iPhone 15 Ultra camera upgrades could give photographers a serious dilemma | Hacker News Reader

iPhone 15 Ultra camera upgrades could give photographers a serious dilemma

techradar.com

14 pointsmikece29 comments

I love the iPhone camera but photos still seem super processed compared to an actual camera body. Plus big camera lens have a lot of character in the bokeh and focus that a tiny phone lens/sensor can't capture. It's nice that people will have increasingly good cameras in their pockets, but Sony (who capitalized on great blogging cameras) and Fujifilm (who capitalized on fun bodies with good film simulation that everybody was already applying in post-processing paired with the expertise of a company who built satellite optics) will be fine. Canon seems to gotten to the mirrorless era a little later than the others and not doing as hot as they used to, but it's not clear that's entirely the fault of iPhone cameras getting better.

Try the ProRAW mode on the iPhone 14 Pro. It has much less processing.

I mostly shoot ProRAW with Halide on my 14 Pro and the processing is reduced, but it's still there, and it's still obvious. I seldom get a photo I would actually consider printable at reasonable sizes because zooming in closely reveals obvious processing artifacts. The darker and higher contrast the scene, the worse it gets - the cool shots I've taken of SF's skyline at night are good test cases. They look good on the device display, but zooming in the processing is beyond obvious.

I was really excited for the 48MP sensor in my new iPhone. Initially I shot a lot more photos and tried to use it more like a 'real camera,' but I wound up picking up 35mm photography this year. I'll likely get a digital body eventually too, but I'm enjoying learning about film stocks and getting a really deep understanding of the exposure triangle. My fancy new iPhone camera ultimately just pushed me to realize I want to be shooting stuff that can enlarge and print better and it's still not there. Not to mention the optical effects of a "real lens" (bokeh, true and configurable physical depth of field).

It’s embarrassing there’s no toggle for minimal processing for everyday pictures of my kids. I just want some simple denoising filters to deal with the ccd Jank and mostly I want to see in the picture what my phone shows on the screen.

> I love the iPhone camera but photos still seem super processed compared to an actual camera body

Anecdotally it seems to have got worse in the past few years. I don't know much about photography, but it feels like the software is far too aggressive in its desire to capture dynamic range, and generally unwilling to let areas naturally be in shadow. Many of the photos I've taken on the last couple of iPhones look flat and unpleasing, unless it's a bright sunny day. Which, given I live in the UK, is something of a rarity. Maybe the algorithms are tuned for Cupertino.

My wife has been using Google Pixels since the original—while it lags behind in video capture, imo, I've always preferred how the still photos out of her phone look.

My iphone camera is good. But It does some weird things. In just normal mode it blurs and shifts. It seriously distorted a sheep in the background of one of my shots and gave our dog a extra paw while running. (Its doing the multiple/merge thing..) Its great for bright and static shots. but anything moving or lower light it can have issues.

Very interested in seeing shots of this extra paw

It's all about personal taste, but I miss the iPhone 7 camera. Though it wasn't a great camera, it was fun and naturally limited.

I think the real issue is that the small lens build gives it an effective focal-length of an 18mm camera . So everything appears very wide angle. It’s easy to spot professional non-phone photos when larger focal lengths make faces appear much flatter (better).

If you thought this article was about photographers gatekeeping, think again

Its just clickbait between buying this iphone or the next iphone

> But these upgrades for the Ultra could give photographers like me a difficult decision. If the rumors are true, the Ultra will be opening up a sizable photographic gap to the rest of the iPhone 15 series – so it could be a decision between splashing out on that flagship, or waiting until next year for an iPhone 16 Pro with a periscope zoom.

One of the main reasons I shoot with an actual camera body is exactly because it has a camera body. The ergonomics of shooting with a phone are terrible.

Obviously phones will never fit in your hand like that, so both will continue to exist because they serve different purposes. I am glad that phone sensors are getting bigger since when you don't have your camera on you they do a fine job (when you avoid the in-cam processing by shooting raw)

You can get a grip accessory that makes it feel more ergonomic.

On the other hand, the best camera is the one that you have with you, so having a better photo camera is always a great thing.

For video I much prefer iPhone with a gimbal though. And the gimbal, with its built in stick and tracking, makes me much more creative for stills than I am with my traditional cameras.

Both pale in comparison to the creativity I feel with a 360 camera though. Image quality ain’t everything.

For what its worth, the volume up button is the shutter button too which helps sometimes. It used to work with wired headphones too.

> One of the main reasons I shoot with an actual camera body is exactly because it has a camera body. The ergonomics of shooting with a phone are terrible.

For me it's that and the conscious decision to get a camera ready and take it along for the ride.

I'm not sure if it makes senses, but to me that's an attitude shift in how I take photos.

its nice to know I'll have the option of having a good enough camera in my pocket for when I leave the mirrorless at home but there's no comparison. even an apsc sensor is bigger than this and sensor and thats going to give it a huge advantage from a PHYSICS perspective. digital bokeh are getting better every year but there's still nothing like a natural bokeh.

Have camera sensors advanced so you can control exposure time, white-balance? I seem to remember Intel dragging their feet on professional parameters for sensors, arguing that they're only used for selfies and not e.g. sports photography.

"Camera sensors" have been able to do this since the dawn of digital photography, seeing as these parameters are so fundamental even for selfies. A sensor that can't adjust exposure time is one that cannot function in almost any light.

Phone cameras are a special category. Sure there are digital cameras that can do it. But low-profile low-power miniaturized camera sensors?

Yeah iPhone cameras can do all that stuff. Notice that iPhones have long exposure modes for astrophotography, but still also take high frame rate “slomo” videos.

MEMS autofocus has been available on iPhones for almost a decade and voice coil motor autofocus before that.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&sxsrf=A...

Here's the comment I was remembering:

Rich Altmaier 3:23 PM (5 minutes ago) to me

The sensors Intel was producing, now about 7 year ago, did not support capturing the full set of frame pixels at one time. Rather pixels could be copied into backing store from just one pixel row at one moment, then read out, then copy the next row and read out. So the single row of pixels was from the same moment in time, and subsequent rows had to spread over about 1/120 second of time. So all images were time delayed from top to bottom of the frame. This method, common to smart phones, is the reason fast moving objects appear bent. e.g. helicopter blades are bent in mobile video.

Secondly I wanted an enhancement, not available at that time in any modern DSLR camera, to adjust the capture image brightness based on ambient illumination changes. This would prevent the typical gym lighting, fluorescent oscillating at 1/120s, from a beat frequency with the video shutter, showing slow moving bands of light/dark across the screen.

Rich

My Galaxy Note 9 can do it. I use the OpenCamera app, which gives manual exposure control, manual shutter speed control, manual focus, and can shoot in raw. Of course auto modes still work. That's a nearly 5 year old phone, though it was rather high-end for the time.

Higher end phone cameras have both of these for many years. Also, any of Apple's stuff (and many Android phones, as well) support shooting in RAW, so you can use the usual DSLR flow of processing RAW photos to get the white balance you desire in post.

Usually these settings are hidden or abstracted. iPhones just call it 'exposure' and it's similar to DSLR EV +/-2.0 adjustment. I believe fancier camera apps that work on iPhones can support explicit exposure time, as well, though.

I've been able to adjust exposure and white balance on my phone cameras for well over a decade and across a few different models of phones. I could do it on Symbian phones, Windows Phone phones, and my Android phones. I cannot think of a single smartphone which didn't let me change exposure and white balance.

I suspect most will stick with their main camera with all the lenses, settings, filters, etc it wouldn’t even really be that much of a conversation.

Funny story, I was in Venice last week to do photography. So I had my camera. I was taking pics of the sunset but I wanted to take a pic to send to my friend. So I used my iPhone. The confused looks I got from people who could see a camera dangling from my wrist while I used an iPhone to take a picture was quite funny.

I suspect it’ll be like that going forward. Want to take a quick snap to send to people use your phone. Want to take a photo to put on your wall, use your camera.

Wow. This website is completely unbearable without an adblocker. Clickbait and Autoplay videos everywhere.

no denying that smart phone completely killed the point and shot industry. But unless they come up with a few new laws of physics, they cannot compete in the FF/APS-C market

Not only that, Apple processing looks worst and worst every year. It's AI to the point you might as well tall the AI what you see and let it process the image than taking the actual picture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com