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I think the iPhone 11 makes some good advances as outlined in the linked article, but a lot of the pictures didn't particularly wow me at all from a camera capa

I think the iPhone 11 makes some good advances as outlined in the linked article, but a lot of the pictures didn't particularly wow me at all from a camera capabilities perspective. A bunch of the images at the top of the article are nice, but that is entirely due to the photographer's skill at composing aesthetically pleasing shots and have little to do with the actual capabilities of the iPhone 11. As someone who owned the LG G3 years ago, and absolutely loved the wide-angle lens on that phone, most of these pictures would look identical. I guess the point I am making is that while it's exciting to have a wide-angle lens on the iPhone 11, it doesn't in any way move the bar compared to what's been out there for a while. Where the iPhone 11 has improved drastically, is with night mode shots, and that's somewhere it has been lacking substantially compared to the competition. They've done a really good job catching up and maybe even surpassing the competition in some areas. Kudos to them for that. That being said, you aren't going to get great prints out of night mode images for anything much larger than post-card sized prints with the iPhone 11 (or any other smart phone camera to be honest). I love the image of the person in the boat at dusk, but even at the size displayed, you can see a bunch of artifacts from noise reduction. As much as everyone loves to hate on DSLRs these days, you are going to get much cleaner images in these light starved environments with a large sensor and good lens. I personally think it's absurd to make that comparison, but I just had to say this because every article about the latest smartphone camera ends up having a bunch of comments about how they are superior to DSLRs at this point (which they are on the computational photography side of things, but good luck getting clean, large prints out of a phone camera, especially in low-light situations)

fock 7y ago
thanks!
frereubu 7y ago
The original image of the person on the boat at dusk is 1000 x 667 pixels, so I'm pretty sure they cropped that. It's also being displayed at 1500 pixels wide, so it's being enlarged from the original. It's a Squarespace site, and I wouldn't mind betting that either Squarespace or the author did some compression on the photo before they uploaded it so the page wasn't slow to load too. I'm not sure there's much you can tell from the quality of that image.
endorphone 7y ago
"As someone who owned the LG G3 years ago, and absolutely loved the wide-angle lens on that phone, most of these pictures would look identical" They wouldn't look remotely alike. Many of those simple shots are incredibly complex dynamic range scenes were the results are quite spectacular. With a lesser device the results would have been a blah photo, which is the point of the amazing progress that is happening in computational photography and the hardware that feeds it (focus pixels, secondary depth analysis, and sensors that have much better dynamic range than they did -- even current SLRs have much better dynamic range than a few years ago). As to print outs, almost no one actually prints out anything. Most photography is for social media, your own camera roll, etc. "As much as everyone loves to hate on DSLRs these days, you are going to get much cleaner images in these light starved environments with a large sensor and good lens." This is a strawman. No one is hating on DSLRs, and I can't find a single comment claiming that they're superior to DSLRs, beyond in the computational photography realm. But yes, smartphones are good enough that we often leave our DSLR at home, and when we do bring it there are many situations where the smarts of the smartphone yield usable to excellent photos where the DSLR will stumble. All things being equal a larger sensor is ideal, though things get more debatable on the lens side (larger lenses equal a longer focal length equal a much shallower depth of field, which while beneficial for bokeh, in many situations because a serious hindrance rather than benefit).
- _coveredInBees 7y ago
  I suggest you pick up an LG G3 and test it's capabilities out. It's not like HDR is some new invention that just came about in the smart phone space. It's been around forever. Yes, some of the algorithms have gotten better, and the HDR tonemapping has been improved, but I've taken thousands of HDR images with my G3 many years ago that looked great. Case in point - https://photos.app.goo.gl/RMMcJe9X6XjaEqcw7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/RMMcJe9X6XjaEqcw7 > As to print outs, almost no one actually prints out anything. Most photography is for social media, your own camera roll, etc. Well, you're certainly very defensive for no apparent reason. All I stated was that it would suffer for prints, which is factual and nothing you stated really adds value to that. I didn't say that it was no good because of that...
  - 7y ago

fock 7y ago

thanks!

frereubu 7y ago

The original image of the person on the boat at dusk is 1000 x 667 pixels, so I'm pretty sure they cropped that. It's also being displayed at 1500 pixels wide, so it's being enlarged from the original. It's a Squarespace site, and I wouldn't mind betting that either Squarespace or the author did some compression on the photo before they uploaded it so the page wasn't slow to load too. I'm not sure there's much you can tell from the quality of that image.

endorphone 7y ago

"As someone who owned the LG G3 years ago, and absolutely loved the wide-angle lens on that phone, most of these pictures would look identical" They wouldn't look remotely alike. Many of those simple shots are incredibly complex dynamic range scenes were the results are quite spectacular. With a lesser device the results would have been a blah photo, which is the point of the amazing progress that is happening in computational photography and the hardware that feeds it (focus pixels, secondary depth analysis, and sensors that have much better dynamic range than they did -- even current SLRs have much better dynamic range than a few years ago). As to print outs, almost no one actually prints out anything. Most photography is for social media, your own camera roll, etc. "As much as everyone loves to hate on DSLRs these days, you are going to get much cleaner images in these light starved environments with a large sensor and good lens." This is a strawman. No one is hating on DSLRs, and I can't find a single comment claiming that they're superior to DSLRs, beyond in the computational photography realm. But yes, smartphones are good enough that we often leave our DSLR at home, and when we do bring it there are many situations where the smarts of the smartphone yield usable to excellent photos where the DSLR will stumble. All things being equal a larger sensor is ideal, though things get more debatable on the lens side (larger lenses equal a longer focal length equal a much shallower depth of field, which while beneficial for bokeh, in many situations because a serious hindrance rather than benefit).

_coveredInBees 7y ago
I suggest you pick up an LG G3 and test it's capabilities out. It's not like HDR is some new invention that just came about in the smart phone space. It's been around forever. Yes, some of the algorithms have gotten better, and the HDR tonemapping has been improved, but I've taken thousands of HDR images with my G3 many years ago that looked great. Case in point - https://photos.app.goo.gl/RMMcJe9X6XjaEqcw7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/RMMcJe9X6XjaEqcw7 > As to print outs, almost no one actually prints out anything. Most photography is for social media, your own camera roll, etc. Well, you're certainly very defensive for no apparent reason. All I stated was that it would suffer for prints, which is factual and nothing you stated really adds value to that. I didn't say that it was no good because of that...
- 7y ago