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iPhone 15 Camera Upgrades Will Be 'Star of the Show' at Apple Event
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People still can't hear me with these pshit phones. Its impossible to make phone that lets people hear you Steve Jobs promised us better sounding phones with better intelligibility and still we can't match wired analog phone sound from the 1980s. Steve Jobs tried hard to make phones where we could understand each other and not start every call with "can you hear me" but it was so stressful that it gave him cancer and killed him So Tim Cook isn't going to try to make a good intelligible phone because it would definitely kill him.
Be aware that zoom introduces a massive compromise to lens physics. No zoom at all makes for far higher quality lenses (called prime lenses), including much higher performance in low light. The greater the zoom range, the worse it gets. The best zoom options are: change lenses (the iPhone Pro has 3); zoom with your feet; crop the photo if you have to (which is basically what digital zoom is).
Instead of adding periscope zoom, for 6x or 10x zoom, they could instead add a 4th lens to the iPhone Pro, and make all 4 of them prime lenses. Now THAT, would make for an epic phone camera system.
Every lens in the iPhone is a prime, the “zooming” is all done by software.
Eh. As a photographer, I can tell you there is infinite room for improvement with the iPhone camera. And I actually think the camera is pretty good, but it’s nowhere near on the same level as even a low-midrange dedicated ultra compact camera. It will be amazing when they eventually get to that point, and the periscope lens might be exactly when this happens.
Have you tried a Galaxy S23 Ultra ?
14 Pro feels unresponsive next to it, and it’s zoom and clarity are bogus in comparison
this sounds like the wrong tool for the wrong audience. One literally is advertised of giving you full control of the camera at your fingertips while the other is more about processing everything for you. Having both xperias and iphones (albeit both are now older models now) and both have their pros and cons. Some have chimed in and there are people who dislike how iphones can at times over-process photos and some may want more control meanwhile others are quite satisfied with how their iphone works so it really depends what you want. Personally I dislike the way how sometimes skin tones show up on iphones at times and certain shots can come out a bit over processed so I do actually prefer certain shots on the other instead but otherwise I like em both for diff things.
HW wise though, the new sensors on the 1 V have been observed to bring less noise with wider DNR especially in lower light situations but I do agree good software can help further the enhancements and ease of use but a higher starting point is always a good thing to base off of so we'll see how the iphones utilize the new sensors.
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Isn't this the S23 Ultra setup?
I'm with you, I don't get the periscope zoom. As any optical zoom, it will be compromised and have a crappy f-stop. Then it's so large that only the large phone will get it.
So the Max is getting a sub-optimal solution and the regular Pro isn't getting anything. That's innovation right there!
I guess I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with that. And I wouldn’t mind more protrusions… but to be honest, I don’t generally use the ultra wide or zoom lens for my quality photography. I use those lenses for specific purposes - image of a room, can’t step back farther at all, or… that’s about it for the ultra wide. The zoom, I use for very specific work purposes that doesn’t require quality - just recognizable, decent shots. So, for me, I don’t mind much about the specifics there… but the more the zoom lens is optically capable, generally the digital zoom becomes better. And I just want to zoom as far as possible while not making the image indiscernible.
I agree with what was said about over-processing. Ideally the camera should provide a natural image close to what is seen by the eye, not something that is over-brightened or made too vibrant. For me, there have been some backward steps since the iPhone 7, some of the images I’ve made with my 13 Pro have shown signs of over-processing. Admittedly some shots like low-light ones would not have been as good with the 7, so it is probably a case of swings and roundabouts, what you gain on the on hand is lost on another.
There is decades-long industry-wide race who has the best camera, and Apple has been competing in this race non-stop. It is curious because when it comes to other features e.g. amount of RAM memory, curved/foldable displays, fast-charging, etc Apple has been rather passive, following its own path and improving based on what they consider is the best direction for the iPhone.
Apple likely sees ram as a means to an end. They will include enough to ensure the camera works properly (eg: the 13 pro gets 6gb ram while the 13 got 4 gb), but don't really see a point giving users any more beyond what is absolutely necessary, instead relying on software optimisation to achieve a similar outcome. It also allows them to save on component costs by including less ram in each device (it really adds up when you selling hundreds of million of iPhones ever year).
Apple also likely views curved / foldable displays as gimmicks that do not provide any meaningful improvement to the end user experience. A folding display, in particular, would force them to make the phone thinner (because it will then be twice as thick when folded), which compromises the quality of the camera that can be included inside, which is the opposite of what Apple has been doubling down on here.
Fast charging is another head-scratcher as well. On one hand, Apple has magsafe charging (and the heat at least seems to have had a deleterious impact on my 13 pro max's battery health). On the other hand, Apple does seem vested in improving the battery longevity of our devices with features like optimised charging. Even the magsafe battery pack appears to reinforce this stance by trickle-charging your iPhone gradually over time.
I don't see it as passive. It's like there are 100 ways to improve your phone, Apple took a look and said no to 90 of them, while opting to focus on the 10 features they felt were more meaningful.
I see. I get your point but I guess if you go down that route then how big do you go before it is no longer practical to also be a phone? And at what point does it make sense to instead just get used to the form factor of having two devices, a proper mirrorless and a small phone?
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Plenty of (physics) room to evolve a camera in a camera form factor: potential for many generations of product without having to only get bigger/thicker.
Little room to keep doing the same within the limitations of a phone form factor.
Little room to keep doing the same within the limitations of a phone form factor.
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want image quality that wipes the floor with any phone ever made or will ever be made in our lifetime?
take that $1000 and buy a used Canon 5D Mark II and a used 24-105 f/4 lens (or similar nikon, sony).
take that $1000 and buy a used Canon 5D Mark II and a used 24-105 f/4 lens (or similar nikon, sony).
As I’ve said over and over again, BS until the actually improve their computational photography.
Google is king and everyone else comes second.
Google is king and everyone else comes second.
Every year it’s “camera upgrades” to wow us.
Yawn….🥱
Exactly.
And every year for the past 3 years - its seems after 6months its not really that impressive until you're lulled by the next event and all those older pics and videos taken by the previous model seems just not so impressive as it was?
Why?
Is it due to OS updates over the course of the year actually slowly and incrementally lowering quality?
I'm not specifically picking on Apple and iPhone Pro models at this last part cause I really wonder if manufacturers actually DO this? sneaky if so.
ALl those picture quality EXO and similar tests need to be evaluated as normally initially on launch - then keped and compared for the same mdoel EVERY OS update for the SAME model in the first and second year and see if quality actually drops?! IS so that would be a MAJOR class action lawsuit.
RIGHT?!
LIke when did pictures and videso become THE primary reason for people to purchase a smartphone? Is NOT ALL a smartphone should be used for nor capable of. Seems like we're back to th efeature (aka dumb-phone) era usage. Its seriously SAD really.
Are you telling me that the "optical zoom" in iPhones is actually digital zoom? If so, then what is the "digital zoom" part of the the zoom in iPhones?
When it's done using crop, they call it "optical", because the detail is more or less real. When you go beyond the last prime (the 3x or whatever you have) and it has to interpolate, it's "digital".
It doesn't do optical zoom like a normal camera with a zoom lens, but the digital is the same.
