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The issue with the camera in newer iphones is that it uses an Ai engine to smooth things and add details that aren’t there.

If you want reference tier photos for documenting family history, modern mirrorless is better. DSLR from 10-15 years ago is also still great in all but the most challenging light conditions, where you could simply use a flash.

Especially on babies, the smoothing or noise reduction is weird. A newborn has a very specific skin with an enormous amount of details/speckles/marks. It’s very hard to capture for some reason. Couldn’t do it with my phone, only with a proper camera and shooting in raw.

Hard agree. As a new parent, I bought a modern mirrorless camera before my kid was born, and the difference is noticeable. Especially, as you say, around skin details like milia (white spots on a newborn's skin) which often get wiped out on my Pixel (I'm sure by the AI processing).

If you are considering an expensive phone upgrade based off of the camera alone, consider buying a dedicated camera first, I say. I know the best camera is the one you have on you, etc...

When you think about all the stuff you schlep around with a kid, whats a few more ounces in a camera at that point.

big discussion was had around this a month ago https://candid9.com/phone-camera/

If you want another big bump in image quality I recommend you use Adobe’s Project Indigo app instead of the default camera app.

Difference is especially startling for HDR and portraits, particularly backlight ones where the stock app does some hideous segmentation-based “enhancements”.

Wait WHAT! Thank you so much!

Yeah. Comparing to my iPhone 14 Pro, improvements are mostly just the camera and the screen. So it's really just about what you want a newer/better camera in your pocket. I'm going to wait one more year, but I do love that we're at the stage where a phone and a laptop can go for 4-5 years without feeling less than "modern".

Just be mindful that those extra megapixels will need some extra storage.

Thats fair, I dont see people two generations behind benefiting from it, but for me its a bit of a bump up.

I’m in the exact same boat. Also toying with the idea of going back to android for the pixel 10 pro. I do miss android notifications and keyboard. Are there any features keeping you from going back?

The whole family is on iPhone, we use Mac now the way everything integrates together I just dont see myself going back. I spent way more on Android and Windows than I have on Apple products. My Macbook Pro with an M4 Pro chip costs half of what my Surface Book 2 laptop costs, and I can do more on it especially with AI locally.

Something about iOS and macOS just feels right. Any time I boot up my old Android phones they feel like a convoluted mess.

> As we raise our first child, having a quality camera is definitely important to us.

A phone camera isn't really a camera, it's a digitally-airbrushed impression of reality. There just isn't enough light hitting the tiny sensor through the tiny lens.

I have 20 year old 5MP DLSR portrait photos that are still better than what a 120MP phone can produce, because it's the lens that counts.

My ancient Canon Rebel camera, I think a T3i, takes stunningly detailed photos against even my iPhone 15 Pro.

But, I never have my Canon and it's too bulky to carry around everyday. I do carry my iPhone everywhere I go. And so, the capabilities of my iPhone camera are more important.

I imagine this is the same for the overwhelming majority of people.

Having said that you also have the midway option with large sensor compact cameras. A ricoh GR III/IV with an APS-C sensor is heavier than a smartphone but not overly so and more compact as it actually fit a pocket. A Canon G9X is even lighter with a 1" sensor.

Some of it's size, some of it the fact that the camera is a second device, and some of it's workflow.

I tried a Sony RX100 (1" sensor) when they first came out, optimistic about the possibility of using it for 'general purpose' photography. After all, it's small enough.

The problem was, it's a second device to carry around and keep charged. Then once you capture the image, it's largely stuck on the device until you find a way to offload your images. I briefly experimented with cables that would let me do things like transfer images from the RX100 to my (Android at the time) mobile phone, for archiving and sending to family and friends. That turned the whole thing into the sort of science fair project that I didn't have time for as the parent of a very young child. (Although in fairness, I can't think of a single time in my life when I'd have had the patience, kids or not.)

This is why, for all the arguments you can make against them as cameras, I've come to be very thankful for the amount of effort that Apple and others have made to get appealing images out of devices I always carry around anyway. I can take a set of pictures, edit them, have them automatically archived to cloud storage, and send them to whoever I want.. all with a single device I was carrying around anyway.

This leaves open the fact that the 'real' camera workflow is still an option when there's the need for higher image quality and the time (or money to hire a photographer) to take advantage of what a DSLR or the like can do.

(When I compare what I can do with my iPhone to what my parents had available to them (a 110 format camera and 35mm Nikons), I like the tradeoffs a lot better. the image quality available now is definitely better than the 110. Some of those 35mm exposures are probably better quality than what I can get out of an iPhone, but they're all stuck in albums and slides, and nobody ever looks at them. )

> Then once you capture the image, it's largely stuck on the device until you find a way to offload your images. I briefly experimented with cables that would let me do things like transfer images from the RX100 to my (Android at the time) mobile phone, for archiving and sending to family and friends. That turned the whole thing into the sort of science fair project that I didn't have time for as the parent of a very young child. (Although in fairness, I can't think of a single time in my life when I'd have had the patience, kids or not.)

Most modern cameras now have a WiFi-based photo transfer system that works pretty well. It's not instantaneous, but it is quick enough to copy the photo you want to share with a friend or partner while you finish a meal or drink your coffee.

This is true, but switching to that mode is frustrating and you often have to use AWFUL mobileOS software to get the images. And my DLSL shoots like 25FPS and each raw file is 80MB. This is NOT fast to send over the wifi.

Waiting until I can plug in the 2TB memory card to my Mac and use a huge screen to review all the photos is far more efficient even if it has much higher startup latency.

Honestly this is a good reason to choose the iPhone Pro over the Air or Standard: 10gbps USB port. Plug the Nikon in to the phone for cloud upload. This would be the fastest path of all. Most people are only focused on the USB bandwidth in the iPhones for download from the phone.

I haven't had too much trouble with the Canon App, but YMMV.

The RX100 has had wifi transfer since the 3rd gen.

I understand the "second device to carry around" but it isn't a real point for baby pics you might take at home. A ridiculous number of times I have no idea where I last put my phone anyway and sometimes have to make it ring from kde connect on my laptop so it is not like a smartphone is necessarily readily available at all time anyway.

I also know a number of people who don't leave home with their smartphone amyway for short errands since they have an apple watch, that leave one pocket available for those that would prefer having a camera.

> The RX100 has had wifi transfer since the 3rd gen.

On an iPhone, I can take the picture and I'm immediately a button press away from a photo editor and then whoever I want to send it to.

(A camera that automatically tethered to a phone and dumped pictures into the phone's camera roll would mostly solve the workflow issues I'm mentioning here. Would not surprise me if this already exists.)

> I understand the "second device to carry around" but it isn't a real point for baby pics you might take at home.

Maybe. The camera still has to be charged and in mind and hand. (Then as soon as the kids leave the house you're back to where you were and having to carry something around that you might not otherwise.)

> I also know a number of people who don't leave home with their smartphone anyway

I see that... different people have different sorts of relationships with personal electronics. For me, it wound up being that I'd carry a cell phone and that was about it. Even in the pre-smartphone days, when I might have carried a PDA, I either wouldn't or couldn't.

> and more compact as it actually fit a pocket

People not gonna let their phone at home and carry the camera only. Having separate camera means you have to carry 2 devices at the same time.

I have a couple DSLR's and a large frame compact, and I wholly get your point. The image quality on even an older DSLR is better, mainly due to the physics of the optics - there's nothing like a high quality lens dumping a bunch of light on a large sensor.

However.... it's really hard to overstate the workflow and convenience aspects of shooting with a phone. (Particularly as a parent, and even moreso when I was a new parent of a small child.) The phone has the twin benefits of 1) being present almost always and 2) being immediately able to process and transmit an image to the people you might want to see it. For the 99% case, that's far more useful than even a very significant improvement in image quality. For the 1% where it matters, I can and do either hire a professional (with better equipment than my own) or make the production of dragging out my DSLR and all that it entails. This is like so many other cases where inarguable technical excellence of a sort gives way to convenience and cost issues. IOW, "Better" is not just about Image Quality.

The best camera is the one you have on hand.

The actual best camera is the one you have on your head (Meta Glasses / Vision Pro / GoPro).

I have a number of great videos with my baby that required me to have both hands in-use. Only have those videos because of the above devices.

I am waiting for someone to clear the iphone air with the jeans back pocket test :)

Fair! I am also curious, I do hope they keep making iPhone Air models, I could see myself buying it in the future.