Until that same fancy processing is available on a DSLR, I think the comparison OP is making is valid. At the end of the day, what I as a consumer care about is "is photo look 1. pleasing, 2. accurate to my perception, and 3. easy to create?" and in those regards, the iPhone absolutely outperforms every DSLR I've ever used.
Clearly, many people enjoy taking /good/ photos that look great /quickly/.
The point being made is, if Apple/Google can do that with a tiny sensor, why hasn't one of the remaining pro camera companies thrown money into similar work to be done on their cameras? I have an olympus e-om10 (I can't even remember the name format) and it has some filter settings, but nothing with the usability and quick results of Apple and Google regarding night shoots, etc.
This was exactly the point I was trying to make. If a "real camera" manufacturer like Canon, Nikon, BlackMagic, etc. stepped up and added Apple-tier processing as an option to their cameras, I'd choose that over an iPhone any day. It frustrates me that the best computational photography in the world is being done using small sensors and tiny lenses, but since no DSLR manufacturer has matched Apple's computational witchcraft, I'll (sadly) be sticking with my iPhone for shooting all my short films. For the price it's easily the best combo of quality and convenience.
That’s because the professionals do all this “computational photography” on a laptop or something.
That way they get to have a little more creative input into it too.
There’s like a billion desktop apps to get any sort of processing you want done on a shot.
DSLRs aren’t good if you want “point and click,” and that’s okay.
>DSLRs aren’t good if you want “point and click,” and that’s okay.
I disagree, that's my point. I completely understand your point that most DSLR users are pros who have tools to make things pop. What I'm suggesting is that there is a market for people who want really high quality photos that are achievable through larger lenses and sensor sizes, with the simplicity and intelligence in realtime of a phone camera.
Would it be a billion dollar market? Maybe not. But with "computational photography" being far from science fiction these days and with mobile chips being so powerful, it would seem like a strong way to stay relevant in a mainstream market to market a DSLR with phone-like usability.
The only catch is, at least on the iPhone 14 Pro, you can't do stuff like light trails with the included camera app. Its very smart, fancy processing carefully removes the trails as it combines exposures so you end up a very well-lit picture of traffic rather than pretty lines and no cars.
I've tried it with an iPhone 13 and an older camera with significantly worse low light performance than any camera from the past 7 years, and even if I disable the built-in image stacking, the mirrorless camera with an f/1.4 lens is incomparably better. I could properly expose my backyard with nothing but light pollution handheld.
Newer cameras can even film video with nothing but moonlight.
Which camera is it? My old X100T is a complete mess in extreme low light conditions and I don’t remember things to have improved much in the following years.
An A7ii with a Sigma EF 85mm f/1.4 (incidentally the whole set up used is about half the price of an iPhone 14 Pro).
The X100T is a great camera for the experience, but it kinda sucks for low-light. If you want good low-light performance, then image stabilization is a must and full-frame with a lens faster than F2 makes a huge difference too. In the end I can hand-hold comfortably at 1/4th of a second, and the camera itself takes in 4x more light, so low light performance is much better than on an X100T.
I can upload the pictures I'm talking about later today, if you want.
I didn't say a phone camera isn't better for the average consumer... I use my phone camera far more often than my actual camera...
But there's no world in which it's technically superior to a real camera, especially one with in-camera processing or in the hands of a professional with access to and skill with professional post-processing software.
A minor and pedantic point, but could we stop with the idea that smartphone cameras are somehow not 'real'? They are enormously sophisticated imaging devices that comprehensively outperform, for example, the 35mm film SLRs that many photographers were using in the 90s. An iPhone 14 enables you to take technically superior photos to the photos that professional photographers were taking only a couple of decades ago.
> An iPhone 14 enables you to take technically superior photos to the photos that professional photographers were taking only a couple of decades ago.
I really don’t agree, and honestly it depends on what categories you’re judging it on.
Film cameras from 20 years ago probably have better dynamic range than your phone. They probably have comparable resolution. You have a lot of options with lenses, so you can get lots of different looks.
Full frame size lets in lots of light. Photography is all about light - no amount of processing is going to make up for the size of a sensor on an iPhone. Let’s not even bring medium format into the discussion.
Hell, I’d say they could take photos that were technically superior to iphones over 100 years ago with tintypes and such. (Film was actually lower resolution than what came before it. ) There are lots of stunning portraiture, with a lot of clarity, from the start of photography that would be impossible to replicate with modern cameras.
Have you ever used a 35mm film camera? I’ve taken loads of photos on 35mm film because I enjoy the process, but the technical quality in terms of resolution and dynamic range is clearly inferior to that of a modern cell phone camera - even if you are using very high qualify scans or wet printing. And the difference in color accuracy is even more stark.
The amount of light that’s let in depends entirely on the aperture diameter, not the size of the sensor. Sometimes you can use a larger diameter on a 35mm camera if you don’t need a lot of depth of field; but equally, modern digital sensors are usable at ISOs where film is not. The acid test here is night photography. If you want to take night portraits, you're going to have a far better time of it using a modern cell phone than a 35mm SLR with, say, an f1.8 lens. Even with a wide aperture lens and 400 ISO film, you'd be lucky to get a shutter speed faster than 1/15th of a second.
You can of course get more resolution with a larger format (I enjoy 4x5 myself). However, using medium or large format film cameras is a massive step down in terms of practicality and rules out entire genres of photography that phones excel at. I enjoy lugging my 4x5 film camera around and I very occasionally I get a nice photo out of it. Even when I do, the version I take on my phone is inferior in terms of resolution (not actually that important) but better in every other respect. You can drive yourself insane trying to get a 4x5 negative that doesn't have any uneven development or scratches.
The bottom line is that a modern cell phone is a vastly superior general purpose photographic tool to anything that was available in the 1990s. We all (in rich parts of the world) have access to cameras that professional photographers would have killed for a few decades ago. Thus, it annoys me when people compare these incredible devices unfavourably with "real cameras". It's pure gatekeeping.
> The amount of light that’s let in depends entirely on the aperture diameter, not the size of the sensor.
That’s wrong. The size of the sensor, the aperture size (and of course the distance between the two) are all factors that together on this.
Saying the sensor size is the reason is also wrong, but the size of the sensor is a factor in the equation - and the sensor being so small forces manufacturers to go with wide open apertures. It’s not ideal for every shot.
> Even with a wide aperture lens and 400 ISO film
If I was shooting at night, why would I use 400 iso?
> You can drive yourself insane trying to get a 4x5 negative that doesn't have any uneven development or scratches.
Sounds like a good time for a hobbyist.
> Thus, it annoys me when people compare these incredible devices unfavourably with "real cameras". It's pure gatekeeping.
I’m not the one gatekeeping. Cell phone cameras are real cameras. They’re just different.
You say it’s good for general shooting, I’m talking about professional and hobbyist use.
I will say though, it’s just an interesting fact AFAICT - digital cameras are still behind - or are only just hitting parity - in terms of dynamic range.
>That’s wrong. The size of the sensor, the aperture size (and of course the distance between the two) are all factors that together on this.
For a given angle of view, the amount of light incident on the sensor depends solely on the diameter of the aperture (the absolute diameter, not the f number). You can see this visually in the comment I made here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540
If you really want to think of it in terms of a combination of sensor size and f number, you can do so. But it's easier just to look at the size of the hole the light is going through – which not surprisingly, determines how much light ends up being collected, once you fix the angle of view.
>If I was shooting at night, why would I use 400 iso?
Because films with higher ISOs are unacceptably grainy for most uses.
I agree on your first point, it is the amount of light coming in through the aperture. A wide open aperture lets more light in.
The point is just that they have to balance DOF and brightness in their designs. It’s a multi-variable equation, and sensor size is one of the factors that constrains the options you have available all things considered.
Like you said
> once you fix the angle of view.
And of course they’re limited to relatively small apertures anyway.
> Because films with higher ISOs are unacceptably grainy for most uses.
Not in my experience! This is just nitpicking now.
We can keep getting more and more technical, but I think you understand how it works.
You’ve made your point. You don’t like gatekeeping. I’m not gatekeeping.
Sorry, there’s something about discussions of the relative merits of camera systems that seems to get everyone very hot under the collar. Indeed, I think we have both made our points based on our own experience.
>They are enormously sophisticated imaging devices that comprehensively outperform, for example, the 35mm film SLRs that many photographers were using in the 90s.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm impressed by what smartphone cameras do these days, but the Nikon F100 snuck into the 90s and beats the pants off my iPhone 14 Pro's camera, while still being very much in the hobbyist/prosumer price range.
Have you done any side by side comparison shots? Even with a high quality scan, you're unlikely to get the same resolution and dynamic range from a 35mm negative. And that's leaving aside the obviously vast differences in convenience and flexibility. (I'm old enough to have used 35mm SLRs, and I have absolutely no nostalgia for that era.)
I've long since lost or sold my F100, but you can go to Flickr or 500px and search for F100 photos - it's still relatively popular among people that want to shoot on film.
Doing a quick side by side comparison of the 'selfie in the woods' shot with a shot of a person with a beard on 500px ( https://500px.com/photo/89633601/ge-by-nika-topuria ), the F100 shot has similar levels of detail in the facial hair, despite being taken from farther away and with what looks to be a wider angle lens by my eyes. You can pick out single strands of hair and bits of fuzz on the subject's clothing, etc., as well.
Bokeh is, of course, massively better on the F100. And I'll take basically any of the Fujia films over the color grading in the iPhone.
Looking at landscape shots, it does appear you'll get more detail out of the iPhone camera ( https://500px.com/photo/10782613/silent-chorus-by-chris-froe... ), so I can't claim it's universally better, but I think the idea that phone cameras "comprehensively" outperform quality film SLRs from the 90s is false.
Without side by side comparisons it's hard to draw any conclusions from some random photos on Flickr. The concert photos you link to are good photos (which is the important thing, of course) but they're hardly excellent from a pure technical perspective. Look at e.g. the blocked out shadows here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ginandsake/32014019777/in/phot...
I guess you're just using the F100 as an example, but it's worth pointing out that the camera body is almost completely irrelevant to image quality with a 35mm film camera. It's all in the lens and the film. (Autofocus might be better on the F100 than on earlier SLRs.)
>And I'll take basically any of the Fujia films over the color grading in the iPhone.
You want the same color balance regardless of time of day or lighting? If you want to get accurate color balance with film you have to use color balancing filters to adjust for lighting and conditions.
There are tradeoffs, for sure. Even in that photo, the details you can see look better than the weird mess that iPhone 14 Pro produced at a concert the other night. I think that's largely due to whatever computational garbage is happening, but that's what the camera app gives me.
>I guess you're just using the F100 as an example, but it's worth pointing out that the camera body is almost completely irrelevant to image quality with a 35mm film camera. It's all in the lens and the film. (Autofocus might be better on the F100 than on earlier SLRs.)
Sure, though the body determines what lenses you can use, ergonomics, features like autofocus, etc. There was a lot of solid Nikkor glass available for the F100. We could also point out that the developing process is also important to quality, etc.
>You want the same color balance regardless of time of day or lighting? If you want to get accurate color balance with film you have to use color balancing filters to adjust for lighting and conditions.
I'm not sure how you get that from my statement. I think that the iPhone's color grading and computational stuff looks pretty awful, and think that Fuji made quite a few excellent films. I don't see where this says I wouldn't use a filter when needed for an SLR... I certainly make use of CPLs and NDs on my cameras today.
Though, I was misremembering when my go-to film was introduced - looks like the FujiColor NPH 400 came out in '02. I'm not sure what I was using prior to that as my standard film.
I don’t think there are any Nikkor lenses that work only on the F100. Nikon has always been pretty good about lens forward and backward compatibility.
There’s lots of nice looking iPhone concert photos on Flickr. I just don’t see any slam dunk there, sorry. But hey there's obviously a subjective component here. If you prefer the results from the F100, that's just as legitimate as whatever preference I have.
I'm confused about the color stuff because digital basically lets you do whatever color grading you want, within reason. Getting the exact colors that you want from film is an arduous process if you aren’t scanning and using a digital color grading workflow. You either need a big set of color correcting filters or you need to do complex work in the darkroom. (Color wet printing is a HUGE pain in the butt.) Back when I shot film for real in the 90s and got the films developed and printed by regular cheap consumer labs, it was pot luck how the colors came out. I think a lot of people have a kind of false nostalgia for film's color rendition based on the results of a film+digital workflow that wasn't available to regular people in the 90s. There's a similar effect with grain, which looks quite different in scans compared to wet prints.
The world where it's superior is when I'm making a short film and want to be able to shoot it without a camera rental budget. As a low-budget filmmaker, my options for cameras are
1.) My old Canon 80D. One time purchase, decently compact, short battery. Produces an okay-ish image with moderate effort.
2.) Renting something nicer than my Canon 80D. Bulky, requires lots of know-how to operate, expensive if I break it. Have to use special cords, cards, lenses, mounts, etc. Produces a top-of-the-line image with high effort.
3.) My iPhone 12 Mini. One time purchase, very compact, multi-hour-battery. Works indoors, outdoors, day or night. Plug-n-play, extremely user friendly. Produces a darn-good image with minimal effort.
I fully understand that it's not the best camera out there—but it seriously competes with everything up to fairly expensive professional cameras. I would not hesitate to use my iPhone for professional photography and videography if the client never found out about it (or was okay with it). At the end of the day, the ratio of quality to convenience it provides is simply higher than any other offering.
The OP didn’t say it was technically superior as a camera - they said it produced better photos. Which you can argue it does, with all the fancy post processing. The statement was only about the final result, which for the eyes for whom most peoples photos are presented to are excellent.
...feels like I'm saying a Keurig "rivals and surpasses espresso machines" because it can produce a better espresso than an arbitrary espresso machine in arbitrary hands.
Yeah, true. Not very meaningful though.
There's probably a McDonald's hamburger analogy here that's better, but, here we are.
My challenge to an ambituous reader looking to comment: make that one work too.
Couldn't you take those photos and apply it back on the computer? Yet when i try to do HDR with 5 shots in Lightroom, it takes 10s of seconds or even minutes. It seems computer haven't caught up either?
Take a photo with your iPhone and very quickly tap the thumbnail of the new image that appears in the bottom left. You can watch it progressively process the image.
Yes and no, Apple's models operate on the raw sensor data as far as I understand, and take advantage of hardware acceleration in the A-series chips' Neural Engine specifically designed for computational photography. Furthermore, Apple's models are proprietary—if you could access them, you could probably run them on your computer and get the same result, but you unfortunately can't access them.
Yeah, it's hard to compare 35mm full frame sensors with miniscule camera sensors. As you said the magic is their processing which compensates for that.
Are there any large sensor cameras that are working on computational photography? Seeing what Apple and Google get out of tiny sensors in a phone makes me wonder what would be possible on a big camera with a better sensor.
There is computational photography happening on cameras but I think it's mostly opt in features.
Olympus and Panasonic can take 80–100MP shots by shifting the sensor a small amount and stitching multiple shots together. This can even be done handheld on the newer models. I imagine phones will get this eventually (maybe some do already).
Then there's all the subject detection auto focus available on basically every camera nowadays.
Where it has more power, but lacks info like how the OIS was moving as the pictures were taken, so isn’t necessarily as good.
And none of those products have nearly the sales of a smartphone to sustain R&D. Similar to how the headphone dongle of an iPhone is much cheaper and yet better quality than most audiophile equipment.
I would consider myself barely passable in skills compared to the average hobbyist photographer and have never seen in-phone computational work that I would take over what can be done manually in Lightroom, or if you want to go the automatic route, with Skylum's offerings.
Even if you aren't interested in the computational work that supposedly enhances a photo, there are other things camera phones have given us that DSLR companies could do but don't.
A phone can do on-camera stuff or capture RAW and let you mess with it on your computer. Are there any big sensor cameras that give you those same options? I’m not aware of any and it baffles me that the camera companies feel so little need to innovate. I kind of wish Apple would do a dedicated big-sensor camera.
Also, are you saying you could reproduce any of the on-phone stuff easily on your computer? I’m thinking about the astrophotography modes, portrait modes, live photos, and low light features.
innovate what? what pro needs in camera processing? when you can process on a computer that is way more powerful and better UX for processing a large number of images?
Raw photo off DSLR is very bland looking till you process it. No one is using raw information off a sensor as a final product and you need "fancy" processing to make it decent looking.
I always wonder what a one-off joint Apple DSLR/mirrorless could be. If they provided the smarts for a Sony or Canon or Nikon, just how good could the pictures be?
They just have lots of fancy processing that makes quick snaps look better than the same amount of effort on a camera.