https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/have-iphone-cameras-become-too-smart Skip to main content The New Yorker * Newsletter To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories Close Alert Sign In Search * News * Books & Culture * Fiction & Poetry * Humor & Cartoons * Magazine * Puzzles & Games * Video * Podcasts * Archive * Goings On * Shop Open Navigation Menu To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories Close Alert The New Yorker New Yorker Favorites * Survival of the Richest * The Creepiest Children's Book * Tucker Carlson's Fighting Words * Crying in H Mart Infinite Scroll Have iPhone Cameras Become Too Smart? Apple's newest smartphone models use machine learning to make every image look professionally taken. That doesn't mean the photos are good. By Kyle Chayka March 18, 2022 * * * * * Save this story for later. Illustration of iphone and flower vase Illustration by Nicholas Konrad / The New Yorker * * * * * Save this story for later. In late 2020, Kimberly McCabe, an executive at a consulting firm in the Washington, D.C. area, upgraded from an iPhone 10 to an iPhone 12 Pro. Quarantine had prompted McCabe, a mother of two, to invest more effort into documenting family life. She figured that the new smartphone, which had been released the month before and featured an enhanced camera, would improve the quality of her amateur snapshots. But the 12 Pro has been a disappointment, she told me recently, adding, "I feel a little duped." Every image seems to come out far too bright, with warm colors desaturated into grays and yellows. Some of the photos that McCabe takes of her daughter at gymnastics practice turn out strangely blurry. In one image that she showed me, the girl's upraised feet smear together like a messy watercolor. McCabe said that, when she uses her older digital single-lens-reflex camera (D.S.L.R.), "what I see in real life is what I see on the camera and in the picture." The new iPhone promises "next level" photography with push-button ease. But the results look odd and uncanny. "Make it less smart--I'm serious," she said. Lately she's taken to carrying a Pixel, from Google's line of smartphones, for the sole purpose of taking pictures. Apple has reportedly sold more than a hundred million units of the iPhone 12 Pro, and more than forty million of the iPhone 13 Pro since it debuted, in September of last year. Both models are among the most popular consumer cameras ever made, and also among the most powerful. The lenses on our smartphones are tiny apertures, no bigger than a shirt button. Until recently, they had little chance of imitating the function of full-size professional camera lenses. Phone cameras achieved the standards of a basic digital point-and-shoot; many of us didn't expect anything more. With the latest iPhone models, though, Apple is attempting to make its minuscule phone cameras perform as much like traditional cameras as possible, and to make every photo they take look like the work of a seasoned professional. (Hence the names 12 and 13 "Pro," which are distinguished from the earlier iPhone 12 and 13 models mainly by their fancier cameras.) The iPhone 13 Pro takes twelve-megapixel images, includes three separate lenses, and uses machine learning to automatically adjust lighting and focus. Yet, for some users, all of those optimizing features have had an unwanted effect. Halide, a developer of camera apps, recently published a careful examination of the 13 Pro that noted visual glitches caused by the device's intelligent photography, including the erasure of bridge cables in a landscape shot. "Its complex, interwoven set of 'smart' software components don't fit together quite right," the report stated. New Yorker Favorites * Did making the rules of war better make the world worse? * What boredom does to us--and for us. * Why John Mearsheimer blames the U.S. for the crisis in Ukraine. * The ten best weather events in fiction. * The faces of Americans living in debt. * Dispatch by Joan Didion: how a once idyllic town fell under the sway of a teen gang. Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. [kyle_chayk] Kyle Chayka is a contributing writer for The New Yorker and the author of "The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism." More:TechnologyPhotographyiPhoneDigital camerasApple The New Yorker Recommends What our staff is reading, watching, and listening to each week. E-mail address [ ] Sign up By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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