Old iPhone 4S photo and its Fuji Sensia equivalent

[MajorFubar]

This came up on my FB newsfeed today from nine years ago, so I thought I'd post it up just for public musing.

No I'm not wanting to re-hash a film vs digital debate from 2003, but I think it serves to show a point that in 2013 iPhones still had a way to go in terms of nailing shots with difficult lighting. I know today's phones would do a better job.

This is a sunset silhouette shot of 12ft tall shell sculpture, taken on 28 September 2013, on a local beach near my then-home in NW England.

iPhone 4S (RHS cropped to give similar aspect ratio to the film equivalent):

Olympus OM4Ti + Fuji Sensia 100 (sadly now NLA), home-scanned on a Epson V850:

The iPhone-shot was taken five minutes later than the film-shot. I waited for the sun to just sink behind the low cloud visible in the film-shot, because an attempt to directly replicate the film-shot failed due to the sky being completely blown-out by the setting sun. If I adjusted the exposure to prevent blow-out, the foreground basically disappeared. So I had to compromise. There is still evidence of blow-out at the top of the iPhone frame, but I remember not wanting to wait any longer for it to get darker.

Still, it's good to see 'where we started'.

 

[Powerbooky]

I wonder how the same shot would have turned out on a current iPhone. My 2017 SE wouldn't have a much better job than the 4S, even with HDR turned on. And back then the performance of those phones was considered fantastic already.
Last August I took a picture with my daughters 2020 SE in similar very high contrast situation and I must say it improved for sure. It's amazing what a difference good control/processing software can make when taking a picture nowadays with a phone camera and traditional (digital and analogue) camera.

 

[MajorFubar]

I wonder how the same shot would have turned out on a current iPhone. My 2017 SE wouldn't have a much better job than the 4S, even with HDR turned on. And back then the performance of those phones was considered fantastic already.
Last August I took a picture with my daughters 2020 SE in similar very high contrast situation and I must say it improved for sure. It's amazing what a difference good control/processing software can make when taking a picture nowadays with a phone camera and traditional (digital and analogue) camera.

Even the HDR on my current 2020 SE2 would have improved things, I imagine the RAW image from an iPhone 14 would provide the same level of contrast and detail as film, if not better. We have improved a lot in ten years, whereas film was already a very mature technology.

 

[Hughmac]

Having said that, my iPhone 4S had one of the first of the better quality cameras.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[MajorFubar]

Having said that, my iPhone 4S had one of the first of the better quality cameras.

Cheers

Hugh

It was state of the art in many ways for its time. Not only did it have one of the best phone cameras, its DAC was probably the best that's ever been fitted to an iPhone. I remember upgrading to an iPhone 5S and being very disappointed by the SQ through quality headphones, it being way worse than the 4S it replaced. All academic now considering there's no headphone output on any of them.

 

[Ray2]

All academic now considering there's no headphone output on any of them.

I never understand comments like this. Apple offers a dirt cheap Lightning to mini-jack adapter that adds all of about 2” to my headphone cord. If I can carry the headphones I can manage the always attached adapter as well.

 

[MajorFubar]

I never understand comments like this. Apple offers a dirt cheap Lightning to mini-jack adapter that adds all of about 2” to my headphone cord. If I can carry the headphones I can manage the always attached adapter as well.

I wasn't complaining that there isn't a headphone jack. I was pointing out that the differences between iPhone internal DACs is an obsolete argument now, considering you have to use some kind of external DAC anyway (including the lightning to mini-jack you mentioned, though most I expect use BlueTooth).

See if you respond to the actual post and the context rather than choosing to be triggered by certain keywords you might end up with a reaction score higher than 1/3rd of your post count.

 

[Ray2]

Need to work on that reaction score. Important.

 

[MajorFubar]

Need to work on that reaction score. Important.

The one thing you was definitely right about is that you didn't understand my comments. So there's that, I guess.