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Comparing iPhone 13 vs. iPhone 14 for Astrophotography

68 points by mikece 3y ago

xattt 3y ago
1:1 crops still look like a solarized mess. It’s nothing than a feel-good gimmick (“oh wow, this phone in my pocket can do some sort of multi-syllable photography”).
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Yeah, I kinda lost me at the end when he’s talking about AI generated “synthetic skies”. I get it, a ton of photoshops will just drop in a new sky. But that’s a choice that a user made not a choice that the phone manufacturer made for them.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > Yeah, I kinda lost me at the end when he’s talking about AI generated “synthetic skies”. For anyone who didn't read TFA, this is part of an in-story quote by Russell Brown (not the author) talking about the future of mobile photography. As a long-time Adobe employee he's parroting their messaging here, since Adobe's value-add is in "what comes after" photography. Photoshop's new AI-powered Generative Fill is a good example of what Russell's thinking of when he talks about "computational AI" (a non-sensical name intended to one-up "computational photography"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR7j8r-LzQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR7j8r-LzQ8
wyager 3y ago
> I used the 1x camera, which is 26mm at f/1.5 I find this way of describing the iPhone cameras frustratingly misleading. It's not the author's fault; Apple does it in their official specs. The "26mm" rating is "equivalent", meaning "this looks like a 26mm lens on a 35mm film camera". It basically tells you the FOV angle. The "f/1.5" rating is not equivalent. It's very dishonest to mix and match equivalent and non-equivalent specs, because it makes the lens sound a lot better than it is to non-expert readers. If they were being honest, the equivalent aperture would be a lot smaller, like f/16 or something. Every other camera mfg I am aware of will consistently use equivalent or non-equivalent for all specs, and make it clear which they are using. For example, most mirrorless camera lenses are spec'd non-equivalently, meaning that a "26mm f/1.5" means "if you put this lens on a 35mm camera and extrapolated the output to cover the whole sensor, that's what you would get". To understand what it will look like on a different sensor, you multiply 26 and 1.5 by the crop factor. In Apple's case, it's actually impossible to tell what the image will look like from the specs without looking up the crop factor, which of course they don't advertise front and center like they do this misleading tuple of specs. In general, lenses with smaller f/N aperture values tend to be better and more expensive (because they have a larger aperture, let in more light, narrower depth of field), so if you don't mind misleading customers, you just pick the smallest denominator you can get away with.
- doodlesdev 3y ago
  Every time people tell me iPhone cameras are getting as good as dedicated DSLR/mirrorless, I always point this out to them. F/16 is absolutely unusable for certain types of photography (although quite perfect for landscape), and even worse with such a small sensor with that big of a crop factor (3.5x) [0]. I personally use a f1.8 35 mm on an APS-C sensor for hobby photography and I still feel the sensor is too small for portrait photography or low light, but then I'm also kind of a weirdo since I still use film cameras once in a while (can't afford a full-frame lol, so I use it for portraits). [0]: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/6110937480 https://www.dpreview.com/articles/6110937480
  - foldr 3y ago
    I don’t personally care for shallow depth of field (it’s become a cliche at this point), but the best phone cameras do a pretty good job of faking it. It’s not yet perfect, but it’s only going to get better. I also like that I can precisely adjust the amount of background blur in post.
- karashi 3y ago
  Camera manufacturers do the same misleading marketing too right? Here’s a video of someone complaining about it. https://youtu.be/6Im4W_9blhY?t=7m28s https://youtu.be/6Im4W_9blhY?t=7m28s That said, at least with stand-alone camera manufacturers you can usually work out what the real specs should be if you’re in the know.
- musictubes 3y ago
  I hate hate hate “equivalent aperture” specs. I don’t mind the FOV being equated to 35mm sensor size but give me the actual Fstop please. Back in the day I shot formats from 8x10 down to 16mm. Nobody ever tried to normalize DOF between formats by talking about fstops until digital photography. Trying to normalize DOF across formats only obscures and confuses what is actually going on optically. No particular fstop (ratio between focal length and physical aperture) has a unique look and yet that is what people that demand equivalent fstops assume and demand. For exposure purposes, f1.5 is the accurate and most important spec for that lens. All mirrorless camera lenses are specced accurately with focal length and fstop. Perhaps some of the marketing is done with 35mm “equivalent” specs but I’ve never seen a lens that had anything but the actual measurements on them. I’m not sure why people are still referring to 35mm focal lengths when talking about FOV in any case. Nobody is comparing the lens on an iPhone with one on a camera with a 35mm sized sensor. Certainly nobody will use the iPhone lens on another camera. The main sensor on an iPhone is larger than most phone cameras but still close enough that touting the f1.5 fstop does indeed mean that it lets in more light, has a larger aperture, and has a narrower DOF than many other phone cameras. The vast majority of iPhone users have never shot with 35mm cameras and so wouldn’t have any idea what you’re talking about when it comes to 35mm DOF. I wish companies would ditch the 35mm normalized specs altogether.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
I like an old camera I have around here with a 50mm lens because the photos I take with it resemble what I see better than when I use my old smartphone. Eg, the size of a windmill behind somebody can vary dramatically in size depending on this If I upgraded my phone, do the new smartphones enable you to take photos like my old 50mm camera, or will I still need my old camera to capture those shots?
- tass 3y ago
  On the iPhone at least, all lenses are wide angle equivalent (24mm, 13mm) except for the telephoto (77mm). There might be a lens you can attach that narrows it down, but otherwise your old camera will do a better job handling your requirement.
  - foldr 3y ago
    The 2x digital zoom is pretty good on the 14 Pro as it’s still got 12MP to work with. (I’m guessing that combining a stack of slightly misaligned exposures helps it to overcome the loss of color information you’d expect from the quad Bayer layout.)
    - yakubin 3y ago
      Digital zoom doesn’t fix the distorted perspective.
      - foldr 3y ago
        The perspective is determined by where you’re standing in relation to the subject. If you’re talking about wide angle ‘distortion’, then on an iPhone (with the default settings) that’s just what a rectilinear projection looks like with a wide field of view. Zooming in digitally ‘corrects’ that just as much as using a longer focal length would. You can easily confirm this by taking side by side comparisons. There are many of these you can find by googling, as this is a popular myth. E.g. https://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/shooting/perspective-and-focal-length/#:~:text=Many%20photographers%20have%20the%20impression,camera%20position%20or%20viewpoint%20changes https://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/shooting/perspective-and....
ris 3y ago
I guess this is "astrophotography" for the sake of making pretty images, because I couldn't imagine the "computational AI" features he mentions towards the end of the article doing anything but horrify even an amateur astronomer.
- Scea91 3y ago
  What do you mean? Statistics and ML is used in astrophotography regularly. For example, the famous black hole “photo” [1]. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/black-hole-image-makes-history https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/black-hole-i...
  - etrautmann 3y ago
    Yes, but the computational pipeline is designed and implemented by the end user to achieve a scientific result. Here, it’s a black box where the resulting image cannot be treated as raw data.
    - chongli 3y ago
      Yes exactly. The training set used for the famous black hole image was a database of images created using black hole simulations based on our best available models. This is pretty far away from these consumer ML models trained on publicly available images which may as well be consider garbage from a scientific perspective.
      - astrange 3y ago
        Nothing about phone cameras involves "ML models trained on publicly available images".
        chongli 3y ago
        You haven't been following the story, then, because Samsung phone cameras have been accused of doing exactly that: using a training set of publicly available images to "enhance" people's images by filling in details with a ML model.
rqtwteye 3y ago
I think the time isn't too far away when you don't even have to go out for taking pictures but you just tell AI to create a perfect image at a certain location with objects or people of your choice. That's maybe a good thing because a lot of people who just want Instagram shots won't bother going to the places anymore so it will be less crowded.
- ccooffee 3y ago
  Samsung has recently been caught replacing the moon in pictures with a reference image. Discussed on HN less than 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601
  - m463 3y ago
    Reading this it seems their method of doing this is different than I expected, but maybe more disturbing: "In the side-by-side above, I hope you can appreciate that Samsung is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess." https://teddit.net/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are_fake_and_here/ https://teddit.net/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_space_...
quanto 3y ago
for general users who simply want clearer photos, what are some cheaper phones for recommendation?
- justsocrateasin 3y ago
  If you can get your handles on a Pixel 3 for cheap, that took simply incredible photos. Even better than my current iPhone 12 for most purposes (not all).
  - habosa 3y ago
    Pixel 3 photos continue to be my favorite of any phone I’ve ever owned (had iPhones since then) I thought I was the only one
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
alexose 3y ago
I've read that CMOS sensors perform better in low light conditions if they're kept cold. Curious if anyone has tried this with a smartphone...

68 points by mikece 3y ago

1:1 crops still look like a solarized mess. It’s nothing than a feel-good gimmick (“oh wow, this phone in my pocket can do some sort of multi-syllable photography”).

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
Yeah, I kinda lost me at the end when he’s talking about AI generated “synthetic skies”. I get it, a ton of photoshops will just drop in a new sky. But that’s a choice that a user made not a choice that the phone manufacturer made for them.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > Yeah, I kinda lost me at the end when he’s talking about AI generated “synthetic skies”. For anyone who didn't read TFA, this is part of an in-story quote by Russell Brown (not the author) talking about the future of mobile photography. As a long-time Adobe employee he's parroting their messaging here, since Adobe's value-add is in "what comes after" photography. Photoshop's new AI-powered Generative Fill is a good example of what Russell's thinking of when he talks about "computational AI" (a non-sensical name intended to one-up "computational photography"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR7j8r-LzQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR7j8r-LzQ8

wyager 3y ago

> I used the 1x camera, which is 26mm at f/1.5 I find this way of describing the iPhone cameras frustratingly misleading. It's not the author's fault; Apple does it in their official specs. The "26mm" rating is "equivalent", meaning "this looks like a 26mm lens on a 35mm film camera". It basically tells you the FOV angle. The "f/1.5" rating is not equivalent. It's very dishonest to mix and match equivalent and non-equivalent specs, because it makes the lens sound a lot better than it is to non-expert readers. If they were being honest, the equivalent aperture would be a lot smaller, like f/16 or something. Every other camera mfg I am aware of will consistently use equivalent or non-equivalent for all specs, and make it clear which they are using. For example, most mirrorless camera lenses are spec'd non-equivalently, meaning that a "26mm f/1.5" means "if you put this lens on a 35mm camera and extrapolated the output to cover the whole sensor, that's what you would get". To understand what it will look like on a different sensor, you multiply 26 and 1.5 by the crop factor. In Apple's case, it's actually impossible to tell what the image will look like from the specs without looking up the crop factor, which of course they don't advertise front and center like they do this misleading tuple of specs. In general, lenses with smaller f/N aperture values tend to be better and more expensive (because they have a larger aperture, let in more light, narrower depth of field), so if you don't mind misleading customers, you just pick the smallest denominator you can get away with.

doodlesdev 3y ago
Every time people tell me iPhone cameras are getting as good as dedicated DSLR/mirrorless, I always point this out to them. F/16 is absolutely unusable for certain types of photography (although quite perfect for landscape), and even worse with such a small sensor with that big of a crop factor (3.5x) [0]. I personally use a f1.8 35 mm on an APS-C sensor for hobby photography and I still feel the sensor is too small for portrait photography or low light, but then I'm also kind of a weirdo since I still use film cameras once in a while (can't afford a full-frame lol, so I use it for portraits). [0]: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/6110937480 https://www.dpreview.com/articles/6110937480
- foldr 3y ago
  I don’t personally care for shallow depth of field (it’s become a cliche at this point), but the best phone cameras do a pretty good job of faking it. It’s not yet perfect, but it’s only going to get better. I also like that I can precisely adjust the amount of background blur in post.
karashi 3y ago
Camera manufacturers do the same misleading marketing too right? Here’s a video of someone complaining about it. https://youtu.be/6Im4W_9blhY?t=7m28s https://youtu.be/6Im4W_9blhY?t=7m28s That said, at least with stand-alone camera manufacturers you can usually work out what the real specs should be if you’re in the know.
musictubes 3y ago
I hate hate hate “equivalent aperture” specs. I don’t mind the FOV being equated to 35mm sensor size but give me the actual Fstop please. Back in the day I shot formats from 8x10 down to 16mm. Nobody ever tried to normalize DOF between formats by talking about fstops until digital photography. Trying to normalize DOF across formats only obscures and confuses what is actually going on optically. No particular fstop (ratio between focal length and physical aperture) has a unique look and yet that is what people that demand equivalent fstops assume and demand. For exposure purposes, f1.5 is the accurate and most important spec for that lens. All mirrorless camera lenses are specced accurately with focal length and fstop. Perhaps some of the marketing is done with 35mm “equivalent” specs but I’ve never seen a lens that had anything but the actual measurements on them. I’m not sure why people are still referring to 35mm focal lengths when talking about FOV in any case. Nobody is comparing the lens on an iPhone with one on a camera with a 35mm sized sensor. Certainly nobody will use the iPhone lens on another camera. The main sensor on an iPhone is larger than most phone cameras but still close enough that touting the f1.5 fstop does indeed mean that it lets in more light, has a larger aperture, and has a narrower DOF than many other phone cameras. The vast majority of iPhone users have never shot with 35mm cameras and so wouldn’t have any idea what you’re talking about when it comes to 35mm DOF. I wish companies would ditch the 35mm normalized specs altogether.

barbariangrunge 3y ago

I like an old camera I have around here with a 50mm lens because the photos I take with it resemble what I see better than when I use my old smartphone. Eg, the size of a windmill behind somebody can vary dramatically in size depending on this If I upgraded my phone, do the new smartphones enable you to take photos like my old 50mm camera, or will I still need my old camera to capture those shots?

tass 3y ago
On the iPhone at least, all lenses are wide angle equivalent (24mm, 13mm) except for the telephoto (77mm). There might be a lens you can attach that narrows it down, but otherwise your old camera will do a better job handling your requirement.
- foldr 3y ago
  The 2x digital zoom is pretty good on the 14 Pro as it’s still got 12MP to work with. (I’m guessing that combining a stack of slightly misaligned exposures helps it to overcome the loss of color information you’d expect from the quad Bayer layout.)
  - yakubin 3y ago
    Digital zoom doesn’t fix the distorted perspective.
    - foldr 3y ago
      The perspective is determined by where you’re standing in relation to the subject. If you’re talking about wide angle ‘distortion’, then on an iPhone (with the default settings) that’s just what a rectilinear projection looks like with a wide field of view. Zooming in digitally ‘corrects’ that just as much as using a longer focal length would. You can easily confirm this by taking side by side comparisons. There are many of these you can find by googling, as this is a popular myth. E.g. https://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/shooting/perspective-and-focal-length/#:~:text=Many%20photographers%20have%20the%20impression,camera%20position%20or%20viewpoint%20changes https://www.photoreview.com.au/tips/shooting/perspective-and....

ris 3y ago

I guess this is "astrophotography" for the sake of making pretty images, because I couldn't imagine the "computational AI" features he mentions towards the end of the article doing anything but horrify even an amateur astronomer.

Scea91 3y ago
What do you mean? Statistics and ML is used in astrophotography regularly. For example, the famous black hole “photo” [1]. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/black-hole-image-makes-history https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/black-hole-i...
- etrautmann 3y ago
  Yes, but the computational pipeline is designed and implemented by the end user to achieve a scientific result. Here, it’s a black box where the resulting image cannot be treated as raw data.
  - chongli 3y ago
    Yes exactly. The training set used for the famous black hole image was a database of images created using black hole simulations based on our best available models. This is pretty far away from these consumer ML models trained on publicly available images which may as well be consider garbage from a scientific perspective.
    - astrange 3y ago
      Nothing about phone cameras involves "ML models trained on publicly available images".
      - chongli 3y ago
        You haven't been following the story, then, because Samsung phone cameras have been accused of doing exactly that: using a training set of publicly available images to "enhance" people's images by filling in details with a ML model.

rqtwteye 3y ago

I think the time isn't too far away when you don't even have to go out for taking pictures but you just tell AI to create a perfect image at a certain location with objects or people of your choice. That's maybe a good thing because a lot of people who just want Instagram shots won't bother going to the places anymore so it will be less crowded.

ccooffee 3y ago
Samsung has recently been caught replacing the moon in pictures with a reference image. Discussed on HN less than 3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35107601
- m463 3y ago
  Reading this it seems their method of doing this is different than I expected, but maybe more disturbing: "In the side-by-side above, I hope you can appreciate that Samsung is leveraging an AI model to put craters and other details on places which were just a blurry mess." https://teddit.net/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_space_zoom_moon_shots_are_fake_and_here/ https://teddit.net/r/Android/comments/11nzrb0/samsung_space_...

quanto 3y ago

for general users who simply want clearer photos, what are some cheaper phones for recommendation?

justsocrateasin 3y ago
If you can get your handles on a Pixel 3 for cheap, that took simply incredible photos. Even better than my current iPhone 12 for most purposes (not all).
- habosa 3y ago
  Pixel 3 photos continue to be my favorite of any phone I’ve ever owned (had iPhones since then) I thought I was the only one
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

alexose 3y ago

I've read that CMOS sensors perform better in low light conditions if they're kept cold. Curious if anyone has tried this with a smartphone...