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With the iPhone 7, Apple Changed the Camera Industry

117 points by paulsutter 10y ago

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foobarbecue 10y ago
Ugh. Another article by someone with no background in the subject he's covering. 12-megapixel lenses eh? That's a lot of pixels for a lens. Professionals call "digital negatives" DNGs, do they? I wonder what professionals call raw... I love the social commentary and analysis in the New Yorker but they should probably steer clear of tech.
- gok 10y ago
  DNG is literally short for Digital Negative.
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    Yes but Malik still sounds like an idiot. A DNG is a specific file format that happens to mean digital negative, but he means RAW. DNG is a proprietary raw format from Adobe. And no we don't call our RAW files "digital negatives".
    - galago 10y ago
      I own both Canon and Nikon bodies and covert everything to DNG as a permanent storage format. Some cameras (Leica!) use DNG as their native format. If he's simplifying for the masses, its a simplification, but not much different from how I actually take photos.
      - 1_2__3 10y ago
        He's not simplifying, he's trying to sound like he understands the material better than he does.
    - erichocean 10y ago
      > DNG is a proprietary raw format That's misleading. DNG is patented by Adobe, but it's also an open, specified format, i.e. it's not "proprietary" in the sense of "can only be opened/used if you pay Adobe money or use/buy their products" which is what people are generally implying when they use the term "proprietary".[0] DNG is a lot like Adobe's PDF format: owned and managed by Adobe, but with an open specification than anyone can implement/use. They even offer a free license to the DNG "patent", should that deter anyone. That said, unlike PDF, it has not (yet) become an ISO standard, although Adobe has indicated that they would like to see that happen. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Negative
1_2__3 10y ago
"Venture capitalist predicts death of companies that compete with companies in his portfolio" I suppose could also be the headline.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  What about "someone puts their money where their mouth is"?
  - Joof 10y ago
    Most people put their mouth where their money is in my experience.
    - paulddraper 10y ago
      To-ma-to
toast0 10y ago
I hope they don't drop the 3.5mm jacks on DSLRs now too...
denzell 10y ago
It sounds like the dual lense plus is a game changer. Is the single lense standard version significantly better than the previous model?
- derogator 10y ago
  lens.
- nicky0 10y ago
  It is an improvement. Notably it has optical image stabilisation now.
guelo 10y ago
I'll wait to see the reviews but I'm sure the 7+ camera will be more evolution than revolution. Premium phones have been taking good enough photos for at least a couple years now. This will be a continuation of existing trends.
- gaius 10y ago
  I thought so too, but I felt the urge to get back into SLR photography recently so I picked up an old Nikon D3 on eBay and the difference between it and my iPhone SE is like night and day. No matter how you tweak them small-sensor photos just look flat and drab in comparison, or garishly oversaturated.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    Both flat/drab and garishly overcolored pictures can be easily fixed in Photoshop, except when noise or lack of dynamic range gets in the way (i.e. the detail never gets captured, or one or more color channels get clipped). The problems with phone cameras (and small sensor cameras more generally) are (1) hitting the resolution limits of the optics, (2) noise, (3) lack of dynamic range, (4) lack of choices in quality lenses, (4) fixed aperture, which means no creative focus effects, and poor performance in low-light settings, (5) software based (and therefore slow and sometimes inaccurate) manual controls over shutter speed, focus, flash, etc., (and more generally, a much less efficient or adaptable physical user interface than a dedicated camera) (6) often limiting output formats, with lots of in-camera processing wiping out data from the raw image. Any 6+ megapixel DSLR (e.g. the ones from the early 2000s) with a nice lens easily outclasses the iPhone or any other phone camera, in the hands of a photographer with basic competence. On the other hand, phone cameras are amazing for their ridiculously tiny size, and their cost is obscenely low after the economies of scale kick in. They take much better pictures on average than the <$50 35mm film cameras from the 1990s, especially when the photographer is a complete beginner (those are the cameras I think of as their spiritual ancestors).
    - gaius 10y ago
      Oh yeah; I remember too realizing that I didn't need my A4 scanner anymore, a phone cam picture was good enough to email a readable document! They're impressive no doubt but SLR technology hasn't stood still either.
billions 10y ago
Apple realizes smartphone development has stagnated industry-wide. Rumors are that they have gone from a 2 year iPhone refresh to 3. I think it's obvious Apple has failed to innovate on 6s and 7 iPhones. This could be a downturn for the company, with a lack of product leadership. The only way this innovation gap could bounce back to growth is if product leadership has refocused to unannounced future products. Self driving cars and wearable technologies would be candidates for markets that could make meaningful impact on Apple's bottom line.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  Phone is mature now, no one can think of any huge advances to be made without any unforeseen disruption. New product categories represent the way forward, but Apple still has to keep milking the iPhone cash cow.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
petre 10y ago
This article misses the fact that aside from the small lens/small sensor issue, smartphones have shitty camera ergonomics. Yes, they're great people who want a point and shoot at all times with them, but I doubt they will replace cameras. Displace cameras and disrupt the camera market they will, as the have done with the PC market. Still, you need a PC, Mac or laptop to do real work (programing, office, photo and video editing etc.). Phones and tablets are more suited and used for proof reading. You still need a camera to do any sort of professional photography efficiently. Camera and photography enthusiasts will also continue to buy cameras. Yes, everyone will now be able to shoot and share professional looking photos with the new iPhone. Cool.
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  This is much like post PC: PCs aren't dead, but many people don't bother having them anymore. Likewise, I used to buy a camera every few years, but I've completely stopped that now, since I'm not a professional. So the camera and PCs markets that used to be growing as non professional consumers bought the new tech are now contracting! If you company makes cameras for consumers, that business is in trouble, and you can often only be so large with a more niche professional product.
- threeseed 10y ago
  Quite a lot of people including myself are doing 99% of photo/video editing on iPads. And most "real work" these days are actually happening inside browsers e.g. Salesforce, JIRA, Office 365 etc.
krzyk 10y ago
I'm not sure how a phone with a 12MP can change an industry if flagships releases year ago had 21MP. Adding another lens is nice but if you are still 1/2 of the resolution of a DSLR or other phones it is quite funny to call it revolutionary.
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  Not saying I agree with the revolutionary label, but if there's any example of a stat on a device turning into a semi-meaningless game of min/maxing, it's camera resolutions.
- johnloeber 10y ago
  MP resolution is not so important. What really matters is lens quality. You can get DSLRs with 12-18 MPs that take pretty nice pictures, though at a lower resolution. There were indeed 16+ MP snapshot cameras five years ago, but the pictures they took were generally rubbish, because of poor lens quality.
  - cptskippy 10y ago
    Lets not forget image sensor size. The smaller the sensor or the higher MP for the same dimensions means much more noise and lose of image fidelity.
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      On the flipside, the smaller the sensor, the deeper your field of view becomes at a given aperture (f-stop). This is really great for phone cameras, since it makes focusing a lot easier. Think about it, when was the last time you got a photo or video that was out of focus on your phone? With a full-size sensor DSLR at f/1.8, I've seen professional broadcasters really struggle to deliver in-focus images. In fact, most broadcast cameras for television have significantly smaller sensors in order to get wide DOF at a large aperture. I mean sure, super-shallow DOF with tons of bokeh can look really pretty when done well, but for 99.9% of people it would give crappy out-of-focus shots.
Animats 10y ago
You can get unprocessed image files out of the Iphone 6.[1] There's an app for that.[2] Now Apple's own app does that, too. [1] https://www.cinema5d.com/apple-ios-raw-photos-iphone-ipad-pro/ https://www.cinema5d.com/apple-ios-raw-photos-iphone-ipad-pr... [2] http://jag.gr/645pro/ http://jag.gr/645pro/
- Synaesthesia 10y ago
  I believe RAW output only works on the iPhone 6S or newer.
  - HNSucksAss 10y ago
    It's just "raw," not "RAW." It's not an acronym.
chaostheory 10y ago
It was iPhone 4 that changed the camera industry. The iPhone 7 is just continuing the trend. Sure there are still stand alone cameras with better quality than a smart phone... but who carries a camera who isn't a hobbyist photographer?
- madaxe_again 10y ago
  If anything, the Sony Ericsson t68i was the firing gun for convergence. I used to use it frequently - not just as a novelty. Would send them via mms where they'd then be published on my website - 140 chars, image, etc - my personal Twitter in 2002. But either way, Apple didn't invent camera phones.
  - sbuk 10y ago
    No one said they did. The suggestion is that the iPhone 4 was a watershed in cameras on smartphones. For a while the iPhone was considered the benchmark, and still is in many ways. As ever, the bigger number of pixels that other devices have does not necessarily mean better cameras. Optics play a huge role. Other mobile devices have caught up and some have exceeded the quality of the iPhones camera, but that doesn't change the fact that the iPhone 4 was an important milestone for smartphone photography.
    - dingaling 10y ago
      > The suggestion is that the iPhone 4 was a watershed in cameras on smartphones Whilst it was the first iPhone to use a contemporaneous sensor, rather than cost-saving with previous-gen, it was still only a 5MP OmniVision OV5642 at the same time as Sony was installing 8MP sensors of a similar backlit configuration. Ironically Apple switched to using Sony's Exmor sensors for later models.
  - chaostheory 10y ago
    How? Did t68i even come with a camera?
    - 10y ago
dingo_bat 10y ago
I don't see anything that Apple has done with 7 and 7+ camera that is remotely new for a flagship smartphone.
- paulrouget 10y ago
  It's the first time the bokeh effect is successfully implemented. AFAIK, competitors never managed to get it right (see HTC for example).
rado 10y ago
Did NYT have a look at the bokeh samples? They are not that good and in everyday use the flaws will show. Isn't 56mm portrait rather than telephoto?
- ryanmaclean 10y ago
  That's roughly "normal" or "short tele". Definitely not the best length for portrait, which starts around 70mm imho.
- threeseed 10y ago
  56mm is neither portrait not telephoto. 50mm is the standard street shooter's focal length.
  - 4ad 10y ago
    Yes, 50mm is a normal lens, but telephoto is a lens design. It doesn't have anything to do with focal length. Even some wide angle lenses have a telephoto design! It is true that telephoto designs are usually used on long lenses, however, and for normal lenses on 35mm you don't usually employ telephoto designs.
- ChristianGeek 10y ago
  In addition, the bokeh feature only works on portraits. BTW, since when is there such a thing as a "12 megapixel lens?"
  - joemi 10y ago
    > In addition, the bokeh feature only works on portraits. That's the first I've heard of that. Can you back that up? Seems like it'd be easy enough to get it working on any image with depth to it, so it seems odd that they'd limit it.
    - scarlac 10y ago
      While explaining the feature in the presentation, Phil Schiller explained that it did face detection to find the foreground. In addition, the camera mode is called "Portrait" in the Camera app. While it is still speculation until next week, I think it's reasonable to be skeptic about its ability to use produce bokeh on images with no detected faces. Presentation: https://youtu.be/NS0txu_Kzl8?t=1h12m25s https://youtu.be/NS0txu_Kzl8?t=1h12m25s
mtgx 10y ago
I assume Apple's camera app won't do this anytime soon, but couldn't a third-party developer enable it to shoot 3D videos?
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Not to a meaningful quality. The lenses are really close together, and they're of different focal lengths, so getting images from both sides to match up is gonna be a chore at best. Were the two lenses on opposite sides of the camera, it would become a lot more interesting, but as it stands, no.
kylehotchkiss 10y ago
Ehh. I like that people can take better pictures but the biggest thing i'd lose is the personality of my 35mm f1.4 - it has a character that makes my pictures feel more lively to me. But always nice to have a better camera for Instagram quick pics! If only the photos app wasn't an unorganized heap of pictures of travels, receipts, and other documents..
- pavelatanassov 10y ago
  So true, the Camera Roll gets quite a mess with time because all types of pics go to the same place. Fortunately, there's already a solution to that. With an additional, complementary photo library like the Utiful app one can cleanly divide the family and vacation photos from the receipts, screenshots, etc.
currywurst 10y ago
Dual-camera setups for phones are not new at all, yet only Apple gets the props for "changing the camera industry" .. For the other vendors it's a "gimmick" !
- sharkjacobs 10y ago
  Ford didn't change the transportation industry when he invented the Model T, he changed it when he put 15 million of them on the road
  - king_phil 10y ago
    Wait, wait, wait. It's not about the photography industry (which would be the transportation industry) bit about the camera (automobile) industry.
  - WayneBro 10y ago
    When Microsoft was on top, Apple fans used to say "it's not about marketshare or profit" and then they would proceed to compare Microsoft to McDonald's. So, it's hilarious to me that today the number one statistic quoted by Apple fans is about how much money Apple makes or how many units they've sold.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Having been around the Apple world for both eras, the two sets of people seem to have very little intersection.
      - WayneBro 10y ago
        I myself, also having been around the Apple world for both eras, see plenty of intersection. It's almost as if many of the people who lived in the 90's are still alive today, including the Apple fans. I personally have many friends who were Apple fans then and now.
        10y ago
l33tbro 10y ago
I've got big boy cameras and big boy lenses (not bragging, just saying), but I really do love having a current Iphone. I pull it out almost every day for really high quality reference stills. Even better, I can zoom in and do color work in phone while waiting for a coffee or between meetings. I think the author here got a few things slightly wrong (he's a writer in a 2016 newsroom - give him a break), but he's right that Iphones have totally changed the camera industry. Sure, there's a small percentage of people like me who need gear that is higher calibre that give the extra 10 percent, but you can really get exceptional images with an Iphone. I really don't see why people would buy a consumer level camera anymore.
- philtar 10y ago
  The author is Om Malik. He should know better than this.
  - sbuk 10y ago
    And he's trying to use language that is more universal, less techie. It could always be editors changing the language of course...
  - ihuman 10y ago
    How come? I have not read his previous work, so I don't know how he writes.
    - kkhire 10y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_Malik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_Malik
- 4ad 10y ago
  I too have real cameras and real lenses, and I love my iPhone camera. I love it so much I am considering buying the iPhone 7+, not for the awful bokeh, but for the versatility of the two lenses. With my iPhone 6s I was slightly disappointed that the ultra aggressive noise reduction ruined some of my shots in very good lighting (other from the same series were fine, some were just totally destroyed though), but it seems the new support for raw images will solve that issue too. It's a camera that is always with me, and considering the technological constraints and limitations, it works exceptionally well.
ohthehugemanate 10y ago
So... how much does a promo piece like this cost for Apple? And how do I get one for MY startup? (Only half joking)
- matt-attack 10y ago
  Hire a PR firm. Not sure of the cost...
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    This is the correct answer. Though getting a feature article like this is probably easier for Apple (also given their budget)
- rimantas 10y ago
  add costs for the new camera R&D and there you have it. Or are you one of the "Apple is just marketing, no substance" guys?
  - 314 10y ago
    Until the new iphone is actually iut in the wild, or Apple release sone real sample images - how could this speculation possibly be substance rather than marketing?
    - rbanffy 10y ago
      Last time I read about it, they had more engineers working on the camera than anyone else.
      - 314 10y ago
        But that does not provide any substance to the opinion that it will be good.
        rimantas 10y ago
BadassFractal 10y ago
The pro DSLR market has been pretty stagnant in the past few years in the traditional Nikon vs Canon space. Very marginal improvements from generation to generation, mostly small incremental iterations on already existing functionality. Sony is doing some interesting work with the mirrorless stuff, so maybe that will go somewhere. Wonder why we're not seeing more competition in this space. Major players too entrenched already and not enough money for others to try to break in?
- 4ad 10y ago
  DSLRs are a very mature technology. Phone cameras, not so much. Hell, DSLRs were mature even when the first iPhone was released, almost a decade ago.
throw2016 10y ago
Like they say the best camera is the one you have with you. Mobile cameras and social media have completely transformed consumer photography with selfies and spur of moment pictures taking over from an era of old style 'event' pictures that required intention. You can't take selfies with your DSLR or even compacts, or lug them around for casual spur of moment shots. Leaving aside this PR piece for iPhone 7 marketing the growing quality of mobile phone cameras have already long impacted the lower end camera market. DSLRs are limited to pros and enthusiasts, with mirroless sharing some spoils in that market. The bulk of the market that would buy a lower to mid end camera now has little reason to. Depth of field or 'bokeh' for those lovely isolation shots is not possible given physical sensor and lens constraints. Apple's dual camera approach with the iPhone 7 seeks to change it and the early shots do look interesting but also a bit artifical. Not the natural flowing isolation you would get from a full frame sensor for portaits at 80 or even 50mm.
HNSucksAss 10y ago
"what is called “bokeh,” a way to blur the background and focus on the subject in the foreground" No. "Bokeh" refers to the QUALITY of the blur itself.
oDot 10y ago
Is there anything to do about the tiny sensors in mobile phones?
- rpeden 10y ago
  The short, trite, unsatisfying answer: keep improving the quality of tiny sensors. Due to size constraints, we can't shove massive sensors into smartphones. But we can keep improving what small sensors are capable of, and we can probably still make improvements to the software that processes the raw data the sensors capture. We can also hope for innovation in the technology behind digital image sensors. We've seen lots of innovation, but the fundamentals behind the CMOS and CCD sensors we use now haven't changed in a long time. I'm not qualified to comment on the viability of it, but perhaps something like this will end up being useful: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1365289912/invisage-brings-long-promised-quantum-film-smartphone-sensor-to-market https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1365289912/invisage-brings...
  - foldr 10y ago
    >Due to size constraints, we can't shove massive sensors into smartphones. Interestingly, though, it's not really the size of the sensor that's the issue but the focal length of the lens required to give a usably narrow field of view with a larger sensor. You could probably squeeze an APS-C sensor into a smartphone, but you couldn't use it with an 8mm focal length. So there are two potential routes to go here. Progress in telephoto designs for very small lenses, and multi-lens cameras.
- _wmd 10y ago
  As foldr mentions they're a feature, the remainder of the optical system scales quite shockingly in proportion to the sensor. I'm sure there are plenty of further incremental improvements to be made to small sensors, but there are real physical limits on how much charge a tiny cell can capture before becoming saturated. For that reason, even if advancements are made in small sensors, a physically larger sensor with access to the same tech will likely always have a dynamic range advantage
cabirum 10y ago
How is it better than the 20MP Zeiss optically-stabilized DNG enabled camera in my Nokia 930? The article reads like a big and not very trustworthy advert.
- morganvachon 10y ago
  Objectively, it's apples and oranges (pardon the obvious pun); the sensors and lenses are completely different, as is the software on the phones. One is not 100% better or worse than the other, they each have strengths and weaknesses that more or less balance them out. Subjectively, it's whatever you prefer. I'm with you; some of the Nokia Lumia cameras easily outperform the best Apple has ever offered, and I say that as someone who currently uses an iPhone 6. If I wasn't so concerned about the future of Windows Phone I'd still be on that platform, since the camera is the second most important part of a smartphone for me (the most being stability/reliability, which Windows Phone 8.1 had but Windows 10 does not, hence my switch to iPhone).
- rangibaby 10y ago
  2 years is a long time in mobile cameras at this point. The Nikon D700 from 2008 shoots at 12MP but still one of the most highly regarded DSLRs (used is still ~$800). More important than MP is the quality of the sensor and lens, and I bet there is a lot of development and improvement in the "small" category. Just because Zeiss made the lens doesn't mean it is better than anything else. Your only guarantee if you see the the word Zeiss is that it will be expensive ;-) I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything and definitely prefer any SLR (digital or otherwise) to phone potatocams, but they are getting better so quickly.
  - cabirum 10y ago
    D700 being still relevant means sensor tech is moving slower than the rest of mobile industry. I didn't mean to accentuate specifically on Zeiss brand. My point is there's nothing revolutionary in today's iPhone 7 compared to 2 year old Lumias. Some big things (optical stabilization) are even missing. And it's sensor+software seem good enough even today.
rocky1138 10y ago
Is this an article or an advertisement?
- iammyIP 10y ago
  It's pretty obvious that this is a down to earth critical analysis of the technical features of a new portable telephone, released by some company.
gniv 10y ago
So if two cameras are better than one, why not three, or four? I assume the hardware is not too expensive (compared to the cost of the phone), and then you can have really nice optical zoom capabilities.
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dintech 10y ago
Ironic that for an article about cameras, it features a really badly took photograph.
- acdha 10y ago
  Do you have a script / ad-blocker? They seem to have a poor responsive image script which starts with a really low-red thumbnail and then loads the full version after the rest of the page has loaded.
brudgers 10y ago
New technology has radically altered the camera industry every ten years or so since the 1820's[1]. Just consider the givens of Apple's camera: solid state storage, CMOS image sensing, in camera image processing, live scene preview, auto-focus, auto-aperature, etc. Not to mention the radio transmitter infrastructure that makes instant image sharing possible and the electronics technologies that make always carrying the camera in one's purse a benefit rather than a burden. The article also ignores the limitations that any small sensor camera has due to physics. Photons arrive within a poisson distribution. The Nyquist limit is hard. Magical designs can't change that. None of which is to say that the new camera won't be good for some definition of 'good'. But the enabling technologies of snapshots are not changing. Neither is the pace of change in photography. [1]: and image making since at not all too dissimilar intervals since the Reneissance e.g. printing press, oil paint, camera obscuras, optics, perspective].

117 points by paulsutter 10y ago

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john0021 10y ago

i was referred to lawsonmichael33@yahoo.com by Janet and he did a good and fast job for me in less than 48hrs...he made available phone hack, chat histories, present chats and future chats spy software and school grades...You can also contact him for all sorts of mobile hacking job. +1 646-652-6107 his good and never scammed me. people try him and see believe me his diffrent trust him.

john0021 10y ago

foobarbecue 10y ago

Ugh. Another article by someone with no background in the subject he's covering. 12-megapixel lenses eh? That's a lot of pixels for a lens. Professionals call "digital negatives" DNGs, do they? I wonder what professionals call raw... I love the social commentary and analysis in the New Yorker but they should probably steer clear of tech.

gok 10y ago
DNG is literally short for Digital Negative.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  Yes but Malik still sounds like an idiot. A DNG is a specific file format that happens to mean digital negative, but he means RAW. DNG is a proprietary raw format from Adobe. And no we don't call our RAW files "digital negatives".
  - galago 10y ago
    I own both Canon and Nikon bodies and covert everything to DNG as a permanent storage format. Some cameras (Leica!) use DNG as their native format. If he's simplifying for the masses, its a simplification, but not much different from how I actually take photos.
    - 1_2__3 10y ago
      He's not simplifying, he's trying to sound like he understands the material better than he does.
  - erichocean 10y ago
    > DNG is a proprietary raw format That's misleading. DNG is patented by Adobe, but it's also an open, specified format, i.e. it's not "proprietary" in the sense of "can only be opened/used if you pay Adobe money or use/buy their products" which is what people are generally implying when they use the term "proprietary".[0] DNG is a lot like Adobe's PDF format: owned and managed by Adobe, but with an open specification than anyone can implement/use. They even offer a free license to the DNG "patent", should that deter anyone. That said, unlike PDF, it has not (yet) become an ISO standard, although Adobe has indicated that they would like to see that happen. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Negative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Negative

1_2__3 10y ago

"Venture capitalist predicts death of companies that compete with companies in his portfolio" I suppose could also be the headline.

paulddraper 10y ago
What about "someone puts their money where their mouth is"?
- Joof 10y ago
  Most people put their mouth where their money is in my experience.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    To-ma-to

toast0 10y ago

I hope they don't drop the 3.5mm jacks on DSLRs now too...

denzell 10y ago

It sounds like the dual lense plus is a game changer. Is the single lense standard version significantly better than the previous model?

derogator 10y ago
lens.
nicky0 10y ago
It is an improvement. Notably it has optical image stabilisation now.

guelo 10y ago

I'll wait to see the reviews but I'm sure the 7+ camera will be more evolution than revolution. Premium phones have been taking good enough photos for at least a couple years now. This will be a continuation of existing trends.

gaius 10y ago
I thought so too, but I felt the urge to get back into SLR photography recently so I picked up an old Nikon D3 on eBay and the difference between it and my iPhone SE is like night and day. No matter how you tweak them small-sensor photos just look flat and drab in comparison, or garishly oversaturated.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  Both flat/drab and garishly overcolored pictures can be easily fixed in Photoshop, except when noise or lack of dynamic range gets in the way (i.e. the detail never gets captured, or one or more color channels get clipped). The problems with phone cameras (and small sensor cameras more generally) are (1) hitting the resolution limits of the optics, (2) noise, (3) lack of dynamic range, (4) lack of choices in quality lenses, (4) fixed aperture, which means no creative focus effects, and poor performance in low-light settings, (5) software based (and therefore slow and sometimes inaccurate) manual controls over shutter speed, focus, flash, etc., (and more generally, a much less efficient or adaptable physical user interface than a dedicated camera) (6) often limiting output formats, with lots of in-camera processing wiping out data from the raw image. Any 6+ megapixel DSLR (e.g. the ones from the early 2000s) with a nice lens easily outclasses the iPhone or any other phone camera, in the hands of a photographer with basic competence. On the other hand, phone cameras are amazing for their ridiculously tiny size, and their cost is obscenely low after the economies of scale kick in. They take much better pictures on average than the <$50 35mm film cameras from the 1990s, especially when the photographer is a complete beginner (those are the cameras I think of as their spiritual ancestors).
  - gaius 10y ago
    Oh yeah; I remember too realizing that I didn't need my A4 scanner anymore, a phone cam picture was good enough to email a readable document! They're impressive no doubt but SLR technology hasn't stood still either.

billions 10y ago

Apple realizes smartphone development has stagnated industry-wide. Rumors are that they have gone from a 2 year iPhone refresh to 3. I think it's obvious Apple has failed to innovate on 6s and 7 iPhones. This could be a downturn for the company, with a lack of product leadership. The only way this innovation gap could bounce back to growth is if product leadership has refocused to unannounced future products. Self driving cars and wearable technologies would be candidates for markets that could make meaningful impact on Apple's bottom line.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
Phone is mature now, no one can think of any huge advances to be made without any unforeseen disruption. New product categories represent the way forward, but Apple still has to keep milking the iPhone cash cow.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

petre 10y ago

This article misses the fact that aside from the small lens/small sensor issue, smartphones have shitty camera ergonomics. Yes, they're great people who want a point and shoot at all times with them, but I doubt they will replace cameras. Displace cameras and disrupt the camera market they will, as the have done with the PC market. Still, you need a PC, Mac or laptop to do real work (programing, office, photo and video editing etc.). Phones and tablets are more suited and used for proof reading. You still need a camera to do any sort of professional photography efficiently. Camera and photography enthusiasts will also continue to buy cameras. Yes, everyone will now be able to shoot and share professional looking photos with the new iPhone. Cool.

seanmcdirmid 10y ago
This is much like post PC: PCs aren't dead, but many people don't bother having them anymore. Likewise, I used to buy a camera every few years, but I've completely stopped that now, since I'm not a professional. So the camera and PCs markets that used to be growing as non professional consumers bought the new tech are now contracting! If you company makes cameras for consumers, that business is in trouble, and you can often only be so large with a more niche professional product.
threeseed 10y ago
Quite a lot of people including myself are doing 99% of photo/video editing on iPads. And most "real work" these days are actually happening inside browsers e.g. Salesforce, JIRA, Office 365 etc.

krzyk 10y ago

I'm not sure how a phone with a 12MP can change an industry if flagships releases year ago had 21MP. Adding another lens is nice but if you are still 1/2 of the resolution of a DSLR or other phones it is quite funny to call it revolutionary.

johncolanduoni 10y ago
Not saying I agree with the revolutionary label, but if there's any example of a stat on a device turning into a semi-meaningless game of min/maxing, it's camera resolutions.
johnloeber 10y ago
MP resolution is not so important. What really matters is lens quality. You can get DSLRs with 12-18 MPs that take pretty nice pictures, though at a lower resolution. There were indeed 16+ MP snapshot cameras five years ago, but the pictures they took were generally rubbish, because of poor lens quality.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  Lets not forget image sensor size. The smaller the sensor or the higher MP for the same dimensions means much more noise and lose of image fidelity.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    On the flipside, the smaller the sensor, the deeper your field of view becomes at a given aperture (f-stop). This is really great for phone cameras, since it makes focusing a lot easier. Think about it, when was the last time you got a photo or video that was out of focus on your phone? With a full-size sensor DSLR at f/1.8, I've seen professional broadcasters really struggle to deliver in-focus images. In fact, most broadcast cameras for television have significantly smaller sensors in order to get wide DOF at a large aperture. I mean sure, super-shallow DOF with tons of bokeh can look really pretty when done well, but for 99.9% of people it would give crappy out-of-focus shots.

Animats 10y ago

You can get unprocessed image files out of the Iphone 6.[1] There's an app for that.[2] Now Apple's own app does that, too. [1] https://www.cinema5d.com/apple-ios-raw-photos-iphone-ipad-pro/ https://www.cinema5d.com/apple-ios-raw-photos-iphone-ipad-pr... [2] http://jag.gr/645pro/ http://jag.gr/645pro/

Synaesthesia 10y ago
I believe RAW output only works on the iPhone 6S or newer.
- HNSucksAss 10y ago
  It's just "raw," not "RAW." It's not an acronym.

chaostheory 10y ago

It was iPhone 4 that changed the camera industry. The iPhone 7 is just continuing the trend. Sure there are still stand alone cameras with better quality than a smart phone... but who carries a camera who isn't a hobbyist photographer?

madaxe_again 10y ago
If anything, the Sony Ericsson t68i was the firing gun for convergence. I used to use it frequently - not just as a novelty. Would send them via mms where they'd then be published on my website - 140 chars, image, etc - my personal Twitter in 2002. But either way, Apple didn't invent camera phones.
- sbuk 10y ago
  No one said they did. The suggestion is that the iPhone 4 was a watershed in cameras on smartphones. For a while the iPhone was considered the benchmark, and still is in many ways. As ever, the bigger number of pixels that other devices have does not necessarily mean better cameras. Optics play a huge role. Other mobile devices have caught up and some have exceeded the quality of the iPhones camera, but that doesn't change the fact that the iPhone 4 was an important milestone for smartphone photography.
  - dingaling 10y ago
    > The suggestion is that the iPhone 4 was a watershed in cameras on smartphones Whilst it was the first iPhone to use a contemporaneous sensor, rather than cost-saving with previous-gen, it was still only a 5MP OmniVision OV5642 at the same time as Sony was installing 8MP sensors of a similar backlit configuration. Ironically Apple switched to using Sony's Exmor sensors for later models.
- chaostheory 10y ago
  How? Did t68i even come with a camera?
  - 10y ago

dingo_bat 10y ago

I don't see anything that Apple has done with 7 and 7+ camera that is remotely new for a flagship smartphone.

paulrouget 10y ago
It's the first time the bokeh effect is successfully implemented. AFAIK, competitors never managed to get it right (see HTC for example).

rado 10y ago

Did NYT have a look at the bokeh samples? They are not that good and in everyday use the flaws will show. Isn't 56mm portrait rather than telephoto?

ryanmaclean 10y ago
That's roughly "normal" or "short tele". Definitely not the best length for portrait, which starts around 70mm imho.
threeseed 10y ago
56mm is neither portrait not telephoto. 50mm is the standard street shooter's focal length.
- 4ad 10y ago
  Yes, 50mm is a normal lens, but telephoto is a lens design. It doesn't have anything to do with focal length. Even some wide angle lenses have a telephoto design! It is true that telephoto designs are usually used on long lenses, however, and for normal lenses on 35mm you don't usually employ telephoto designs.
ChristianGeek 10y ago
In addition, the bokeh feature only works on portraits. BTW, since when is there such a thing as a "12 megapixel lens?"
- joemi 10y ago
  > In addition, the bokeh feature only works on portraits. That's the first I've heard of that. Can you back that up? Seems like it'd be easy enough to get it working on any image with depth to it, so it seems odd that they'd limit it.
  - scarlac 10y ago
    While explaining the feature in the presentation, Phil Schiller explained that it did face detection to find the foreground. In addition, the camera mode is called "Portrait" in the Camera app. While it is still speculation until next week, I think it's reasonable to be skeptic about its ability to use produce bokeh on images with no detected faces. Presentation: https://youtu.be/NS0txu_Kzl8?t=1h12m25s https://youtu.be/NS0txu_Kzl8?t=1h12m25s

mtgx 10y ago

I assume Apple's camera app won't do this anytime soon, but couldn't a third-party developer enable it to shoot 3D videos?

Sanddancer 10y ago
Not to a meaningful quality. The lenses are really close together, and they're of different focal lengths, so getting images from both sides to match up is gonna be a chore at best. Were the two lenses on opposite sides of the camera, it would become a lot more interesting, but as it stands, no.

kylehotchkiss 10y ago

Ehh. I like that people can take better pictures but the biggest thing i'd lose is the personality of my 35mm f1.4 - it has a character that makes my pictures feel more lively to me. But always nice to have a better camera for Instagram quick pics! If only the photos app wasn't an unorganized heap of pictures of travels, receipts, and other documents..

pavelatanassov 10y ago
So true, the Camera Roll gets quite a mess with time because all types of pics go to the same place. Fortunately, there's already a solution to that. With an additional, complementary photo library like the Utiful app one can cleanly divide the family and vacation photos from the receipts, screenshots, etc.

currywurst 10y ago

Dual-camera setups for phones are not new at all, yet only Apple gets the props for "changing the camera industry" .. For the other vendors it's a "gimmick" !

sharkjacobs 10y ago
Ford didn't change the transportation industry when he invented the Model T, he changed it when he put 15 million of them on the road
- king_phil 10y ago
  Wait, wait, wait. It's not about the photography industry (which would be the transportation industry) bit about the camera (automobile) industry.
- WayneBro 10y ago
  When Microsoft was on top, Apple fans used to say "it's not about marketshare or profit" and then they would proceed to compare Microsoft to McDonald's. So, it's hilarious to me that today the number one statistic quoted by Apple fans is about how much money Apple makes or how many units they've sold.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Having been around the Apple world for both eras, the two sets of people seem to have very little intersection.
    - WayneBro 10y ago
      I myself, also having been around the Apple world for both eras, see plenty of intersection. It's almost as if many of the people who lived in the 90's are still alive today, including the Apple fans. I personally have many friends who were Apple fans then and now.
      - 10y ago

l33tbro 10y ago

I've got big boy cameras and big boy lenses (not bragging, just saying), but I really do love having a current Iphone. I pull it out almost every day for really high quality reference stills. Even better, I can zoom in and do color work in phone while waiting for a coffee or between meetings. I think the author here got a few things slightly wrong (he's a writer in a 2016 newsroom - give him a break), but he's right that Iphones have totally changed the camera industry. Sure, there's a small percentage of people like me who need gear that is higher calibre that give the extra 10 percent, but you can really get exceptional images with an Iphone. I really don't see why people would buy a consumer level camera anymore.

philtar 10y ago
The author is Om Malik. He should know better than this.
- sbuk 10y ago
  And he's trying to use language that is more universal, less techie. It could always be editors changing the language of course...
- ihuman 10y ago
  How come? I have not read his previous work, so I don't know how he writes.
  - kkhire 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_Malik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_Malik
4ad 10y ago
I too have real cameras and real lenses, and I love my iPhone camera. I love it so much I am considering buying the iPhone 7+, not for the awful bokeh, but for the versatility of the two lenses. With my iPhone 6s I was slightly disappointed that the ultra aggressive noise reduction ruined some of my shots in very good lighting (other from the same series were fine, some were just totally destroyed though), but it seems the new support for raw images will solve that issue too. It's a camera that is always with me, and considering the technological constraints and limitations, it works exceptionally well.

ohthehugemanate 10y ago

So... how much does a promo piece like this cost for Apple? And how do I get one for MY startup? (Only half joking)

matt-attack 10y ago
Hire a PR firm. Not sure of the cost...
- raverbashing 10y ago
  This is the correct answer. Though getting a feature article like this is probably easier for Apple (also given their budget)
rimantas 10y ago
add costs for the new camera R&D and there you have it. Or are you one of the "Apple is just marketing, no substance" guys?
- 314 10y ago
  Until the new iphone is actually iut in the wild, or Apple release sone real sample images - how could this speculation possibly be substance rather than marketing?
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    Last time I read about it, they had more engineers working on the camera than anyone else.
    - 314 10y ago
      But that does not provide any substance to the opinion that it will be good.
      - rimantas 10y ago

BadassFractal 10y ago

The pro DSLR market has been pretty stagnant in the past few years in the traditional Nikon vs Canon space. Very marginal improvements from generation to generation, mostly small incremental iterations on already existing functionality. Sony is doing some interesting work with the mirrorless stuff, so maybe that will go somewhere. Wonder why we're not seeing more competition in this space. Major players too entrenched already and not enough money for others to try to break in?

4ad 10y ago
DSLRs are a very mature technology. Phone cameras, not so much. Hell, DSLRs were mature even when the first iPhone was released, almost a decade ago.

throw2016 10y ago

Like they say the best camera is the one you have with you. Mobile cameras and social media have completely transformed consumer photography with selfies and spur of moment pictures taking over from an era of old style 'event' pictures that required intention. You can't take selfies with your DSLR or even compacts, or lug them around for casual spur of moment shots. Leaving aside this PR piece for iPhone 7 marketing the growing quality of mobile phone cameras have already long impacted the lower end camera market. DSLRs are limited to pros and enthusiasts, with mirroless sharing some spoils in that market. The bulk of the market that would buy a lower to mid end camera now has little reason to. Depth of field or 'bokeh' for those lovely isolation shots is not possible given physical sensor and lens constraints. Apple's dual camera approach with the iPhone 7 seeks to change it and the early shots do look interesting but also a bit artifical. Not the natural flowing isolation you would get from a full frame sensor for portaits at 80 or even 50mm.

HNSucksAss 10y ago

"what is called “bokeh,” a way to blur the background and focus on the subject in the foreground" No. "Bokeh" refers to the QUALITY of the blur itself.

oDot 10y ago

Is there anything to do about the tiny sensors in mobile phones?

rpeden 10y ago
The short, trite, unsatisfying answer: keep improving the quality of tiny sensors. Due to size constraints, we can't shove massive sensors into smartphones. But we can keep improving what small sensors are capable of, and we can probably still make improvements to the software that processes the raw data the sensors capture. We can also hope for innovation in the technology behind digital image sensors. We've seen lots of innovation, but the fundamentals behind the CMOS and CCD sensors we use now haven't changed in a long time. I'm not qualified to comment on the viability of it, but perhaps something like this will end up being useful: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1365289912/invisage-brings-long-promised-quantum-film-smartphone-sensor-to-market https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1365289912/invisage-brings...
- foldr 10y ago
  >Due to size constraints, we can't shove massive sensors into smartphones. Interestingly, though, it's not really the size of the sensor that's the issue but the focal length of the lens required to give a usably narrow field of view with a larger sensor. You could probably squeeze an APS-C sensor into a smartphone, but you couldn't use it with an 8mm focal length. So there are two potential routes to go here. Progress in telephoto designs for very small lenses, and multi-lens cameras.
_wmd 10y ago
As foldr mentions they're a feature, the remainder of the optical system scales quite shockingly in proportion to the sensor. I'm sure there are plenty of further incremental improvements to be made to small sensors, but there are real physical limits on how much charge a tiny cell can capture before becoming saturated. For that reason, even if advancements are made in small sensors, a physically larger sensor with access to the same tech will likely always have a dynamic range advantage

cabirum 10y ago

How is it better than the 20MP Zeiss optically-stabilized DNG enabled camera in my Nokia 930? The article reads like a big and not very trustworthy advert.

morganvachon 10y ago
Objectively, it's apples and oranges (pardon the obvious pun); the sensors and lenses are completely different, as is the software on the phones. One is not 100% better or worse than the other, they each have strengths and weaknesses that more or less balance them out. Subjectively, it's whatever you prefer. I'm with you; some of the Nokia Lumia cameras easily outperform the best Apple has ever offered, and I say that as someone who currently uses an iPhone 6. If I wasn't so concerned about the future of Windows Phone I'd still be on that platform, since the camera is the second most important part of a smartphone for me (the most being stability/reliability, which Windows Phone 8.1 had but Windows 10 does not, hence my switch to iPhone).
rangibaby 10y ago
2 years is a long time in mobile cameras at this point. The Nikon D700 from 2008 shoots at 12MP but still one of the most highly regarded DSLRs (used is still ~$800). More important than MP is the quality of the sensor and lens, and I bet there is a lot of development and improvement in the "small" category. Just because Zeiss made the lens doesn't mean it is better than anything else. Your only guarantee if you see the the word Zeiss is that it will be expensive ;-) I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything and definitely prefer any SLR (digital or otherwise) to phone potatocams, but they are getting better so quickly.
- cabirum 10y ago
  D700 being still relevant means sensor tech is moving slower than the rest of mobile industry. I didn't mean to accentuate specifically on Zeiss brand. My point is there's nothing revolutionary in today's iPhone 7 compared to 2 year old Lumias. Some big things (optical stabilization) are even missing. And it's sensor+software seem good enough even today.

rocky1138 10y ago

Is this an article or an advertisement?

iammyIP 10y ago
It's pretty obvious that this is a down to earth critical analysis of the technical features of a new portable telephone, released by some company.

gniv 10y ago

So if two cameras are better than one, why not three, or four? I assume the hardware is not too expensive (compared to the cost of the phone), and then you can have really nice optical zoom capabilities.

comppresar 10y ago

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dintech 10y ago

Ironic that for an article about cameras, it features a really badly took photograph.

acdha 10y ago
Do you have a script / ad-blocker? They seem to have a poor responsive image script which starts with a really low-red thumbnail and then loads the full version after the rest of the page has loaded.

brudgers 10y ago

New technology has radically altered the camera industry every ten years or so since the 1820's[1]. Just consider the givens of Apple's camera: solid state storage, CMOS image sensing, in camera image processing, live scene preview, auto-focus, auto-aperature, etc. Not to mention the radio transmitter infrastructure that makes instant image sharing possible and the electronics technologies that make always carrying the camera in one's purse a benefit rather than a burden. The article also ignores the limitations that any small sensor camera has due to physics. Photons arrive within a poisson distribution. The Nyquist limit is hard. Magical designs can't change that. None of which is to say that the new camera won't be good for some definition of 'good'. But the enabling technologies of snapshots are not changing. Neither is the pace of change in photography. [1]: and image making since at not all too dissimilar intervals since the Reneissance e.g. printing press, oil paint, camera obscuras, optics, perspective].