6 ms·

Optical or Digital: Minimum focusing distance on iPhone 15 Pro Max 5x camera

37 points by ofou 3y ago

eterevsky 3y ago
I also bought iPhone 15 Pro Max partly because of the 5x zoom, but I'm somewhat disappointed. The gap between 1x and 5x is just too big and includes focal lengths that are very useful for things like portraits. I wish they had 4 cameras at 0.5x, 1x, 3x and 10x like Samsung does.
- merelysounds 3y ago
  Personally even 3x is too much for me, I preferred 2x from earlier iterations; the ~50mm focal length still worked for portraits and also was easier to work with indoors. With 3x I’m getting a lot of “move further away” notifications. All this contributes to complexity and lack of control, and it makes me use my digital camera more. Since this workaround works for me, I’m not interested in upgrading my phone, at least not because of camera improvements.
  - eterevsky 3y ago
    When my cat does something funny, I usually have a phone at hand, but the camera is in another room. There's a lot of other situations in which snapping a quick photo on the phone is the only way.
    - postexitus 3y ago
      "The best camera is the one you have with you" - Chase Jarvis
      - _aavaa_ 3y ago
        Carry a better camera.
- ricardobeat 3y ago
  2x in the iPhone 15 uses pixel binning and should result in the same quality as optical 2x, just at 12MP instead of 24, same as the previous generation. Isn’t that usable?
  - eterevsky 3y ago
    With the same optics the 2x picture the effective size of the sensor is 2x smaller and it receives 4x less light. This has to result in the lower-quality picture. Also, the resolution of the photo is mostly limited not by the number of megapixels, but by optical resolution of the lens.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      The zoom lenses which need to fit into the phone package have also significantly smaller light gathering capability, so you won't be able to improve a lot over the main camera.
- windowsrookie 3y ago
  Newer Sony Xperia phones have variable optical zoom by physically moving the lenses. Maybe eventually other manufacturers will start adopting this. https://www.dpreview.com/news/1686332610/sony-s-xperia-1-and-5-mark-iii-introduce-variable-optical-zoom https://www.dpreview.com/news/1686332610/sony-s-xperia-1-and...
deckar01 3y ago
The heuristic Apple uses for switching lenses is reminiscent of a street lamp that flickers on and off at dusk. How do they get away with marketing a device as professional that requires a 3rd party app to work?
- sneak 3y ago
  Lots of consumer devices “get away with” marketing themselves as “professional” when they’re just stylish toys. The iPhone 15 Pro cameras are fantastic, but professionals shoot with real cameras, despite what Apple’s marketing says. (Professional vloggers/vertical video tiktokers notwithstanding.)
  - IndySun 3y ago
    Yes, true. I believe that's why Apple call them "Pro" and not professional. In marketing, apple-speak, and irl, there's a world of difference.
  - musictubes 3y ago
    Did you see the Scary Fast event from Apple? It was shot on iPhone 15 pro max and looks great. They even did a behind the scenes video showing how they did it. Yes, Apple did that as a marketing tool. But the fact that they were able to use the phone instead of the usual Arri/Blackmagic etc. does show that “pros” can make great looking products with it. Plus, I like the fact that Apple is dogfooding high end camera use. The more internal feedback they get the better. We’ll see if they keep using iPhones in their videos going forward.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      Agreed. For photos instead of video you can find tons of amazing pictures that people took on iPhone pros. People take the picture in raw and then process it themselves like they would if it was from a DSLR and they come out incredible. Yeah the stock camera app meant to be point-and-shoot doesn’t re-create the same results as a professional spending a bunch of time in Photoshop, but what do you expect? Apple does a pretty good job of making very good photos under incredible constraints of tiny sensors, possibly low light, and every other condition that someone might whip their phone out in.
nichch 3y ago
At the bottom of Settings > Camera, there is a setting called “Macro Control”. If enabled, it displays an icon when the lenses are auto swapped and pressing it swaps them back.
mojamoja 3y ago
> When I tap the 5x button I want to use the 5x camera The stock camera app does not interpret the user tapping the 5x button as wanting the 5x camera; it interprets it as the user wanting the highest quality photo at 5x magnification that the system (thinks it) can deliver, because there are a lot of potential tradeoffs to be made. It's a subtle distinction, but it's there. If you want a behavior like you describe, use a "pro" app like Halide or Obscura.
- gbil 3y ago
  Funny that you say that, a couple of weeks ago I saw that a friend's 14pro max had a broken camera glass on one of the 3 cameras, it was only the protective glass they installed yet I wondered why they keep it like that and they were like "oh it doesn't come up in the camera" but I had to investigate. So I see from the relevant pictures on the internet that it is the 3x telephone one, I open the camera app, put it on 3x and.... nothing, the image is still clear, no signs of the broken protector glass and I'm confused. After checking again and again and playing with the zoom and putting my fingers on the cameras trying to map the zoom setting with actual physical cameras, I realize that the actual optical 3x lens was triggered under specific conditions which currently I don't remember but confirm what you wrote here I guess. And it bothered me very much like the writer of the article. My expectation is that when I consciously choose that zoom factor, it does use the hardware I paid for, otherwise why buy the hardware to start with ? And in this case the hardware part is the main feature you spend more money for, it is not a side-feature. If nothing else I would expect this as a configuration item, by default using the actual hardware with an option of "turn this AIblah thing on for the phone to select the best possible camera for you for any zoom level", could even extend it to more mambo jumbo (or not) wording but you get the point. Taking it one step further, where does this stop? I get the 24kBTU air conditioning unit but can't actually fully use it because when you put it at max the AC decides on its own that it will send the "proper amount of cool air for the environment, outside temperature etc" and you can't override it. I know, a bit stupid example but you get the point. And I'm all in for the many cases that device calculated decisions can bring a lot of benefit compared on what the user chooses BUT give the explanation and the option to turn it off and don't assume things
baz00 3y ago
I'm so over smartphone cameras now. Earlier this week I did a two week expedition and what I did take on my 13 Pro was pretty terrible. You have to run with the fact that these cameras are all three shitty prime lenses and a lot of computation making up for that. My initial playing with the 15 Pro Max in store confirmed that it is of course, exactly the same. I figured if I can drag my mirrorless camera half way across the world I can chuck it in my bag when I'm out. And that allows me to buy a considerably cheaper phone. Pixel 6A output is a fine example of where digital processing goes awry: https://imgur.com/a/YLNyYnb https://imgur.com/a/YLNyYnb . I regret not retaking that photo with my mirrorless but I learned to use the right tools for the job there.
- Moldoteck 3y ago
  oh god, that looks bad. I too, started using my dsrl more. Even if it's heavier, the result is much more natural both in colors, grain & better at zoom...
- shinycode 3y ago
  I did a two week holidays with only my iPhone 13 PM. In most cases the photos were amazing given the resolution. Sure when you zoom in 100% it’s not that great. But the fact that I could take everything with such a light camera, edit right on spot and create an album that I could share without ever touching a computer is amazing. For a professional setup it’s not great. But to capture nice memories and stay light at all times it’s perfect. I really prefer the quality of my dslr but it’s so cumbersome to carry around and to process photos then share them that it’s a compromise I’m willing to accept. It’s a nightmare for me to process thousands of picture from my dslr.
  - mettamage 3y ago
    I find the iPhone more than adequate for my social media shenanigans, which is not a whole lot compared to generation Z. I need good looking pictures in certain cases and I've seen the difference in having my social circle expanded because of it. I don't need a pro camera.
  - baz00 3y ago
londons_explore 3y ago
Why is is a binary choice which lens to use anyway? They should be taking a photo from both lenses and computationally merging them. Sure - very close shots will mostly use the output of one lens, and distant shots will mostly use the other, but there should be no sudden switchover and there is no situation in which there is no value from extra data collected from the other.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  I agree that the binary switch is very annoying - when zooming with my fingers I have to make sure I don't get stuck at 3.8x or something and need to cross over to 4.X to get decent quality. Ideally 3.8x would still use 4x camera to fill most of the frame and the main camera would fill just the edges. The idea is quite simple, but it's rather difficult to implement in practice. The lenses have each different character, optical flaws, color rendering and naive merging would look pretty bad. But it does sound like something AI tech could handle.
Synaesthesia 3y ago
Considering the new iPhones have 48mp sensors, a crop from the regular sensor might in fact be the best option, quality wise. The longer a lens is, the smaller the aperture, so the 5x lens might have inferior light-gathering ability.
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  A 5x crop from 48Mpx will produce a 2Mpx image. It's less trivial to calculate the light gathering capability of each camera, but I doubt the zoom is 20 times worse.
- cozzyd 3y ago
  Well if you have plenty of light this doesn't matter. The wide is supposedly f1.8 while the telephoto is supposedly f2.8. the wide has pixels 4 times bigger, so the effective sensor size is about 2/3 on the wide for this field of view. So I think the telephoto gets roughly half the light as the wide if I'm doing mental math correctly.
a1o 3y ago
Considering the Blackmagic Camera has video features in a manual configuration, I guess it should be possible for an App do the same for the photos.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bartwr 3y ago
I think the author doesn't understand consumer products, especially cameras and what most people care about (taking photos!) and need. Generally, people don't care if the phone uses expensive 5x lens or not. I don't really know who does. :) They are at some position and want to quickly take a picture - phone refusing to take a photo or taking an out of focus one would be terrible for them and cause outrage. Image Quality is somewhat important, but 1000x less important than capturing the right moment. If you miss the moment - it's gone forever. I worked as a researcher at the Google HDR+ team, developing algorithms for Pixel 2/3/4/5/6 camera. And consistently we would get both user studies/bugs/feedback, as well as guidance from PMs that responsiveness/latency and "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible" was more important than the Image Quality. I'll admit, we didn't always deliver and often compromised (doing in software what everyone else was doing in hardware back then is HARD), but this principle blocked some cool IQ improvements from launching - and I think was the right call, even if some of those were mine (like high quality multi frame super res in every photo).
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  > think the author doesn't understand consumer products, especially cameras and what most people care about (taking photos!) and need. The author didn't claim that iPhone has it wrong, just that their personal expectation and preference is different. > Generally, people don't care if the phone uses expensive 5x lens or not. I don't really know who does. :) That's a strange claim. I know many people who value decent quality zoom, even if they're not otherwise photography geeks. > we would get both user studies/bugs/feedback, as well as guidance from PMs that responsiveness/latency and "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible" was more important than the Image Quality What I don't like about these studies is that it collapses different user groups and different use cases into one average "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible". The reality is much more colorful and often depends on a situation. When taking a photo of an animal then quick shutter speed is indeed important. But when I'm taking a photo of a static subject, esp. in challenging light conditions, I care more about quality.
  - bartwr 3y ago
    The latter is the reason why we launched Night Sight. And a ton of people were pissed that it's slow and their subjects won't stay still for so long. We were not conflating user groups, just that if one group is literally 95% of the market and all photos taken, then you optimize the default app and the default mode for them and make the experience super polished. The remaining 5% of power users can use dedicated apps...

37 points by ofou 3y ago

I also bought iPhone 15 Pro Max partly because of the 5x zoom, but I'm somewhat disappointed. The gap between 1x and 5x is just too big and includes focal lengths that are very useful for things like portraits. I wish they had 4 cameras at 0.5x, 1x, 3x and 10x like Samsung does.

merelysounds 3y ago
Personally even 3x is too much for me, I preferred 2x from earlier iterations; the ~50mm focal length still worked for portraits and also was easier to work with indoors. With 3x I’m getting a lot of “move further away” notifications. All this contributes to complexity and lack of control, and it makes me use my digital camera more. Since this workaround works for me, I’m not interested in upgrading my phone, at least not because of camera improvements.
- eterevsky 3y ago
  When my cat does something funny, I usually have a phone at hand, but the camera is in another room. There's a lot of other situations in which snapping a quick photo on the phone is the only way.
  - postexitus 3y ago
    "The best camera is the one you have with you" - Chase Jarvis
    - _aavaa_ 3y ago
      Carry a better camera.
ricardobeat 3y ago
2x in the iPhone 15 uses pixel binning and should result in the same quality as optical 2x, just at 12MP instead of 24, same as the previous generation. Isn’t that usable?
- eterevsky 3y ago
  With the same optics the 2x picture the effective size of the sensor is 2x smaller and it receives 4x less light. This has to result in the lower-quality picture. Also, the resolution of the photo is mostly limited not by the number of megapixels, but by optical resolution of the lens.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    The zoom lenses which need to fit into the phone package have also significantly smaller light gathering capability, so you won't be able to improve a lot over the main camera.
windowsrookie 3y ago
Newer Sony Xperia phones have variable optical zoom by physically moving the lenses. Maybe eventually other manufacturers will start adopting this. https://www.dpreview.com/news/1686332610/sony-s-xperia-1-and-5-mark-iii-introduce-variable-optical-zoom https://www.dpreview.com/news/1686332610/sony-s-xperia-1-and...

deckar01 3y ago

The heuristic Apple uses for switching lenses is reminiscent of a street lamp that flickers on and off at dusk. How do they get away with marketing a device as professional that requires a 3rd party app to work?

sneak 3y ago
Lots of consumer devices “get away with” marketing themselves as “professional” when they’re just stylish toys. The iPhone 15 Pro cameras are fantastic, but professionals shoot with real cameras, despite what Apple’s marketing says. (Professional vloggers/vertical video tiktokers notwithstanding.)
- IndySun 3y ago
  Yes, true. I believe that's why Apple call them "Pro" and not professional. In marketing, apple-speak, and irl, there's a world of difference.
- musictubes 3y ago
  Did you see the Scary Fast event from Apple? It was shot on iPhone 15 pro max and looks great. They even did a behind the scenes video showing how they did it. Yes, Apple did that as a marketing tool. But the fact that they were able to use the phone instead of the usual Arri/Blackmagic etc. does show that “pros” can make great looking products with it. Plus, I like the fact that Apple is dogfooding high end camera use. The more internal feedback they get the better. We’ll see if they keep using iPhones in their videos going forward.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Agreed. For photos instead of video you can find tons of amazing pictures that people took on iPhone pros. People take the picture in raw and then process it themselves like they would if it was from a DSLR and they come out incredible. Yeah the stock camera app meant to be point-and-shoot doesn’t re-create the same results as a professional spending a bunch of time in Photoshop, but what do you expect? Apple does a pretty good job of making very good photos under incredible constraints of tiny sensors, possibly low light, and every other condition that someone might whip their phone out in.

nichch 3y ago

At the bottom of Settings > Camera, there is a setting called “Macro Control”. If enabled, it displays an icon when the lenses are auto swapped and pressing it swaps them back.

mojamoja 3y ago

> When I tap the 5x button I want to use the 5x camera The stock camera app does not interpret the user tapping the 5x button as wanting the 5x camera; it interprets it as the user wanting the highest quality photo at 5x magnification that the system (thinks it) can deliver, because there are a lot of potential tradeoffs to be made. It's a subtle distinction, but it's there. If you want a behavior like you describe, use a "pro" app like Halide or Obscura.

gbil 3y ago
Funny that you say that, a couple of weeks ago I saw that a friend's 14pro max had a broken camera glass on one of the 3 cameras, it was only the protective glass they installed yet I wondered why they keep it like that and they were like "oh it doesn't come up in the camera" but I had to investigate. So I see from the relevant pictures on the internet that it is the 3x telephone one, I open the camera app, put it on 3x and.... nothing, the image is still clear, no signs of the broken protector glass and I'm confused. After checking again and again and playing with the zoom and putting my fingers on the cameras trying to map the zoom setting with actual physical cameras, I realize that the actual optical 3x lens was triggered under specific conditions which currently I don't remember but confirm what you wrote here I guess. And it bothered me very much like the writer of the article. My expectation is that when I consciously choose that zoom factor, it does use the hardware I paid for, otherwise why buy the hardware to start with ? And in this case the hardware part is the main feature you spend more money for, it is not a side-feature. If nothing else I would expect this as a configuration item, by default using the actual hardware with an option of "turn this AIblah thing on for the phone to select the best possible camera for you for any zoom level", could even extend it to more mambo jumbo (or not) wording but you get the point. Taking it one step further, where does this stop? I get the 24kBTU air conditioning unit but can't actually fully use it because when you put it at max the AC decides on its own that it will send the "proper amount of cool air for the environment, outside temperature etc" and you can't override it. I know, a bit stupid example but you get the point. And I'm all in for the many cases that device calculated decisions can bring a lot of benefit compared on what the user chooses BUT give the explanation and the option to turn it off and don't assume things

baz00 3y ago

I'm so over smartphone cameras now. Earlier this week I did a two week expedition and what I did take on my 13 Pro was pretty terrible. You have to run with the fact that these cameras are all three shitty prime lenses and a lot of computation making up for that. My initial playing with the 15 Pro Max in store confirmed that it is of course, exactly the same. I figured if I can drag my mirrorless camera half way across the world I can chuck it in my bag when I'm out. And that allows me to buy a considerably cheaper phone. Pixel 6A output is a fine example of where digital processing goes awry: https://imgur.com/a/YLNyYnb https://imgur.com/a/YLNyYnb . I regret not retaking that photo with my mirrorless but I learned to use the right tools for the job there.

Moldoteck 3y ago
oh god, that looks bad. I too, started using my dsrl more. Even if it's heavier, the result is much more natural both in colors, grain & better at zoom...
shinycode 3y ago
I did a two week holidays with only my iPhone 13 PM. In most cases the photos were amazing given the resolution. Sure when you zoom in 100% it’s not that great. But the fact that I could take everything with such a light camera, edit right on spot and create an album that I could share without ever touching a computer is amazing. For a professional setup it’s not great. But to capture nice memories and stay light at all times it’s perfect. I really prefer the quality of my dslr but it’s so cumbersome to carry around and to process photos then share them that it’s a compromise I’m willing to accept. It’s a nightmare for me to process thousands of picture from my dslr.
- mettamage 3y ago
  I find the iPhone more than adequate for my social media shenanigans, which is not a whole lot compared to generation Z. I need good looking pictures in certain cases and I've seen the difference in having my social circle expanded because of it. I don't need a pro camera.
- baz00 3y ago

londons_explore 3y ago

Why is is a binary choice which lens to use anyway? They should be taking a photo from both lenses and computationally merging them. Sure - very close shots will mostly use the output of one lens, and distant shots will mostly use the other, but there should be no sudden switchover and there is no situation in which there is no value from extra data collected from the other.

The_Colonel 3y ago
I agree that the binary switch is very annoying - when zooming with my fingers I have to make sure I don't get stuck at 3.8x or something and need to cross over to 4.X to get decent quality. Ideally 3.8x would still use 4x camera to fill most of the frame and the main camera would fill just the edges. The idea is quite simple, but it's rather difficult to implement in practice. The lenses have each different character, optical flaws, color rendering and naive merging would look pretty bad. But it does sound like something AI tech could handle.

Synaesthesia 3y ago

Considering the new iPhones have 48mp sensors, a crop from the regular sensor might in fact be the best option, quality wise. The longer a lens is, the smaller the aperture, so the 5x lens might have inferior light-gathering ability.

The_Colonel 3y ago
A 5x crop from 48Mpx will produce a 2Mpx image. It's less trivial to calculate the light gathering capability of each camera, but I doubt the zoom is 20 times worse.
cozzyd 3y ago
Well if you have plenty of light this doesn't matter. The wide is supposedly f1.8 while the telephoto is supposedly f2.8. the wide has pixels 4 times bigger, so the effective sensor size is about 2/3 on the wide for this field of view. So I think the telephoto gets roughly half the light as the wide if I'm doing mental math correctly.

a1o 3y ago

Considering the Blackmagic Camera has video features in a manual configuration, I guess it should be possible for an App do the same for the photos.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bartwr 3y ago

I think the author doesn't understand consumer products, especially cameras and what most people care about (taking photos!) and need. Generally, people don't care if the phone uses expensive 5x lens or not. I don't really know who does. :) They are at some position and want to quickly take a picture - phone refusing to take a photo or taking an out of focus one would be terrible for them and cause outrage. Image Quality is somewhat important, but 1000x less important than capturing the right moment. If you miss the moment - it's gone forever. I worked as a researcher at the Google HDR+ team, developing algorithms for Pixel 2/3/4/5/6 camera. And consistently we would get both user studies/bugs/feedback, as well as guidance from PMs that responsiveness/latency and "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible" was more important than the Image Quality. I'll admit, we didn't always deliver and often compromised (doing in software what everyone else was doing in hardware back then is HARD), but this principle blocked some cool IQ improvements from launching - and I think was the right call, even if some of those were mine (like high quality multi frame super res in every photo).

The_Colonel 3y ago
> think the author doesn't understand consumer products, especially cameras and what most people care about (taking photos!) and need. The author didn't claim that iPhone has it wrong, just that their personal expectation and preference is different. > Generally, people don't care if the phone uses expensive 5x lens or not. I don't really know who does. :) That's a strange claim. I know many people who value decent quality zoom, even if they're not otherwise photography geeks. > we would get both user studies/bugs/feedback, as well as guidance from PMs that responsiveness/latency and "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible" was more important than the Image Quality What I don't like about these studies is that it collapses different user groups and different use cases into one average "taking any usable photo at all as fast as possible". The reality is much more colorful and often depends on a situation. When taking a photo of an animal then quick shutter speed is indeed important. But when I'm taking a photo of a static subject, esp. in challenging light conditions, I care more about quality.
- bartwr 3y ago
  The latter is the reason why we launched Night Sight. And a ton of people were pissed that it's slow and their subjects won't stay still for so long. We were not conflating user groups, just that if one group is literally 95% of the market and all photos taken, then you optimize the default app and the default mode for them and make the experience super polished. The remaining 5% of power users can use dedicated apps...