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> The size of the sensor and the smarts behind it matter a lot more And the lenses. My backup DSLR shooting at 6MP with $100 of glass on the front looks infin

> The size of the sensor and the smarts behind it matter a lot more And the lenses. My backup DSLR shooting at 6MP with $100 of glass on the front looks infinitely better than the photos out of my iPhone 12 Pro.

BoorishBears 5y ago
I feel like that's not giving the iPhone 12 camera nearly enough credit, but yes having infinitely more space for optics helps
- nucleardog 5y ago
  Oh, I give the iPhone a ton of credit. It generally looks good enough, the HDR on video makes shit look better than reality, the low-light performance beats the absolute pants off of anything else I own by a _huge_ margin. I bought an iPhone 12 Pro pretty much entirely as a camera to use to capture a bunch of photos of my kid because (1) I don't have my DSLR within arm's reach in the house all the time and (2) our house isn't very well lit. I have zero complaints about it. I probably take photos with my iPhone versus my actual photo gear at least 20:1, if not more. The photos look great on a phone screen. But even just printing a 4x6 photo from the iPhone and a 15 year old DSLR and putting them side by side, the difference is immediately obvious. The iPhone photos are disgustingly oversharpened while somehow being weirdly smoothed, but in all the wrong spots. I grabbed a couple of my own photos taken on the same day in the same place under largely the same lighting conditions (it's never exact) and zoomed/cropped them to help demonstrate and for privacy. Neither have been adjusted at all (I did try and improve the iPhone photo best I could, but really managed no substantial looking improvement so posted it as-shot), so focus more on the definition in the hair: https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S See if you can guess which came from an iPhone 12 Pro, and which came from a Nikon D70 (about a $100 camera body at this point). That all said, the entire point was... expecting anything more than 12MP out of an iPhone is absolutely pointless because the sensor size and optics simply aren't there to actually produce a better photo.
  - foldr 5y ago
    >the difference is immediately obvious. The iPhone photos are disgustingly oversharpened while somehow being weirdly smoothed, but in all the wrong spots. That's just the iPhone's default JPEG processing. You can avoid that by shooting RAW. I posted a comparison in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769511 Not sure what is going on with your comparison crop. The phone photo seems to actually be out of focus in the relevant area, not to mention overexposed.
    - willis936 5y ago
      Technically, iPhones use HEIF, which uses HEVC, which uses DCT and DST and variable block sizes. JPEG uses DCT with fixed block sizes. The results of the two file formats are similar.
      - foldr 5y ago
        Yes, sure. I mean that it's the result of sharpening, noise reduction, and the other processes that are typically applied to a raw image.
megablast 5y ago
I doubt it.
- cmsj 5y ago
  Why would you doubt it?
  - rimliu 5y ago
    Because it is a big claim. And there are many different kinds of photographs you can take in many different situations, so something what is an advantage in one situation is a disadvantage in another. Computational photography can overcome some of the optical limitations of the small sensor. E.g. you need a really good camera to get the dynamic range that is available with iPhone HDR. Old camera (I am not aware of any modern cameras having 6mpx sensors) is an old camera. Cheap glass is a cheap glass. The bigger the sensor the better your lens has to be optically, because light is bent at the bigger angles. The two most obvious areas (ergonomics and interchangeable lenses aside) of advantages of the "proper" cameras with bigger sensors are low-light performance and "bokeh". Otoh, if you want to have as much in focus as possible small sensors win.
    - foldr 5y ago
      >The bigger the sensor the better your lens has to be optically, because light is bent at the bigger angles. The angle that the light is bent depends on the angle of view, not the size of the sensor.
      - rimliu 5y ago
        No. No matter if you have wide-angle lens or the telephoto lens, you still need to cover the whole sensor with the image and the distance from the last glass element of the lens to the focal plane does not differ that much.
  - fingerlocks 5y ago
    Not the person you’re responding to, but lenses don’t improve image quality. All optics have some defects, and high quality lenses will have fewer of them. But a larger, more expensive lens primarily allows for a wider range of aperture and greater control of depth of field. That does allow for more artistic photographs, but objective image quality does not improve. If you’re still skeptical, consider a pinhole camera with no lens capturing an image at near infinite focus. Adding a piece of glass that refracts the light can’t perform any better than pure parallel rays of light.
rimliu 5y ago
There is some good cheap glass, but I am not aware of any good $100 glass. I also assume that 6mpix camera has to be quite old, and that means that computational photography in iPhone 12 wrt dynamic range will be vastly superior. In any case "infinitely better" sounds like a big stretch. Can you share some examples?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nucleardog 5y ago
  > Can you share some examples? The main issue, as far as I understand it, is that the tiny sensor and tiny lens at some point just end up limiting the effective resolution. You can capture more pixels, but you never really increase the actual effective resolution of the end product. At that point you're not accomplishing much more than scaling up a lower resolution picture. The "computational photography" usually ends up just vastly over-doing the sharpening and creating artifacts, and leaving weirdly smooth gaps where there was nothing to sharpen but the camera completely failed to pick up detail. Just a couple random photos I grabbed from a day I took my kid to the park, but not necessarily like... scientific-paper worthy examples: https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S One's taken with my iPhone 12 Pro, one with a Nikon D70. Mainly, though, I base this off of trying to print any of the photos I've taken, and maybe someone else can hop in and explain this for me. I could be way off base here. Printing photos from my iPhone at 4x6 they all look like someone took a really soft or slightly out-of-focus photo, applied way too much sharpening, and printed it. Printing a photo from my D70 generally still looks crisp and natural. Even if I blow it up beyond the actual resolution, it looks pixelated... not soft and then sharpened. This is even though the iPhone has twice the resolution of the D70.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    Maybe we should measure resolution in TV lines per image height instead of pixels. It sounds like an archaic measurement but then all the clever processing tricks and dodgy pixel counting wouldn't hide the true resolution.
- 5y ago
criddell 5y ago
I've often wondered if Apple were to put their computational photography magic into a traditional camera (DSLR or similar), what would the result be? I'm thinking if it were a good idea, then Canon, Sony, and Nikon would all be doing that.
- kaba0 5y ago
  It would be a good idea and I think, that’s the future. They are just asleep and hoping to get away with “lazy” work.

BoorishBears 5y ago

I feel like that's not giving the iPhone 12 camera nearly enough credit, but yes having infinitely more space for optics helps

nucleardog 5y ago
Oh, I give the iPhone a ton of credit. It generally looks good enough, the HDR on video makes shit look better than reality, the low-light performance beats the absolute pants off of anything else I own by a _huge_ margin. I bought an iPhone 12 Pro pretty much entirely as a camera to use to capture a bunch of photos of my kid because (1) I don't have my DSLR within arm's reach in the house all the time and (2) our house isn't very well lit. I have zero complaints about it. I probably take photos with my iPhone versus my actual photo gear at least 20:1, if not more. The photos look great on a phone screen. But even just printing a 4x6 photo from the iPhone and a 15 year old DSLR and putting them side by side, the difference is immediately obvious. The iPhone photos are disgustingly oversharpened while somehow being weirdly smoothed, but in all the wrong spots. I grabbed a couple of my own photos taken on the same day in the same place under largely the same lighting conditions (it's never exact) and zoomed/cropped them to help demonstrate and for privacy. Neither have been adjusted at all (I did try and improve the iPhone photo best I could, but really managed no substantial looking improvement so posted it as-shot), so focus more on the definition in the hair: https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S See if you can guess which came from an iPhone 12 Pro, and which came from a Nikon D70 (about a $100 camera body at this point). That all said, the entire point was... expecting anything more than 12MP out of an iPhone is absolutely pointless because the sensor size and optics simply aren't there to actually produce a better photo.
- foldr 5y ago
  >the difference is immediately obvious. The iPhone photos are disgustingly oversharpened while somehow being weirdly smoothed, but in all the wrong spots. That's just the iPhone's default JPEG processing. You can avoid that by shooting RAW. I posted a comparison in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769511 Not sure what is going on with your comparison crop. The phone photo seems to actually be out of focus in the relevant area, not to mention overexposed.
  - willis936 5y ago
    Technically, iPhones use HEIF, which uses HEVC, which uses DCT and DST and variable block sizes. JPEG uses DCT with fixed block sizes. The results of the two file formats are similar.
    - foldr 5y ago
      Yes, sure. I mean that it's the result of sharpening, noise reduction, and the other processes that are typically applied to a raw image.

megablast 5y ago

I doubt it.

cmsj 5y ago
Why would you doubt it?
- rimliu 5y ago
  Because it is a big claim. And there are many different kinds of photographs you can take in many different situations, so something what is an advantage in one situation is a disadvantage in another. Computational photography can overcome some of the optical limitations of the small sensor. E.g. you need a really good camera to get the dynamic range that is available with iPhone HDR. Old camera (I am not aware of any modern cameras having 6mpx sensors) is an old camera. Cheap glass is a cheap glass. The bigger the sensor the better your lens has to be optically, because light is bent at the bigger angles. The two most obvious areas (ergonomics and interchangeable lenses aside) of advantages of the "proper" cameras with bigger sensors are low-light performance and "bokeh". Otoh, if you want to have as much in focus as possible small sensors win.
  - foldr 5y ago
    >The bigger the sensor the better your lens has to be optically, because light is bent at the bigger angles. The angle that the light is bent depends on the angle of view, not the size of the sensor.
    - rimliu 5y ago
      No. No matter if you have wide-angle lens or the telephoto lens, you still need to cover the whole sensor with the image and the distance from the last glass element of the lens to the focal plane does not differ that much.
- fingerlocks 5y ago
  Not the person you’re responding to, but lenses don’t improve image quality. All optics have some defects, and high quality lenses will have fewer of them. But a larger, more expensive lens primarily allows for a wider range of aperture and greater control of depth of field. That does allow for more artistic photographs, but objective image quality does not improve. If you’re still skeptical, consider a pinhole camera with no lens capturing an image at near infinite focus. Adding a piece of glass that refracts the light can’t perform any better than pure parallel rays of light.

rimliu 5y ago

There is some good cheap glass, but I am not aware of any good $100 glass. I also assume that 6mpix camera has to be quite old, and that means that computational photography in iPhone 12 wrt dynamic range will be vastly superior. In any case "infinitely better" sounds like a big stretch. Can you share some examples?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nucleardog 5y ago
> Can you share some examples? The main issue, as far as I understand it, is that the tiny sensor and tiny lens at some point just end up limiting the effective resolution. You can capture more pixels, but you never really increase the actual effective resolution of the end product. At that point you're not accomplishing much more than scaling up a lower resolution picture. The "computational photography" usually ends up just vastly over-doing the sharpening and creating artifacts, and leaving weirdly smooth gaps where there was nothing to sharpen but the camera completely failed to pick up detail. Just a couple random photos I grabbed from a day I took my kid to the park, but not necessarily like... scientific-paper worthy examples: https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S https://imgur.com/a/7bn8W5S One's taken with my iPhone 12 Pro, one with a Nikon D70. Mainly, though, I base this off of trying to print any of the photos I've taken, and maybe someone else can hop in and explain this for me. I could be way off base here. Printing photos from my iPhone at 4x6 they all look like someone took a really soft or slightly out-of-focus photo, applied way too much sharpening, and printed it. Printing a photo from my D70 generally still looks crisp and natural. Even if I blow it up beyond the actual resolution, it looks pixelated... not soft and then sharpened. This is even though the iPhone has twice the resolution of the D70.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Maybe we should measure resolution in TV lines per image height instead of pixels. It sounds like an archaic measurement but then all the clever processing tricks and dodgy pixel counting wouldn't hide the true resolution.
5y ago

criddell 5y ago

I've often wondered if Apple were to put their computational photography magic into a traditional camera (DSLR or similar), what would the result be? I'm thinking if it were a good idea, then Canon, Sony, and Nikon would all be doing that.

kaba0 5y ago
It would be a good idea and I think, that’s the future. They are just asleep and hoping to get away with “lazy” work.