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looks like light wasn't amazing and the negative in all smart phone cameras is low light is where you see the difference. this is why a bigger sensor will help in this area. if the 14 pro has a 1/1.3 sensor I would hope to see better results.
Off-topic, but what an awesome thing to have attended! I’m jealous
The issue here is mostly the telephoto sensor that is really too small. It's a 1/3,4" (12,2mm2) and is waaaaay smaller than the main 1/1,65" (44mm2) sensor that the iPhone 13PM has. It's almost 4 times smaller and that's why, with the narrower aperture, the lens is struggling when there are no direct sunlights.
It's nice that Apple is looking for bigger sensors for its main lens but they really have to care more about the others, especially the telephoto. They tried to compensate by using digital zoom from the main lens if the light is not perfect but with its 12Mpx cropped, loss of details from the AI, the result is indeed so bad.
However, with the apparently new 48Mpx main sensor for 14 Pro lineup, the result from digital zoom may be better, I don't know if Apple will improve its telephoto sensor? They didn't show a tendency for that...
On the other hand, some Chinese brands and also the Google Pixel 6 Pro have a bigger sensor (around 1/2,0") and it definitely helps for low lights. I hope Apple will be looking for bigger sensors that will make the iPhone good in almost every conditions. The telephoto lens they chose for the 13PM is definitely not really good...
Can you give us some picture to prove it? Or, are you particularly referring to its 3X lens?
I also came from 6s, day and night difference. 13Pro is way more superior and that's why we all are complaining here all the over-processing and other inferiors of the stock app.
Your 6plus has neither ultra-wide nor 3x lens; nothing to compare here.
6plus camera is not in the same league as 13 & Pro and in no way better than ultra-wide or 3x lens of 13Pro for scenario they are designed for.
In fact, I abandoned shooting with 6s after a few months put it into field test. It's garbage and I went for Canon G7X (and later G7X Mark2) as my always-with-me camera.
Fast forward, iPhone 13 Pro camera sometimes defeated the said Canon G7X in difficult lighting conditions and when I had no time or intention maneuvering with those buttons and wheels.
Agree! Except its lacking of toggle for turning off HDR, auto 3x->wide, and annoying OCR menu.
All other 3rd party apps that I tried or own has inferior and awkward UI that make you wondering how could they be all blind to the design beauty of stock app.
It's unchanged, everything exactly the same. Although they solved another issue I had, where sometimes opening the camera would start in a weird overexposed mode. It's now way more consistent.
Telephoto is not expected to get major improvements until 2023. 5x pericope lens but still another year away sadly
Yep, I know that, sadly. It could be one of the major improvement on the iPhone for the last couple years.
However, I hope also Apple will take the same direction of the Google Pixel 6 Pro's instead of Samsung's one. It's great to have a periscope that can have a x10 optical lens but with such a long focal length, the sensor is really small and it works well only during daily time while the Pixel's one is quite good also in low light.
I think that Apple won't add a fourth lens to the trio they have now but with the potentially main 48MPx, they'll count on that to take good pictures from x1 to x3. And then, they'll add a periscope lens to have a bigger x4 (or something like that) to have really good quality in all conditions from x0,5 to x10.
I think the flexibility in every condition is what should tend Apple for. Today, they're recognized to have the "best quality" for a smartphone by many reviewers because of that. Nevertheless, these reviews are indeed opinions.
But the aperture of Pixel 6 tele lens is f/3.5, 2/3 stop smaller than iPhone 13P, is actually inferior in light gathering.
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You're right, aperture is smaller but I believe the Pixel use also pixel binning and that makes a pixel size of 1,6µm for a 12MPx picture and in the end, looking at the results, Pixel's telephoto is much cleaner in low light conditions.
But you're right, I'm not an engineer in that department, I just hope Apple will focus more on the telephoto lens as it delivers really not good pictures if you compare it to the main lens.
The f-number is ratio of focal length to entrance pupil. So considering the increased focal length of the Pixel 6 Pro's tele of 102.6mm vs 77mm, if one held sensor size constant, the Pixel 6 Pro would actually have a slightly larger entrance pupil (slightly more light coming in) vs the iPhone 13P. Because the Pixel 6 Pro's tele sensor is larger though, the physical focal length and therefore entrance pupil size (and therefore incoming light) is even larger than the previous calculation.
I've been a Google Pixel user since the nexus phones and recently moved from a Pixel 4XL to an iPhone 13 Pro and I'm honestly shocked at how bad the camera on the 13 Pro is. It adds a significant amount of post processing which you can't turn off (they removed the HDR toggle from settings on the iPhone 13). Low light shots are blurry, have strange artifacts and look like a water color painting. Lastly the front facing camera adds a face touch up "beautifying" filter that softens the images and reduces the quality, and again there is no ability to turn it off. I'm super disappointed in this camera, I was expecting it to blow my 3 year old pixel out of the water.
Now don't get me wrong a lot of photos turn out good in the right conditions, but for the latest and greatest flagship iPhone this is truly disappointing, especially for a first time iPhone user. I hope Apple takes action on this.
Some of the low light photos I took seriously look like they came from a Motorola flip phone. Attached a cropped photo for reference... I was shocked when I saw how this photo came out lol, low quality and artifacts all over ugh.
Now don't get me wrong a lot of photos turn out good in the right conditions, but for the latest and greatest flagship iPhone this is truly disappointing, especially for a first time iPhone user. I hope Apple takes action on this.
Some of the low light photos I took seriously look like they came from a Motorola flip phone. Attached a cropped photo for reference... I was shocked when I saw how this photo came out lol, low quality and artifacts all over ugh.
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I think most posters would agree the native app does this but how do the cameras compare if you use one of the third party camera apps on the iPhone 13 Pro? I suspect then the photo quality would be much closer and require a blinded comparison to find any significant differences.
Is anyone still having major issues with their cameras? Well I guess some of you are, I love the way my photos turn out. I don’t really have any complaints:
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Hi Todd,
Great photos, can you please describe how these photos were shot and edited? Did you use a 3rd party camera? Proraw etc...
I just got my iPhone 13 last week and have yet to take photos im really proud of.
Thanks
Sure & thanks for the compliment. Congrats on your new iPhone. I am currently using the 13 pro max.
The app that I used was a third-party app called Pro camera by Moment. It is a fantastic app for ProRAW photos. It doesn’t have all of the smart HDR and heavy color saturation that the default camera app has. For one of these I did use a tripod, but most of them were handheld and that moment app has a feature called focus speaking that allows me to get perfect focus as the object that I am focusing on is highlighted in green indicating that that area is in perfect focus. I believe the first shot of the tree limb with the little red berries was taken with the shiftCam 75mm long range macro lens. The rest of the images were with the 1X and 3X cameras.
Since I did use ProRAW, I edited these images in the Lightroom mobile app and used some of the presets that I have created from purchased ones. Meaning that I used purchased presets in the past, made adjustments and saved it as a separate preset somewhere else in a different folder so that I can revert back to those depending on the subject photographed.
The default camera does a good job on its own, but ProRAW is much better. I did have overcast skies and I set the exposure compensation (EV) to -1.2 to compensate for some of the darker areas of the scene so the camera won’t try and brighten it up, plus dropping back one stop makes the image look a lot richer and helps with editing. I had my iPhone in a bracket mounted to my tripod the whole time so I could use it when needed. I left it in that bracket and just held the tripod sideways and took these photos… I wasn’t being lazy to take the phone out and hand hold it, holding the tripod actually helped stabilize The phone even more, surprisingly. It’s a small tripod and fairly light weight. Sounds strange but it worked. In the Moment app I adjusted the exposure value and selected auto AF and manually adjusted the focus until the area I wanted to capture was highlighted in green and took the shot. I got as close as I could with the 1X camera so that the natural Bokeh or blur of the background looked good. The manual focus mode in the Moment app has a slider that you move left or right to focus with and it will tell you when you run out of room which means you’re too close so that’s very handy. I actually like this app probably a little bit better than Halide. Reeflex is also a great app. I’ve had good luck using that one as well and they all look pretty much the same when using ProRAW.
I really don’t shoot JPEG that much anymore unless it’s just going to be a snapshot that I just want to quickly share with someone that I don’t have to edit. The editing that I do doesn’t take very long anyway so it’s really not a bother to use ProRAW and lightroom. Lightroom mobile is a free app but you do have to get a monthly subscription to unlock all of the editing tools in the app. I think it’s $4.99 a month which is nothing. So if you’re normally used to editing photos, it should be pretty easy on the phone using Lightroom mobile. Anyway I hope my description helped you out, if not let me know and I can assist further. If you end up getting the Moment app, let me know & I can help you with the settings for the best image quality.
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I just wanted to report back, after returning the 13, I bought a refurb 11 pro a few weeks ago. I was passing the same church today so took a photo to make a comparison. This is by no means scientific, different position, different time of day, different time of year, different light etc. I'm much happier with the photos I'm getting out of the 11 Pro than I was the 13. The ultra wide is especially useful at the moment because I'm viewing houses.
There's a couple of 300% crops and the full images.
There's a couple of 300% crops and the full images.
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I’m not seeing anything like that with my 13 pro max. You said you had the iPhone 13, is this the non-pro model? apparently you aren’t using ProRaw but correct me if I’m wrong.. JPEG files are pretty bad generally therefore I don’t shoot in that format. I’d be curious if you still have your 13 and could try the Moment app or halide in jpeg mode/