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iPhone 14 Pro Camera Review: Scotland

208 points by axg 4y ago

iLoveOncall 4y ago
Quite impressive when they shot at 48MP, but the pictures taken at 12MP just look like your bad, few generations old, non-pro iPhone photo. As a very amateur photograph that doesn't want to carry his DSLR all the time I considered getting it for the 48MP but after reading the review and seeing what would be most of the pictures I would take (the 12MP ones), it's a hard pass.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  That’s an odd takeaway from the article. You can trivially switch between 12MP and 48MP. Why not just… switch to 48MP when you want the extra resolution, and otherwise stick to 12MP. Perhaps switch to 48MP when you would otherwise use your DSLR…?
  - avrionov 4y ago
    That's not how I understood it. 48MP are available only in ProRaw format.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    Because looking at the 12MP pictures I would NEVER want it, and I don't want to sacrifice the battery / storage with 48MP pictures the time. I expected the lower resolutions to be a leap compared to the current gen (I have a 13 non-pro) but there's basically no difference.
    - emkoemko 4y ago
      if you want image quality you will not find it in phones... this is a limitation of psychics
    - astrange 4y ago
      Those 12MP photos aren't representative because he's using a third party camera app that hasn't been tuned for this phone yet and for some reason is using this as a review of the official camera. They look fine to me though. If you're worried about beating "a DSLR", a medium format film camera from 1920 beats it in every aspect anyway. Read your Ken Rockwell!
- saurik 4y ago
  Yeah... I love my iPhone XS Max, partly because it has 2x telephoto--not 2.5x, not 3x or 4x of all the ridiculous things: just a good 2x--and I essentially use that 2x telephoto lens every chance I can. They finally have come up with an iPhone that has brought back 2x telephoto... but as a digital simulation from 1x and thereby only at 12MP, and so it isn't fundamentally different than my existing phone :/. (I do appreciate that the low light abilities are probably better, and maybe that should be worth it to quickly upgrade before they screw up 2x again.)
  - ideamotor 4y ago
    For real. Hardware 2x is instant buy.
  - dividedbyzero 4y ago
    What's wrong with the 3x ones on the 13 and 14 Pros?
    - MBCook 4y ago
      It’s often “too much”. You wish it was zoomed out just a bit more, but if you do that it’s a digital zoom on the 1x lens so you lose quality.
    - tern 4y ago
      It's an 85mm equivalent focal length, which is comparatively niche (to 50mm, aka "standard" focal length) 85mm is great for head shots, detail shots, video b-roll, etc. and limiting for general use, unless your style is all about subject isolation, telephoto, compression, etc. Photographers often fall into categories of focal length usage. Some prefer the 24-35mm/85mm pair and skip "normal". Some shoot mainly 50mm. Landscape photographers often shoot 16-35mm and then 70mm+. My sweet spot is 50-100mm, which was well served by the dedicated 2x camera (I'm often fine with digital zoom—the artifacts are part of the style). So, they've made a reasonable choice, but 50mm lovers are left out.
  - MBCook 4y ago
    But the sensor the 2x crop is taken from is better than the old real 2x camera. So it should still be better.
- ahepp 4y ago
  I'm upgrading my iPhone 13 mini because having switched from a Pixel 4a, the camera performance is just unacceptably bad. It's a testament to how much I like the rest of the iPhone that I didn't just go back to the pixel. I briefly considered carrying the Pixel around just to take pictures.
  - naet 4y ago
    I loved my Pixel 4a. Price point seemed reasonable, battery and camera were both very decent, and I preferred using Android to iOS. The one downfall was that when I broke my screen this year, the replacement was so costly that I ended up switching to a friend's unused older model iPhone for now. I may still repair it at the end of the year...
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    Huh wow, I have a 13 mini and love the camera. It’s a bit better than my 11 Pro, especially in low light, and I had no complaints about that camera when it was my main phone. What’s not to like about the camera on the 13?
    - ahepp 4y ago
      The pictures just look bad compared to old ones from my pixel 4a. I'm not sure if it's a signal processing thing or what. I will try booting that up and posting a side by side in a bit.
    - ahepp 4y ago
      I said I'd try getting my Pixel 4a running again to do a comparison, but I'm feeling lazy and found this video comparing the 5a and the iPhone 13. So it's not exactly the comparison I had been making in my comment, but I think the video demonstrates a lot of the issues I saw between the 4a and iPhone 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi1Pu9ez8sI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi1Pu9ez8sI Some of these photos are just completely damning for the iPhone. https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=79 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=79 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=135 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=135 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=330 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=330
- emkoemko 4y ago
  get a mirrorless... DSLR are old, can't even compare these 48mp images to say a Sony at 48mp well i guess if your not that into printing large and only viewing your images on facebook i guess its fine.
  - iLoveOncall 4y ago
    DSLRs are not old, new ones come out every year, and they have advantages over most if not all mirrorless, such as the battery life or the size of the sensor.
    - hacym 4y ago
      What? Mirrorless cameras use both full frame sensors and crop sensors based on price and line, the exact sizes you would get in DSLRs. While battery life is generally better on a DSLR you should also consider the feature set you’re getting with that reduced battery life. Further, I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the last of Canon and Nikon prosumer and pro level DSLRs: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/nikon-will-reportedly-join-canon-in-ending-development-on-high-end-dslr-cameras/?amp=1 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/nikon-will-reportedl... So yes, they are old and are being phased out in favor of the superior in nearly every way technology of mirrorless.
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yodsanklai 4y ago
I wonder if it's because I'm getting old and jaded, but I really fail to get excited by this continuous flow of new devices (and "stuff" in general). I could get a new iPhone from my company, but I don't even see the point.
- n8cpdx 4y ago
  Coming from a still enthusiastic tech person who loves iPhone, I don’t think it’s a you problem. This is clearly another S revision in all but name, for the second year in a row. I want to be excited but there’s nothing particularly compelling unless you’re coming from pre-2020 (or maybe pre-2019). I’m still loving my 12 mini and will probably use it for at least another year, maybe two. Compelling upgrades would be: another small variant (or smaller than 14 pro at least), something foldable (maybe, if done really really well), significantly improved battery life, bike computer functionality (CarPlay for bikes), or significantly improved performance (in a few years, maybe the 12 mini will be noticeably slow in 2024). The curse of releasing devices with hardware that’s 3-5 years ahead of the competition in delivered performance (not just feature checklists) is that unless you wait 4+ years, new models don’t always feel like upgrades.
  - gordon_freeman 4y ago
    I have iPhone 11 and I still don't think it is worth upgrading to 14 or 14Pro yet. I consider myself tech savvy person but I don't see a point to buy a new phone if my current phone takes good enough pics for myself and my family and friends to enjoy. Also if the speed of browsing web and opening and using apps is still good enough then what's the point of buying a new phone and polluting environment? As I see it, the latest iPhones are capable of at least 5 years of use and only may need to do is replace the battery once in that life span and I am happy with this approach.
    - tempofinale 4y ago
      One justification that I can see is the trade in values. Here in the US, you can get a "free" iPhone if you're on a specific plan. Might as well take it if you already have the plan.
supernova87a 4y ago
I would appreciate if articles reviewing cameras did a better job of explaining why the pixel count is just a single (and highly manipulable) measure of imaging merit. For all the pixel count, no company ever talks about pixel size (physical) and the noise characteristic as a result or the effective resolution. The imaging chip has not gotten physically larger between iPhones, I assume, so the pixels are just dividing the same light into more sites. Is this better? People who don't know will just assume that 48 MP, well that's better than a Sony A7RIII now, right? Of course not.
- gpt5 4y ago
  I'm not sure you are right here. The sensor size (and the lens speed) has been one of the key things Apple marketing has been leaning towards in the last few generations. Tech reviewers tend to repeat it back to their audience, which eventually lead to general consensus of Apple's camera system being superior.
  - orbital-decay 4y ago
    Sensor size in smartphones is also "highly manipulable", because the smartphones are very flat and have serious angle of incidence issues as the lens is too close to the sensor. If consumers demand larger sensors, sure it can be done - but it will reduce the amount of light that reaches the edges of the sensor, eating the possible increase in image quality. Smartphone cameras are limited by thickness, not by sensor sizes.
    - PapuaNewGuinea 4y ago
      But smartphone cameras use telecentric lens…
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Apple has been making the cameras protrude out more every year for a while now.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
itg 4y ago
The Verge also mentioned that Apple goes overboard when it comes to noise reduction lately with their phones. It becomes really obvious when you compare an iPhone 13 with say a Pixel phone and there have been many complaints about it. Instead it looks like they continued to double down with it on the iPhone 14. It's a shame since they have such good hardware and ruin the pics with their photo processing pipeline.
- drexlspivey 4y ago
  You can shoot RAW and skip all the processing if you think it ruins the picture
  - lancesells 4y ago
    Isn't that with 3rd party apps only?
    - evan_ 4y ago
      No. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/take-apple-proraw-photos-iphae1e882a3/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/take-apple-proraw-pho...
      - flutas 4y ago
        ProRAW doesn't disable image processing, in fact it even says as much in the link you provided. > Apple ProRAW combines the information of a standard RAW format along with iPhone image processing to offer additional creative control when you make adjustments to exposure, color, and white balance.
        drexlspivey 4y ago
        ProRAW is regular DNG raw files. In the DNG format you can store metadata like tonemapping masks etc but those are non destructive adjustments, it’s like a layer on top of the raw data. You can open the ProRAW files on any app that reads RAW files and undo any processing without loss of information and do your own processing.
symlinkk 4y ago
Who cares? The improvements here are beyond minuscule. It would affect my life more if Chipotle came out with a new flavor of chicken
- kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  Chipotle's Pollo Asado is pretty good if you haven't tried it yet!
  - keepquestioning 4y ago
    There's not too many Chipotle on the west coast.
julienb_sea 4y ago
I'm really conflicted about if I'm going to be shooting in 48MP or 12MP for normal use. Most of my photos are taken of friends in casual settings and used for social media. Many times a good shot requires capturing a number of photos in sequence, with all but one or two discarded. The local file storage and backup capacity requirements for 48MP are going to get crazy. I may only shoot in 48MP in rare cases when I really want the super quality and normally leave in 12MP mode.
- gerdesj 4y ago
  You say that and then you try to zoom in and 48MP instead of 12MP might get you a number plate or a face or a bird identification or whatever. As well as rather a lot of pixels on modern phones, we also have things like review videos attached to photos and they take up space too. Nowadays we have stupidly large amounts of storage available. I recall my Commodore 64 ... It all ... depends. Do you want the flexibility to be able zoom in or not? Do you want to long term store your photos or not? If you can't be bothered with storage management and don't need very high resolution then dial it down and off you trot but you do have a choice.
- dkonofalski 4y ago
  Haven't gotten my hands on it yet but, from the videos I've seen, you're able to turn 48MP right from within the camera app. I've also seen a spot in videos to switch video modes also.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Yeah I wish there was an easy way to automatically delete all but 1 or 2 of the shots from a set. Kind of like how they let you easily discard all but one of a burst.
localhost 4y ago
This is an excellent video review by Peter McKinnon. I really like his studio shot comparison between his Canon mirrorless camera and the iPhone 14 Pro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh9wNWA6bSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh9wNWA6bSQ
- asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
  I don’t think it’s any surprise that a smartphone can capture a decent image in perfect lighting conditions. That’s been the case for a while. You’ll notice though that all pro photographers still reach for their real camera when the quality of the pictures matter.
  - hacym 4y ago
    For all the people that complain about the people who say that their iPhone is superior to DSLR and Mirrorless cameras, I’ve never actually seen anyone seriously say that. Everyone should know that the best camera you have is the one with you. The iPhone enables this. Are there really people out there saying they’re going to shoot a wedding or something with an iPhone and mean it? Sounds more like photographers compensating.
    - dingaling 4y ago
      > Everyone should know that the best camera you have is the one with you. Not really. There's not really any point taking a smartphone camera out of your pocket at an airshow, or at a zoo, to take a photo of the Moon or a myriad of other scenarios where the lens is the dominant factor. Sometimes the best choice is not to take the shot.
      - hacym 4y ago
        That a stupid argument, and one that misses the point completely. If you want or need to take a photo, your massive camera setup sitting at home does you no good. The camera sitting in your pocket anyways, however, does.
t0bia_s 4y ago
I though era of "more megapixel = better picture" is gone, but apparently not. All that matters in technical quality of cameras is dynamic range. That is related to sensor size, more specific to pixel size that has ability to absorb light. It is simple physics. Those who need camera sensor quality should check this charts: https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  But your eyeballs are still better than cameras, or at least what we see is better than an image taken of the same thing. Maybe it makes sense that we have not hit the absolute limits. Although these cameras are smaller than you eyeballs. Might not make sense to compare digital cameras to eyeballs yet.
  - t0bia_s 4y ago
    I'm looking forward to have screens with twice higher resolution than real world =)
- aikinai 4y ago
  I would agree with you, but read about what they’re actually doing with this camera. They’re actually binning the pixels back down to the same resolution as before and only using the extra size to enhance sharpness and dynamic range. You only actually get higher resolution if you shoot raw.
  - emkoemko 4y ago
    why not just have larger photodiode to increase dynamic range? can't see how using more photodiode would equal more dynamic range or better noise levels? never seen a sony,canon etc get less noisy and better dynamic range as they add more mega pixels..
    - systoll 4y ago
      The iPhone is using a quad-bayer filter. Most of the time, it is behaving as a 12MP camera with error correcting photodiodes. Compared to a normal 12MP camera, the 48MP one will collect slightly less light due to there being more gaps, but the bet is that the increased noise from that is less than the noise reduction from the pixel-binning. Every photodiode has three others around it with the same colour. If they’re all similar, the sensor will average them, and if one of them is way off, it’ll throw that one away and average the rest. This is better than doing noise reduction on either a 12MP, or a standard 48MP sensor because the space between comparable diodes is reduced, making it less likely to falsely treat small things like stars as noise. As a bonus, if the user zooms in on a really sunny day, the 48MP might actually be worth using directly.
stanislavb 4y ago
It's good that he's highlighting the potential issues with the eSim. To me, forcing every new iPhone user to go all-in with eSim is ridiculous. That will work for many, yet it could be a painful issue for some. Given that they still sell iPhone 14 with regular SIM cards, why wouldn't they allow that option in the US ¯\_(ツ)_/¯!?
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > forcing every new iPhone user to go all-in with eSim is ridiculous. That will work for many, yet it could be a painful issue for some Floppy disks. Java. Disk drives. Headphone jacks. This is Apple’s M.O.
  - unstatusthequo 4y ago
    You forgot power cable. Inductive for the win. I figure the cable is just a backup for real problems
    - MBCook 4y ago
      The cable is still good for charging (if you need fast) and I like it a lot for CarPlay because in my experience wireless CarPlay has a ton of lag to it. I do wonder what they do if they remove the port completely, how do they fix the phone if it gets truly messed up? Does it become like the watch where they just have to swap it out with a different one and send it back to Apple?
    - mr_toad 4y ago
      Unless they’ve changed it you still need a USB cable to sync directly from finder for the first time.
- roberttod 4y ago
  I recently tried buying an esim while travelling to Sweden because I always forget to buy one at the airport, or in advance. It actually worked out very well, and it was nice not to have to swap out my existing sim and take on a new phone number across all the messaging apps while I was there.
gigatexal 4y ago
I wish he’d use the normal camera app and not a paid for app.
londons_explore 4y ago
I think we need a new way to judge cameras... Getting experts to zoom in on tricky corners is no longer a good way to test. There needs to be a new metric that reflects the whole user journey of using the camera - from figuring out how it works, to taking new photos when one came out bad. How many attempts to get a photo of a serial number label down behind the dishwasher..? Do pictures of the moon look terrible because the lens has fingerprints all over and the user doesn't realise? Can the camera run at the same time as google maps navigation and an audiobook without lag?
leejoramo 4y ago
Regarding the desire for a Red Screen Mode to save night vision I have long used the Accessibility feature of a red Color Filter
- petercooper 4y ago
  I came here to comment this too. It works surprisingly well. Perfect for using your iPad in bed (someone's got to get the Sudokus done..) while someone else is sleeping or something as you can go extremely dark and extremely red, hurting no-one's eyes at all.
rexf 4y ago
I have the iPhone 13 Pro, and I wish Apple would fix the Live Photos video flash bug https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/live-photo-flashing-exposure-bug.2347720/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/live-photo-flashing-exp... This is a first world problem: the flash that appears in their flagship Live Photos photo/video feature has ruined some great vacation photos that were hard to take. I don't know if this is fixed in the iPhone 14 / iOS 16.
mikeyla85 4y ago
My 13 Pro is so good, and it sounds like there are still issues with 48 megapixel photos (a lag in processing the files, compatibility.) I'll wait till the next model.
rcarr 4y ago
Literally just had to leave a comment on this blog post after reading because he talks about how he's going to start leaving his Garmin InReach Mini at home because he can now use the satellite feature on his iPhone when he's out hiking in the Scottish mountains. As far as I'm aware, the satellite functionality is currently strictly for the US and Canadian markets only. I get that it's a big deal and a great technological achievement they want to brag about but I hope they are making it abundantly clear in other countries that this functionality is not available. If they're glossing over it, they're going to end up with a lot of people going into potentially dangerous situations with a false sense of security like this guy with potentially tragic consequences.
- MBCook 4y ago
  It’s not active yet, the speculation is roughly November. Knowing Apple they will be VERY clear about this when the time comes. Since you have to sign up for service (free for the first two years) that would be a good time to make you go through the limitations.
  - ahepp 4y ago
    Wait, do you need a subscription to send SOS messages? If that's true, it's an awful idea and is obviously going to result in tons of awful PR.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Another good reason not to give up the Garmin just yet is having two-way communication on your emergency beacon too. It's not really confirmed or known what Apple is offering here and if there will be any way to communicate with rescuers if you have to initiate a rescue. With Garmin devices you can text both ways and it has been shown in many rescues to be a huge advantage at getting the right search and rescue or other team to you faster--they can find out what the situation is and if they need to skip right to a helicopter rescue for example. If I were an avid hiker I wouldn't ditch the Garmin just yet (but hopefully in a year or two we'll see if Apple and others try to compete in the satellite rescue beacon world and offer comparable features).
remote_phone 4y ago
Cinematic mode for me is a bust. At 30 fps it was extremely choppy when I panned side to side, which makes it unusable. I was shocked at how bad it looked so I’m wondering how 24 fps can be any better.
AceJohnny2 4y ago
I continue to find the iPhone's "night" photos underwhelming compared to Google Pixel's (haven't tested other Android devices). Google seems to be doing a much better job at stacking or other Computational Photography tricks. Considering Apple's marketing focuses so much on the camera, and they have so much experience in the domain, I'm kind of shocked they continue to be so disappointing. Perhaps it's a style decision. (I certainly haven't tried playing with RAW, that's beyond my level of care.)
jeffbee 4y ago
At 48MP these things are starting to tread on the territory of the "super resolution" mode of my Olympus camera body. Of course, the top-of-the-lone iPhone is also larger than that camera body in 2 out of 4 relevant dimensions, and costs more. The new iPhones are so big and so expensive that the idea that I would rather carry one than a big expensive camera is starting to seem questionable. In fact, if I had a choice, I am quite sure I'd rather my camera with a cheap lens were stolen, rather than my iPhone.
asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
I’ve been kinda unimpressed with the iPhone 13 mini camera coming from the pixel 6 pro. I like everything else about the iPhone better, but the camera seems substantially worse. I have to edit pictures quite a bit to fix color balance issues. Here’s a recent example: https://adobe.ly/3qEZRVx https://adobe.ly/3qEZRVx (Lightroom won’t let me share both my edit and the unedited original but the blueish picture was taken at almost the same time and had the same general look as the edited picture.) I’m not sure who would like the unedited version of the picture but I get weird color issues like this all the time on my mini. Here’s another one of my kid: https://adobe.ly/3UerPEY https://adobe.ly/3UerPEY For anyone who has a doubt, I testify that my kid is not red and those cliffs were not blue. Worst thing is it’s totally unpredictable when the issue is gonna crop up. It doesn’t happen in every picture. I don’t know what someone would do with a camera like this if they didn’t know how to edit to fix the colors.
- shaklee3 4y ago
  this is true. you can follow @dalevon_digital on Twitter and he frequently does slr/iPhone/pixel blind comparisons. the pixel has won every single one when compared to a reference SLR picture.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
    For what it’s worth, I’ll take my ILC photos over my p6pro every day. But I’ll take the p6 over the iPhone. I will check out that account though!
- astrange 4y ago
  Do believe that first one's blue because your finger's in it. The other one seems like a bug. Could always go complain about it.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
    I understand why you might think my finger is the cause but there are other pictures from that day and that series that lack the finger and still have the blue cast.
EugeneOZ 4y ago
I’m in doubt if I should upgrade from 12 Pro Max. Please share your opinion. The main reason for the upgrade for me is a better camera. Is the difference noticeable between 12 Pro Max and 14 Pro?
ValentineC 4y ago
> Offloading photos/videos via Lightning cable is another story. I’ve had some serious pains trying to transfer content from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. I’ve been on YouTube watching videos, unplugging, switching Lightning cables, restarting devices — doing all the things I can think of. I finally found a tip that said if you turn on Airplane mode, then Apple Photos will properly load, and thankfully it did. > These pains offloading media are not a new issue specific to the iPhone 14 Pro, and I really hope it is solved soon. I'm surprised that he didn't consider AirDrop as a means of getting photos out. That's how I transfer most of the photos I need to edit on my MacBook these days.
- morpheuskafka 4y ago
  When I worked at walk-in tech support at university, we weren't supposed to take responsibility for backing up data prior to drop-off and didn't have drives or anything for that purpose. Sometimes if the customer seemed like the type of person that wouldn't blame us (why that policy was there) and really had no way to get it off I would use one of our WinPE USB drives to copy their essential files. When they had a Mac, however, I would just AirDrop their entire home directory to the Mac loaner and show them how to do the same when it came back. It would go through 100GBs of files within a few minutes and didn't use any of our equipment other than the loaner itself. I don't think I've plugged an iPhone into my MacBook other than to charge on a trip since the last time I was into jailbreaking and was running checkra1n.
- zionic 4y ago
  AirDrop is 100x slower than the equivalent wired solution. I say this as someone transfering 350GB of media off their phone on friday, Apple needs to fix wired file access from mac to phone.
  - Hamuko 4y ago
    Lightning is limited to 53 MB/s by the sheer virtue of being USB 2.0, and probably is even slower in real life, so AirDrop would be at maximum 0.5 MB/s?
Magi604 4y ago
I want to see how the camera stacks up against other phones from other makers in the same class. Dxomark does very thorough comparison tests. I will wait for their results.
gdubs 4y ago
Feels like the iPhone could use a micro SD card at this point. If I'm gonna use a phone as a cinema camera, shooting 4k and 48 MP stills I don't want to be clogging up my bandwidth uploading a ton of footage to iCloud when I'm probably going to cut it in Premiere or something on my desktop. My drone is like this — it has an internal hard drive, but it's way more flexible and convenient to shoot to its optional micro SD card.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Never going to happen, it doesn't make Apple any money.
Technetium 4y ago
I don't think a sponsored review of a popular phone camera belongs here.
Havoc 4y ago
I found mrwhosetheboss youtube comparison against the Samsung S22 ultra helpful too. Very interesting how different the approaches are despite both being aimed at top end

208 points by axg 4y ago

Quite impressive when they shot at 48MP, but the pictures taken at 12MP just look like your bad, few generations old, non-pro iPhone photo. As a very amateur photograph that doesn't want to carry his DSLR all the time I considered getting it for the 48MP but after reading the review and seeing what would be most of the pictures I would take (the 12MP ones), it's a hard pass.

parkingrift 4y ago
That’s an odd takeaway from the article. You can trivially switch between 12MP and 48MP. Why not just… switch to 48MP when you want the extra resolution, and otherwise stick to 12MP. Perhaps switch to 48MP when you would otherwise use your DSLR…?
- avrionov 4y ago
  That's not how I understood it. 48MP are available only in ProRaw format.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  Because looking at the 12MP pictures I would NEVER want it, and I don't want to sacrifice the battery / storage with 48MP pictures the time. I expected the lower resolutions to be a leap compared to the current gen (I have a 13 non-pro) but there's basically no difference.
  - emkoemko 4y ago
    if you want image quality you will not find it in phones... this is a limitation of psychics
  - astrange 4y ago
    Those 12MP photos aren't representative because he's using a third party camera app that hasn't been tuned for this phone yet and for some reason is using this as a review of the official camera. They look fine to me though. If you're worried about beating "a DSLR", a medium format film camera from 1920 beats it in every aspect anyway. Read your Ken Rockwell!
saurik 4y ago
Yeah... I love my iPhone XS Max, partly because it has 2x telephoto--not 2.5x, not 3x or 4x of all the ridiculous things: just a good 2x--and I essentially use that 2x telephoto lens every chance I can. They finally have come up with an iPhone that has brought back 2x telephoto... but as a digital simulation from 1x and thereby only at 12MP, and so it isn't fundamentally different than my existing phone :/. (I do appreciate that the low light abilities are probably better, and maybe that should be worth it to quickly upgrade before they screw up 2x again.)
- ideamotor 4y ago
  For real. Hardware 2x is instant buy.
- dividedbyzero 4y ago
  What's wrong with the 3x ones on the 13 and 14 Pros?
  - MBCook 4y ago
    It’s often “too much”. You wish it was zoomed out just a bit more, but if you do that it’s a digital zoom on the 1x lens so you lose quality.
  - tern 4y ago
    It's an 85mm equivalent focal length, which is comparatively niche (to 50mm, aka "standard" focal length) 85mm is great for head shots, detail shots, video b-roll, etc. and limiting for general use, unless your style is all about subject isolation, telephoto, compression, etc. Photographers often fall into categories of focal length usage. Some prefer the 24-35mm/85mm pair and skip "normal". Some shoot mainly 50mm. Landscape photographers often shoot 16-35mm and then 70mm+. My sweet spot is 50-100mm, which was well served by the dedicated 2x camera (I'm often fine with digital zoom—the artifacts are part of the style). So, they've made a reasonable choice, but 50mm lovers are left out.
- MBCook 4y ago
  But the sensor the 2x crop is taken from is better than the old real 2x camera. So it should still be better.
ahepp 4y ago
I'm upgrading my iPhone 13 mini because having switched from a Pixel 4a, the camera performance is just unacceptably bad. It's a testament to how much I like the rest of the iPhone that I didn't just go back to the pixel. I briefly considered carrying the Pixel around just to take pictures.
- naet 4y ago
  I loved my Pixel 4a. Price point seemed reasonable, battery and camera were both very decent, and I preferred using Android to iOS. The one downfall was that when I broke my screen this year, the replacement was so costly that I ended up switching to a friend's unused older model iPhone for now. I may still repair it at the end of the year...
- gnicholas 4y ago
  Huh wow, I have a 13 mini and love the camera. It’s a bit better than my 11 Pro, especially in low light, and I had no complaints about that camera when it was my main phone. What’s not to like about the camera on the 13?
  - ahepp 4y ago
    The pictures just look bad compared to old ones from my pixel 4a. I'm not sure if it's a signal processing thing or what. I will try booting that up and posting a side by side in a bit.
  - ahepp 4y ago
    I said I'd try getting my Pixel 4a running again to do a comparison, but I'm feeling lazy and found this video comparing the 5a and the iPhone 13. So it's not exactly the comparison I had been making in my comment, but I think the video demonstrates a lot of the issues I saw between the 4a and iPhone 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi1Pu9ez8sI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi1Pu9ez8sI Some of these photos are just completely damning for the iPhone. https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=79 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=79 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=135 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=135 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=330 https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=330
emkoemko 4y ago
get a mirrorless... DSLR are old, can't even compare these 48mp images to say a Sony at 48mp well i guess if your not that into printing large and only viewing your images on facebook i guess its fine.
- iLoveOncall 4y ago
  DSLRs are not old, new ones come out every year, and they have advantages over most if not all mirrorless, such as the battery life or the size of the sensor.
  - hacym 4y ago
    What? Mirrorless cameras use both full frame sensors and crop sensors based on price and line, the exact sizes you would get in DSLRs. While battery life is generally better on a DSLR you should also consider the feature set you’re getting with that reduced battery life. Further, I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the last of Canon and Nikon prosumer and pro level DSLRs: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/nikon-will-reportedly-join-canon-in-ending-development-on-high-end-dslr-cameras/?amp=1 https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/nikon-will-reportedl... So yes, they are old and are being phased out in favor of the superior in nearly every way technology of mirrorless.

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yodsanklai 4y ago

I wonder if it's because I'm getting old and jaded, but I really fail to get excited by this continuous flow of new devices (and "stuff" in general). I could get a new iPhone from my company, but I don't even see the point.

n8cpdx 4y ago
Coming from a still enthusiastic tech person who loves iPhone, I don’t think it’s a you problem. This is clearly another S revision in all but name, for the second year in a row. I want to be excited but there’s nothing particularly compelling unless you’re coming from pre-2020 (or maybe pre-2019). I’m still loving my 12 mini and will probably use it for at least another year, maybe two. Compelling upgrades would be: another small variant (or smaller than 14 pro at least), something foldable (maybe, if done really really well), significantly improved battery life, bike computer functionality (CarPlay for bikes), or significantly improved performance (in a few years, maybe the 12 mini will be noticeably slow in 2024). The curse of releasing devices with hardware that’s 3-5 years ahead of the competition in delivered performance (not just feature checklists) is that unless you wait 4+ years, new models don’t always feel like upgrades.
- gordon_freeman 4y ago
  I have iPhone 11 and I still don't think it is worth upgrading to 14 or 14Pro yet. I consider myself tech savvy person but I don't see a point to buy a new phone if my current phone takes good enough pics for myself and my family and friends to enjoy. Also if the speed of browsing web and opening and using apps is still good enough then what's the point of buying a new phone and polluting environment? As I see it, the latest iPhones are capable of at least 5 years of use and only may need to do is replace the battery once in that life span and I am happy with this approach.
  - tempofinale 4y ago
    One justification that I can see is the trade in values. Here in the US, you can get a "free" iPhone if you're on a specific plan. Might as well take it if you already have the plan.

supernova87a 4y ago

I would appreciate if articles reviewing cameras did a better job of explaining why the pixel count is just a single (and highly manipulable) measure of imaging merit. For all the pixel count, no company ever talks about pixel size (physical) and the noise characteristic as a result or the effective resolution. The imaging chip has not gotten physically larger between iPhones, I assume, so the pixels are just dividing the same light into more sites. Is this better? People who don't know will just assume that 48 MP, well that's better than a Sony A7RIII now, right? Of course not.

gpt5 4y ago
I'm not sure you are right here. The sensor size (and the lens speed) has been one of the key things Apple marketing has been leaning towards in the last few generations. Tech reviewers tend to repeat it back to their audience, which eventually lead to general consensus of Apple's camera system being superior.
- orbital-decay 4y ago
  Sensor size in smartphones is also "highly manipulable", because the smartphones are very flat and have serious angle of incidence issues as the lens is too close to the sensor. If consumers demand larger sensors, sure it can be done - but it will reduce the amount of light that reaches the edges of the sensor, eating the possible increase in image quality. Smartphone cameras are limited by thickness, not by sensor sizes.
  - PapuaNewGuinea 4y ago
    But smartphone cameras use telecentric lens…
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Apple has been making the cameras protrude out more every year for a while now.
iLoveOncall 4y ago

itg 4y ago

The Verge also mentioned that Apple goes overboard when it comes to noise reduction lately with their phones. It becomes really obvious when you compare an iPhone 13 with say a Pixel phone and there have been many complaints about it. Instead it looks like they continued to double down with it on the iPhone 14. It's a shame since they have such good hardware and ruin the pics with their photo processing pipeline.

drexlspivey 4y ago
You can shoot RAW and skip all the processing if you think it ruins the picture
- lancesells 4y ago
  Isn't that with 3rd party apps only?
  - evan_ 4y ago
    No. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/take-apple-proraw-photos-iphae1e882a3/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/take-apple-proraw-pho...
    - flutas 4y ago
      ProRAW doesn't disable image processing, in fact it even says as much in the link you provided. > Apple ProRAW combines the information of a standard RAW format along with iPhone image processing to offer additional creative control when you make adjustments to exposure, color, and white balance.
      - drexlspivey 4y ago
        ProRAW is regular DNG raw files. In the DNG format you can store metadata like tonemapping masks etc but those are non destructive adjustments, it’s like a layer on top of the raw data. You can open the ProRAW files on any app that reads RAW files and undo any processing without loss of information and do your own processing.

symlinkk 4y ago

Who cares? The improvements here are beyond minuscule. It would affect my life more if Chipotle came out with a new flavor of chicken

kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Chipotle's Pollo Asado is pretty good if you haven't tried it yet!
- keepquestioning 4y ago
  There's not too many Chipotle on the west coast.

julienb_sea 4y ago

I'm really conflicted about if I'm going to be shooting in 48MP or 12MP for normal use. Most of my photos are taken of friends in casual settings and used for social media. Many times a good shot requires capturing a number of photos in sequence, with all but one or two discarded. The local file storage and backup capacity requirements for 48MP are going to get crazy. I may only shoot in 48MP in rare cases when I really want the super quality and normally leave in 12MP mode.

gerdesj 4y ago
You say that and then you try to zoom in and 48MP instead of 12MP might get you a number plate or a face or a bird identification or whatever. As well as rather a lot of pixels on modern phones, we also have things like review videos attached to photos and they take up space too. Nowadays we have stupidly large amounts of storage available. I recall my Commodore 64 ... It all ... depends. Do you want the flexibility to be able zoom in or not? Do you want to long term store your photos or not? If you can't be bothered with storage management and don't need very high resolution then dial it down and off you trot but you do have a choice.
dkonofalski 4y ago
Haven't gotten my hands on it yet but, from the videos I've seen, you're able to turn 48MP right from within the camera app. I've also seen a spot in videos to switch video modes also.
gnicholas 4y ago
Yeah I wish there was an easy way to automatically delete all but 1 or 2 of the shots from a set. Kind of like how they let you easily discard all but one of a burst.

localhost 4y ago

This is an excellent video review by Peter McKinnon. I really like his studio shot comparison between his Canon mirrorless camera and the iPhone 14 Pro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh9wNWA6bSQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh9wNWA6bSQ

asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
I don’t think it’s any surprise that a smartphone can capture a decent image in perfect lighting conditions. That’s been the case for a while. You’ll notice though that all pro photographers still reach for their real camera when the quality of the pictures matter.
- hacym 4y ago
  For all the people that complain about the people who say that their iPhone is superior to DSLR and Mirrorless cameras, I’ve never actually seen anyone seriously say that. Everyone should know that the best camera you have is the one with you. The iPhone enables this. Are there really people out there saying they’re going to shoot a wedding or something with an iPhone and mean it? Sounds more like photographers compensating.
  - dingaling 4y ago
    > Everyone should know that the best camera you have is the one with you. Not really. There's not really any point taking a smartphone camera out of your pocket at an airshow, or at a zoo, to take a photo of the Moon or a myriad of other scenarios where the lens is the dominant factor. Sometimes the best choice is not to take the shot.
    - hacym 4y ago
      That a stupid argument, and one that misses the point completely. If you want or need to take a photo, your massive camera setup sitting at home does you no good. The camera sitting in your pocket anyways, however, does.

t0bia_s 4y ago

I though era of "more megapixel = better picture" is gone, but apparently not. All that matters in technical quality of cameras is dynamic range. That is related to sensor size, more specific to pixel size that has ability to absorb light. It is simple physics. Those who need camera sensor quality should check this charts: https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm

2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
But your eyeballs are still better than cameras, or at least what we see is better than an image taken of the same thing. Maybe it makes sense that we have not hit the absolute limits. Although these cameras are smaller than you eyeballs. Might not make sense to compare digital cameras to eyeballs yet.
- t0bia_s 4y ago
  I'm looking forward to have screens with twice higher resolution than real world =)
aikinai 4y ago
I would agree with you, but read about what they’re actually doing with this camera. They’re actually binning the pixels back down to the same resolution as before and only using the extra size to enhance sharpness and dynamic range. You only actually get higher resolution if you shoot raw.
- emkoemko 4y ago
  why not just have larger photodiode to increase dynamic range? can't see how using more photodiode would equal more dynamic range or better noise levels? never seen a sony,canon etc get less noisy and better dynamic range as they add more mega pixels..
  - systoll 4y ago
    The iPhone is using a quad-bayer filter. Most of the time, it is behaving as a 12MP camera with error correcting photodiodes. Compared to a normal 12MP camera, the 48MP one will collect slightly less light due to there being more gaps, but the bet is that the increased noise from that is less than the noise reduction from the pixel-binning. Every photodiode has three others around it with the same colour. If they’re all similar, the sensor will average them, and if one of them is way off, it’ll throw that one away and average the rest. This is better than doing noise reduction on either a 12MP, or a standard 48MP sensor because the space between comparable diodes is reduced, making it less likely to falsely treat small things like stars as noise. As a bonus, if the user zooms in on a really sunny day, the 48MP might actually be worth using directly.

stanislavb 4y ago

It's good that he's highlighting the potential issues with the eSim. To me, forcing every new iPhone user to go all-in with eSim is ridiculous. That will work for many, yet it could be a painful issue for some. Given that they still sell iPhone 14 with regular SIM cards, why wouldn't they allow that option in the US ¯\_(ツ)_/¯!?

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> forcing every new iPhone user to go all-in with eSim is ridiculous. That will work for many, yet it could be a painful issue for some Floppy disks. Java. Disk drives. Headphone jacks. This is Apple’s M.O.
- unstatusthequo 4y ago
  You forgot power cable. Inductive for the win. I figure the cable is just a backup for real problems
  - MBCook 4y ago
    The cable is still good for charging (if you need fast) and I like it a lot for CarPlay because in my experience wireless CarPlay has a ton of lag to it. I do wonder what they do if they remove the port completely, how do they fix the phone if it gets truly messed up? Does it become like the watch where they just have to swap it out with a different one and send it back to Apple?
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    Unless they’ve changed it you still need a USB cable to sync directly from finder for the first time.
roberttod 4y ago
I recently tried buying an esim while travelling to Sweden because I always forget to buy one at the airport, or in advance. It actually worked out very well, and it was nice not to have to swap out my existing sim and take on a new phone number across all the messaging apps while I was there.

gigatexal 4y ago

I wish he’d use the normal camera app and not a paid for app.

londons_explore 4y ago

I think we need a new way to judge cameras... Getting experts to zoom in on tricky corners is no longer a good way to test. There needs to be a new metric that reflects the whole user journey of using the camera - from figuring out how it works, to taking new photos when one came out bad. How many attempts to get a photo of a serial number label down behind the dishwasher..? Do pictures of the moon look terrible because the lens has fingerprints all over and the user doesn't realise? Can the camera run at the same time as google maps navigation and an audiobook without lag?

leejoramo 4y ago

Regarding the desire for a Red Screen Mode to save night vision I have long used the Accessibility feature of a red Color Filter

petercooper 4y ago
I came here to comment this too. It works surprisingly well. Perfect for using your iPad in bed (someone's got to get the Sudokus done..) while someone else is sleeping or something as you can go extremely dark and extremely red, hurting no-one's eyes at all.

rexf 4y ago

I have the iPhone 13 Pro, and I wish Apple would fix the Live Photos video flash bug https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/live-photo-flashing-exposure-bug.2347720/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/live-photo-flashing-exp... This is a first world problem: the flash that appears in their flagship Live Photos photo/video feature has ruined some great vacation photos that were hard to take. I don't know if this is fixed in the iPhone 14 / iOS 16.

mikeyla85 4y ago

My 13 Pro is so good, and it sounds like there are still issues with 48 megapixel photos (a lag in processing the files, compatibility.) I'll wait till the next model.

rcarr 4y ago

Literally just had to leave a comment on this blog post after reading because he talks about how he's going to start leaving his Garmin InReach Mini at home because he can now use the satellite feature on his iPhone when he's out hiking in the Scottish mountains. As far as I'm aware, the satellite functionality is currently strictly for the US and Canadian markets only. I get that it's a big deal and a great technological achievement they want to brag about but I hope they are making it abundantly clear in other countries that this functionality is not available. If they're glossing over it, they're going to end up with a lot of people going into potentially dangerous situations with a false sense of security like this guy with potentially tragic consequences.

MBCook 4y ago
It’s not active yet, the speculation is roughly November. Knowing Apple they will be VERY clear about this when the time comes. Since you have to sign up for service (free for the first two years) that would be a good time to make you go through the limitations.
- ahepp 4y ago
  Wait, do you need a subscription to send SOS messages? If that's true, it's an awful idea and is obviously going to result in tons of awful PR.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
Another good reason not to give up the Garmin just yet is having two-way communication on your emergency beacon too. It's not really confirmed or known what Apple is offering here and if there will be any way to communicate with rescuers if you have to initiate a rescue. With Garmin devices you can text both ways and it has been shown in many rescues to be a huge advantage at getting the right search and rescue or other team to you faster--they can find out what the situation is and if they need to skip right to a helicopter rescue for example. If I were an avid hiker I wouldn't ditch the Garmin just yet (but hopefully in a year or two we'll see if Apple and others try to compete in the satellite rescue beacon world and offer comparable features).

remote_phone 4y ago

Cinematic mode for me is a bust. At 30 fps it was extremely choppy when I panned side to side, which makes it unusable. I was shocked at how bad it looked so I’m wondering how 24 fps can be any better.

AceJohnny2 4y ago

I continue to find the iPhone's "night" photos underwhelming compared to Google Pixel's (haven't tested other Android devices). Google seems to be doing a much better job at stacking or other Computational Photography tricks. Considering Apple's marketing focuses so much on the camera, and they have so much experience in the domain, I'm kind of shocked they continue to be so disappointing. Perhaps it's a style decision. (I certainly haven't tried playing with RAW, that's beyond my level of care.)

jeffbee 4y ago

At 48MP these things are starting to tread on the territory of the "super resolution" mode of my Olympus camera body. Of course, the top-of-the-lone iPhone is also larger than that camera body in 2 out of 4 relevant dimensions, and costs more. The new iPhones are so big and so expensive that the idea that I would rather carry one than a big expensive camera is starting to seem questionable. In fact, if I had a choice, I am quite sure I'd rather my camera with a cheap lens were stolen, rather than my iPhone.

asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago

I’ve been kinda unimpressed with the iPhone 13 mini camera coming from the pixel 6 pro. I like everything else about the iPhone better, but the camera seems substantially worse. I have to edit pictures quite a bit to fix color balance issues. Here’s a recent example: https://adobe.ly/3qEZRVx https://adobe.ly/3qEZRVx (Lightroom won’t let me share both my edit and the unedited original but the blueish picture was taken at almost the same time and had the same general look as the edited picture.) I’m not sure who would like the unedited version of the picture but I get weird color issues like this all the time on my mini. Here’s another one of my kid: https://adobe.ly/3UerPEY https://adobe.ly/3UerPEY For anyone who has a doubt, I testify that my kid is not red and those cliffs were not blue. Worst thing is it’s totally unpredictable when the issue is gonna crop up. It doesn’t happen in every picture. I don’t know what someone would do with a camera like this if they didn’t know how to edit to fix the colors.

shaklee3 4y ago
this is true. you can follow @dalevon_digital on Twitter and he frequently does slr/iPhone/pixel blind comparisons. the pixel has won every single one when compared to a reference SLR picture.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
  For what it’s worth, I’ll take my ILC photos over my p6pro every day. But I’ll take the p6 over the iPhone. I will check out that account though!
astrange 4y ago
Do believe that first one's blue because your finger's in it. The other one seems like a bug. Could always go complain about it.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 4y ago
  I understand why you might think my finger is the cause but there are other pictures from that day and that series that lack the finger and still have the blue cast.

EugeneOZ 4y ago

I’m in doubt if I should upgrade from 12 Pro Max. Please share your opinion. The main reason for the upgrade for me is a better camera. Is the difference noticeable between 12 Pro Max and 14 Pro?

ValentineC 4y ago

> Offloading photos/videos via Lightning cable is another story. I’ve had some serious pains trying to transfer content from my iPhone to my MacBook Pro. I’ve been on YouTube watching videos, unplugging, switching Lightning cables, restarting devices — doing all the things I can think of. I finally found a tip that said if you turn on Airplane mode, then Apple Photos will properly load, and thankfully it did. > These pains offloading media are not a new issue specific to the iPhone 14 Pro, and I really hope it is solved soon. I'm surprised that he didn't consider AirDrop as a means of getting photos out. That's how I transfer most of the photos I need to edit on my MacBook these days.

morpheuskafka 4y ago
When I worked at walk-in tech support at university, we weren't supposed to take responsibility for backing up data prior to drop-off and didn't have drives or anything for that purpose. Sometimes if the customer seemed like the type of person that wouldn't blame us (why that policy was there) and really had no way to get it off I would use one of our WinPE USB drives to copy their essential files. When they had a Mac, however, I would just AirDrop their entire home directory to the Mac loaner and show them how to do the same when it came back. It would go through 100GBs of files within a few minutes and didn't use any of our equipment other than the loaner itself. I don't think I've plugged an iPhone into my MacBook other than to charge on a trip since the last time I was into jailbreaking and was running checkra1n.
zionic 4y ago
AirDrop is 100x slower than the equivalent wired solution. I say this as someone transfering 350GB of media off their phone on friday, Apple needs to fix wired file access from mac to phone.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  Lightning is limited to 53 MB/s by the sheer virtue of being USB 2.0, and probably is even slower in real life, so AirDrop would be at maximum 0.5 MB/s?

Magi604 4y ago

I want to see how the camera stacks up against other phones from other makers in the same class. Dxomark does very thorough comparison tests. I will wait for their results.

gdubs 4y ago

Feels like the iPhone could use a micro SD card at this point. If I'm gonna use a phone as a cinema camera, shooting 4k and 48 MP stills I don't want to be clogging up my bandwidth uploading a ton of footage to iCloud when I'm probably going to cut it in Premiere or something on my desktop. My drone is like this — it has an internal hard drive, but it's way more flexible and convenient to shoot to its optional micro SD card.

iLoveOncall 4y ago
Never going to happen, it doesn't make Apple any money.

Technetium 4y ago

I don't think a sponsored review of a popular phone camera belongs here.

Havoc 4y ago

I found mrwhosetheboss youtube comparison against the Samsung S22 ultra helpful too. Very interesting how different the approaches are despite both being aimed at top end