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There’s no simple answer for everyone but my current take on phone cameras is simple: Every current production iPhone has a good camera. The rear-facing camer

There’s no simple answer for everyone but my current take on phone cameras is simple: Every current production iPhone has a good camera. The rear-facing cameras (which you use for taking pictures) are within spitting distance of perfect, barring any revolutions in camera physics. The front-facing cameras are inferior but they get the job done and are very respectable. If you want a noticeably better camera, it’s simply not available in this form factor. You can play with gimmicks like the 108MP Xiaomi Mi Note, but once you zoom in, you can see the dirty secret that there is heavy, heavy processing that makes the resolution possible at all, and from an image quality standpoint, you’re not any better off.

jahlove 7y ago
> The rear-facing cameras (which you use for taking pictures) are within spitting distance of perfect, barring any revolutions in camera physics. The front-facing cameras are inferior but they get the job done and are very respectable. I disagree. The pics looks good on a phone, but when you compare a large print vs a full frame camera, the difference is obvious. Also, if you try to photograph the milky way with your iPhone, it's limitations are obvious (even on a phone screen).
- klodolph 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, you aren’t disagreeing with what I was saying. I’m talking about “perfect” relative to what is physically possible within a mobile phone form factor, under the assumption that we are using traditional camera technology—using a lens to project a two-dimensional image onto a sensor, which records the image. From quantum physics we know the resolution is limited by diffraction through the aperture, so barring radical new materials, this won’t change much. Also from quantum mechanics we know that the noise floor will never drop below the shot noise of the actual photons hitting the sensor. If you want a better camera, it’s easy to just get a bigger one. However, camera technology has plateaued, and we no longer see radical improvements in image quality just by upgrading our cameras to newer models. (We still see incremental improvements, like the appearance of mirrorless cameras, but there’s only so many incremental improvements you can make before you run out of physics, and need to change your assumptions.)

jahlove 7y ago

> The rear-facing cameras (which you use for taking pictures) are within spitting distance of perfect, barring any revolutions in camera physics. The front-facing cameras are inferior but they get the job done and are very respectable. I disagree. The pics looks good on a phone, but when you compare a large print vs a full frame camera, the difference is obvious. Also, if you try to photograph the milky way with your iPhone, it's limitations are obvious (even on a phone screen).

klodolph 7y ago
As far as I can tell, you aren’t disagreeing with what I was saying. I’m talking about “perfect” relative to what is physically possible within a mobile phone form factor, under the assumption that we are using traditional camera technology—using a lens to project a two-dimensional image onto a sensor, which records the image. From quantum physics we know the resolution is limited by diffraction through the aperture, so barring radical new materials, this won’t change much. Also from quantum mechanics we know that the noise floor will never drop below the shot noise of the actual photons hitting the sensor. If you want a better camera, it’s easy to just get a bigger one. However, camera technology has plateaued, and we no longer see radical improvements in image quality just by upgrading our cameras to newer models. (We still see incremental improvements, like the appearance of mirrorless cameras, but there’s only so many incremental improvements you can make before you run out of physics, and need to change your assumptions.)