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The points really boil down to: 1. Difference in focal length/ position. 2. Difference in color processing But…the article is fairly weak on both points? 1.

by dagmx 1y ago

The points really boil down to: 1. Difference in focal length/ position. 2. Difference in color processing But…the article is fairly weak on both points? 1. It’s unclear why the author is comparing different focal lengths without clarifying what they used. If I use the 24mm equivalent on either my full frame or my iPhone, the perspective will be largely the same modulo some lens correction. Same if I use the 70mm or whatever the focal length is. 2. Color processing is both highly subjective but also completely something you can disable on the phone and the other camera. It’s again, no different between the two. It’s a poor article because it doesn’t focus on the actual material differences. The phone will have a smaller sensor. It will have more noise and need to do more to combat it. It won’t have as shallow a depth of field. The phone will also of course have different ergonomics. But the things the post focuses on are kind of poor understandings of the differences in what they’re shooting and how their cameras work.

sazylusan 1y ago
Agreed, in particular the distortion of the players on the ends, the smaller shoulders and chest, as well as the lean can all be attributed to the wider lens used on the iPhone (and as such that the photo was taken closer to players). I'd guess the author was using the "1x" lens on the iPhone, a lot of these issues go away if they use the "3x" or "5x" lens. I'd even consider that most of the jawline change of the player is simply the angle of their chin/face as well as expression.
- Joeri 1y ago
  The 2x mode of the wide lens is basically the standard “nifty fifty” of a big camera and what the author should have compared to. The 1x is 24mm equivalent which is a focal length I don’t particularly care for, but I get why they picked it (easy to frame a group of people indoors). For portraits the ideal length is 85mm equivalent which would be 3.5x, rumored to be on the next iphone pro. At this length there is minimal facial feature distortion without getting the flattening effect you get at longer focal lengths.
lambdasquirrel 1y ago
This does not address the detrimental parts of computational photography.
- dangus 1y ago
  Which I’m personally failing to witness consistently by the “evidence” in this article. Most of the photo examples here were somewhere between “I can’t tell a significant difference” and “flip a coin and you might find people who prefer the iPhone result more.” Even less of a difference when they’re printed out and put in a 5x7” frame. Keep in mind the cost of a smartphone camera is $0. You already own one. You were going to buy a smartphone anyway for other things. So if we are going to sit and argue about quality we still have to figure out what dollar value these differences are worth to people. And the “evidence” is supposedly that people aren’t getting their phone photos printed out. But let’s not forget the fact that you literally couldn’t see your film photos without printing them when we were using film cameras.
  - chongli 1y ago
    The problem with computational photography is that it uses software to make photos "look good" for everyday users. That may be an advantage for those users but it is basically a non-starter for a photographer because it makes it a crapshoot to take photos which predictably and faithfully render the scene.
    - askbjoernhansen 1y ago
      Lots of apps gives you other options for how to process the image data. I've had a bunch of "high-end" digital SLRs and they (and the software processing the raw files) do plenty computational processing as well. I completely agree that all else being equal it's possible to get photos with better technical quality from a big sensor, big lens, big raw file; but this article is more an example of "if you take sloppy photos with your phone camera you get sloppy photos".
    - ChrisGreenHeur 1y ago
      Your brain also uses software to make what you see look good
SoftTalker 1y ago
Can you really have a 70mm focal length on a phone that is less than 10mm thick? I thought it was simulated by cropping the image from the actual very short focal length.
- jeswin 1y ago
  Yes, periscope lenses are fairly common on phones. 10x "optical zoom".
- Espressosaurus 1y ago
  Usually it's "FOV equivalent", e.g. scaled to a full frame sensor size. Tiny sensor size means you maybe have a 10mm focal length, but the size of the sensor relative to 10mm makes it the FOV of a 70mm lens on a full frame camera. You see similar when people are comparing APS-C, micro 4/3, or medium format lenses.
  - strogonoff 1y ago
    Physics really works out such that the smaller you make camera sensor, the smaller you can make the lens. Full-frame lenses tend to be markedly bigger for equivalent quality compared to, say, APS-C lenses. However, due to physics there is also no working around the quality issues of a small sensor. Photosites get less light and produce more noise, and automated noise suppression costs detail and sharpness. I wonder whether tiny lenses of equivalent sharpness and clarity as their larger equivalents would be much more expensive or impossible to produce (sure, less material, but much finer precision required), but it probably doesn’t matter because the tiny sensor already loses enough sharpness that better lenses won’t contribute much.
    - croemer 1y ago
      > Physics really works out such that the smaller you make camera sensor, the smaller you can make the lens. At some point the wave-like nature of light starts to bite. Can't really go much smaller than a micron per pixel. So a millimeter sized chip gets you 1 megapixel. 50MP mean ~7mm. (back of the envelope caveats apply)
majormajor 1y ago
The biggest real differences between iPhone and whatever ye-olde-good-standalone-digital-camera are sharpening/edge enhancements and flattening of lighting. If you take a lot of landscapes with detailed textures in high-contrast lighting you'll see the differences pretty quickly. The iPhone photos will look better at first glance because they have a lot of tricks to deal with lighting that would otherwise give a photographer difficulty. For instance, that shot of the child could easily have a completely blown-out background in slightly different circumstances for a typical use of a digital camera's auto-exposure mode. But it results in a certain look that this article really doesn't show well, in terms of the more fake-looking aspects of it. The gravel in the shot of the child hints at it, and you can start to see it more if you view the image full-size vs the scaled down presentation. The asphalt under the car, too - there's something very harsh and fake about the iPhone texture rendering approach that gets worse the larger you display the image. This started around the iPhone 11, IIRC, with it's ML processing. Both things can be avoided with Halide's raw mode (more "raw" than Apple's) if you want side by side comparisons on your own device. Though IIRC it doesn't support full-res on the newer phones. The trick, though, is that if you want images that look better in tough conditions, there's a learning curve for using a standalone camera or to shooting in RAW with Halide. In terms of lighting it's not even "more realistic" right out of the gate, necessarily, because your eye has more dynamic range and your brain has more tricks than most any straight-out-of-camera non-ML-enhanced image. But if you want images you can print out at 8x10+ you'll benefit from the investment. (Samsung cameras are even wilder in their over-enhancement of photos.)
- sundvor 1y ago
  Yeah I like to take photos of my cast iron cooking with my S25U, on a black induction glass surface - and I find myself swapping to Pro mode all the time as the colour temperature is often way too warm and or oversaturated. It's a great camera in automatic mode most of the time, but not for that scenario.
neya 1y ago
I disagree, I thought the article highlighted the differences beautifully. I'm on a professionally color calibrated 27" monitor that came with one of those color calibration "certificates" at the time of purchase. The second I loaded the article, the differences were just stark. The skin tones alone were a dead giveaway. It is no secret that Apple does a lot of post processing on their mediocre photos to make them look good - more so than most other Androids - because, it's all software. But, from the article, it is understood that the author is trying to point out that Apple could've done a better job to represent skin tones more accurately atleast. The fish-eye defense for Apple is totally understandeable, but, why are we defending the weak skin tones? Every year, they keep launching and claiming grandoise statements "This is the best smartphone camera out there is". And no, this is not a limitation of smartphone sensors. In fact, if you look at the latest Xperia series from Sony, they have the same software from their DSLRs translated into the smartphones that addresses the skintones perfectly well. I hope we can skip past the biases and personal preferences we have towards Apple and treat them neutrally like any other manufacturer. This "Apple can do no wrong" narrative and attacking anyone who points out their flaws is just tired and boring at this point.
- dagmx 1y ago
  You’re somehow both reading far too in to my comment (none of my comment is specific to Apple) and not reading my comment enough (because you m missed the point about color profiles) I’m not defending the default color choices, I’m saying that they’re comparing apples to oranges because they’re comparing an output designed to be opinionated with one that’s designed to be processed after the fact. The iPhone is perfectly capable of outputting neutral images and raw files.
  - ubercow13 1y ago
    The non-iPhone pictures are probably also in-camera jpegs so they are also 'opinionated', not RAWs.
    - Ancapistani 1y ago
      I would go so far as to say: if you're using in-camera JPEGs, you would probably be better off with a cellphone.
ksec 1y ago
>Color processing is both highly subjective but also completely something you can disable on the phone How do I disable Colour processing?
- subscribed 1y ago
  I think you can get RAW on iPhone? I don't own one so I can't confirm. On my Pixel RAW is also available, even moreso with the non-standard camera software.
  - mh- 1y ago
    Yes, I shoot in RAW by default most of the time. It can be quickly turned on and off from the stock camera app without even leaving the main screen. You may have to enable it once in Settings -> Camera -> Formats; I've been using it so long I don't remember what the defaults are. But once you've done that, it's in the top right of the camera app - just tap where it says RAW.
- Terretta 1y ago
  https://www.lux.camera/introducing-process-zero-for-iphone/ https://www.lux.camera/introducing-process-zero-for-iphone/
  - ksec 1y ago
    Thank You. Didn't know this exist.
dehrmann 1y ago
Does anyone have experience with aftermarket add-on lenses? Theoretically, they can help with the focal length.
mattwilsonn888 1y ago
You're completely off base on the focal length argument. A traditional camera has the choice and can choose the most appropriate length; an Iphone is locked in to a fish-eye clearly put in there to overcome its inherent limitations. So it doesn't really matter "if it's fair" or not, because it's not about a fair comparison, it's a demonstration that a traditional camera is just better. Why should the traditional camera use an inappropriate focal length just because the Iphone is forced to?
- kqr 1y ago
  Yes and no. Modern phone cameras are strong enough that you can crop out the centre and get a passable image as if taken with a longer focal length.
- Twisell 1y ago
  Every hardware have it's limitations, my DSLR don't fit in my pocket for instance. But that wouldn't be a fair point when comparing photo quality against a smartphone. Comparing quality with non equivalent focal lengths is as pertinent as to mount a fisheye on the DSLR (because you can!) and then claim that the smartphone have less distortion.
  - DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
    The article is comparing photo quality between two different cameras. The lens affects image quality, so it's completely fair to discuss. If it were possible to switch out the lens on the iPhone, and the photographer had just chosen the wrong lens for the job, that would be a fair criticism of the article. But that's not what happened. The iPhone is just very limited when it comes to the lens, compared to a DSLR.
    - josephg 1y ago
      > If it were possible to switch out the lens on the iPhone... It is possible to "switch out the lens" on an iphone, because iPhones ship with multiple camera lenses. (Well, multiple entire cameras). The iphone 16 they're using here has 3 cameras. And yet, I'm pretty sure the photo of the boys was taken with the ultrawide for some reason. A lot of the distortion problems would go away if they took a few steps back and used one of the longer lenses - just like they did with the DSLR.
bayindirh 1y ago
I'll kindly disagree with you. Like the other commenter, I'm on a 27" HP business monitor comes with color calibration certificate, and the differences are very visible. Moreover, I'm taking photos as a hobby for some time. The angle, different focal lengths doesn't matter in rendering of the images. The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Moreover, we want to be liked as human beings, it's in our nature. So, phone companies driven by both smaller sensors (that thing is way noisier when compared to a full frame sensor) and market pressure to reduce processing needed to be done by end users (because it inconveniences them), started to add more and more complicated post-processing in their cameras. The result is this very article. People with their natural complications reduced, skin tones boosted on red parts, sharpened but flatter photos, without much perspective correction and sometimes looking very artificial. Make no mistake, "professional" cameras also post process, but you can both see this processing and turn it off if you want, and the professional cameras corrects what lens fails at, but smartphones, incl. iPhone makes "happy, social media ready" photos by default. As, again other commenter said, it's not a limitation of the sensor (sans the noise). Sony supplies most of the higher end sensors in the market, and their cameras or other cameras sporting sensors produced by them got the "best color" awards over and over again, and XPeria smartphones comes with professional camera pipelines after that small sensor, so they can take photos like what you see. I personally prefer iPhone as my smartphone of my choice, but the moment I want to take a photo I want to spend time composing, I ditch default camera app and use Halide, because that thing can bypass Apple's post-processing, and even can apply none if you want.
- lonelyasacloud 1y ago
  > The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Is nothing new. When film was mass market almost no one developed their own photos (particularly colo(u)r). Instead almost all printing went through bulk labs who optimised for what people wanting to show to their family and friends. What is different now is if someone cares about post processing to try and present their particular version of reality they can do it easily without the cost and inconvenience of having to setup and run a darkroom.
isodev 1y ago
I think the physical parameters of the lenses are negligible compared to the distortions caused by "computational computing" and the colour changes iPhones tend to add to make photos more instagramable by default.
- Narew 1y ago
  Some of the distortion shown in the article is call "Volume Anamorphosis". It's a distortion that strongly deform face and person. This deformation is really visible for short focal lens. Disclaimer: I work for a photo processing software.
wisty 1y ago
Um, I'm pretty sure a 24mm shot on a full frame camera will look the same as an iPhone shot, but only if you crop the full frame shot (ignoring pixels counts). Yes, you could get the same photo of the guy in the centre on the iPhone, but only by zooming in and cropping out everything else. I guess if you REALLY wanted you could run back, and zoom in. Better get a tripod to hold it steady since you're zooming in then. So anyone but an expert will shoot with a much shorter lens when using the iPhone. This is how crop factors work unless I'm really mistaken.
- dagmx 1y ago
  Please note that I specifically said “equivalent focal length”. A 24mm equivalent will have almost the exact same perspective on any sized sensor, because that’s what equivalent means. It’s a relationship of sensor size to actual focal length. A 16mm on a 1.5x APs-c is a 24mm equivalent on a 35mm. The iPhones base lens is something like 1.5mm but when related to its sensor, it’s roughly a 24mm equivalent. There’s no cropping that needs to happen.
nateroling 1y ago
Looking at the trees in the background of the first photo, it’s clear he’s using a longer focal length on the non-iPhone. He has some good points, maybe, but in general it’s a pretty naive comparison.
geldedus 1y ago
they don't even know what "bokeh" means
rob74 1y ago
Yup, that was the thing that jumped out at me too: in the photos with the golf players, the trees in the background appear much smaller in the iPhone photo than in the "real camera" photo, which means the "real camera" photo was taken from further away and zoomed in, so it obviously will have less distortion. Same for the building and car pictures, but the article doesn't mention that at all (except for writing that "the fish eye iPhone lens creates distortion" - of course it does, that's why the iPhone has other lenses as well)!
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
  Yeah it's disappointing to see photographers getting this wrong. Most of them know better. It's the _distance_ that causes distortion, not the _lens_. You can prove this by doodling light rays on a sheet of paper. There is no lens that will get you a good photo at 1 meter from a person. They stand back 2 or 3 or more and then say "ho ho fish eye lens". I'm so sick of it Someone agrees: https://petapixel.com/2021/08/02/lenses-dont-cause-perspective-distortion-and-lens-compression/ https://petapixel.com/2021/08/02/lenses-dont-cause-perspecti...

by dagmx 1y ago

sazylusan 1y ago

Agreed, in particular the distortion of the players on the ends, the smaller shoulders and chest, as well as the lean can all be attributed to the wider lens used on the iPhone (and as such that the photo was taken closer to players). I'd guess the author was using the "1x" lens on the iPhone, a lot of these issues go away if they use the "3x" or "5x" lens. I'd even consider that most of the jawline change of the player is simply the angle of their chin/face as well as expression.

Joeri 1y ago
The 2x mode of the wide lens is basically the standard “nifty fifty” of a big camera and what the author should have compared to. The 1x is 24mm equivalent which is a focal length I don’t particularly care for, but I get why they picked it (easy to frame a group of people indoors). For portraits the ideal length is 85mm equivalent which would be 3.5x, rumored to be on the next iphone pro. At this length there is minimal facial feature distortion without getting the flattening effect you get at longer focal lengths.

lambdasquirrel 1y ago

This does not address the detrimental parts of computational photography.

dangus 1y ago
Which I’m personally failing to witness consistently by the “evidence” in this article. Most of the photo examples here were somewhere between “I can’t tell a significant difference” and “flip a coin and you might find people who prefer the iPhone result more.” Even less of a difference when they’re printed out and put in a 5x7” frame. Keep in mind the cost of a smartphone camera is $0. You already own one. You were going to buy a smartphone anyway for other things. So if we are going to sit and argue about quality we still have to figure out what dollar value these differences are worth to people. And the “evidence” is supposedly that people aren’t getting their phone photos printed out. But let’s not forget the fact that you literally couldn’t see your film photos without printing them when we were using film cameras.
- chongli 1y ago
  The problem with computational photography is that it uses software to make photos "look good" for everyday users. That may be an advantage for those users but it is basically a non-starter for a photographer because it makes it a crapshoot to take photos which predictably and faithfully render the scene.
  - askbjoernhansen 1y ago
    Lots of apps gives you other options for how to process the image data. I've had a bunch of "high-end" digital SLRs and they (and the software processing the raw files) do plenty computational processing as well. I completely agree that all else being equal it's possible to get photos with better technical quality from a big sensor, big lens, big raw file; but this article is more an example of "if you take sloppy photos with your phone camera you get sloppy photos".
  - ChrisGreenHeur 1y ago
    Your brain also uses software to make what you see look good

SoftTalker 1y ago

Can you really have a 70mm focal length on a phone that is less than 10mm thick? I thought it was simulated by cropping the image from the actual very short focal length.

jeswin 1y ago
Yes, periscope lenses are fairly common on phones. 10x "optical zoom".
Espressosaurus 1y ago
Usually it's "FOV equivalent", e.g. scaled to a full frame sensor size. Tiny sensor size means you maybe have a 10mm focal length, but the size of the sensor relative to 10mm makes it the FOV of a 70mm lens on a full frame camera. You see similar when people are comparing APS-C, micro 4/3, or medium format lenses.
- strogonoff 1y ago
  Physics really works out such that the smaller you make camera sensor, the smaller you can make the lens. Full-frame lenses tend to be markedly bigger for equivalent quality compared to, say, APS-C lenses. However, due to physics there is also no working around the quality issues of a small sensor. Photosites get less light and produce more noise, and automated noise suppression costs detail and sharpness. I wonder whether tiny lenses of equivalent sharpness and clarity as their larger equivalents would be much more expensive or impossible to produce (sure, less material, but much finer precision required), but it probably doesn’t matter because the tiny sensor already loses enough sharpness that better lenses won’t contribute much.
  - croemer 1y ago
    > Physics really works out such that the smaller you make camera sensor, the smaller you can make the lens. At some point the wave-like nature of light starts to bite. Can't really go much smaller than a micron per pixel. So a millimeter sized chip gets you 1 megapixel. 50MP mean ~7mm. (back of the envelope caveats apply)

majormajor 1y ago

The biggest real differences between iPhone and whatever ye-olde-good-standalone-digital-camera are sharpening/edge enhancements and flattening of lighting. If you take a lot of landscapes with detailed textures in high-contrast lighting you'll see the differences pretty quickly. The iPhone photos will look better at first glance because they have a lot of tricks to deal with lighting that would otherwise give a photographer difficulty. For instance, that shot of the child could easily have a completely blown-out background in slightly different circumstances for a typical use of a digital camera's auto-exposure mode. But it results in a certain look that this article really doesn't show well, in terms of the more fake-looking aspects of it. The gravel in the shot of the child hints at it, and you can start to see it more if you view the image full-size vs the scaled down presentation. The asphalt under the car, too - there's something very harsh and fake about the iPhone texture rendering approach that gets worse the larger you display the image. This started around the iPhone 11, IIRC, with it's ML processing. Both things can be avoided with Halide's raw mode (more "raw" than Apple's) if you want side by side comparisons on your own device. Though IIRC it doesn't support full-res on the newer phones. The trick, though, is that if you want images that look better in tough conditions, there's a learning curve for using a standalone camera or to shooting in RAW with Halide. In terms of lighting it's not even "more realistic" right out of the gate, necessarily, because your eye has more dynamic range and your brain has more tricks than most any straight-out-of-camera non-ML-enhanced image. But if you want images you can print out at 8x10+ you'll benefit from the investment. (Samsung cameras are even wilder in their over-enhancement of photos.)

sundvor 1y ago
Yeah I like to take photos of my cast iron cooking with my S25U, on a black induction glass surface - and I find myself swapping to Pro mode all the time as the colour temperature is often way too warm and or oversaturated. It's a great camera in automatic mode most of the time, but not for that scenario.

neya 1y ago

I disagree, I thought the article highlighted the differences beautifully. I'm on a professionally color calibrated 27" monitor that came with one of those color calibration "certificates" at the time of purchase. The second I loaded the article, the differences were just stark. The skin tones alone were a dead giveaway. It is no secret that Apple does a lot of post processing on their mediocre photos to make them look good - more so than most other Androids - because, it's all software. But, from the article, it is understood that the author is trying to point out that Apple could've done a better job to represent skin tones more accurately atleast. The fish-eye defense for Apple is totally understandeable, but, why are we defending the weak skin tones? Every year, they keep launching and claiming grandoise statements "This is the best smartphone camera out there is". And no, this is not a limitation of smartphone sensors. In fact, if you look at the latest Xperia series from Sony, they have the same software from their DSLRs translated into the smartphones that addresses the skintones perfectly well. I hope we can skip past the biases and personal preferences we have towards Apple and treat them neutrally like any other manufacturer. This "Apple can do no wrong" narrative and attacking anyone who points out their flaws is just tired and boring at this point.

dagmx 1y ago
You’re somehow both reading far too in to my comment (none of my comment is specific to Apple) and not reading my comment enough (because you m missed the point about color profiles) I’m not defending the default color choices, I’m saying that they’re comparing apples to oranges because they’re comparing an output designed to be opinionated with one that’s designed to be processed after the fact. The iPhone is perfectly capable of outputting neutral images and raw files.
- ubercow13 1y ago
  The non-iPhone pictures are probably also in-camera jpegs so they are also 'opinionated', not RAWs.
  - Ancapistani 1y ago
    I would go so far as to say: if you're using in-camera JPEGs, you would probably be better off with a cellphone.

ksec 1y ago

>Color processing is both highly subjective but also completely something you can disable on the phone How do I disable Colour processing?

subscribed 1y ago
I think you can get RAW on iPhone? I don't own one so I can't confirm. On my Pixel RAW is also available, even moreso with the non-standard camera software.
- mh- 1y ago
  Yes, I shoot in RAW by default most of the time. It can be quickly turned on and off from the stock camera app without even leaving the main screen. You may have to enable it once in Settings -> Camera -> Formats; I've been using it so long I don't remember what the defaults are. But once you've done that, it's in the top right of the camera app - just tap where it says RAW.
Terretta 1y ago
https://www.lux.camera/introducing-process-zero-for-iphone/ https://www.lux.camera/introducing-process-zero-for-iphone/
- ksec 1y ago
  Thank You. Didn't know this exist.

dehrmann 1y ago

Does anyone have experience with aftermarket add-on lenses? Theoretically, they can help with the focal length.

mattwilsonn888 1y ago

You're completely off base on the focal length argument. A traditional camera has the choice and can choose the most appropriate length; an Iphone is locked in to a fish-eye clearly put in there to overcome its inherent limitations. So it doesn't really matter "if it's fair" or not, because it's not about a fair comparison, it's a demonstration that a traditional camera is just better. Why should the traditional camera use an inappropriate focal length just because the Iphone is forced to?

kqr 1y ago
Yes and no. Modern phone cameras are strong enough that you can crop out the centre and get a passable image as if taken with a longer focal length.
Twisell 1y ago
Every hardware have it's limitations, my DSLR don't fit in my pocket for instance. But that wouldn't be a fair point when comparing photo quality against a smartphone. Comparing quality with non equivalent focal lengths is as pertinent as to mount a fisheye on the DSLR (because you can!) and then claim that the smartphone have less distortion.
- DiogenesKynikos 1y ago
  The article is comparing photo quality between two different cameras. The lens affects image quality, so it's completely fair to discuss. If it were possible to switch out the lens on the iPhone, and the photographer had just chosen the wrong lens for the job, that would be a fair criticism of the article. But that's not what happened. The iPhone is just very limited when it comes to the lens, compared to a DSLR.
  - josephg 1y ago
    > If it were possible to switch out the lens on the iPhone... It is possible to "switch out the lens" on an iphone, because iPhones ship with multiple camera lenses. (Well, multiple entire cameras). The iphone 16 they're using here has 3 cameras. And yet, I'm pretty sure the photo of the boys was taken with the ultrawide for some reason. A lot of the distortion problems would go away if they took a few steps back and used one of the longer lenses - just like they did with the DSLR.

bayindirh 1y ago

I'll kindly disagree with you. Like the other commenter, I'm on a 27" HP business monitor comes with color calibration certificate, and the differences are very visible. Moreover, I'm taking photos as a hobby for some time. The angle, different focal lengths doesn't matter in rendering of the images. The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Moreover, we want to be liked as human beings, it's in our nature. So, phone companies driven by both smaller sensors (that thing is way noisier when compared to a full frame sensor) and market pressure to reduce processing needed to be done by end users (because it inconveniences them), started to add more and more complicated post-processing in their cameras. The result is this very article. People with their natural complications reduced, skin tones boosted on red parts, sharpened but flatter photos, without much perspective correction and sometimes looking very artificial. Make no mistake, "professional" cameras also post process, but you can both see this processing and turn it off if you want, and the professional cameras corrects what lens fails at, but smartphones, incl. iPhone makes "happy, social media ready" photos by default. As, again other commenter said, it's not a limitation of the sensor (sans the noise). Sony supplies most of the higher end sensors in the market, and their cameras or other cameras sporting sensors produced by them got the "best color" awards over and over again, and XPeria smartphones comes with professional camera pipelines after that small sensor, so they can take photos like what you see. I personally prefer iPhone as my smartphone of my choice, but the moment I want to take a photo I want to spend time composing, I ditch default camera app and use Halide, because that thing can bypass Apple's post-processing, and even can apply none if you want.

lonelyasacloud 1y ago
> The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Is nothing new. When film was mass market almost no one developed their own photos (particularly colo(u)r). Instead almost all printing went through bulk labs who optimised for what people wanting to show to their family and friends. What is different now is if someone cares about post processing to try and present their particular version of reality they can do it easily without the cost and inconvenience of having to setup and run a darkroom.

isodev 1y ago

I think the physical parameters of the lenses are negligible compared to the distortions caused by "computational computing" and the colour changes iPhones tend to add to make photos more instagramable by default.

Narew 1y ago
Some of the distortion shown in the article is call "Volume Anamorphosis". It's a distortion that strongly deform face and person. This deformation is really visible for short focal lens. Disclaimer: I work for a photo processing software.

wisty 1y ago

Um, I'm pretty sure a 24mm shot on a full frame camera will look the same as an iPhone shot, but only if you crop the full frame shot (ignoring pixels counts). Yes, you could get the same photo of the guy in the centre on the iPhone, but only by zooming in and cropping out everything else. I guess if you REALLY wanted you could run back, and zoom in. Better get a tripod to hold it steady since you're zooming in then. So anyone but an expert will shoot with a much shorter lens when using the iPhone. This is how crop factors work unless I'm really mistaken.

dagmx 1y ago
Please note that I specifically said “equivalent focal length”. A 24mm equivalent will have almost the exact same perspective on any sized sensor, because that’s what equivalent means. It’s a relationship of sensor size to actual focal length. A 16mm on a 1.5x APs-c is a 24mm equivalent on a 35mm. The iPhones base lens is something like 1.5mm but when related to its sensor, it’s roughly a 24mm equivalent. There’s no cropping that needs to happen.

nateroling 1y ago

Looking at the trees in the background of the first photo, it’s clear he’s using a longer focal length on the non-iPhone. He has some good points, maybe, but in general it’s a pretty naive comparison.

geldedus 1y ago

they don't even know what "bokeh" means

rob74 1y ago

Yup, that was the thing that jumped out at me too: in the photos with the golf players, the trees in the background appear much smaller in the iPhone photo than in the "real camera" photo, which means the "real camera" photo was taken from further away and zoomed in, so it obviously will have less distortion. Same for the building and car pictures, but the article doesn't mention that at all (except for writing that "the fish eye iPhone lens creates distortion" - of course it does, that's why the iPhone has other lenses as well)!

01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y ago
Yeah it's disappointing to see photographers getting this wrong. Most of them know better. It's the _distance_ that causes distortion, not the _lens_. You can prove this by doodling light rays on a sheet of paper. There is no lens that will get you a good photo at 1 meter from a person. They stand back 2 or 3 or more and then say "ho ho fish eye lens". I'm so sick of it Someone agrees: https://petapixel.com/2021/08/02/lenses-dont-cause-perspective-distortion-and-lens-compression/ https://petapixel.com/2021/08/02/lenses-dont-cause-perspecti...