IPhone 4S against all other iPhone models (low light shooting)
campl.us
campl.us
The only thing my 4S lacks that my point-and-shoot has is an optical zoom. Beyond that, the phone's ecosystem of photo apps plus the ability to drop photos into Facebook in seconds makes warehousing my old digital a no-brainer.
In my surveying, they're almost only used in places where macro, low-light, flash, speed (image stabilization) and zoom performance are very important: birthdays, landmarks, weddings, kids events, zoos.
And those are features where the known solutions just do not fit into the physical constraints of smartphones.
It seems to me that there's still a place for a well-designed point-and-shoot. And certainly a place for one with better software and integration.
On the low end, I went into a store 8 months ago and compared time to photo-snap from finger-press as well as blur on non-steady targets and none of the sub 500 dollar digitals stood up well. My iPhone 3g consistently captures better images than our 2 year old Cannon Powershot.
My 3G was handy if I forgot my P&S at home, but it was just a fallback, nothing more. I don't know if I'll replace my Canon with my 4S, but we'll see.
I'm not looking for control. I'm looking for non-posed shots of my children to be 1-captured in time before the moment is over and what I'm photographing is gone, and 2-not blurry. With most low end digitals, you can take a nap between when you press the button and the actual picture is snapped.
Digital cameras win hands down. Slam the power button, slam the photo button, and you have at least a blurry blackmail-worthy shot of your friend dancing with a hobo.
With a mobile phone, by the time I get the app up and running, the hobo is gone and my friend is left with nothing but hobo sweat.
This is even quicker with the "NoLock" app that disables the lock screen.
Even on the relatively poor shutter speed iPhone 4, I'm usually taking pictures within 2-3 seconds. Supposedly the 4S has significantly reduced the shutter-lag to first picture - looking forward to seeing the truth of that.
How is that sequence so significantly different from (in iOS 5) double pressing the home button from the lock screen, touching 'Camera' then taking a photo? I'm not suggesting that camera phones are as good as compact digital cameras yet, but it's getting much closer.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/10/14/camera-lock-screen-ios-5/
And once you are in the camera app, you can use the Volume Up button as a shutter to take pictures.
I've also noticed that the camera records what the action was at the time the shutter button's pressed, perhaps even a moment before the button was pressed, as though it's recording a continuous buffer and reaching back into it a few frames.
There are also a couple video apps that record a continuous buffer, and when you "start" a recording, they start it retroactively, so you can press record after something neat happens and not miss video of the event itself. The one I use has the great "Philip K Dick"-esque name Precorder:
But with the 4S they're all focused and crystal clear.
and take the 2nd pic with the manual settings.
Furthermore I loved the fact that Samsung's Camera software allows you to specify the ISO and focus mode(spot/center/etc) whereas neither Camera+ nor iPhones Camera app provides for ISO manipulation(I dont recall if Camera+ allows specifying focus modes) -- this could be a limitation of iOS SDK.
Camera+ lets you separately control focus point and metering point, that's most likely what you're looking for in "focus modes".
If the cameras are subject a random motion which causes blur greater than the blur caused by low-light conditions then the results are meaningless as the random motion is independent of the variable being tested.
This post wasn't about the quality of the sensor it was about the quality of the photograph.
My point is that regardless of if a 4S shot better photos, the photographer could hiccup and get a blurrier photo than they might have taken last with a 3GS. In a less extreme circumstance, they could have just exhaled instead of hiccuping, in which case no one would have noticed and the error could be incorrectly attributed to the camera.
A great photograph with a camera phone requires a certain set of parameters that can almost entirely be individually measured outside of human interaction (and randomness). If you want good handheld performance, you need a fast exposure time, which can be measured from the EXIF data of each photo. If you want high dynamic range, measure the ratio of pure white and black pixels to the rest of the image (white and black is basically over/underexposed). The only thing that would be effected by motion that I can't think of how else to measure beyond being handheld is time to good focus (outside of crazy contraptions that result in more repeatable motion, like sticking your phone in a centrifuge), but there probably exists a way to do so while avoiding the inherent non-repeatability of humans behavior.
With a tripod there would be no blur, but the picture quality would still shine through. The amount of noise difference in each phone's photos is very noticeable.
In an experiment all the conditions should be the same except for the variable, which in this case is the phone.
The motion blur is significant because it speaks to the increased aperture/ decreased exposure time in the 4S, which are both part of the phone wouldn't you agree? On a tripod these aren't crippling to the quality of the photo like they actually are.
1) Timer mode -- allows me to minimize the shake in the less-than-ideal light situation.
2) Separate focus/exposure locks
It also adds a number of post-processing filters, but these are a dime a dozen in this post-Instagram world
in hardware? or software post processing?
You can go from 'meh' photo to 'wow!' in just a few clicks. Often, I'll show my girlfriend the before and after and she is surprised that a pleasing photo can come from something marginal. It's a fun photo app -- Instagram is great, too.
Oh i know. Bullshit that's what. They don't even care.
Focus varies, exposure varies and I'm shure the stability of the person taking those pictures varies too.
It tells nothing about the quality of the camera (hardware) or the software (in phone post processing).
Meh.