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Ultra wide or telephoto?

  • Ultra wide

    Votes: 15 46.9%
  • Telephoto

    Votes: 17 53.1%

  • Total voters
    32

DexBell

Suspended
Original poster
Oct 23, 2016
839
1,068
Im not sure why Apple has decided to put the ultra wide camera as the second camera on the Mini and 12 over the telephoto camera. Most people I know, myself included, want to be able to zoom in and get closer to a subject to take a photo (kids, pets etc..) not have a super distorted, funhouse mirror looking ultra wide lens. I would much prefer the telephoto as the second camera. What say you?
 
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Ultra wide by far. You get much better understanding of the context of the photo with a UW lens, whether indoors or out. We're social beings and take photos of groups of people, not just one person. It's the reason iPhone 11 has a wider front camera. Of course, your activities depend on your age group. And as always, you can step closer or digitally zoom. But you can't restore something that was never in the frame to begin with.
 
The digital zoom is actually not that bad, imo. I took this, highly zoomed, photo using my mini yesterday:
 

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if I had to choose ultra wide for sure. the shots you can get are more important I would say certainly when you can still use digital zoom if need be.

pixel got killed for having a telephoto instead of an ultra wide In 2019 and changed it up in 2020
 
UW is more useful for social media and group pics and (what i use it for) landscape. UW rocks in taking landscape (in good lighting of course)...such as taking a picture from top of mountain.

Personally, I ONLY use telephoto for Portraits, which is its best use. Portraits with wide (main) sensor gives wrong perspective (everyone long and thin). 2.5x or 2x zoom capabilities are not that useful...and since the sensor is tiny with narrow opening (f-stop), it is useless in low light.
 
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Ultra Wide all the way.

Harder to mimic ultra wide result with standard wide focal length (possible via manual photo stitching or using panorama mode), but easier to achieve telephoto focal length result.

Here’s example steps how:

1. Normal result with standard wide focal length:
4A2EDB4F-124D-4E87-9EDD-4B45BFEF0FE6.png

2. Crop it around this much:
EE7EE54F-9331-4CE5-8658-6ECADAC8B617.png

3. Adjust the bokeh effect realistically according the distance between each objects:
92F889F2-F427-41E8-B9A0-72A2EF7B1690.png

4. Final result in comparison with telephoto focal length:
C6B712BD-035C-4FA3-BEC8-F27F06366920.png

You can always crop in post processing to achieve telephoto result (never digitally zoom, degrades quality).
But often you cannot step back for wider framing of family group shot indoor or landscape photography.

Most professional / enthusiast amateur photographers would pick a wide lens over telephoto lens if they can only bring one lens with interchangeable lens camera body. Especially with higher megapixel counts, more room to crop in post.
Too bad iPhone kept the 12 MP sensor only.
 
Last edited:
well, adding more MP while keeping sensor size and f-stop the same.......will destroy what little quality it has in medium lighting conditions.
Very true, until Apple or mobile camera sensor manufacturers finds a way to put larger sensor inside, the 12-16 MP is the maximum pixels the sensor could take effectively.
 
In two words: social media.

It's much more common for a user to take a group or scene shot than concentrating on a single item.

With that said, my iPhone X still does everything I need it to but the camera types configuration is indeed another reason for me to not replace it quite yet -- because when I do I feel I'll need to go for the iPhone Pro to retain the telephoto camera option.
 
Thanks for the comments. Funny how it’s tied 11-11 but only the UWA voters are commenting
 
Thanks for the comments. Funny how it’s tied 11-11 but only the UWA voters are commenting
Then I will comment. The issue with an UWA is that it is extremely hard to take GOOD photos. Check any professional photograph blog/class, and they will say an UWA lens is very interesting for art photos, but very challenging. On top of that the iPhone UWA lens is of poor quality, so forget about artistic photos. So, the UWA lens really is just for taking poor quality distorted group shots. On the other hand, the tele lens is really what is usually called a normal lens, because it has about the same perspective as the eye. This is one of the easiest focal lengths to take good photos with.
 
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