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I am still not understanding why my iPhone 13 landscape photos look as good as those from my $900 Nikkor Z 24mm f/1.8 S prime lens with its superior optics on

I am still not understanding why my iPhone 13 landscape photos look as good as those from my $900 Nikkor Z 24mm f/1.8 S prime lens with its superior optics on a $2k DSLR body. If the reason is fancy post-processing, then why can't Nikon have a tiny lens like the iPhone 13 and just add fancy post-processing to it?

pb7 4y ago
Do they look the same when zoomed in/at 100% zoom? Phone photos look great on small screens but show weaknesses on desktop.
- pcurve 4y ago
  Yep. Dslr and large sensors count when it comes to making every pixel count without introducing artifacts
- astrange 4y ago
  It's rarely the case that you want to look at a camera or a phone photo at 100% zoom unless you're cropping a smaller image out of a larger one. Of course, sometimes it's useful for things like reading text, but that's limited by the lens and focus abilities as much as the sensor resolution. You'd be surprised how little megapixels are just fine for putting up on a wall or billboard. It's all about how far away the viewer is.
foldr 4y ago
I wouldn't necessarily assume that the optics are superior. Smartphone lenses are pretty sophisticated. Also, their smaller size and far greater production numbers open up manufacturing techniques that wouldn't be practical for DSLR lenses. Edit: Apologies for commenting on downvotes, but I'd be genuinely curious to see some objective evidence that the optics of a typical DSLR lens have a superior design. Of course it is true that larger lenses for larger sensors tend to be superior because they do not need to resolve as many lines per mm and they do not need to be machined as precisely (all else being equal). But does anyone know of any actual lab tests that make relevant comparisons? I am a bit tired of people just assuming that DLSR lenses are higher quality than smartphone lenses, even though the cost of modern smartphones, and the enormous disparity in the number of units sold, makes it far from obvious that this should be the case.
- pb7 4y ago
  I didn't downvote but I imagine at least someone did because the laws of physics dictate that smaller lenses/sensors can't capture as much light as bigger ones of similar quality. This is why cameras have started trending to be larger rather than smaller. Only so much you can do software-wise before you hit physical limitations.
  - foldr 4y ago
    >the laws of physics dictate that smaller lenses/sensors can't capture as much light as bigger ones of similar quality. This is not really true to a very great extent once you take depth of field into account. At least, it would be helpful if you could indicate what it is exactly that you take the laws of physics to imply in this context. I made a comment here that's relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540 I took 'superior optics' to be a claim of greater sophistication or higher quality, but perhaps that is not what was meant, and the poster was merely referring to the difference in size.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      If the size of the lens wasn't important, we wouldn't have built a 100" mirror on Mt. Wilson followed by a 200" mirror at Palomar Observatory. A 14mm wide-angle lens with a primary opening of 2mm is never going to let in the same amount of light as a 14mm wide-angle with a 114mm primary opening will. Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens. There are some adapters that are known as speed boosters that reduce the exit pupil for full frame lenses that will actually add a stop to the lens.
      - foldr 4y ago
        >Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens. I'm aware of that – that's the point I made in my post that I linked. But DoF considerations entail that you can't just keep arbitrarily increasing the size of the opening.
323 4y ago
For the same reason you can't upload to Instagram from your $2k camera - they know how to make hardware. But the idea of enhancing filters or social media features is completely alien to them.
shishy 4y ago
I doubt those iphone photos look the exact same as the nikon ones on a large display (i.e. anything bigger than an iphone...) It has not been the case for me.
fassssst 4y ago
Just shoot your mirrorless in RAW and process them later. Lightroom gives great results, but you can also use Apple Photos to get similar color processing as your iPhone photos. The mirrorless photos will look much better on a laptop or bigger screen but about the same on a phone.
- sys32768 4y ago
  Thanks for the tip on Apple Photos. Had not tried that.
  - fassssst 4y ago
    My other favorite is the Really Nice Images plugin for Lightroom. Very pleasing results on my Nikon Z6 RAW files--better to me than Apple's iPhone processing--by essentially just clicking the filter you want and adjusting a strength slider.
sudosysgen 4y ago
What settings are you shooting? How do you edit your images?
- sys32768 4y ago
  On my Z5 I can use the built-in Landscape mode, and on the Z6 I can use auto or manual. Autocorrect RAW in Adobe Photoshop looks good. And certainly on a 4k monitor the DSLR images reveal more detail. My post here has me realizing I need to take iPhone and DSLR shots side-by-side in the same place with the same lighting and begin to compare them in-camera and in post-processing.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    What aperture are you shooting at? You probably already know it, but for landscapes you'd be looking at f/5.6 or so unless you're hurting for light. Popular notion is that at f/11 only will diffraction start to affect you, but with modern high resolution cameras diffraction starts to creep in as early as f/9, so f/5.6 is generally best unless you really need the deeper field. You're probably going to be fine at 24MP, though.
  - emkoemko 4y ago
    "What aperture are you shooting at? You probably already know it, but for landscapes you'd be looking at f/5.6 or so unless you're hurting for light." this is bad advice.... shoot on a tripod and set your f stop to get the DOF you need or do a focus stack, f/5.6 would work if your shooting a distant landscape but having anything in the foreground f5.6 would not be enough, i usually stay at around F10 any higher i don't like because diffraction starts to reduce image quality and if i need more DOF i just focus stack for ISO set it to 100 or what ever your cameras base ISO is then adjust your shutter speed until you get correct exposure
    - sudosysgen 4y ago
      If you are using an APS-C camera or a FF above 30MP, at f/10 you are already suffering from diffraction. You really want to be between f/5.6 and f/8. Of course, composition is still the most important thing, so if you need the depth of field you need the depth field. As for the exposure you can just use aperture priority with your ISO set to the base ISO. On a Nikon camera you'd actually want to be at 64. If the scene doesn't have challenging highlights then going under the base ISO or overexposing will provide even better results.
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GoToRO 4y ago
Good looking != captures reality. iPhones apply filters to make the photos look more vivid and to make them "ready to share". If a professional camera would do that, it would not be professional.
- astrange 4y ago
  It doesn’t do that unless you turn on vivid photographic styles. It’s tuned pretty much like a dedicated camera. This does annoy many people who then switch to Snow/BeautyCam to actually take their pictures since they want to look prettier.
  - GoToRO 4y ago
    By default, the pictures they take have nothing to do with reality. You can check it yourself by comparing the picture on the screen with the scene you pictured. Try it with some clouds f.e. This was my experience.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      Every camera does that to a degree pretty much by definition. I don’t think iphones would fair worth to their adherence to reaity than a “proper” camera does on auto.
    - pyfork 4y ago
      I dn, all the pictures of my friends and family and dog look pretty close to reality. I'm not sure I care if a cloud is slightly different, to be honest.
    - astrange 4y ago
      I think there is some sky recoloring, but eh, that's how camera AWB always works. Dedicated cameras try to make everything noon daylight if you leave them in auto mode; there are manual mode phone apps for this just like there's manual controls on the camera. There seems to be an assumption here that dedicated cameras* always shoot in raws you can spend your time editing later, but that's not the case. If I shoot a concert or wedding and want to return the photos the next day, and in-camera JPEG or HEIF looks good, I'm shooting that. * you can't make me say "DSLR", they aren't all DSLRs
sfmike 4y ago
Apple and photography processing at this point is like TSMC and chips. They probably have a great deal of algorithmic knowhow that is in house and they're doing things that no one else is quite getting close to at any of the big camera brands. Maybe just Pixel phones have some clue in's on some of the post processing hacks. I'd guess in the dark ex apple helped consult.
asciimov 4y ago
Targeted audience doesn't demand the feature. If a users needs are being met by an iPhone then they shouldn't worry about dslrs. If a users needs aren't being met by the dslr gotta wonder is it the technology or the skill of the user?
- dylan604 4y ago
  The best rule I've learned is that the best camera you have is the one you have with you right now. Doesn't matter if you have a $2k+ camera body with a $5k lens sitting at home while you look at the photo op in front of you so you've used your mobile device instead. You at least have the picture that unless you've really messed it up, is better than no picture.
adrr 4y ago
Never got why camera manufactures never followed the phones. Like Live photo,and automatic hdr. Can we get rid of the shutter?
- emkoemko 4y ago
  i am glad they don't but in any case what is live photo? automatic HDR? well shoot a bracket +- certain EV ? get rid of the shutter? would need a global shutter unless you like rolling shutter look, phone sensors are tiny they can have fast enough readout vs a 35mm or larger
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  > Can we get rid of the shutter? That's a challenge, I think. Take an R5 (only because I'm most familiar with it). 47 megapixels, 12 bpp 211.5MB, maximum shutter speed of 1/8000. In other words, you need to be able to pull data off the sensor (and to be clear, there's parallelization available, I just don't know what) at a global rate of 1.6TB/s.
  - adrr 4y ago
    They have global shutter sensors around the 12 megapixel level. They could split the sensor up into different processing paths. Do these 200 megapixel phone camera sensors have really bad rolling sensor issues? They are using electronic rolling shutters like your R5 when in silent mode or whatever canon calls it now.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - FireBeyond 4y ago
      What 200 mp phone camera sensors? The iPhone 14 is closer to a 12MP digital camera (quad bayer 48 million sensors). And from what I recall, 8 or maybe 10 bit. So in comparison to the 211MB of sensor data coming off the R5, there's 36 to 45MB of data coming off the phone camera. And I believe the 14's max shutter speed is 1/1000, so there's up to 35 times less data needing to be read off the sensor (45GB/s versus 1.6TB/s) And I'm sure there is multiple processing paths - I just don't know the fine details about how that raw data is slurped off the sensor.
majormajor 4y ago
Mine don't (iPhone 13 Pro Max, Fuji XT-2 and various lenses). They do in daylight, sure, but things like sunrise/sunset or unusual colors throw them off like crazy. Textures can also throw them off - "amplification" of the texture effect, almost. They also suffer a bit zoomed in. The post-processing fixes a lot of problems of older phone cameras but it has its limits. On good camera hardware there's very little that all that post-processing would add outside of extreme-high-ISO-noise, IMO. Which - would it be nice? Sure. But you can find software and stack exposures manually and such for those situations too. And a lot of the other smart stuff gets fooled too easily.
- sys32768 4y ago
  This is true. I should have added "in good light". The DSLR images also retain much more detail in cropping.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    And even moderate optical telephoto lenses are pretty powerful tools as well—especially in poorer light.
- dylan604 4y ago
  I hate when you get one of those amazing sunsets where the whole sky changes color, but the phone auto-correct removes/corrects the color tone.
  - qbasic_forever 4y ago
    You can shoot in raw on iphones now to prevent this or fix it later.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      Thanks, but now doesn't do me any good then
      - 4y ago
sp332 4y ago
I think Nikkor assumes that you would use software to do the post processing. It gives you something a lot closer to what's coming from the sensor, so you can choose which $XXX image editing suite you want to run it through. The iPhone knows the vast majority of people won't do that with their photos, so they can go all-out, but you're stuck with their specific result baked in to your photo.
- alfiedotwtf 4y ago
  Sorry, I'm a photo-noob. What type of post-processing is the iPhone doing that professional would do themselves with RAW? Looking at RawTherapee, it looks like colour profiling. What other operations do people do?
  - sp332 4y ago
    I think correcting for lens distortion is the main thing that wasn't already mentioned in the article. Regular cameras can't do that, but the iPhone knows exactly what lens is being used and can take advantage of that.
  - bzzzt 4y ago
    The iPhone does a lot of stuff: - correcting for lens distortion - automatically setting white balance - optimizing color and contrast - blending multiple exposures when it's dark and has some advanced denoising tricks (which sometimes gives photo's a bit of an 'oil painting' look) - sharpening to get that 'crisp' look (even if your lens is not that sharp)
- theturtletalks 4y ago
  Apple has always been about making the choice for it’s users. Jobs always thought giving users too many options was problematic.
  - lemonberry 4y ago
    While in training at my first restaurant job I asked a party where they would like to sit in the dining room. The owner pulled me aside and said to never give people a choice. They'll get confused and think that there's a "best" table and that their dinner could suffer if they feel like they didn't get it. I don't know if it's "real" or not but between work and my personal life I've got decision fatigue. Help make decisions. Especially about non-important ones that feel important at the time.
stavros 4y ago
Try photographing at night with short exposures.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I’ve never seen SLR’s do this very well either.
  - stavros 4y ago
    And yet they do it much better than phones.
kybernetyk 4y ago
The Nikon does minimal post processing. The iPhone throws a metric shit ton of algorithms at the image data to make it passable. For normal people the iPhone output is good enough - though it often looks very over-processed. Nikon just expects you to handle that post processing part that your iPhone is doing for you. In exchange you get way more control over the final image. Both devices are aimed at different people. I myself have an iPhone 13 pro and a Nikon Z6ii. I tend to take snapshots with my iPhone because getting out the Nikon + playing around with sliders in Capture One is just too much hassle for a snapshot. Now would I take the iPhone and do a landscape photo where I hiked 6 hours to the photo location at 3 a.m. in the morning? Probably not. ;)
- maxgashkov 4y ago
  I wouldn’t have gone on the hiking trip if I had to lug fullsize camera with me ;)
  - ethbr0 4y ago
    ^ Obviously not Les Stroud
andrewia 4y ago
I think it's processing power and engineering effort. I got a Sony RX100M2 for my mom and it has the same computational photography techniques that Google released the following year (https://ai.googleblog.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dynamic-range.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dyn...). But Sony's image stacking is only in "Superior Auto" mode, and is only used when necessary. Google's implementation does a lot of advanced work, including selecting and blending parts of the photo depending on motion, that Sony doesn't do. I assume Sony's imaging engineers have less expertise in advanced processing, and didn't have the resources to implement the features that Google did. Sony also has to devote engineering resources to other features - a lot of their sales are to photographers that will edit in post (RAW), and later, videographers. So features that are only in "auto" mode may have limited budget.
jsmith99 4y ago
The Nikon photos will be under sharpened because it's so easy to apply sharpening in post, and the amount of sharpening is very dependent on the size and format of your desired output. Also, in ideal conditions (medium sized, evenly and brightly lit, static subject a moderate distance away) practically all cameras will give good results: try comparing in less ideal circumstances like a darkish area indoors.
packetlost 4y ago
Try zooming in, even a little bit. You'll notice squiggly oversharpening artifacts pretty quickly. Yes they probably look fine on a phone screen, but blow them up at all and they start to show their weaknesses
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  The oversharpening on the iphone is so frustrating! I like the utility of the basic camera app, but the pictures look so weird. I guess I should explore alternative apps.
reedf1 4y ago
It really won't beat modern fast lenses. Try a lowlight situation. You will not be able to beat a larger aperture for light collection, it's simply how many photons you can catch.
qbasic_forever 4y ago
A landscape photo is the easiest thing for any camera to capture. Focus is at infinity and no depth of field means the lens can be literally a greasy pinhole and still get sharp shots. You're probably taking photos in direct sunlight so again the camera has to do very little work and is flooded with light. Try taking a portrait photo in iffy lighting, like at a concert, wedding, sporting event, etc. Something that really needs a fast and sharp lens.
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  Exactly, landscape photos on phones and pocket cameras ten years ago looked comparable to a DSLR. Just lower res.
TedShiller 4y ago
iPhone 13 photos will look just as good as a Nikon photo on your iPhone. As soon as you view the iPhone photos on a monitor or print them out, everything falls apart. iPhone photos are excellent as long as viewers are only seeing them on iPhones.
- astrange 4y ago
  iPhone photos will look better than a Nikon photo on your phone, because nothing except iPhone can take HDR still photos that display in HDR. They can only do video. "HDR stacking" apps are actually "SDR tone mapping" apps; they /start/ with an HDR result and make it not HDR anymore!
MurrayHill1980 4y ago
Because deep down, it's not what they do. They are optics and camera hardware companies. In the race between physics and software, they are on the physics side. This is evident in the entire user experience. They keep missing the boat with the way people actually use photography today, and don't even seem to care much. There's not much evidence they have the kind of research expertise that Apple, Google or Adobe built in signal processing and image processing, either. See also https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-2017-news/february-2017-nikon-news/a-plan-for-nikon.html https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201... and https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-2017-news/september-2017-nikon-news/dumb-things-the-camera.html https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201...
- hef19898 4y ago
  The purpose is completely different. Camera makers put the processing power between the sensor and whatever RAW fioes their cameras create. For people that do their own post-processing. Phone makers put the processng power at the post processing of photos, for people who never do their own post processing. Both approaches are equally valid, they simply aim at different markets. And as far as softeare vs. physics goes, no amount of software and processing power can overcome the laws of optics.
paxys 4y ago
Because Nikon's target audience (photographers) don't want that "fancy post-processing" done by their camera.
berkut 4y ago
Do the jpegs (or hief?) look as good on a 27-inch monitor, or just on the phone screen? Capturing non-raw in my experience (iPhone 6S, now have 13 mini) the jpegs are heavily de-noised, and really don't look that good 1:1 on a large monitor: on the iphone screen they look very good, as they're downsampled. The article mentions the 'watercolor' effect since the iPhone 8, but I definitely had the issue with all the jpegs taken on my iPhone 6S since 2015... DNGs however DO look very good, so clearly the sensor is capable of pretty nice images.
saiya-jin 4y ago
Obviously you don't look at close detail on computer, which is very strange for seemingly such a power photo user. Phones these days are good but not yet that good if you don't do some beginner mistakes with camera. Maybe Pixel 7 pro based on samples I saw, but definitely not ie iphone 13 pro max. What people often mean by similar statements is they like default phone processing compared to 0 in the camera, and there is enough detail due to tons of light and due to landscapes being generally easiest scene to shoot. As for why they are not comparable, also a very strange question from seemingly experienced photo shooter - compare software development department and budget in Apple vs Nikon, who is a tiny player we all love (have D750 since it came out and carried it everywhere up to 6000m), they use very specialized CPUs which are very good for 1 thing only (basic operations on raw sensor data and potential jpeg transformation), and various ML and stacking transformations aren't simply available there at performance required. The whole construction of camera and processing hardware isn't around snapping 30 pics and combining them together under 1s, pre-taking pictures before actually hitting shutter etc.
m463 4y ago
I've noticed it's getting easier and easier to take photos with the SUN in the frame than when digital sensors first came out.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
Well, put bluntly, the reason is that you probably are not using the Nikon properly. So, your photos are not coming out that great or as you hoped. Don't take this personally, I also have my limitations using cameras properly. But I understand I'm an amateur when it comes to this and that I'm part of the problem. I try to learn to do better. I try, and sometimes it works out nicely and I get a really nice shot. Landscape photography is tough to get right. You really need to understand your camera and lenses to make that work. The point of such a camera is not the in camera processing, which most pro users would not use on principle. Instead it's gaining a lot of control over setting up the shot properly with a lot of control over all the parameters that matter to achieve a look that matches what you want, intentionally. And then you finish the job in post processing. There's reason these things have so many buttons and dials: you need to use them to get the most out of the camera. And the point of owning such a camera is having that level of control. The flip side is that that makes you responsible for the intelligence. That kind of is the whole point. If that's not what you wanted, you bought the wrong camera. The iphone has a very limited set of controls. You actually have very little control over it. Nice if that's what you want and the AI is awesome. But it's also a bit limiting if you want more. Of course it's very nice when that's the camera you have and you want to take a shot quickly by just pointing and clicking. Nothing wrong with that. I have a Pixel 6 and a Fuji X-T30. I use them both but not the same way.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  > Well, put bluntly, the reason is that you probably are not using the Nikon properly. Probably one of the biggest mistakes people make: not understanding at what aperture their lens is sharpest - typically stopping the lens down too much. Other mistakes: not using a fast enough shutter speed to eliminate blurring from mirror slap (or using anti-mirror-slap features in their camera), not using a sufficiently sturdy tripod and mount, and so on. Also, sometimes lenses just don't leave the factory in very good shape. If you struggle to get sharp results, it may be beneficial to send it in for service. The stuff sent around to reviewers has been obsessed over by the manufacturer, perfectly tweaked on a lens testing bench to get it as close to perfect as they can.
JALTU 4y ago
Nikon and Canon and all the other camera companies, Japanese, German, or otherwise, are not software companies and have a pretty awful track record for even the basic software in their camera interfaces. Post processing is something they could not or would not get involved in. Apple ate their lunches and then some. While I'm an old-school photographer who thinks a great SLR camera is the photographic equivalent of driving a Porsche, I don't miss carrying pounds of gear around. (OTOH I HATE the Ux of iPhones for photography.) I digress. The camera biz is a classic biz school study in humans being human.
pkulak 4y ago
I guess if you like that look. I don't; not really. The photos from my phone are fine. If taken in really good light, they are actually pretty good. But they are always processed to within an inch of their lives.
xdfgh1112 4y ago
Because landscape photos are easy. No bokeh, no depth of field (everything at infinity), good lighting, no need for fast shutter speed or a big sensor. Your images will be sharper I guess, but that's not worth $2k in most cases.
- astrange 4y ago
  If you take a lot of landscapes I think that's actually when you do want the big sensor. Which, remember, is not a 35mm full-frame DSLR either! Instead it might be a 4x5 large format camera like Ansel Adams used. (Which requires a lot of patience, but an old one would be cheaper than a new camera. Though renting is always an option.)
  - shrx 4y ago
    The ratio of sensor areas between full frame (864 mm²) and for example iphone 13 pro max "wide" (main) camera sensor (44 mm²) is actually larger than the ratio between a 4x5 large format film plate (12903 mm²) and a full frame sensor. edit: changed "sensor sizes" to "sensor areas" for clarity.
- nihilius 4y ago
  Looks like you never took a lanscape photo where you had to use a (Gradiant) ND, Polarisation Filter, Multiple Exposures, Long Exposures for smooth Water or anything where you had to hink about how to take the perfect shot. So yes for a quick snapshot a phone is good enough. For a photograph a bigger camera is much more benefical than "just" for sharper images.
  - xdfgh1112 4y ago
    I have done all of those when I owned a DSLR. Phones have been able to do smooth water and multiple exposures for years though...
ska 4y ago
This is probably the wrong way to think of it. Especially at screen sizes, there are certain photos your iphone 13 can take that are comparable to what you would get with your nikon gear. However there are photos you can get with that 1.8 that won't work at all on your phone.
ulfw 4y ago
There is no way they do. First of all you don't have a DSLR, but a mirorrless (Nikon Z) series. But nevermind, that's just nitpicking. Likely a Z6 from the price point you mentioned. It has 24 MP (instead of iPhone 13's 12MP) and a much much higher dynamic range (more than 11 steps vs an iPhone's about 8). So unless you don't know what you're doing the Nikon is a way better camera (as it should be. It ways 5x as much with lens)
theshrike79 4y ago
Because landscapes are easy. The subject isn't moving, you aren't in a hurry and the phone has all the time in the world to gather enough data for a photo. Same goes for posed portraits, the phone has time to use it's processing power to make the image look amazing. Now try to do sports photography with a mobile phone. The first problem is lack of zoom compared to a 200mm lens. The second issue is trying to get the 1/8000 exposure you need on a rainy football field you need to stop the action for a good photo.

pb7 4y ago

Do they look the same when zoomed in/at 100% zoom? Phone photos look great on small screens but show weaknesses on desktop.

pcurve 4y ago
Yep. Dslr and large sensors count when it comes to making every pixel count without introducing artifacts
astrange 4y ago
It's rarely the case that you want to look at a camera or a phone photo at 100% zoom unless you're cropping a smaller image out of a larger one. Of course, sometimes it's useful for things like reading text, but that's limited by the lens and focus abilities as much as the sensor resolution. You'd be surprised how little megapixels are just fine for putting up on a wall or billboard. It's all about how far away the viewer is.

foldr 4y ago

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the optics are superior. Smartphone lenses are pretty sophisticated. Also, their smaller size and far greater production numbers open up manufacturing techniques that wouldn't be practical for DSLR lenses. Edit: Apologies for commenting on downvotes, but I'd be genuinely curious to see some objective evidence that the optics of a typical DSLR lens have a superior design. Of course it is true that larger lenses for larger sensors tend to be superior because they do not need to resolve as many lines per mm and they do not need to be machined as precisely (all else being equal). But does anyone know of any actual lab tests that make relevant comparisons? I am a bit tired of people just assuming that DLSR lenses are higher quality than smartphone lenses, even though the cost of modern smartphones, and the enormous disparity in the number of units sold, makes it far from obvious that this should be the case.

pb7 4y ago
I didn't downvote but I imagine at least someone did because the laws of physics dictate that smaller lenses/sensors can't capture as much light as bigger ones of similar quality. This is why cameras have started trending to be larger rather than smaller. Only so much you can do software-wise before you hit physical limitations.
- foldr 4y ago
  >the laws of physics dictate that smaller lenses/sensors can't capture as much light as bigger ones of similar quality. This is not really true to a very great extent once you take depth of field into account. At least, it would be helpful if you could indicate what it is exactly that you take the laws of physics to imply in this context. I made a comment here that's relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540 I took 'superior optics' to be a claim of greater sophistication or higher quality, but perhaps that is not what was meant, and the poster was merely referring to the difference in size.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    If the size of the lens wasn't important, we wouldn't have built a 100" mirror on Mt. Wilson followed by a 200" mirror at Palomar Observatory. A 14mm wide-angle lens with a primary opening of 2mm is never going to let in the same amount of light as a 14mm wide-angle with a 114mm primary opening will. Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens. There are some adapters that are known as speed boosters that reduce the exit pupil for full frame lenses that will actually add a stop to the lens.
    - foldr 4y ago
      >Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens. I'm aware of that – that's the point I made in my post that I linked. But DoF considerations entail that you can't just keep arbitrarily increasing the size of the opening.

323 4y ago

For the same reason you can't upload to Instagram from your $2k camera - they know how to make hardware. But the idea of enhancing filters or social media features is completely alien to them.

shishy 4y ago

I doubt those iphone photos look the exact same as the nikon ones on a large display (i.e. anything bigger than an iphone...) It has not been the case for me.

fassssst 4y ago

Just shoot your mirrorless in RAW and process them later. Lightroom gives great results, but you can also use Apple Photos to get similar color processing as your iPhone photos. The mirrorless photos will look much better on a laptop or bigger screen but about the same on a phone.

sys32768 4y ago
Thanks for the tip on Apple Photos. Had not tried that.
- fassssst 4y ago
  My other favorite is the Really Nice Images plugin for Lightroom. Very pleasing results on my Nikon Z6 RAW files--better to me than Apple's iPhone processing--by essentially just clicking the filter you want and adjusting a strength slider.

sudosysgen 4y ago

What settings are you shooting? How do you edit your images?

sys32768 4y ago
On my Z5 I can use the built-in Landscape mode, and on the Z6 I can use auto or manual. Autocorrect RAW in Adobe Photoshop looks good. And certainly on a 4k monitor the DSLR images reveal more detail. My post here has me realizing I need to take iPhone and DSLR shots side-by-side in the same place with the same lighting and begin to compare them in-camera and in post-processing.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  What aperture are you shooting at? You probably already know it, but for landscapes you'd be looking at f/5.6 or so unless you're hurting for light. Popular notion is that at f/11 only will diffraction start to affect you, but with modern high resolution cameras diffraction starts to creep in as early as f/9, so f/5.6 is generally best unless you really need the deeper field. You're probably going to be fine at 24MP, though.
- emkoemko 4y ago
  "What aperture are you shooting at? You probably already know it, but for landscapes you'd be looking at f/5.6 or so unless you're hurting for light." this is bad advice.... shoot on a tripod and set your f stop to get the DOF you need or do a focus stack, f/5.6 would work if your shooting a distant landscape but having anything in the foreground f5.6 would not be enough, i usually stay at around F10 any higher i don't like because diffraction starts to reduce image quality and if i need more DOF i just focus stack for ISO set it to 100 or what ever your cameras base ISO is then adjust your shutter speed until you get correct exposure
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    If you are using an APS-C camera or a FF above 30MP, at f/10 you are already suffering from diffraction. You really want to be between f/5.6 and f/8. Of course, composition is still the most important thing, so if you need the depth of field you need the depth field. As for the exposure you can just use aperture priority with your ISO set to the base ISO. On a Nikon camera you'd actually want to be at 64. If the scene doesn't have challenging highlights then going under the base ISO or overexposing will provide even better results.

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GoToRO 4y ago

Good looking != captures reality. iPhones apply filters to make the photos look more vivid and to make them "ready to share". If a professional camera would do that, it would not be professional.

astrange 4y ago
It doesn’t do that unless you turn on vivid photographic styles. It’s tuned pretty much like a dedicated camera. This does annoy many people who then switch to Snow/BeautyCam to actually take their pictures since they want to look prettier.
- GoToRO 4y ago
  By default, the pictures they take have nothing to do with reality. You can check it yourself by comparing the picture on the screen with the scene you pictured. Try it with some clouds f.e. This was my experience.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    Every camera does that to a degree pretty much by definition. I don’t think iphones would fair worth to their adherence to reaity than a “proper” camera does on auto.
  - pyfork 4y ago
    I dn, all the pictures of my friends and family and dog look pretty close to reality. I'm not sure I care if a cloud is slightly different, to be honest.
  - astrange 4y ago
    I think there is some sky recoloring, but eh, that's how camera AWB always works. Dedicated cameras try to make everything noon daylight if you leave them in auto mode; there are manual mode phone apps for this just like there's manual controls on the camera. There seems to be an assumption here that dedicated cameras* always shoot in raws you can spend your time editing later, but that's not the case. If I shoot a concert or wedding and want to return the photos the next day, and in-camera JPEG or HEIF looks good, I'm shooting that. * you can't make me say "DSLR", they aren't all DSLRs

sfmike 4y ago

Apple and photography processing at this point is like TSMC and chips. They probably have a great deal of algorithmic knowhow that is in house and they're doing things that no one else is quite getting close to at any of the big camera brands. Maybe just Pixel phones have some clue in's on some of the post processing hacks. I'd guess in the dark ex apple helped consult.

asciimov 4y ago

Targeted audience doesn't demand the feature. If a users needs are being met by an iPhone then they shouldn't worry about dslrs. If a users needs aren't being met by the dslr gotta wonder is it the technology or the skill of the user?

dylan604 4y ago
The best rule I've learned is that the best camera you have is the one you have with you right now. Doesn't matter if you have a $2k+ camera body with a $5k lens sitting at home while you look at the photo op in front of you so you've used your mobile device instead. You at least have the picture that unless you've really messed it up, is better than no picture.

adrr 4y ago

Never got why camera manufactures never followed the phones. Like Live photo,and automatic hdr. Can we get rid of the shutter?

emkoemko 4y ago
i am glad they don't but in any case what is live photo? automatic HDR? well shoot a bracket +- certain EV ? get rid of the shutter? would need a global shutter unless you like rolling shutter look, phone sensors are tiny they can have fast enough readout vs a 35mm or larger
FireBeyond 4y ago
> Can we get rid of the shutter? That's a challenge, I think. Take an R5 (only because I'm most familiar with it). 47 megapixels, 12 bpp 211.5MB, maximum shutter speed of 1/8000. In other words, you need to be able to pull data off the sensor (and to be clear, there's parallelization available, I just don't know what) at a global rate of 1.6TB/s.
- adrr 4y ago
  They have global shutter sensors around the 12 megapixel level. They could split the sensor up into different processing paths. Do these 200 megapixel phone camera sensors have really bad rolling sensor issues? They are using electronic rolling shutters like your R5 when in silent mode or whatever canon calls it now.
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  - FireBeyond 4y ago
    What 200 mp phone camera sensors? The iPhone 14 is closer to a 12MP digital camera (quad bayer 48 million sensors). And from what I recall, 8 or maybe 10 bit. So in comparison to the 211MB of sensor data coming off the R5, there's 36 to 45MB of data coming off the phone camera. And I believe the 14's max shutter speed is 1/1000, so there's up to 35 times less data needing to be read off the sensor (45GB/s versus 1.6TB/s) And I'm sure there is multiple processing paths - I just don't know the fine details about how that raw data is slurped off the sensor.

majormajor 4y ago

Mine don't (iPhone 13 Pro Max, Fuji XT-2 and various lenses). They do in daylight, sure, but things like sunrise/sunset or unusual colors throw them off like crazy. Textures can also throw them off - "amplification" of the texture effect, almost. They also suffer a bit zoomed in. The post-processing fixes a lot of problems of older phone cameras but it has its limits. On good camera hardware there's very little that all that post-processing would add outside of extreme-high-ISO-noise, IMO. Which - would it be nice? Sure. But you can find software and stack exposures manually and such for those situations too. And a lot of the other smart stuff gets fooled too easily.

sys32768 4y ago
This is true. I should have added "in good light". The DSLR images also retain much more detail in cropping.
- ghaff 4y ago
  And even moderate optical telephoto lenses are pretty powerful tools as well—especially in poorer light.
dylan604 4y ago
I hate when you get one of those amazing sunsets where the whole sky changes color, but the phone auto-correct removes/corrects the color tone.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  You can shoot in raw on iphones now to prevent this or fix it later.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Thanks, but now doesn't do me any good then
    - 4y ago

sp332 4y ago

I think Nikkor assumes that you would use software to do the post processing. It gives you something a lot closer to what's coming from the sensor, so you can choose which $XXX image editing suite you want to run it through. The iPhone knows the vast majority of people won't do that with their photos, so they can go all-out, but you're stuck with their specific result baked in to your photo.

alfiedotwtf 4y ago
Sorry, I'm a photo-noob. What type of post-processing is the iPhone doing that professional would do themselves with RAW? Looking at RawTherapee, it looks like colour profiling. What other operations do people do?
- sp332 4y ago
  I think correcting for lens distortion is the main thing that wasn't already mentioned in the article. Regular cameras can't do that, but the iPhone knows exactly what lens is being used and can take advantage of that.
- bzzzt 4y ago
  The iPhone does a lot of stuff: - correcting for lens distortion - automatically setting white balance - optimizing color and contrast - blending multiple exposures when it's dark and has some advanced denoising tricks (which sometimes gives photo's a bit of an 'oil painting' look) - sharpening to get that 'crisp' look (even if your lens is not that sharp)
theturtletalks 4y ago
Apple has always been about making the choice for it’s users. Jobs always thought giving users too many options was problematic.
- lemonberry 4y ago
  While in training at my first restaurant job I asked a party where they would like to sit in the dining room. The owner pulled me aside and said to never give people a choice. They'll get confused and think that there's a "best" table and that their dinner could suffer if they feel like they didn't get it. I don't know if it's "real" or not but between work and my personal life I've got decision fatigue. Help make decisions. Especially about non-important ones that feel important at the time.

stavros 4y ago

Try photographing at night with short exposures.

Aeolun 4y ago
I’ve never seen SLR’s do this very well either.
- stavros 4y ago
  And yet they do it much better than phones.

kybernetyk 4y ago

The Nikon does minimal post processing. The iPhone throws a metric shit ton of algorithms at the image data to make it passable. For normal people the iPhone output is good enough - though it often looks very over-processed. Nikon just expects you to handle that post processing part that your iPhone is doing for you. In exchange you get way more control over the final image. Both devices are aimed at different people. I myself have an iPhone 13 pro and a Nikon Z6ii. I tend to take snapshots with my iPhone because getting out the Nikon + playing around with sliders in Capture One is just too much hassle for a snapshot. Now would I take the iPhone and do a landscape photo where I hiked 6 hours to the photo location at 3 a.m. in the morning? Probably not. ;)

maxgashkov 4y ago
I wouldn’t have gone on the hiking trip if I had to lug fullsize camera with me ;)
- ethbr0 4y ago
  ^ Obviously not Les Stroud

andrewia 4y ago

I think it's processing power and engineering effort. I got a Sony RX100M2 for my mom and it has the same computational photography techniques that Google released the following year (https://ai.googleblog.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dynamic-range.html https://ai.googleblog.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dyn...). But Sony's image stacking is only in "Superior Auto" mode, and is only used when necessary. Google's implementation does a lot of advanced work, including selecting and blending parts of the photo depending on motion, that Sony doesn't do. I assume Sony's imaging engineers have less expertise in advanced processing, and didn't have the resources to implement the features that Google did. Sony also has to devote engineering resources to other features - a lot of their sales are to photographers that will edit in post (RAW), and later, videographers. So features that are only in "auto" mode may have limited budget.

jsmith99 4y ago

The Nikon photos will be under sharpened because it's so easy to apply sharpening in post, and the amount of sharpening is very dependent on the size and format of your desired output. Also, in ideal conditions (medium sized, evenly and brightly lit, static subject a moderate distance away) practically all cameras will give good results: try comparing in less ideal circumstances like a darkish area indoors.

packetlost 4y ago

Try zooming in, even a little bit. You'll notice squiggly oversharpening artifacts pretty quickly. Yes they probably look fine on a phone screen, but blow them up at all and they start to show their weaknesses

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
The oversharpening on the iphone is so frustrating! I like the utility of the basic camera app, but the pictures look so weird. I guess I should explore alternative apps.

reedf1 4y ago

It really won't beat modern fast lenses. Try a lowlight situation. You will not be able to beat a larger aperture for light collection, it's simply how many photons you can catch.

qbasic_forever 4y ago

A landscape photo is the easiest thing for any camera to capture. Focus is at infinity and no depth of field means the lens can be literally a greasy pinhole and still get sharp shots. You're probably taking photos in direct sunlight so again the camera has to do very little work and is flooded with light. Try taking a portrait photo in iffy lighting, like at a concert, wedding, sporting event, etc. Something that really needs a fast and sharp lens.

xdfgh1112 4y ago
Exactly, landscape photos on phones and pocket cameras ten years ago looked comparable to a DSLR. Just lower res.

TedShiller 4y ago

iPhone 13 photos will look just as good as a Nikon photo on your iPhone. As soon as you view the iPhone photos on a monitor or print them out, everything falls apart. iPhone photos are excellent as long as viewers are only seeing them on iPhones.

astrange 4y ago
iPhone photos will look better than a Nikon photo on your phone, because nothing except iPhone can take HDR still photos that display in HDR. They can only do video. "HDR stacking" apps are actually "SDR tone mapping" apps; they /start/ with an HDR result and make it not HDR anymore!

MurrayHill1980 4y ago

Because deep down, it's not what they do. They are optics and camera hardware companies. In the race between physics and software, they are on the physics side. This is evident in the entire user experience. They keep missing the boat with the way people actually use photography today, and don't even seem to care much. There's not much evidence they have the kind of research expertise that Apple, Google or Adobe built in signal processing and image processing, either. See also https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-2017-news/february-2017-nikon-news/a-plan-for-nikon.html https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201... and https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-2017-news/september-2017-nikon-news/dumb-things-the-camera.html https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201...

hef19898 4y ago
The purpose is completely different. Camera makers put the processing power between the sensor and whatever RAW fioes their cameras create. For people that do their own post-processing. Phone makers put the processng power at the post processing of photos, for people who never do their own post processing. Both approaches are equally valid, they simply aim at different markets. And as far as softeare vs. physics goes, no amount of software and processing power can overcome the laws of optics.

paxys 4y ago

Because Nikon's target audience (photographers) don't want that "fancy post-processing" done by their camera.

berkut 4y ago

Do the jpegs (or hief?) look as good on a 27-inch monitor, or just on the phone screen? Capturing non-raw in my experience (iPhone 6S, now have 13 mini) the jpegs are heavily de-noised, and really don't look that good 1:1 on a large monitor: on the iphone screen they look very good, as they're downsampled. The article mentions the 'watercolor' effect since the iPhone 8, but I definitely had the issue with all the jpegs taken on my iPhone 6S since 2015... DNGs however DO look very good, so clearly the sensor is capable of pretty nice images.

saiya-jin 4y ago

Obviously you don't look at close detail on computer, which is very strange for seemingly such a power photo user. Phones these days are good but not yet that good if you don't do some beginner mistakes with camera. Maybe Pixel 7 pro based on samples I saw, but definitely not ie iphone 13 pro max. What people often mean by similar statements is they like default phone processing compared to 0 in the camera, and there is enough detail due to tons of light and due to landscapes being generally easiest scene to shoot. As for why they are not comparable, also a very strange question from seemingly experienced photo shooter - compare software development department and budget in Apple vs Nikon, who is a tiny player we all love (have D750 since it came out and carried it everywhere up to 6000m), they use very specialized CPUs which are very good for 1 thing only (basic operations on raw sensor data and potential jpeg transformation), and various ML and stacking transformations aren't simply available there at performance required. The whole construction of camera and processing hardware isn't around snapping 30 pics and combining them together under 1s, pre-taking pictures before actually hitting shutter etc.

m463 4y ago

I've noticed it's getting easier and easier to take photos with the SUN in the frame than when digital sensors first came out.

jillesvangurp 4y ago

Well, put bluntly, the reason is that you probably are not using the Nikon properly. So, your photos are not coming out that great or as you hoped. Don't take this personally, I also have my limitations using cameras properly. But I understand I'm an amateur when it comes to this and that I'm part of the problem. I try to learn to do better. I try, and sometimes it works out nicely and I get a really nice shot. Landscape photography is tough to get right. You really need to understand your camera and lenses to make that work. The point of such a camera is not the in camera processing, which most pro users would not use on principle. Instead it's gaining a lot of control over setting up the shot properly with a lot of control over all the parameters that matter to achieve a look that matches what you want, intentionally. And then you finish the job in post processing. There's reason these things have so many buttons and dials: you need to use them to get the most out of the camera. And the point of owning such a camera is having that level of control. The flip side is that that makes you responsible for the intelligence. That kind of is the whole point. If that's not what you wanted, you bought the wrong camera. The iphone has a very limited set of controls. You actually have very little control over it. Nice if that's what you want and the AI is awesome. But it's also a bit limiting if you want more. Of course it's very nice when that's the camera you have and you want to take a shot quickly by just pointing and clicking. Nothing wrong with that. I have a Pixel 6 and a Fuji X-T30. I use them both but not the same way.

KennyBlanken 4y ago
> Well, put bluntly, the reason is that you probably are not using the Nikon properly. Probably one of the biggest mistakes people make: not understanding at what aperture their lens is sharpest - typically stopping the lens down too much. Other mistakes: not using a fast enough shutter speed to eliminate blurring from mirror slap (or using anti-mirror-slap features in their camera), not using a sufficiently sturdy tripod and mount, and so on. Also, sometimes lenses just don't leave the factory in very good shape. If you struggle to get sharp results, it may be beneficial to send it in for service. The stuff sent around to reviewers has been obsessed over by the manufacturer, perfectly tweaked on a lens testing bench to get it as close to perfect as they can.

JALTU 4y ago

Nikon and Canon and all the other camera companies, Japanese, German, or otherwise, are not software companies and have a pretty awful track record for even the basic software in their camera interfaces. Post processing is something they could not or would not get involved in. Apple ate their lunches and then some. While I'm an old-school photographer who thinks a great SLR camera is the photographic equivalent of driving a Porsche, I don't miss carrying pounds of gear around. (OTOH I HATE the Ux of iPhones for photography.) I digress. The camera biz is a classic biz school study in humans being human.

pkulak 4y ago

I guess if you like that look. I don't; not really. The photos from my phone are fine. If taken in really good light, they are actually pretty good. But they are always processed to within an inch of their lives.

xdfgh1112 4y ago

Because landscape photos are easy. No bokeh, no depth of field (everything at infinity), good lighting, no need for fast shutter speed or a big sensor. Your images will be sharper I guess, but that's not worth $2k in most cases.

astrange 4y ago
If you take a lot of landscapes I think that's actually when you do want the big sensor. Which, remember, is not a 35mm full-frame DSLR either! Instead it might be a 4x5 large format camera like Ansel Adams used. (Which requires a lot of patience, but an old one would be cheaper than a new camera. Though renting is always an option.)
- shrx 4y ago
  The ratio of sensor areas between full frame (864 mm²) and for example iphone 13 pro max "wide" (main) camera sensor (44 mm²) is actually larger than the ratio between a 4x5 large format film plate (12903 mm²) and a full frame sensor. edit: changed "sensor sizes" to "sensor areas" for clarity.
nihilius 4y ago
Looks like you never took a lanscape photo where you had to use a (Gradiant) ND, Polarisation Filter, Multiple Exposures, Long Exposures for smooth Water or anything where you had to hink about how to take the perfect shot. So yes for a quick snapshot a phone is good enough. For a photograph a bigger camera is much more benefical than "just" for sharper images.
- xdfgh1112 4y ago
  I have done all of those when I owned a DSLR. Phones have been able to do smooth water and multiple exposures for years though...

ska 4y ago

This is probably the wrong way to think of it. Especially at screen sizes, there are certain photos your iphone 13 can take that are comparable to what you would get with your nikon gear. However there are photos you can get with that 1.8 that won't work at all on your phone.

ulfw 4y ago

There is no way they do. First of all you don't have a DSLR, but a mirorrless (Nikon Z) series. But nevermind, that's just nitpicking. Likely a Z6 from the price point you mentioned. It has 24 MP (instead of iPhone 13's 12MP) and a much much higher dynamic range (more than 11 steps vs an iPhone's about 8). So unless you don't know what you're doing the Nikon is a way better camera (as it should be. It ways 5x as much with lens)

theshrike79 4y ago

Because landscapes are easy. The subject isn't moving, you aren't in a hurry and the phone has all the time in the world to gather enough data for a photo. Same goes for posed portraits, the phone has time to use it's processing power to make the image look amazing. Now try to do sports photography with a mobile phone. The first problem is lack of zoom compared to a 200mm lens. The second issue is trying to get the 1/8000 exposure you need on a rainy football field you need to stop the action for a good photo.