iPhone 13 Pro: The Edge of Intelligent Photography
lux.camera
lux.camera
Those who are interested in this area should check out their explainer article on what’s iPhone’s ProRAW format: https://lux.camera/understanding-proraw/
I’m from this field (tech for phone photography) and it was really helpful.
I've been looking at the Pixel 6 too, but the combination of much shorter OS support, and what sounds like an endless stream of bugs has really put me off. But I'm also wary of moving to iOS, I like the way Android works. I think Google do a better job with security, while being much worse on their own privacy practices. Neither look perfect at the moment.
FWIW, I've had a Pixel 6 since around launch time and have not had a single issue with it. That being said, my phone never received the 'problematic' December update, so maybe that's why.
I've had a lot of phones over the past 20+ years and I'd rate it as one of the best phones I've owned. The only downsides I've noticed are its weight (it's noticably heavy in my opinion) and that it does not charge as fast as my old OnePlus (which has unbeatable charing speeds). The picture quality is excellent and the wide-angle lens is actually quite useful.
I think I'm going to keep my current phone going until the iPhone 14 and Pixel 7 are out. I think it's got about another year before the battery doesn't last the day and it's _fine_ most of the time. I'm hoping that once Google get comfortable with their new architecture that they start extending the guarenteed support period, which is one of the big things pushing me towards an iPhone.
I'm also not sure about the size of the 6, I'm hoping they expand the range a bit and produce a smaller one at some point.
I do find the HDR to be a bit in-your-face, even on "neutral" settings. Sunsets are very saturated when you want to take a picture of pastel shades. Cloudy or sunny skies are a bit hit or miss, often there are blown highlights. The lens also seems much more susceptible to flare at night than other phones I've used with the dreaded green dot - not something I ever noticed with the Pixel. Motion photos are pretty great, really handy for low-effort blur on moving water, although you have to use Photos. Google Photos will play the clip, but it won't do the long exposure/bounce modes. Also a pain if you subscribe to G Cloud (which can sync photos fine), because iCloud is incessant about not having enough backup space. I tried Halide, but I didn't see a significant advantage over Slow Shutter Cam which costs a couple of bucks - if you're going to shoot raw, you're going to edit it somewhere else anyway. Maybe aperture and focus control is worth it? The risk with shooting in RAW and post-processing, is that the camera isn't really that good compared to a larger sensor and you're relying on a huge amount of computational photography to fix those limitations. I did try some astrophotography resting the phone on the car roof, but it never really worked.
This part doesn't make a lot of sense. The iPhone 12 ultrawide is fixed focus, so it's sharp if your subject is at infinity (which is pretty close, given the focal length) and blurry if it's not. There's no reason why having a fixed focus should yield 'smudgy images'. I guess maybe the article is suggesting that the fixed focus is set at a hyperfocal distance to increase the sharpness of closer subjects. I'm not sure if that would really make sense for such a short focal length, though, as the majority of elements in the frame would typically be at infinity.
iPhones are very handy in taking kids pictures when you don't have time to go fetch a DSLR. Huawei P50 & Xiaomi seem to have better cameras but don't want to go anywhere near them.
the 13 pro max camera is insanely good so you're likely seeing a bug. I would very strongly disagree it's worse than the iPhone x or 11. I had both.
I think it's possible you're seeing a bug where the camera is using the wrong lens for the distance. I did notice earlier neat launch when I switch between 1x and 3x sometimes the software will use 1x and digital zoom to 3x instead which obviously produced horrible images. I think this got patched as I haven't seen it recently.
The Apple thread you linked highlights how small changes can really make a large difference on quality.
> This is a very dumb check, but I had a screen protector that was the full screen into the camera module and made my pictures blurry at times. When I removed it, photos were perfect.
This seems extremely unlikely. The aperture in these lenses is fixed, so the aperture is just a circular hole.
Picture 1 iPhone 13 Pro Max
https://i.postimg.cc/Rhb4Jq2F/61-D79076-B244-4-BDF-9-CD1-898...
Picture 2 iPhone X
https://i.postimg.cc/L4yHb0hp/EF1-FCAF0-D1-A6-488-E-8-F03-B8...
The first image looks like it has had much more aggressive noise reduction applied to it. Possibly, a 'face' was detected in one case but not the other, and this influenced the processing choices.