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It's important to note that recent iPhones contain the same M1 chip as last year's MacBooks. They are not limited by processing power. DSLR and mirrorless came

It's important to note that recent iPhones contain the same M1 chip as last year's MacBooks. They are not limited by processing power. DSLR and mirrorless cameras have better optical properties. But they are held back by starting too late and being much worse when it comes to software. These cameras also are limited by their CPUs, which are a decade behind, and by their batteries, which are much smaller but expected to last for thousands of exposures.

perardi 5y ago
I had to check that, as these big chunky camera batteries “feel” like they should have a lot of mAH compared to a phone. And I am wrong. Depending on the phone. A Nikon battery: 2280 mAh. An iPhone 13: anywhere from 2406–4352 mAH. Yeah, that’s a way smaller power budget than a Pro iPhone, especially as you have autofocus and image stabilization systems that have to move around a lot more mass.
- Zak 5y ago
  It is not accurate to compare the capacity in Amp-hours because the Nikon EN-EL15C battery has twice the voltage (two Li-ion cells in series) of a single-cell smartphone battery.
  - wholinator2 5y ago
    As well I'd like to add the thought that the smart phone could be running all kinds of battery draining things in the background. So actual battery life depends not only mAh but how efficiently the device uses its capacity.
    - radlad 5y ago
      Alternatively: I'd point out that the camera app tends to be a highly battery-draining activity on a phone. Most phone users do not leave the camera app up 24/7. (And as a digital camera user - at least I can hot swap batteries. I miss my old cell phones that allowed for this.)
    - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
      And the camera batteries are replaceable. Quickly. In the field. There are also "battery grips" that have extra battery slots in them and automatically switch between the batteries. The camera never has to sit on a charger, only a spare battery does.
  - numpad0 5y ago
    Napkin math: 7V/2280mAh = 16Wh or equivalent to 3.7V/4300mAh (USB power banks are always measured and marked in 3.7V and mAh as unit to produce largest comparable numbers)
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      If you want napkin math then just multiply 2280 by two. It'll be faster and more accurate than converting to watt hours.
    - Zak 5y ago
      I've always thought it was odd powerbanks didn't advertise in mWh. That's a bigger number and comparable regardless of voltage.
- nucleardog 5y ago
  Keep in mind that my Nikon really only consumes power when it's _doing_ something. I can leave my camera "on" for months at a time and come back to a fully charged battery. The screen is off except when I'm previewing a photo. The viewfinder is physical. The metering is only on for 10-20 seconds after I wake the camera by touching the shutter release and is only displaying on a low power monochromatic LCD. Autofocus only happens while I'm holding the shutter release until it finds focus then locks. Meanwhile the iPhone battery is powering what is, effectively, an entire laptop with a 5+" screen and cellular, wifi and bluetooth radios. Articles I can find are quoting an iPhone taking a few hundred shots on a charge. Nikon's testing puts my camera able to take a few _thousand_ per charge. There's literally an order of magnitude difference from my Nikon's 1400mAh battery to a iPhone's 2500-4500mAh battery. Two to three times the capacity for 1/10 the pictures.
  - Auracle 5y ago
    That comparison doesn’t work for newer mirrorless cameras. I have a DSLR and mirrorless strapped to my body at each wedding and I go through more than twice the amount of batteries in the mirrorless. They also take a second or so to wake from standby which is super annoying for my job, so I have it set to 5 minutes. That essentially means it never goes in to standby on a wedding day.
floatboth 5y ago
But that CPU shouldn't really do anything other than shoveling raw sensor data to flash as fast as possible. All the processing can happen on your workstation (or an iPad or whatever).
- hughrr 5y ago
  I’ve got nearly the same CPU in my iPad, MacBook and iPhone. I can do the processing on any device…
  - wtallis 5y ago
    You don't have the same heatsink on all three, and not necessarily the same number of cores.
    - sundvor 5y ago
      This. My Corsair H150i Pro AIO water cooler and decent airflow case (Define 7 W/Corsair ML140s) allows me to run my Ryzen 3900XT at 4.4ghz constantly, all cores, for any kind of real life workload. Good luck trying that with a laptop.
      - Tepix 5y ago
        The M1-Max at 30W seems to have tge same Geekbench 5 multicore benchmark score as the Ryzen 3900XT at 105W. Think about that. Also a better single core score. You won't be using all cores all the time.
    - hughrr 5y ago
      All the image processing is short bursts so this is mostly irrelevant.
- numpad0 5y ago
  You don't want to shovel 12MP 14-bit-effective multi-frame raw pixel data along its metadata into the flash...
user_7832 5y ago
> It's important to note that recent iPhones contain the same M1 chip as last year's MacBooks. They are not limited by processing power. Correct me if I'm wrong but there's still a huge issue with silicon processing capabilities/power when it comes to image sensors (which is why camera sensors buffer images between shots). I unfortunately don't remember the context but it said something that it was (very far) from possible to actually get all the sensor data into the processor and as a result you only take a small fraction of the actual incident light/photos practically.
- sciencesama 5y ago
  iphones come with a15 not m1
- hug 5y ago
  This isn’t true, really: there are massive amounts of data being pushed about in a modern camera, through custom image pipelines that will do many gigabytes per second of throughout, but none of those are really bottlenecks for the sensor data per se. Most of it ends up in a RAM-like write buffer, because SD cards, or even faster formats like CF-express, can’t keep up with the write speed of tens of 50 megapixel shots coming through every second. There are sensor readout speed limits, which is why you don’t see cameras exceed 30 frames per second of 8k recording, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t read out the entire full-well capacity of the sensor each of those frames.
judge2020 5y ago
> recent iPhones contain the same M1 chip as last year's MacBooks I mean, sure, but the A15 bionic is much more power constrained and effectively has less 'GPUs' and cores than the M1, likely because the SoC is also constrained by its size within the phone housing.
emkoemko 5y ago
held back? why on earth would anyone want the camera to do more then just give you a raw image file back? if you don't want to be creative then yea i guess go with a phone and let it make all the choices for you.

perardi 5y ago

I had to check that, as these big chunky camera batteries “feel” like they should have a lot of mAH compared to a phone. And I am wrong. Depending on the phone. A Nikon battery: 2280 mAh. An iPhone 13: anywhere from 2406–4352 mAH. Yeah, that’s a way smaller power budget than a Pro iPhone, especially as you have autofocus and image stabilization systems that have to move around a lot more mass.

Zak 5y ago
It is not accurate to compare the capacity in Amp-hours because the Nikon EN-EL15C battery has twice the voltage (two Li-ion cells in series) of a single-cell smartphone battery.
- wholinator2 5y ago
  As well I'd like to add the thought that the smart phone could be running all kinds of battery draining things in the background. So actual battery life depends not only mAh but how efficiently the device uses its capacity.
  - radlad 5y ago
    Alternatively: I'd point out that the camera app tends to be a highly battery-draining activity on a phone. Most phone users do not leave the camera app up 24/7. (And as a digital camera user - at least I can hot swap batteries. I miss my old cell phones that allowed for this.)
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    And the camera batteries are replaceable. Quickly. In the field. There are also "battery grips" that have extra battery slots in them and automatically switch between the batteries. The camera never has to sit on a charger, only a spare battery does.
- numpad0 5y ago
  Napkin math: 7V/2280mAh = 16Wh or equivalent to 3.7V/4300mAh (USB power banks are always measured and marked in 3.7V and mAh as unit to produce largest comparable numbers)
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    If you want napkin math then just multiply 2280 by two. It'll be faster and more accurate than converting to watt hours.
  - Zak 5y ago
    I've always thought it was odd powerbanks didn't advertise in mWh. That's a bigger number and comparable regardless of voltage.
nucleardog 5y ago
Keep in mind that my Nikon really only consumes power when it's _doing_ something. I can leave my camera "on" for months at a time and come back to a fully charged battery. The screen is off except when I'm previewing a photo. The viewfinder is physical. The metering is only on for 10-20 seconds after I wake the camera by touching the shutter release and is only displaying on a low power monochromatic LCD. Autofocus only happens while I'm holding the shutter release until it finds focus then locks. Meanwhile the iPhone battery is powering what is, effectively, an entire laptop with a 5+" screen and cellular, wifi and bluetooth radios. Articles I can find are quoting an iPhone taking a few hundred shots on a charge. Nikon's testing puts my camera able to take a few _thousand_ per charge. There's literally an order of magnitude difference from my Nikon's 1400mAh battery to a iPhone's 2500-4500mAh battery. Two to three times the capacity for 1/10 the pictures.
- Auracle 5y ago
  That comparison doesn’t work for newer mirrorless cameras. I have a DSLR and mirrorless strapped to my body at each wedding and I go through more than twice the amount of batteries in the mirrorless. They also take a second or so to wake from standby which is super annoying for my job, so I have it set to 5 minutes. That essentially means it never goes in to standby on a wedding day.

floatboth 5y ago

But that CPU shouldn't really do anything other than shoveling raw sensor data to flash as fast as possible. All the processing can happen on your workstation (or an iPad or whatever).

hughrr 5y ago
I’ve got nearly the same CPU in my iPad, MacBook and iPhone. I can do the processing on any device…
- wtallis 5y ago
  You don't have the same heatsink on all three, and not necessarily the same number of cores.
  - sundvor 5y ago
    This. My Corsair H150i Pro AIO water cooler and decent airflow case (Define 7 W/Corsair ML140s) allows me to run my Ryzen 3900XT at 4.4ghz constantly, all cores, for any kind of real life workload. Good luck trying that with a laptop.
    - Tepix 5y ago
      The M1-Max at 30W seems to have tge same Geekbench 5 multicore benchmark score as the Ryzen 3900XT at 105W. Think about that. Also a better single core score. You won't be using all cores all the time.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    All the image processing is short bursts so this is mostly irrelevant.
numpad0 5y ago
You don't want to shovel 12MP 14-bit-effective multi-frame raw pixel data along its metadata into the flash...

user_7832 5y ago

> It's important to note that recent iPhones contain the same M1 chip as last year's MacBooks. They are not limited by processing power. Correct me if I'm wrong but there's still a huge issue with silicon processing capabilities/power when it comes to image sensors (which is why camera sensors buffer images between shots). I unfortunately don't remember the context but it said something that it was (very far) from possible to actually get all the sensor data into the processor and as a result you only take a small fraction of the actual incident light/photos practically.

sciencesama 5y ago
iphones come with a15 not m1
hug 5y ago
This isn’t true, really: there are massive amounts of data being pushed about in a modern camera, through custom image pipelines that will do many gigabytes per second of throughout, but none of those are really bottlenecks for the sensor data per se. Most of it ends up in a RAM-like write buffer, because SD cards, or even faster formats like CF-express, can’t keep up with the write speed of tens of 50 megapixel shots coming through every second. There are sensor readout speed limits, which is why you don’t see cameras exceed 30 frames per second of 8k recording, but there’s no reason why you couldn’t read out the entire full-well capacity of the sensor each of those frames.

judge2020 5y ago

> recent iPhones contain the same M1 chip as last year's MacBooks I mean, sure, but the A15 bionic is much more power constrained and effectively has less 'GPUs' and cores than the M1, likely because the SoC is also constrained by its size within the phone housing.

emkoemko 5y ago

held back? why on earth would anyone want the camera to do more then just give you a raw image file back? if you don't want to be creative then yea i guess go with a phone and let it make all the choices for you.