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And its all done in software (or ML) with recent phones to get around the lack of a good lenses system. And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily. Th

And its all done in software (or ML) with recent phones to get around the lack of a good lenses system. And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily. This has been one of the complaints against camera manufactures recently, that the firmware on the cameras is wildly archaic.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
It works horribly with hair and sharp edges even on the flagship phones. Plus it can't possibly work correctly with transparent and semi-transparent objects like glass.
- distances 7y ago
  My main complaint isn't that it doesn't work through glasses, but rather that it can't handle the frames at all. They are always blurred if the photo isn't taken from directly in front. It's a bit surprising as so many people use glasses -- a third, maybe? One could think that to be a major use case.
volkk 7y ago
im curious to see how good it will get in like 5-10 years because right now, to a mildly trained eye its very noticeably bad
behringer 7y ago
As a photographer I really don't ever want to use the camera software. Even when it's perfect for my application, I want RAW photographs because you have to fix so many other things before you ever get to special effects. You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter. The entire reason to use a high end camera is to do it right. Camera software is never going to do it right until they start putting photoshop on cameras.
- mchristen 7y ago
  It's not the software that holds back phone cameras. It's the literal size and shape of the sensors and lens. You can already shoot RAW on a phone, but putting Photoshop on the phone won't solve the lack of depth of field inherent to the lens and sensor setup.
  - jfengel 7y ago
    Does the RAW format save the kind of information that the software uses to guess at bokeh (depth sensors, multiple lenses, multiple shots, defocused pixels)? Or is there some other format that could save all that info, so you could really use the phone but do the processing later?
    - linuxdude314 7y ago
      There’s no, but there isn’t really a need. The R package mentioned in a comment in this thread achieves a similar effect using no additional data. Ray tracing will suffice!
      - BubRoss 7y ago
        It shows a hand made depth map. You can't just 'raytrace' a 2D image and magically add depth of field.
- gnopgnip 7y ago
  You can shoot in raw on most high end smartphones now if you want to do handle that after the fact, but the default used by the camera software does all of that
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- droitbutch 7y ago
  > You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter. Modern phones already do all that - and seemingly in that order. As a photographer, what I find lacking are the lenses. You can only squeeze so much light from the relatively tiny lenses. Perfect recent example was kids Christmas play. Sitting back 25+ meters, with somewhat dim lighting and fast moving kids, I could see the other parents with their smartphones and tablets getting very poor photo's and vids - whereas my Nikon had zoom galore and excellent clear focus. Physics matters.
endorphone 7y ago
"the lack of a good lenses system" This is very much a subjective interpretation and I don't mean to be picking at nits, however most smartphones have tremendous lens systems. They just happen to have a short focal length (e.g. 1.54mm, 4.25mm and 6mm on the iPhone 11). Depth of field is primarily a function of focal length, and the smaller the focal length the larger the depth of field. Which is why portrait photographers often use zoom lenses. In the real world though 99% of the time what people are aiming for is simply sharp photos where the subject is in focus. That small focal length makes that much, much more likely, yielding a dramatically higher percentage of "keeper" photos. Shallow depth of field photos are a gimmick in most cases.
penagwin 7y ago
If we're talking about non-point and shoot cameras, such as DSLRs or Mirrorless Cameras that cost $500+ such as my Sony A6000, I absolutely DO NOT want post-processing done on my camera. Portrait mode on my iPhone 7+ looks okay at a glance, but thinks like hair, wires, and twigs are TERRIBLE on closer inspection. Not to say the software couldn't be improved. For example, after taking a 20 second exposure, I have to wait another ~15 seconds before I can take another photo. I'd love for that processing time to be cut down.
- lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
  I mean, you are using an iPhone 7, iirc that’s the first iPhone to implement portrait mode. The processing time on my iPhone 11 that I just got is minimal. I upgraded from an iPhone 6S so I’m not sure what the processing time was like on iPhones with portrait mode prior to the 11 models though. As well, who’s to say what Apple could do when given an image from a high end camera sensor instead of the tiny one in an iPhone? And lastly, why not just enable power users to turn it off? Sure you can say manpower would be better directed at other problems, but who cares if post processing capabilities are on the camera if you can turn it off? Those who want it use it. Those who don’t don’t.
  - krzyk 7y ago
    My wife has iPhone 8, I can't find portrait mode on it (I'm coming from Pixel 3 so I was wondering how it looks on iPhones). When I scroll the photo modes there is no such thing as "portrait". Or maybe it is only for the Plus models with two cameras?
    - zakki 7y ago
      Yeah, it is on plus model including animoji
  - throwanem 7y ago
    > who’s to say what Apple could do when given an image from a high end camera sensor instead of the tiny one in an iPhone? Ruin it. But they wouldn't, because there'd be no need. The thing about a big high-end camera sensor is that having one means you don't need to fake bokeh. You can put a good fast prime lens in front of it and get the real thing. Phone cameras have to post-process their way to it because the physics of their small sensors mean they simply aren't capable of capturing enough off-axis light to produce true bokeh.
gerbilly 7y ago
Ugh, most people probably eat fast food three times a week too.
__jal 7y ago
> And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily Most people apparently don't look at their pictures. The "enhanced" photos I've gotten from the Iphone for the last few models have just been getting worse. They look OK if you don't look too closely, but then they're just wrong. Blurry details on the same focal plane as crisp ones, crappy details with translucency, hair or anything else that confuses the "foreground/background" detector, they're just bad. My DLSR will be in service for quite a while longer.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  Same experience here. My guess is most people view their photos on their phones, via Instagram or Facebook. Rarely are photos looked at in full size on a high quality monitor. I have no intention of giving up my Olympus mirrorless system. I'll probably add at least one more lens to my collection next year - I've been relying on my 12-40 f2.8 for portraits, but I'm liking what I've read about the Sigma 56 f1.4.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- month13 7y ago
  The watercolour effect from the de-noiser in iOS results in watercolour-esque patterns in the final image, and washes away most of the fine detail at 1:1. FWIW, I have an iPhone X. The watercolour trend started around the iPhone 5s, IIRC.
throwanem 7y ago
No, it hasn't. This comes up every time someone on HN mentions anything to do with photography - mostly, it seems, from people who don't do a lot of photography or at the very least aren't closely familiar with interchangeable-lens cameras - and it never stops being nonsense. There are plenty of things that could be improved about DSLR and mirrorless cameras, in the firmware and out of it. The number of those things which are in any way related to, or could be in any way improved by, the idea of jamming a smartphone into an interchangeable-lens camera, is zero. (In case anyone's inclined to question my own chops: that's fair, considering my line of argument. I don't post much of my work lately, but here's my best shot of 2019, taken from a distance of six inches with a Nikon D500 and a 105mm macro lens: https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DSC_9393.jpg https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DSC_9393.jpg - so you can look at that and judge for yourself whether I'm qualified to speak to the question of how familiarity with interchangeable-lens cameras influences the perceived value of junking up their UI with a lot of smartphone garbage.)

bufferoverflow 7y ago

It works horribly with hair and sharp edges even on the flagship phones. Plus it can't possibly work correctly with transparent and semi-transparent objects like glass.

distances 7y ago
My main complaint isn't that it doesn't work through glasses, but rather that it can't handle the frames at all. They are always blurred if the photo isn't taken from directly in front. It's a bit surprising as so many people use glasses -- a third, maybe? One could think that to be a major use case.

volkk 7y ago

im curious to see how good it will get in like 5-10 years because right now, to a mildly trained eye its very noticeably bad

behringer 7y ago

As a photographer I really don't ever want to use the camera software. Even when it's perfect for my application, I want RAW photographs because you have to fix so many other things before you ever get to special effects. You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter. The entire reason to use a high end camera is to do it right. Camera software is never going to do it right until they start putting photoshop on cameras.

mchristen 7y ago
It's not the software that holds back phone cameras. It's the literal size and shape of the sensors and lens. You can already shoot RAW on a phone, but putting Photoshop on the phone won't solve the lack of depth of field inherent to the lens and sensor setup.
- jfengel 7y ago
  Does the RAW format save the kind of information that the software uses to guess at bokeh (depth sensors, multiple lenses, multiple shots, defocused pixels)? Or is there some other format that could save all that info, so you could really use the phone but do the processing later?
  - linuxdude314 7y ago
    There’s no, but there isn’t really a need. The R package mentioned in a comment in this thread achieves a similar effect using no additional data. Ray tracing will suffice!
    - BubRoss 7y ago
      It shows a hand made depth map. You can't just 'raytrace' a 2D image and magically add depth of field.
gnopgnip 7y ago
You can shoot in raw on most high end smartphones now if you want to do handle that after the fact, but the default used by the camera software does all of that
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
droitbutch 7y ago
> You need to crop, color correct, distortion correct, noise correct, exposure correct. Only after that would you ever really want to apply some kind of bokeh filter. Modern phones already do all that - and seemingly in that order. As a photographer, what I find lacking are the lenses. You can only squeeze so much light from the relatively tiny lenses. Perfect recent example was kids Christmas play. Sitting back 25+ meters, with somewhat dim lighting and fast moving kids, I could see the other parents with their smartphones and tablets getting very poor photo's and vids - whereas my Nikon had zoom galore and excellent clear focus. Physics matters.

endorphone 7y ago

"the lack of a good lenses system" This is very much a subjective interpretation and I don't mean to be picking at nits, however most smartphones have tremendous lens systems. They just happen to have a short focal length (e.g. 1.54mm, 4.25mm and 6mm on the iPhone 11). Depth of field is primarily a function of focal length, and the smaller the focal length the larger the depth of field. Which is why portrait photographers often use zoom lenses. In the real world though 99% of the time what people are aiming for is simply sharp photos where the subject is in focus. That small focal length makes that much, much more likely, yielding a dramatically higher percentage of "keeper" photos. Shallow depth of field photos are a gimmick in most cases.

penagwin 7y ago

If we're talking about non-point and shoot cameras, such as DSLRs or Mirrorless Cameras that cost $500+ such as my Sony A6000, I absolutely DO NOT want post-processing done on my camera. Portrait mode on my iPhone 7+ looks okay at a glance, but thinks like hair, wires, and twigs are TERRIBLE on closer inspection. Not to say the software couldn't be improved. For example, after taking a 20 second exposure, I have to wait another ~15 seconds before I can take another photo. I'd love for that processing time to be cut down.

lame-robot-hoax 7y ago
I mean, you are using an iPhone 7, iirc that’s the first iPhone to implement portrait mode. The processing time on my iPhone 11 that I just got is minimal. I upgraded from an iPhone 6S so I’m not sure what the processing time was like on iPhones with portrait mode prior to the 11 models though. As well, who’s to say what Apple could do when given an image from a high end camera sensor instead of the tiny one in an iPhone? And lastly, why not just enable power users to turn it off? Sure you can say manpower would be better directed at other problems, but who cares if post processing capabilities are on the camera if you can turn it off? Those who want it use it. Those who don’t don’t.
- krzyk 7y ago
  My wife has iPhone 8, I can't find portrait mode on it (I'm coming from Pixel 3 so I was wondering how it looks on iPhones). When I scroll the photo modes there is no such thing as "portrait". Or maybe it is only for the Plus models with two cameras?
  - zakki 7y ago
    Yeah, it is on plus model including animoji
- throwanem 7y ago
  > who’s to say what Apple could do when given an image from a high end camera sensor instead of the tiny one in an iPhone? Ruin it. But they wouldn't, because there'd be no need. The thing about a big high-end camera sensor is that having one means you don't need to fake bokeh. You can put a good fast prime lens in front of it and get the real thing. Phone cameras have to post-process their way to it because the physics of their small sensors mean they simply aren't capable of capturing enough off-axis light to produce true bokeh.

gerbilly 7y ago

Ugh, most people probably eat fast food three times a week too.

__jal 7y ago

> And for most people it seems to work satisfactorily Most people apparently don't look at their pictures. The "enhanced" photos I've gotten from the Iphone for the last few models have just been getting worse. They look OK if you don't look too closely, but then they're just wrong. Blurry details on the same focal plane as crisp ones, crappy details with translucency, hair or anything else that confuses the "foreground/background" detector, they're just bad. My DLSR will be in service for quite a while longer.

alistairSH 7y ago
Same experience here. My guess is most people view their photos on their phones, via Instagram or Facebook. Rarely are photos looked at in full size on a high quality monitor. I have no intention of giving up my Olympus mirrorless system. I'll probably add at least one more lens to my collection next year - I've been relying on my 12-40 f2.8 for portraits, but I'm liking what I've read about the Sigma 56 f1.4.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
month13 7y ago
The watercolour effect from the de-noiser in iOS results in watercolour-esque patterns in the final image, and washes away most of the fine detail at 1:1. FWIW, I have an iPhone X. The watercolour trend started around the iPhone 5s, IIRC.

throwanem 7y ago

No, it hasn't. This comes up every time someone on HN mentions anything to do with photography - mostly, it seems, from people who don't do a lot of photography or at the very least aren't closely familiar with interchangeable-lens cameras - and it never stops being nonsense. There are plenty of things that could be improved about DSLR and mirrorless cameras, in the firmware and out of it. The number of those things which are in any way related to, or could be in any way improved by, the idea of jamming a smartphone into an interchangeable-lens camera, is zero. (In case anyone's inclined to question my own chops: that's fair, considering my line of argument. I don't post much of my work lately, but here's my best shot of 2019, taken from a distance of six inches with a Nikon D500 and a 105mm macro lens: https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DSC_9393.jpg https://aaron-m.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/DSC_9393.jpg - so you can look at that and judge for yourself whether I'm qualified to speak to the question of how familiarity with interchangeable-lens cameras influences the perceived value of junking up their UI with a lot of smartphone garbage.)