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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

has anyone else got the impression that default compression ruined the image quality on very recent devices ? i moved from iphone se2 to 12 pro and took pictures of trees and grass, and was wondering why all my pictures looked blurred.

Then i activated the uncompressed pro format and got much better results (with images weighting a ton more of course)

i still have to get back to the se2 and see if i have the same problems but it was the first time i was completely unimpressed by the camera when upgrading my phone.

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The iPhone 12 Pro models seems to have had a software issue[1] that resulted in poor focusing — this was fixed later. A workaround at the time was using a different camera app, eg the link recommends ProCam but I suspect any RAW capture app would do.

If it’s taking blurry photos still, it probably is defective and needs to be returned.

[1] https://piunikaweb.com/2020/12/09/iphone-12-pro-camera-focus...

Thanks for the links. I looked at the video and in my case wasn't that blurry (and not particularely for close-ups). The problem is just that patches of grass were smeared when zooming in just a little (after taking the shot).

Moving to the pro format solved the issue, so my guess is that it's more a problem with the compression / post processing than with the auto-focusing part (although i must say i'm not really sure what constitutes post-processing anymore with modern camera)

The default processing is fairly aggressive about noise reduction, yes. Here's a comparison on the 12 Pro Max. You can see that e.g. the brickwork and the clock face are clearer in the raw file. Many photography nerds would probably be perfectly happy with the (low) level of noise in the unprocessed RAW shot, but perhaps regular people's preferences differ in this regard.

The original images:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-2NQ0meQ-PgNvgObWmPT...

A cropped comparison saved as a high quality JPEG, for easier viewing:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VEMVPGDE7ck-0du9QYxydM1a3P8...

I don't think the compression is the issue here, by the way. It's just that when you don't shoot RAW you are getting the default denoising+sharpening.

Yeah, that's exactly the thing i've noticed.

But why ?? isn't a camera supposed to give you "crisp" pictures instead of artistic / smeared renditions of reality ?

I thought the blame could be put on AI-based post-processing going out of control, but your comment seems to imply it's made on purpose. I really don't get the point.

It has (or at least aggressive denoising) since the 6S I still have.

If you look at the images at 1:1, they sometimes look like watercolours with regards to edges.

This is very true in dim lighting. Take a photo in low light and any skin imperfections are washed away. Less true in daylight conditions, which is when mobile cameras shine, in my opinion.

Every camera shines in daylight conditions… some of them literally.

All phone cameras have tiny apertures and tiny pixels (relatively speaking to their DSLR and medium format counterparts). One can’t use them for any kind of serious photography.

There are lots of people making money off photos taken with phone cameras. Of course photography snobs will not consider these people to be “serious” photographers. Serious photography means taking photos of bored-looking attractive women in awkward poses with a blurry background :)

Just as true for the 6S (and friends' more modern iPhones) in bright sunlight which should be at ISO 100 in my experience...

Oh no, a small sensor like the iPhone's is quite noisy at ISO 100. The base ISO for these is around 20-25.

I have issues since my iPhone 7 with pictures turning into watercolour renditions when zooming in any further than screen size. My wife’s iPhone 7 doesn’t have this issue. My 11 pro doesn’t have this issue as badly but grass seems like it is replaced by some texture instead of reality. Seems like overly aggressively compression in most cases.

I've noticed the same, it's frustrating that the defaults would be this extreme especially given how much storage those phones have nowadays.

To others who might be curious, the iPhone 12 now supports raw photo mode. Older models do not natively have this.

Nope, previous iPhones also supported RAW photos (my iPhone Xs does).

Natively? I just researched and it sounds like only iPhone 12 can take raw photos w/o a 3rd party camera app.

No, not natively in the sense the built-in Camera app can do it, but that's not what the comment was saying.

I'm pretty sure the 6s was the first iPhone to support RAW.

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