CPUs. That's a difference between first place and second place of almost 100 billion dollars. Third place is you're fired.
I do get upset at google though -- i wish they did more to make it easier for developers to port their apps to android. also the iOS version of apps are built better, it sucks to have a garbage version of snapchat on android. but the sacrifice is worth it to have the physical back button.
"The launch of the initial iPhone may have harmed mobile camera tech development. There was a rush was to put touch screens on everything and cameras seemed to be less important all of a sudden when busting out a top-end spec list."
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobil...
Look at HTC. They tried and failed. Dual camera, but the Bokeh is actually a gimmick. It doesn't work.
http://petapixel.com/2016/09/07/iphone-7-7-plus-announced-du... (Scroll about halfway down.)
The fake Bokeh from the dual cameras looks like flat circles with Gaussian blur applied. It's a useless gimmick, I can't imagine ruining real photos with this look.
Also my understanding is that there's no blending of images between the two cameras at all. You literally use only one camera or the other. There are existing systems on the market that do this correctly to obtain a much higher quality of image than what is possible with only one camera alone. I would expect Apple to implement this in a future software update.
The way depth information is determined with phase detection autofocus is very similar conceptually with how you'd generate a depth map in software from two separate cameras.
Granted, not all cameras can do phase detection AF at f/8, and at 35mm you have enough DOF that the accuracy of the AF is not that critical. But they can do AF at f/5.6 accurate enough for a 50mm lens. That gives you 8.92mm separation. Still comparable to iPhone.
The microlens/aperture system of the AF masks essentially the back plane of the lens (which follows from the exit pupil) for the AF sensor (interacting mainly with the exit telecentrism of the lens, which is why AF speed and acccuracy can widely vary with lens type, even if the same f-stop is used). Also a reason (besides the fact that many digital sensor designs perform better with telecentric designs due to increased scattering and reflections in the sensor itself compared to film) why modern lenses are almost always strongly telecentric designs.
A completely separate matter is the circle of confusion which is indeed directly related to the aperture of the lens.
(I hope I got most of the optical terms correct, I don't normally discuss this topic in English)
You can trivialy make a great bokeh implementation that's not merely a Gaussian blur.
And I don't see much horrible in these examples -- perfectly fine I'd rather say, if a little overemphasized. But you can get totally blurry bokeh from some lenses, including smeared highlights instead of nice little circles...
Since it's done in software, Apple could use a more uniform circle kernel instead of a Gaussian kernel to do a more authentic bokeh style.
But, it is Apple, so I'm sure people will buy them. Missing 3.5mm jack and all...
It's not even out yet! How do you if its any better?
[1] https://www.cinema5d.com/apple-ios-raw-photos-iphone-ipad-pr... [2] http://jag.gr/645pro/
Mobile cameras and social media have completely transformed consumer photography with selfies and spur of moment pictures taking over from an era of old style 'event' pictures that required intention.
You can't take selfies with your DSLR or even compacts, or lug them around for casual spur of moment shots.
Leaving aside this PR piece for iPhone 7 marketing the growing quality of mobile phone cameras have already long impacted the lower end camera market.
DSLRs are limited to pros and enthusiasts, with mirroless sharing some spoils in that market. The bulk of the market that would buy a lower to mid end camera now has little reason to.
Depth of field or 'bokeh' for those lovely isolation shots is not possible given physical sensor and lens constraints. Apple's dual camera approach with the iPhone 7 seeks to change it and the early shots do look interesting but also a bit artifical. Not the natural flowing isolation you would get from a full frame sensor for portaits at 80 or even 50mm.
50mm is the standard street shooter's focal length.
It is true that telephoto designs are usually used on long lenses, however, and for normal lenses on 35mm you don't usually employ telephoto designs.
BTW, since when is there such a thing as a "12 megapixel lens?"
That's the first I've heard of that. Can you back that up? Seems like it'd be easy enough to get it working on any image with depth to it, so it seems odd that they'd limit it.
That shouldn't be a limitation in the technology though, just a implementation detail. Emulating DoF would work whether you have a face in the photo or not, it's just easier to lock on to a face as your primary focus.
I was thinking that this would be interesting for product photography but not sure whether it would work. For example, if I'm shooting a row of coffee cups for the side (diagonally) but want the front cup to be in focus and rest in the row gradually going out of focus.
[Edit]
The point being Apple uses algorithm to detect face to 'compute' the depth of field - would the same work for any random object? I'm not sure about this.
They probably focus on the portrait application because it has the least amount of corner cases.
Lenses are not perfect and have limits on their resolution. You can often find charts showing the performance of a lens as part of a review.
http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/x-archive/measuring-lens-re...
I believe the OP is "The New Yorker", not NYT.
Any flaws aught to be in the depth map generation, so things being inappropriately blurred.
Telephoto is a lens design, not a characteristic of the focal length. Hell, some wide engle lenses have telephoto designs!
Though getting a feature article like this is probably easier for Apple (also given their budget)
If people like you are praising the new iPhone 7+ camera _before it's even been released_ then it's pretty obviously the latter, isn't it?
Subjectively, it's whatever you prefer. I'm with you; some of the Nokia Lumia cameras easily outperform the best Apple has ever offered, and I say that as someone who currently uses an iPhone 6. If I wasn't so concerned about the future of Windows Phone I'd still be on that platform, since the camera is the second most important part of a smartphone for me (the most being stability/reliability, which Windows Phone 8.1 had but Windows 10 does not, hence my switch to iPhone).
More important than MP is the quality of the sensor and lens, and I bet there is a lot of development and improvement in the "small" category.
Just because Zeiss made the lens doesn't mean it is better than anything else. Your only guarantee if you see the the word Zeiss is that it will be expensive ;-)
I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything and definitely prefer any SLR (digital or otherwise) to phone potatocams, but they are getting better so quickly.
I didn't mean to accentuate specifically on Zeiss brand. My point is there's nothing revolutionary in today's iPhone 7 compared to 2 year old Lumias. Some big things (optical stabilization) are even missing. And it's sensor+software seem good enough even today.
But either way, Apple didn't invent camera phones.
Whilst it was the first iPhone to use a contemporaneous sensor, rather than cost-saving with previous-gen, it was still only a 5MP OmniVision OV5642 at the same time as Sony was installing 8MP sensors of a similar backlit configuration.
Ironically Apple switched to using Sony's Exmor sensors for later models.
I'm curious, did it really turn out to be one?
I had a disaster with the iphone 5c, the phone kept breaking down from simple use and i had to fix it several times before i gave up; for me that killed any warm feelings for apple, with android you can at least try another vendor, without having to learn a totally different UI.
The article also ignores the limitations that any small sensor camera has due to physics. Photons arrive within a poisson distribution. The Nyquist limit is hard. Magical designs can't change that.
None of which is to say that the new camera won't be good for some definition of 'good'. But the enabling technologies of snapshots are not changing. Neither is the pace of change in photography.
[1]: and image making since at not all too dissimilar intervals since the Reneissance e.g. printing press, oil paint, camera obscuras, optics, perspective].
But we can keep improving what small sensors are capable of, and we can probably still make improvements to the software that processes the raw data the sensors capture.
We can also hope for innovation in the technology behind digital image sensors. We've seen lots of innovation, but the fundamentals behind the CMOS and CCD sensors we use now haven't changed in a long time. I'm not qualified to comment on the viability of it, but perhaps something like this will end up being useful: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1365289912/invisage-brings...
Interestingly, though, it's not really the size of the sensor that's the issue but the focal length of the lens required to give a usably narrow field of view with a larger sensor. You could probably squeeze an APS-C sensor into a smartphone, but you couldn't use it with an 8mm focal length.
So there are two potential routes to go here. Progress in telephoto designs for very small lenses, and multi-lens cameras.
I'm sure there are plenty of further incremental improvements to be made to small sensors, but there are real physical limits on how much charge a tiny cell can capture before becoming saturated. For that reason, even if advancements are made in small sensors, a physically larger sensor with access to the same tech will likely always have a dynamic range advantage
Wonder why we're not seeing more competition in this space. Major players too entrenched already and not enough money for others to try to break in?
That's misleading. DNG is patented by Adobe, but it's also an open, specified format, i.e. it's not "proprietary" in the sense of "can only be opened/used if you pay Adobe money or use/buy their products" which is what people are generally implying when they use the term "proprietary".[0]
DNG is a lot like Adobe's PDF format: owned and managed by Adobe, but with an open specification than anyone can implement/use. They even offer a free license to the DNG "patent", should that deter anyone. That said, unlike PDF, it has not (yet) become an ISO standard, although Adobe has indicated that they would like to see that happen.
I could be wrong though. Can I write and sell software that reads and writes DNG format without having to sign an agreement or pay Adobe money?
I believe the answer is: yes, you can. The DNG patent license is here: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/digital-negative.html
You do not need to "sign anything" or "pay Adobe money" to make use of it. It's no different (in terms of usage) than someone open sourcing API documentation with an Apache license (or whatever).
Not sure if there is much reason to fork the DNG spec in practice, but still the situation is fairly different from "open sourcing API documentation with an Apache license".
Of course, taking pictures of something in motion will be harder.
(He later added a lens, to simplify the process, but even without you get fairly good images with a pinhole.)
"Very large sensors" also seems to means something different to you than it does to me. I would not want a full frame sensor (which I would only consider large, not even "very large") on my phone even if it were cost effective and didn't require a large lens.
Eventually we will be reconstructing high quality photos from raw sensor data, applying all manner of algorithms to stabilize and accumulate brightness, stylized blur that isn't even optically possible, no shutter or lense or any moving parts really, and the whole thing will happen on your smartphone.
Based on the use of Foveon sensors and light field tech from Lytro I wouldn't count on lens less cameras showing up in a phone in the next five years. A decade wouldn't surprise me but it's hard to predict tech trends that far out.
I'm not particularly bullish on lensless cameras either. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't expect those to meet modern quality standards in a small form factor for a long time.
I love using my DSLR, but I hate dealing with the workflow. If I take a picture with my DSLR I have to put the SD card in my computer, load up Lightroom, edit, export, and finally upload/share the picture.
Transfer it to your phone and do whatever you would have done otherwise.
Random Google Search: of Techradar's top 10 list of full-frame DSLRs, 7 have Wi-Fi.
http://www.techradar.com/news/photography-video-capture/came...
Or at least just move those files to my desktop only. But what I see is that Canon doesn't allow that (copy all files in the background to e.g. an ftp server), it has to have a phone or some strange proprietary Canon app.
For me it beats the purpose of having a wifi in a DSLR, I might as well just use SD card it the photos are not moved automatically where I would like.
I hear very good things about Sony's A6000 series and some Micro 4/3 cameras.
Edit: Also, you definitely don't need to fire up Lightroom to share photos from your DSLR; I think practically any DSLR can shoot JPG. Many DSLRs can also share photos to phones via wifi or Bluetooth these days. Mine didn't come with such a feature, but Nikon sells a $20-30 adapter that adds that capability.
This means objects and figures that aren't faces might not be tuned too well.
It actually works surprisingly well, but I've not traded in my SLR. Being able to do something similar with a second lens -- or even using Project Tango sensors -- to avoid the post-exposure motion would make it more useful, but I suspect still not as versatile (and even with my SLR, the difference between my relatively cheap lenses and borrowing someone's more expensive lenses, on the same body, is quite obvious).
With a phone, you just tap the share button on the picture you just took, tap the icon for whatever you want to share it to and you're done.
I surely don't and do exactly the same workflow with my phones as I do with my cameras.
Other priorities might be ok to have their pictures known to the world.
I am moving all my photos from the last few decades into Photos/iCloud which will then appear on my phone.
It's a competitor for high end P&S e.g. Sony RX100 and mirrorless e.g. Fuji X100.
https://www.amazon.com/Nikon-Wireless-Mobile-Adapter-Digital...
Many of the reviews say it is not very good, but I have not tried it personally.
Then there is Geo tagging.
https://www.amazon.com/Nikon-GP-1A-Unit-Cameras-27034/dp/B00...
Again, reviews are pretty poor.
Like I said, I love my DSLR, but the phone workflow is just so much easier/nicer.
And I think that's true even if you're a professional - as a professional, your shots should use your phone's cellular connection to upload the shots to Adobe Creative Cloud (or competing cloud) as you take them, so that when you open your machine to do post-processing work, your shots are all already there. Why should anybody be bothering with CF or SD cards anymore? Just store everything on your smartphone (did you hear the iPhone 7 will now have a 256 GB option?), which in and of itself is a buffer for your work before it gets transferred to the cloud.
Modular backs a la Moto Z are interesting because there's a lot of potential now for making "big glass" relevant again for prosumers. Make a modular back with a large sensor and a Micro Four-Thirds or F mount. The only real problem is getting OEMs to agree on a common standard that they would stick to for years, because nobody wants to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a camera back they won't be able to use next year when they upgrade their phone, and yes that's actually a really big problem, but leadership from Google (in the Nexus/Pixel lines) can really help here.
Is the single lense standard version significantly better than the previous model?
Think about it, when was the last time you got a photo or video that was out of focus on your phone? With a full-size sensor DSLR at f/1.8, I've seen professional broadcasters really struggle to deliver in-focus images. In fact, most broadcast cameras for television have significantly smaller sensors in order to get wide DOF at a large aperture.
I mean sure, super-shallow DOF with tons of bokeh can look really pretty when done well, but for 99.9% of people it would give crappy out-of-focus shots.
https://photographylife.com/sensor-size-perspective-and-dept...
From that article, which has actually done the math:
"This iPhone at 4.15mm and f/2.2 gives you a similar field of view and depth of field as a full-frame camera with a 30mm lens set to f/16 does."
Um... every day? Every version of Android released since Jelly Bean has made the focusing worse on my Nexus 4. Right now if I don't explicitly tap on a subject to focus then the camera will always take an out of focus shot.
So the camera and PCs markets that used to be growing as non professional consumers bought the new tech are now contracting! If you company makes cameras for consumers, that business is in trouble, and you can often only be so large with a more niche professional product.
And most "real work" these days are actually happening inside browsers e.g. Salesforce, JIRA, Office 365 etc.