[HN Gopher] Have iPhone cameras become too smart?
___________________________________________________________________
Have iPhone cameras become too smart?
Author : tomduncalf
Score : 123 points
Date : 2022-03-21 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| azinman2 wrote:
| The whole idea that the iPhone 7 was dumb but now the 12 is too
| smart shows how poorly researched this article is. The aperture
| on all cell phone cameras are tiny, so you're running into the
| limits of physics as you get very few photons per pixel imaged.
| The noise is just very high and uneven. So all cameras use
| computational photography, including way before the iPhone 7, in
| order to achieve the results they get. You can argue that the
| algorithms are getting worse, but you cannot say they weren't
| smart before.
| deanCommie wrote:
| > "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.
|
| And here we completely sabotage the premise of the headline, and
| make it clear that this whole topic is a subjective perception
| issue by the consumers. Pixels do FAR more ML-based post-
| processing than iPhones. It just so happens that I guess they do
| a BETTER job.
|
| Which means that iPhone cameras aren't too smart, but rather
| aren't smart enough.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Whole article talks about photo differences but there aren't any
| concrete shown examples of the problem images. Kind of
| disappointing because it's difficult to tell if the differences
| are huge or mild exaggeration.
| lelandfe wrote:
| It's kind of the house style of the New Yorker to be picture-
| adverse, which is definitely to the detriment of this article.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Yeah, slightly odd decision I agree!
|
| If you scroll down to "The 75mm Telephoto Camera" section of
| https://lux.camera/iphone-13-pro-camera-app-intelligent-
| phot..., there are some images demonstrating the "painted" look
| you get from the noise reduction.
| Etheryte wrote:
| While most readers probably have at least some firsthand
| experience with this, some examples would've gone a long way to
| illustrate the issues brought up.
| andybak wrote:
| I took a fairly elderly Panasonic DMC-GX80 on holiday with me and
| despite the lack of HDR, AI and clever stuff with multiple
| exposures, I found that for most of the interesting photos I
| wanted to take, it did the right thing.
|
| My phone on the other hand did the blandest thing possible.
| Impossible to get an atmospheric color cast, a dramatic
| silhouette or anything that made a photo interesting to me. It
| was fine in most situations with "normal" lighting but they
| aren't usually the things I want to photograph.
|
| The problem isn't the smartness - it's that combined with the
| pathological desire to simplify UI and remove options. Give me
| the clever stuff but let me tweak it.
|
| But no - settings are bad and options are confusing to the user.
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| It's not that cameras have become too smart. It's that they're
| making choices for us, and these are not the choices we would
| make for ourselves.
|
| 11 years ago, I gave a talk about this at the Internet Archive.
| It seems to have held up. https://youtu.be/UMMogOoWEbI
| GeekyBear wrote:
| >It's that they're making choices for us, and these are not the
| choices we would make for ourselves.
|
| Of course, you can always take off the training wheels and
| shoot raw.
|
| Apple even worked with Adobe to create ProRaw, which allows you
| to selectively turn on or off various parts of their image
| processing pipeline after you shoot the image.
|
| https://lux.camera/understanding-proraw/
| daniel_reetz wrote:
| ProRaw is demosaiced and includes the computational
| photography stuff as well.
|
| The big picture is that cameras profoundly influence how we
| see and share ourselves, others, and the world. Fairly
| recently, cameras (and their developers) started making
| opinionated decisions for us about things like the color of
| sky, the texture of skin, and much more. Sure, any one of us
| can opt out and do things RAW, but the rest of the world will
| go on taking pictures with these decisions baked in. I don't
| think the answer is RAW, because the problem is not pixel
| data -- it is who controls image making in the first place.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| I don't see how this is different than the film stock you
| shot on, the lens you used, or the format you shot it on.
| [deleted]
| kaba0 wrote:
| What's your proposed way of solving the issue? HDR can be
| considered more natural to how our own eyes work, being
| pedantic the "old-school" model is much more foreign than
| the NN-enhanced one. Sure, one can overdo it, e.g.
| replacing an image of a moon with a photograph of it, but I
| don't think that NN-based color balance, HDR and the like
| are worsening the problem.
| silisili wrote:
| I've always especially felt this way about Pixel cameras. They
| are no doubt good, but there is something just off about them I
| cannot easily identify. I believe it both oversharpens faces
| and makes white skin tanner.
|
| Is there any company out there doing just HDR, and not making
| color choices? Or is it baked in at the SOC level now?
| pishpash wrote:
| Choice implies a non-processed alternative but hardware has
| been driven in a direction so as to make the non-processed
| alternative unusable (meh hardware, processing to fix).
| azeirah wrote:
| Delegating the issue to hardware seems off to me.
|
| Aren't hardware manufacturers also making choices for you?
|
| I get that software allows for far broader picture
| manipulation but there are a decent amount of similar choices
| on the lens and sensor level, no?
| Scalestein wrote:
| True but hardware makes it obvious why the image looks the
| way it does and is consistent. Photographers can even tell
| what lenses were used for a photo by looking at it.
|
| Software makes it more of a black box. The same picture
| taken days apart could look different due to a software
| update you weren't even aware of. Hardware is also a forced
| choice so is more deliberate which again is the opposite of
| the software situation of changing algos and processing.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Pretty much this. I have a Pixel 4a and if I use an alternate
| camera that doesn't have Google's algos, the images look like
| ass.
| simion314 wrote:
| My digital camera had Profiles for outdoors, night/dark
| areas, people, animals, macro. Seems to me Apple did what
| they do best (and credit to Gnome too) remove the Profiles
| options because the users are stupid and use some shit
| algorithm to decide what profile to use for you,
| kaba0 wrote:
| Computational photography is much more advanced than that.
| tencentshill wrote:
| You can still capture RAW and edit it yourself, right?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| > It's that they're making choices for us
|
| I think that's the definition of a "smart" appliance, and you
| just described what my problem with "smart" appliances is: they
| are too smart by a half, and end up making bad choices when
| pushed a little.
| mcphage wrote:
| > they are too smart by a half, and end up making bad choices
| when pushed a little.
|
| That's seems like the opposite of smart--instead, it's dumb
| yet intrusive. Or as Kurt Vonnegut said: "Beware of the man
| who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds
| himself no wiser than before." These devices do a lot of
| thinking, but have no wisdom.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| They _are_ smart, if you consider "smarts" to mean making
| lots of complex decisions. And they make good decisions a
| lot of the time too.
|
| But you can't encode a set of heuristics that works every
| time into a physical device - that is the real problem with
| "smart". In a small minority of cases, the situation will
| get so complicated that the rules you embedded will produce
| suboptimal behaviour. To overcome that, you'd need to embed
| a human-like intelligence in the device.
|
| Similarly will they fail for the minority of people who
| have drastically different goals (e.g. aesthetics) for the
| purpose of the device. Now you end up having to clone the
| owner wholesale.
|
| Okay, really the problem with "smart" devices is that they
| typically don't disclose what rules they follow, and
| typically don't come to the user asking for help choosing
| when tradeoffs enter the picture (literally in the context
| of this article).
|
| "Dumb" devices, meanwhile, lay all choices flat.
|
| Granted, cameras have long stopped being comletely dumb -
| but they often make a good job opening themselves to doubt
| with things like optional manual color balance, and
| different priority modes.
| kaba0 wrote:
| To be honest even our very own eyes not that "smart" --
| they can be fooled quite easily, by eg. visual illusions,
| magic tricks.
| tormock wrote:
| tomduncalf wrote:
| I found this interesting as I'm someone who used to travel with
| at least one camera most of the time, but I've recently come back
| from a holiday where I used my iPhone 13 Pro as my only camera.
|
| Overall I actually found it a great experience - I love having an
| ultra wide angle lens in my pocket and after a bit of time
| getting used to it, I find the 3x zoom a more useful focal length
| than the 2x zoom on my previous iPhone X - but I did find the
| over-processing (the "painterly" look) frustrating, and even more
| annoying is that it will often use the wide angle lens and
| upscale rather than using the 3x zoom (even with ProRAW enabled -
| see [1]).
|
| I understand why the software makes these choices for the
| "average" user, but it would be nice to enable a "pro" mode which
| reduces noise reduction and favours the zoom lens in more
| situations.
|
| I ended up using the stock camera app for "snapshots" (e.g.
| photos where I didn't care too much about the quality, or where I
| was just using the wide angle lens), and Lightroom Mobile's
| camera for shots where I wanted more control, or when I wanted to
| ensure that the zoom lens was being used (Halide is also good for
| this, but I found it convenient to have the photos in LR Mobile
| for processing immediately, even if Lightroom's UX is clunkier).
|
| This actually worked pretty well for me - you can trust the stock
| camera to take a photo which will look good at mobile screen
| sizes even in challenging conditions, so it's great for
| "capturing the moment", while if you are taking a photo where you
| care about the details, it's usually not an issue to take a few
| extra seconds to open LR... but it would be nice to be able to do
| this in the stock camera.
|
| The results with RAWs from Lightroom are actually pretty
| impressive IMO - there's more noise than the stock camera, but I
| prefer this to the smudged noise reduction look and I'm sure with
| some processing I can find a happy medium. Even the ultra wide
| photos are reasonably sharp.
|
| This was a long way of saying that if you're frustrated by this
| issue, try a third party camera app and hopefully you'll find
| that you can get more out of the newer iPhone's great cameras,
| while still having the default camera there for quick snapshots!
|
| [1] https://lux.camera/iphone-13-pro-camera-app-intelligent-
| phot...
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| You mean you cannot manually choose the lens on iPhone 13?? :O
|
| I have an old Samsung Note 8; I was contemplating Iphone 13 Pro
| for my wife so we can improve the casual/random photos of our
| kids, but that'd be a deal breaker :-<
|
| [context - we have Nikon d800, d7200, couple of d90's, V1, etc
| lying around the house so we do like photos, and being able to
| zoom or choose a lens is something we take for granted :]
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| You can manually choose the lens, but in edge cases where the
| stock camera app decides that you're too close to the subject
| to be able to focus with, e.g. the 3x lens, it switches to
| the 0.5x ultrawide lens instead, to maintain focus, and crops
| to maintain the same field of view. Using a non-stock app
| lets you force it to respect your lens setting, out-of-focus
| and all.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Had a very difficult time shooting a photo through a fence
| recently, because it kept switching lenses to focus one the
| fence itself, which changes the framing, making it
| difficult to adjust focus back.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Exactly this, also the iPhone "helps" you by sometimes
| digitally cropping the 1x image to the 3x field of view if
| the result from the 3x lens was not judged to be good
| enough.
|
| It has always done this to some extent, but as the other
| link I posted ([1]) describes, this both happens more
| frequently with the 3x lens on the 13 Pro than the 2x lens
| on previous generations because the 3x zoom has a smaller
| aperture than the 2x, and also the effect is more
| noticeable, because it's blowing a 1x image up to 3x rather
| than 2x.
|
| I hope Apple will offer some facility to tweak this in
| future as it seems to me it frequently chooses digital zoom
| rather than the zoom lens even in "not that challenging"
| conditions. I do get why they'd do this though - the
| reality is that if it always used the zoom lens, you'd end
| up with a lot more noisy/blurred photos due to physics -
| but it would be nice to say "I'm OK with that"!
|
| One other thing I should mention is that you can't set a
| third party camera app as the default, so the camera button
| on the lock screen always opens the stock camera. In
| practice I don't find this a huge issue, as if I'm grabbing
| a quick snapshot from the lock screen it might be of some
| fleeting moment, in which case I'd probably rather get a
| usable digitally zoomed image, than a blurry optical zoom
| one.
|
| [1] https://lux.camera/iphone-13-pro-camera-app-
| intelligent-phot...
| ben7799 wrote:
| You've been able to disable this behavior since like a
| month after the iPhone 13/13 Pro came out.
|
| It's the auto-macro functionality in the camera settings.
| The default behavior switches to the ultra-wide below the
| minimum focus distance of the other two cameras.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| As far as I know you can't prevent it from switching to
| 1x image digitally zoomed when shooting at 3x though,
| unless you use a third party app
| spyspy wrote:
| I did the same for my honeymoon last fall. I hate carrying
| around a "full size" camera because 1) it's bulky and heavy and
| expensive so I have to worry about it constantly and 2) it
| makes me look like your standard tourist. Pocket. 13. Snap.
| Snap. Pocket. Go. Happy wife. Airdrop her the photos next time
| we sit down for food for upload to instagram.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| I think this is what sets this technology apart. The human
| element. We don't take photos to look at in awe of the
| quality and crispness. We take them to share with others.
| Usually DSLRs force you to get to a computer, insert the
| memory card, process the photos in Lightroom, then share from
| your computer.
|
| Phones make this process seamless because the designers
| realized that the key to a good photo experience is the human
| experience of sharing.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Yeah, I'm not sure I'll go back to using a full size camera
| except for situations which call for a specialist lens (e.g.
| going on safari, maybe astrophotography one day). I think for
| me the killer feature is that the photos are there on your
| phone (and in the cloud), ready to be browsed/shared/edited.
| I'm terrible for never getting round to downloading/editing
| the photos from an SD card!
| spyspy wrote:
| My Sony a6500 has been relegated to webcam duties.
| kuschku wrote:
| Honestly, I just carry my a6300 with me most of the time.
| I've used some of the modded apps that are available
| (it's running android after all) to ensure I can single-
| click pair it to my phone and send all photos over, or
| send photos over automatically as soon as they're taken.
|
| It's just as convenient for quick sharing, and the photos
| are so much better.
| sujinge9 wrote:
| Can you share what apps are? I'm highly interested. Main
| reason my a6000 is gathering dust is because saving to
| Google Photos is a pain.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| @kuschku (sorry I can't reply to yours due to comment
| depth) - do you have a link to these apps? I have a few
| Sony cameras gathering dust, so this sounds interesting!
| leoff wrote:
| An article talking about photos that has no photos in it, huh.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| It's the same thing with the webcams on the M1 Macs.
|
| Comparing my 2015 Macbook Pro and my 2021 Macbook Pro, I can say
| that they both have crappy webcams. The 2015 has a somewhat
| grainy, high contrast look. The 2021 webcam has extreme smoothing
| applied, to the point where my facial hair looks like it's
| painted on. The result is that my face always looks blurry. There
| are also weird movement glitches that are probably caused by
| temporal smoothing.
|
| From a distance, the pictures from the new webcams look better.
| But up close it's frustrating that my face is always blurry.
| ISL wrote:
| As several here have noted, an antidote is to use both RAW and
| jpg formats. I have my Pixel set to dual outputs, which yields
| both Google's processed image and a dng I can use later.
|
| For the shifts in color (blue skies at night or colorful sunsets
| turned dun), that problem exists for most cameras. No matter the
| camera you use, if you turn off automatic white balance and pin
| it to 'daylight' or ~5500K, you'll find a whole world of color
| returns to your images. There's post-processing work (definitely
| work in RAW, of course) to do, but it brings back a perspective
| that is often lost.
|
| As for the author's lament, _" Now every photo we take on our
| iPhones has had the salt applied generously, whether it is needed
| or not."_ , I'm less sad. People like salty snacks and fast food,
| but that doesn't mean a meal from a skilled chef is any less
| delicious. If anything, it makes the work of an artisan stand out
| more to those who appreciate it.
|
| An example -- check out Bianca Germain's images
| https://biancagermainphoto.com/ (@biancagermain). The composition
| of her environmental portraiture captures context and narrative,
| something an algorithm cannot do.
| creaghpatr wrote:
| I think the point about resulting uncanniness is valid, but can't
| most of these features be turned off? Portrait mode, despite the
| blurring issues, seems to be a popular feature.
|
| Having just traded from an iPhone 5 to a 13 Pro, I can without
| hesitation say the upgrade to the quality of my pictures blew my
| mind. Let's not overthink this.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| > Having just traded from an iPhone 5 to a 13 Pro, I can
| without hesitation say the upgrade to the quality of my
| pictures blew my mind. Let's not overthink this.
|
| Okay, but that's what, a 6 generation leap? It had better be
| better because of hardware alone!
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Sure, and I expected as much for that reason. It's just funny
| to see the author talking trash about the 12 Pro
| featurization after trading from a 7...should still be a big
| upgrade in general quality.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Samsung has some crazy thing turned on by default which makes
| selfies into air-brushed portraits where you've applied blush and
| a sparkle to your eye. It's surreal, ridiculous and generally
| disturbing.
|
| Happily, since it's a non-iOS device, I can just turn it off.
|
| Apple is Apple. Bitching about the way they over-coddle their
| users is a pastime almost as old as I am at this point, so I
| won't. I'd be a devoted Apple zealot if they gave power users the
| ability to customize their devices. It's disappointing they
| don't, as they have such nice kit, but I'm not their target
| market and never have been, so I just use other products.
|
| Apple hasn't noticed my personal boycott, yet, but any day now,
| they'll notice and cave in to my demands, I'm sure.
| contingencies wrote:
| _Samsung has some crazy thing turned on by default which makes
| selfies into air-brushed portraits where you 've applied blush
| and a sparkle to your eye. It's surreal, ridiculous and
| generally disturbing._
|
| I believe the word you are looking for is _Korean_.
| https://vitalbar.com/blog/what-is-the-korean-beauty-standard...
| acd wrote:
| Film cameras might hip again for the same feeling as music LP.
| The digital version of photos become a little bit to perfect.
|
| Why do we call addictive smart phones that tracks users by
| selling advertisement smart?
| floren wrote:
| I've been shooting film on and off for about a decade now, and
| a good film shot pretty much always looks better than a phone
| picture.
|
| The problem is that going from camera to digitally-shareable
| photo is either 1) time-consuming, or 2) quite expensive. I
| mostly do my own scanning, which takes a lot of time and manual
| labor, because getting _good quality_ digital scans of
| negatives costs a lot of money and frankly I don 't take enough
| good pictures to a roll to make it worthwhile.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Funny, I just had this problem. We got a taro-mousse cake for my
| daughter's birthday and I was trying to take a photo of it on my
| iPhone 11 Pro. I could see the brilliant purple of the taro
| section of the cake with my own eyes, but the iPhone would
| hesitate before eventually turning it into a darker, almost brown
| color.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Was it possible to fix this by tapping on the cake itself?
| Might it have been affected by the color of the lighting in the
| room? We had issues with that in our kitchen, which had warm
| yellow lights. Our 'paprika' colored plates always showed up
| weird in food photos.
| faitswulff wrote:
| Refocusing on the cake didn't help for us. This was in a
| fairly bright sunlit room, which I guess is technically warm
| lighting?
| gnicholas wrote:
| Can you fix it by adjusting the temperature or tint in the
| Photos app?
| faitswulff wrote:
| Maybe, I'll try it!
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Personally I'm tired of the HDR-ification of everything. House
| listings? It's like realtors figured out what HDR was and went
| NUTS. Those images are like the comic sans of photography.
| brimble wrote:
| I've seen them add _light fixtures_ to photos. Like, the light
| fixtures _do not exist_ in the actual house. Not a lamp,
| something _connected to the house_. The way they 're going,
| that industry's gonna get a regulatory smack-down at some
| point.
| Arrath wrote:
| I recently saw a listing where badly inserted trees and piles
| of rocks were littered around the back yard, maybe to hide
| crap the owner hadn't bothered to clean up? Not sure, but it
| was obvious.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| UGH! Is that what virtual staging is going to next, straight
| up lies? It's one thing to use a fake couch, but a fake
| _fixture_ is not acceptable.
| lelandfe wrote:
| Here in New York I've seen listings use extremely bright,
| daylight-emulating lights to make rooms appear "sun-drenched"
| when their only window faces another building, and remain dim
| year-round.
|
| I even saw this on a _video walkthrough_ of an apartment -
| they clearly had placed the lights right outside the window.
|
| Finding a place to live is challenging.
| mikestew wrote:
| That, and the "realtor lens". Driveways suddenly become 50%
| longer. TVs are 3 meters long and .75 meters tall. That bedroom
| looks like a long, narrow jail cell (well, not in real life;
| such is the unintended consequence of misrepresentation). We
| all know what you're doing, few (if any) are fooled, just take
| the shot as it is or just leave it out, since that photo might
| as well be a picture of the Eiffel Tower for all of its lack of
| usefulness in representing the house.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's how HDR was originally. Everyone used it to the
| Xtreme++!! Everything looked post-apocolyptic instead of just
| rolling the highlights back to proper exposure and pulling
| details out of the shadows. It's perfectly fine to shoot HDR
| without going nuts, but very few people choose to do it that
| way.
| asdff wrote:
| It's even better when they throw on HDR for one of those faux
| Mediterranean houses built with the fit and finish of an Olive
| Garden. It's like a tell to stay away, someone who worshiped
| Camilla Soprano's kitchen once owned this home.
| asiachick wrote:
| Going to respectfully disagree, though maybe we are referring
| to different images. When I look at images on Redfin, it's
| clear someone either used HDR or manually edited in the scenes
| outside the window. To me, this looks like what my eyes would
| see when in the room vs what the camera itself would show which
| would either be blown out views outside the windows or the room
| too dark.
|
| Random example: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Santa-
| Monica/1319-Harvard-St-90404...
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I did real estates photography for a while.
|
| Most real estate photographers use HDR, and the higher end
| uses off-camera flash (as did I). There's no nefarious reason
| behind this - it's because photos where you can actually see
| out the windows look better. It's also more like what your
| eyes would see rather than a crazy blown out white rectangle.
| When the house is on a lake you want people to see what the
| view is like. It was the rooms where I didn't do that where I
| was hiding something, like an air conditioning unit being all
| you could see or whatnot.
|
| The stupidly wide lenses most use? Yeah, that's deceptive. I
| also think it looks bad I tried to ride the line on using the
| tightest lens I could while still showing the room.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > or manually edited in the scenes outside the window
|
| This is definitely a thing. A lot of real estate photos are
| manipulated to replace the content of copyrighted photos and
| paintings, to hide unsightly views through windows, or to
| show clear skies when the photographs were taken on a rainy
| day.
| gruez wrote:
| >To me, this looks like what my eyes would see when in the
| room vs what the camera itself would show which would either
| be blown out views outside the windows or the room too dark.
|
| >Random example: https://www.redfin.com/CA/Santa-
| Monica/1319-Harvard-St-90404...
|
| Honestly it's hard to tell without a reference picture.
| Looking at the first picture, it seems reasonable that the
| living room would be well lit because of huge windows.
| However, the section with the tall houseplants look nearly as
| bright as the open living room area, which seems doubtful.
| asiachick wrote:
| I noticed this recently. I was in Lightroom editing some photos
| from iPhone 13 Pro and zooming in they looked like impressionist
| paintings, small blotches of color, instead of what I'm used to
| from previous phones.
| mgdlbp wrote:
| There's a good record of phone imaging over the years to be found
| in a few devoted sites still comparing phone cameras with the
| Lumia 1020, the 2013 flagship of Windows Phones known for their
| camera hardware and naturalistic processing.
|
| I find it quite remarkable that the 1020's 41 MP, 1/1.5", f/2.2
| camera, relying only on oversampling, has performance that still
| falls within the range of the flagships of today. It even
| achieves comparable performance when _zooming_ , despite modern
| dedicated telephotos!
|
| Nokia 808 vs 1020 vs Pixel 5 vs iPhone 12 Pro Max:
|
| http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/features/item/24153_Youwante...
| fungiblecog wrote:
| like most technology today it is now being forced on us rather
| than being available as a tool.
| mutagen wrote:
| Digital photos are inherently computational, I think the
| distinction is where you stop processing and how much human
| control is exercised over the final product. Even film has some
| carefully developed characteristics that are used by the the
| photographer and developer to influence the image.
|
| I love the full spectrum of it, from my DSLR to my iPhone. I'd
| love to see camera companies embrace the ability to capture the
| raw data to make deeper processing available and to open up the
| pipeline and let me tweak to my preference.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Controversial take: DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have largely
| made themselves irrelevant by ignoring computational photography
| advancements (computational photography is seen as "cheating").
|
| I own several "real" cameras: FF, M43, and over a dozen lenses.
| Multiple camera companies. On paper many have very impressive
| specs. The problem is that camera companies focus primarily on
| raw specs with software being a secondary concern. To give one
| concrete example, I can press one button on a cellphone (almost
| any) and it will capture more dynamic range than my $2K DSLR.
|
| How can a tiny sense in a cellphone capture more dynamic range
| can a massive sensor? Software. It is stacking multiple rapid
| exposures using an eShutter and computationally merging them. You
| can do that with a DSLR, but it is time-consuming, outside of
| camera, and produces worse results (e.g. motion in the frame will
| ruin your stack).
|
| It is super aggravating, but it isn't actually surprising if you
| look at the amounts of money spent on photographic software alone
| compared to almost the entire camera industry. I've given up for
| most things, a cellphone can beat all but the absolute top end
| dedicated cameras and even then only for niches.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > a cellphone can beat all but the absolute top end dedicated
| cameras and even then only for niches.
|
| In what aspect ? Artistically a 2010 dslr would shit on any
| single phone on the market
|
| If your goal is to take pictures to document your life then yes
| use your phone, 100% the better choice here, but if your job or
| passion is to make pictures a proper camera will always be
| better, even my 1965 leica produce better pictures than the
| current top end iphone.
|
| The problem with DSLRs/mirrorless is that they're proper tools
| and just like with a brush and a canvas you have to put time
| and effort to master them. No amount of computational
| photography will make you a good photographer and if a modern
| 2k$ camera is the bottleneck it certainly is more of your fault
| than the camera.
|
| I also think the cross section between casual users who want an
| iphone like experience X people who drop 2k$ on a camera is
| extremely small. Different tools for different jobs
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > but if your job or passion is to make pictures a proper
| camera will always be better
|
| The camera you have with you is better than the camera you
| don't. A smartphone camera which delivers 90% of the results
| while being on your person 100% of the time is therefore a
| strong contender.
|
| > No amount of computational photography will make you a good
| photographer and if a modern 2k$ camera is the bottleneck it
| certainly is more of your fault than the camera.
|
| - Posts about trade-offs and the loss of competitive
| advantage between DSLRs/mirrorless Vs. smartphones.
|
| - Replies that they aren't a "good photographer" because they
| hold this opinion. And are therefore clearly the "bottleneck"
| in quality photographs. QED?
|
| This is exactly why photography never evolves (see also
| film). The community is actually the problem. More specs!
| More specs! Ignore technological advancement! The camera
| market shrinks 10% YoY, but no changes, no listening to the
| market, those who point out the flaws in the strategy aren't
| "good photographers" who are just bads "bottleneck[ed]" by
| their lack of skill.
|
| CPU and GPU power has doubled, and power consumption has
| halved, computer vision has had a Renaissance, use it
| onboard? Na, that's only what 95% of the consumer and
| prosumer market wants, let's just continue to serve the 5%
| and keep the training rolling towards bankruptcy.
|
| If your equipment need RAW, you've just shrunk your market
| share by 80%. If you cannot post instantly you've just shrunk
| it by 90%. So fight to be the King of the tiny kingdom that
| is the remaining 5-10%. RAW is a great facility to have, but
| it is just that, a facility. When it picks up the slack for
| the antiquated onboard abilities it is just a crutch at that
| point.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| > In what aspect ? Artistically a 2010 dslr would shit on any
| single phone on the market
|
| I can 100% guarantee that it won't when I'm holding it.
|
| Sure, you can invest time to get good at it and the money
| into the tools to apply those skills. I have other priorities
| so I don't and the very best option is a smartphone camera.
|
| It makes no sense that point and shoots aren't attacking
| this. Even "cheap" ones have a massive edge in terms of
| (imaging) hardware over phones.
|
| Someone like Apple or Google should create a dedicated camera
| and just knock that entire segment out from under the
| dinosaurs.
| lupire wrote:
| DSLRs take amazing pictures easily. they collect a lot of
| light, which obviates the need for a lot of comluter magix,
| they have autofocus and autoexposure and simple basic
| adjustments you can play with.
|
| what they won't do is pre apply filters to make the colors
| super poppy and generically "artsy" like the phone will.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Do they also take good pictures in low-light with shaky
| hands? Surely there is a point where work smarter not
| harder actually pays off - your own eyes likely has
| better capabilities than any camera, yet hardware-wise
| the latter is surely better than your slightly incorrect
| bio-lenses. It just has a huge NN attached to it
| copperx wrote:
| I would have expected that by now Nikon/Canon/Fuji would
| employ hundreds of ML engineers. Does anybody know whether
| that's going to happen, eventually? Or are they going to
| sit on their laurels?
| gdfgjhs wrote:
| > The problem with DSLRs/mirrorless is that they're proper
| tools and just like with a brush and a canvas you have to put
| time and effort to master them. No amount of computational
| photography will make you a good photographer and if a modern
| 2k$ camera is the bottleneck it certainly is more of your
| fault than the camera.
|
| This is a good analogy, I will have to borrow it.
|
| I got friends who ended up buying expensive DSLRs after they
| saw my photos taken with f/1.8 lens. But they had kit lens
| and were complaining that their cameras. I told them to get
| f/1.8 lens. Then they were complaining about zoom. Also they
| could not use maximum aperture outside. I helped them get ND
| filters. Now they are complaining about that. And forget to
| take ND filters indoors, get way too many photos incorrectly
| focused etc.
|
| Most people expect pro cameras to just act just like cell
| phone cameras.
| bla3 wrote:
| What's a good resource to learn how to use cameras
| correctly?
| floren wrote:
| "Understanding Exposure" is good on the absolute basics.
| However I don't remember if it covers more philosophical
| stuff like "zoom with your feet", and it probably won't
| help someone who just straight up keeps forgetting to
| take off / put on a filter.
| aspyct wrote:
| As a sports photographer, I disagree. There's no stacking
| multiple frames in my world.
|
| Also, as a portrait photographer, I disagree too. Until we can
| use flashes properly, I'm not getting rid of my camera.
|
| Plus, dynamic range isn't everything.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > As a sports photographer, I disagree.
|
| You don't disagree with the post you replied to. Niches will
| always require specialized equipment as it said. It was a
| comment about general purpose photography (and its ever
| shrinking market share).
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Moving objects aren't a niche, they are the real life
| outside of of selfies and posing.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Surely the background is somewhat stationary during, so
| there is ample space to refine that with less fast-moving
| data.
|
| Sure, you have to get better hardware to properly capture
| the fast moving target of the photo, but it is not an
| either or question.
| aspyct wrote:
| It's not about the niche, it's about doing a job with the
| right tools.
|
| Did you ever build a desktop gui app with php? You actually
| can, it's just not the most productive tool.
|
| Conversely, you can take good pictures with a smartphone
| (for some specific cases), it's just not a great tool for
| the job.
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I have to side with OP here. Yours pluses are really worth it
| only if you need quality 98% of the people here won't ever
| need (OK, 1-3 pictures printed as bigger canvas in next 10
| years, but still). Most people today see pics on phones only.
| Even those done by pros in studios. The rest is mostly
| tablet/notebook screen. 1% (like me) something bigger. On
| that level, I can do almost/completely same pics as you with
| my Samsung S22 Ultra for those portraits (not sports part,
| but if its for family, videos usually trump photos for target
| audience).
|
| Minuses are staggering - the amount of money, time invested,
| annoyance to shooter and subjects, the speed with which you
| can capture most moments in life.
|
| If I understood you correctly, you're pro/semi-pro. That's
| not the topic here, its everybody else snapping pics. As long
| term full frame shooter, for last 2 weeks, its almost dead
| platform for me. I'll consider to take it for longer
| vacations, but I expect it to come out of bag very rarely.
| aspyct wrote:
| We're just not photographing the same subjects in the same
| way. 90% of the pictures I take, be it professionally or
| personally, I couldn't take with a smartphone.
| HALtheWise wrote:
| For sports photography, why wouldn't you want stacked
| exposures for the non-moving background parts of the frame?
| If it allows getting a comparable noise floor with faster
| shutter speeds, that seems like a strictly good trade.
| perardi wrote:
| As a photographer on the side: nahhhh. I have a "real" camera
| because I _want_ control. Give me the RAW data, and I can move
| mountains.
|
| What have made interchangeable lens cameras increasingly
| irrelevant: the workflow. On a phone, somewhat obviously, I
| take a photo, and post it to Instagram, instantly. On a stand-
| alone camera? I...
|
| ...uh, well if I'm shooting RAW I need to either have RAW/JPEG
| turned on, or convert to JPEG in camera, and then save that
| image, and then use the awful built-in wifi to connect to a
| shoddily made app that will randomly not connect for reasons,
| and then hope the transfer finishes, or use a SD-to-Lightning
| adapter and dongle up my phone.
|
| The DSLR/mirrorless workflow is still, conceptually, film,
| except replace a darkroom with Lightroom. It's terrible for
| run-and-go casual shooting, which was a huge part of the lower-
| end market.
| bla3 wrote:
| A fellow Sony user, I see.
| perardi wrote:
| Sony? Luxury.
|
| Fuji. It's like trying to connect a Palm Pilot to wifi or
| something.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I was thinking the same thing.
| ghaff wrote:
| And Lightroom has a fair bit of computational photography
| built into it as well as does Photoshop. Though I use my
| iPhone mostly on raw a lot as well as my "real" cameras.
| They're mostly easier for snapshots and sharing.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| I don't know about the latest versions of lightroom (I
| still use my perpetual license) but the one I have remains
| untouched by the icy tendrils of "A.I.", and my output is
| still worlds better than it
| perardi wrote:
| Distortion correction, chromatic aberration correction,
| perspective correction...yeah, all nice stuff. Especially
| the perspective feature, which is relatively recent. It's
| nice to be able to straighten up an image quickly, in the
| Lightroom workflow, without having to round-trip to
| Photoshop.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Ugh, god no. I don't want fancy software trying to think for
| me. I want raw sensor data captured with as much detail and
| fidelity as possible that I can feed into my virtual darkroom
| workflow.
|
| The dynamic range thing is frustrating, indeed. But even so the
| data is usually still there. Perhaps better scene programs is a
| solution for traditional DSLR cameras, but most definitely NOT
| "computational photography"
|
| Photography needs better sensors and better scene programs, not
| a bunch of algorithms with their poorly-thought-out predefined
| notions of what is "good"
| hughrr wrote:
| Problem with smartphones is the lack of glass up front. I have
| an iPhone 13 Pro which is about as good as it gets but there's
| no linear optical zoom on it. That means you have to spend half
| of the time getting closer and further away from things or deal
| with huge quality drop from cropping. The sensor and processing
| aren't anywhere near as important as that.
|
| With all that my 13 Pro is about as capable as my old Nikon
| D3100 which I bought over 12 years ago.
|
| I am actually considering buying a Nikon Z50 so I can actually
| go back to an era of more control.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >Problem with smartphones is the lack of glass up front.
|
| They have "periscope lenses" in some phones
| hughrr wrote:
| Yes aware of that. The optics aren't quite there yet. They
| seem to suffer from internal reflections and aberrations
| you don't get on much larger better engineered lenses.
|
| The iPhone 13 pro has a couple of annoying things already
| in that space.
| walljm wrote:
| Most of what the cell phone camera is doing in software is also
| available in the post processing software for DSLRs.
|
| Its not as convenient, but the quality is better.
|
| But, HDR isn't necessary in most cases, specially given that
| RAW files give you an extra stop in both directions when post
| processing. OTH, the properties of different lenses (FOV, DOF,
| magnification, macro) can't be reproduced in a cell phone
| camera (only approximated in software, and not usually well).
|
| A big DSLR isn't necessary for snapshots, but for serious
| applications (landscape, portraiture, nature, sports, events,
| etc...) they don't hold up.
| joshyeager wrote:
| As someone who learned photography with film in an old Nikon
| but hasn't kept up, how is it possible to get two extra stops
| from a RAW file? And why does it need to be done in post
| processing instead of the camera just recording the image
| with the sensor's full dynamic range in the first place?
| tomc1985 wrote:
| It manifests as extra detail hidden in the shadow or
| highlights, which is only exposed when you start messing
| with color curves or drag shadow or exposure controls way
| up.
|
| I asked a very similar question in another comment thread
| recently and the answer I got was that camera's awareness
| of the scene isn't nearly good enough when it comes to
| adjusting its own sensitivity curves, and that our eyes and
| brain are much better at postprocessing the raw data then
| the camera is.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > specially given that RAW files give you an extra stop in
| both directions
|
| With modern gear you can even recover 4 or 5 stops of shadow
| details relatively easily:
| https://theartofphotography.tv/nikon-z6-dynamic-range/
| mateo1 wrote:
| Computational photography can be done on your computer. What
| you should ask yourself is why isn't there any widespread
| software for this sort of thing widely available? Because the
| sort of people who want overprocessed photos are happy with
| their phones.
|
| People buy DSLRs for many reasons, none of which include
| unremovable sharpening filters, automatic replacement of faces
| with leafs or turning a bright orange sky blue. Or replacing
| the blurry 300px moon you just shot with a 3mp stock photo.
| lupire wrote:
| > automatic replacement of faces with leafs
|
| this was confirmed to be fake news.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Does your computer know as much about the scene as your
| phone/camera at the time of shooting it? I really don't think
| that a computer can do the same computational photography as
| a real-time device, at least not with current formats.
|
| It's probably the same as AOT vs JIT -- the proper solution
| would be to move more data to the computer where we have
| faster hardware and less resource-constraints, which would be
| the equivalent of profile-guided optimizations in my analogy
| (things like movement, maybe even some basic description of
| the scene based on NN and previously seen images)
| weberer wrote:
| Well there's CHDK for Canon cameras. I had it installed on a
| point-and-shoot a few years back and really liked the
| features it gave.
|
| https://chdk.fandom.com/wiki/CHDK
| guelo wrote:
| > How can a tiny sense in a cellphone capture more dynamic
| range can a massive sensor? Software
|
| No it's also hardware. The cellphone has much more powerful
| CPUs and GPUs than your DSLR that enable this
| positus wrote:
| The CPU and GPU aren't really relevant in a DSLR. What does
| matter, though, is the efficiency of the sensor and the
| quality of the lenses. If I'm shooting a DSLR I'm also going
| to be editing the RAW data on a much, much more powerful
| device than a cell phone.
| guelo wrote:
| The point is that if DSLRs were to do onboard computational
| photography like OP wants them to it would require them to
| have more powerful CPUs and GPUs
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| There may be more dynamic range in an iPhone photo, but the
| tones are quite harsh if you don't control the light. Fine
| texture also seems lacking when viewing on a (desktop) computer
| screen.
|
| I very much prefer the rendering of a "big camera", even with
| less dynamic range, than what can be obtained from an iPhone.
|
| Of course, as others have said, the iPhone quality is still
| amazing for what it is, especially given that you can carry it
| in your jeans pockets. Even the tiny Olympus Pens are worlds
| away from that. And just as always, the best camera is the one
| you have with you.
|
| I also agree that it would probably be great to have a "big
| camera" with the smarts of an iPhone. But there's probably not
| that big of a market for that, so the manufacturers don't
| invest in it. Although I'm surprised Sony didn't do anything,
| since they're in the camera phone business, too. At least, much
| more than say Nikon, Canon or Olympus.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Maybe they're focusing on what's important. It's plausible
| they're blind and dumb, or it's possible they reviewed iphones
| features and shots and said nop.
|
| Most smartphone pics have a weird feel to it, I thought I was
| being picky but it seems the article author feels the same.
| Computing power alter the optics too much.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Possible but unlikely. They have had a decade to see this
| coming and innovate. They just kept selling the same thing
| with more megapixels.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I mean I get the point, smartphones did feel like
| incredible wonders, thin, instant, stupid simple.. but if
| it swaps "reality" for gimmicks then I can see why actual
| camera brands wouldn't pursue it or at least leverage it in
| their own products.
|
| Absolute ease is rarely a requirement for quality, be it in
| photography, music .. or most things I guess.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| This isn't my experience _at all_.
|
| Until about six months ago, I carried a Fujifilm X-E2. It's
| an older camera (~2014), and was 16.3 MP. I upgraded to an
| X-Pro3, which is 26.1MP. Given that the MP stat increases
| with the square of resolution, that's not a huge change.
|
| My iPhone X has a 12MP camera, the same as the iPhone 13
| Pro. The technical resolution _doesn't matter_. It hasn't
| mattered since the 10MP barrier was breached.
|
| I would prefer the Nikon that I carried in ~2004 to the
| iPhone 13 Pro for "photography". Note that that is in
| quotes, because "photography" is very different from
| "taking pictures". I use my iPhone when I'm with my family
| most of the time and it's great for that. It's great for
| documenting activities and "capturing memories". That's not
| at all the same thing as "photography".
|
| My X-Pro3 can produce excellent images at 12,800 ISO and
| f/1.4. My iPhone doesn't even tell me what ISO its capable
| of as far as I know, has a static f/2.4 aperture, and the
| OS "Camera" app doesn't even let me set shutter speed. It
| does "does its best".
|
| They aren't comparable tools.
| copperx wrote:
| Yes, a photo is not a snapshot. But no one can deny that
| the iPhone 13 Pro is among the best snapshot tools in the
| world.
| m463 wrote:
| I think the mirrorless cameras do some of this. canon does skin
| smoothing, selfie, HDR, etc.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| Fun fact: your eyes are apparently a very low-quality camera.
| The reason we can make out so much detail is because our brains
| are really good at processing and focusing.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| I agree. 90% of DSLR shots don't need to push the limits of
| physics. 100 vs 1600 ISO doesn't matter if you have
| indistinguishable noise reduction. F/1.8 gives a nice bokeh,
| but if you only have two depth planes (a foreground subject and
| a distant background), no one will notice if you fake the blur.
|
| That said, I still have to carry my mirrorless into the
| backcountry because tiny sensors can _physically_ only let in
| so much light, which makes them unsuitable for
| astrophotography. I've seen the "Astro-modes" on new flagship
| phones and the result is always "wow, this is good...for a
| phone", but nowhere close to what I can get unedited from my
| camera.
|
| And the worst thing is that it's unlikely to change. Companies
| that have the ability to make really good phone cameras have no
| interest in ILCs, and the ones who make really good ILCs don't
| care about software.
|
| And good luck trying to compete in the middle without the
| hundreds of millions that Apple/Google put into ML research and
| the decades of research that Canon has done on colour science.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> by ignoring computational photography advancements_
|
| I don't believe it's true. Dedicated cameras never "ignored"
| the means to get better dynamic range and signal/noise ratio
| with stacking. It's just not needed most of the time, being a
| very specific trade-off for certain scenes. And RAW processing
| software is pretty much embracing computational photography
| (calibrated optics correction, noise reduction, highlight
| reconstruction etc, including things like auto retouching and
| tonemapping if you don't want to do it manually). It hugely
| improved over the years, being able to pull out much better
| results from the same RAW shot.
|
| What they're lacking is miniaturization and speed. Big sensors
| and many megapixels mean slow reading and writing speeds; my
| smartphone can record RAW video at 4K@60fps which is out of
| reach for my camera. Modern super-sharp lenses became huge.
| Electronic viewfinder and variable aperture mechanism can't be
| made reasonably small. Thankfully, the need for mechanical
| shutter seems to slowly go away as recent Nikons show.
|
| I hope there will be more super-compact cameras like Sigma fp
| in the future; combine it with a pancake lens and proper
| calibration ("computational photography") to compensate for the
| lack of corrective elements in pancakes, and you got yourself a
| pocket camera with vastly better capabilities.
|
| Smartphones can sometimes get nice results and are pretty good
| at motion compensation in deep stacks, but they are slow, un-
| ergonomic and very restricted in what you can shoot well with
| them. And the people who use dedicated cameras tend to shoot
| RAW with smartphones for best results as well. (stacking is
| available in bayer domain so it's not a problem)
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > Dedicated cameras never "ignored" the means to get better
| dynamic range and signal/noise ratio with stacking.
|
| I respectfully disagree. No dedicated format for stacks
| (instead just filenames), no first party software to combine
| the stacks, and absolutely no on-board combination.
|
| Heck on a fairly recent camera I own, you cannot even
| configure the camera to _always_ take a stack cellphone
| style. You have to bind to button to open a menu, to select
| stack size, every single shot.
|
| > And RAW processing software is pretty much embracing
| computational photography (calibrated optics correction,
| noise reduction, highlight reconstruction etc, including
| things like auto retouching and tonemapping if you don't want
| to do it manually).
|
| True. However, the market has shown time and time again that
| onboard is more popular than post-progressing. People want to
| snap and post, they don't want to snap and then post the next
| day/week after they've post processed it in PhotoLab or
| Lightroom.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > absolutely no on-board combination.
|
| This is false. My 2016 (I think?) Olympus Pen-F does
| multiple-exposure combination on-board. The results aren't
| always the best, since you can't control much, and it's
| JPEG only, but it _does_ do it.
|
| The reference manual:
| https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1081745/Olympus-
| Pen-F.html...
| hatsunearu wrote:
| The whole stacking argument is, in my opinion, a little
| silly.
|
| Why do we need stacking? Because it allows you to do
| exposure bracketing to get better dynamic range.
|
| Now the question is, in a high end mirrorless like, say an
| a7r4, you get something like 12-14 stops of dynamic range
| (expressing this as a number is kind of ambiguous). Do you
| really need one or two stops of dynamic range with
| bracketing? I don't think so.
|
| If you expose smartly you can absolutely make use of the
| incredible dynamic range.
|
| The only problem I see is on iPhone, it shoots in HEIC
| which is a great format because it lets you encode much
| higher dynamic range (and the software support is there to
| display it correctly). Check out a recent iPhone and take a
| picture with the sun and something medium-dark and you'll
| see that the sun is eye searingly bright whereas the
| medium-dark subject is still visible. I wish there was a
| flow that lets me produce HEIC images (AFAIK even Photoshop
| doesn't allow HDR workflows). A lot of the pro imaging
| workflow is only "aware" of printed end results and low-end
| digital images like Instagram or JPEG web publishing. Very
| frustrating in my opinion.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| As a "serious amateur" photographer at this stage of my life,
| the last thing I want my camera to do is be "smart".
|
| I use a Fujifilm X-Pro3, and while I have a variety of lenses,
| I almost always have my 23mm f/1.4 mounted. With the crop
| factor that gives me a "traditional" 35mm focal length. I
| almost always shoot with fully manual exposure, and only use
| autofocus about half the time.
|
| I chose this kit specifically because I have full control over
| the image with physical controls to make changes - I can change
| shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and even dynamic range without
| taking my eye out of the viewfinder.
|
| The X-Pro3 is pretty much made for me and my use case. While it
| has a "screen", it's folded into the back of the camera and
| isn't visible unless I manually flip it down. It can't
| practically be exposed when I'm using the camera normally. It's
| handy if I want to shoot at waist level or if I want to show
| someone standing next to me an image... but that's it.
|
| I have nothing against "computational photography", and it
| definitely has its place - but for me, as for most
| photographers, that place is in post-processing. Adobe is
| responsible for that stuff, not my camera. I expect my camera
| to produce a RAW file as an artifact, not an "image".
| m463 wrote:
| I think it would be nice to have a shooting mode where you
| could create a "folder of files" from one shot. maybe call it
| multi-raw?
|
| examples: - exposure stacking - focus
| stacking - time lapse - burst - panorama
| (or any kind of increased resolution)
|
| You could generate a preview image in-camera as an aid, but
| you would be free to use external tools on the individual
| images afterwards.
| somebodythere wrote:
| As a person who makes money shooting video. I wish I had more
| reason to invest in my camera body. Interchangeable lens
| should come with chromatic abberation/distortion profiles on
| a chip that communicates with the camera so we can buy
| cheaper and lighter lenses with fewer elements. You can
| always buy the fancy lens with perfect optics if you prefer
| that aesthetic. A professional camera software will always
| expose on/off switches for the correction so the photographer
| retains control over the shot. I really don't see the problem
| with giving pro cameras more optional smarts, it just makes
| them more versatile.
| perardi wrote:
| Are you sure cameras don't do that?
|
| I honestly do not know. They definitely do for still photos
| --Nikon has had chromatic aberration correction and lens
| distortion correction for quite a while, and it's keyed to
| individual lenses.
|
| If they aren't doing that in video, I suspect it's a pure
| horsepower limitation. Reading the data off the sensor, and
| applying the corrections in real-time while writing to card
| may be too computationally intensive or bandwidth-limited.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| _> Interchangeable lens should come with chromatic
| abberation/distortion profiles on a chip that communicates
| with the camera so we can buy cheaper and lighter lenses
| with fewer elements._
|
| Pretty much this, and this is what some people already do
| with pancake lenses, correcting the result in post. However
| there's a problem with this: for the universal vendor-
| supplied profiles to work well, the lens must still be made
| within pretty tight tolerances, so the cost reduction is
| limited. And proper manual calibration is really expensive
| and tedious, which defeats the point.
|
| I don't know if there's a niche, but I'd love to see some
| startup doing the full-fledged lens and body calibration
| (STF/OTF and stuff) on demand to make high quality custom
| tailored profiles. That way you can use really cheap and
| compact lenses to get the same result; software correction
| can do wonders nowadays.
| AlanYx wrote:
| >Adobe is responsible for that stuff, not my camera.
|
| I grew up on analog photography, and one of things I really
| appreciate about recent Fujifilm cameras is that you don't
| necessarily need to use Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. There's an
| "X Raw Studio" app, which lets you develop RAWs in-camera
| through a USB tether to your computer. It has a very, very
| limited set of RAW development choices, but for me it brings
| back a little bit of the feel of working in a darkroom.
| Limited options. I rarely use actual postprocessing software
| these days.
| chucksta wrote:
| I don't see how tethering your camera to your computer is
| much different then popping out a card and loading any 1st
| or 3rd party software? Or even just shooting in some
| processed format?
| Chilko wrote:
| Fujifilm cameras have an image processing chip that is
| used for film simulations, which this computer software
| also uses. Essentially it's in-camera editing controlled
| through a PC.
| unfocused wrote:
| I kind of agree. I'm not an absolute kind of person.
|
| For day to day photos, where there is no set up, sure, the
| camera phones are great because you can quickly take that
| photo. As they say, the best camera is the one you have with
| you.
|
| As a complete amateur, trying to take a photo of my kid at
| soccer, I have a Sony A6000 and I bought a used Sigma 100-400mm
| F5-6.3 DG DN OS. The camera phone is simply useless. Also, good
| luck trying to take a photo of that bird and showing it to your
| kids!
| coolso wrote:
| > I've given up for most things, a cellphone can beat all but
| the absolute top end dedicated cameras and even then only for
| niches.
|
| Phone cameras absolutely unequivocally cannot beat the clarity,
| sharpness, detail, natural bokeh, shutter speed, and overall
| quality of even an affordable dedicated camera in the $1K
| range. The only time a phone camera can somewhat keep up is
| when you're looking at the photos on your tiny 4" phone screen
| and throwing some heavy duty filters on it to the point where
| anything will look "good". Throw that photo up on a computer
| monitor, or TV screen, or get it printed and you can
| immediately see the difference just in sharpness and detail
| alone.
|
| Yes, phone cameras are far more convenient, and they have more
| filter options, and so on. But there's no comparison
| whatsoever. It's just that most people don't care enough when
| they're putting it up as a tiny little square on Instagram or
| sending it as a Snap that someone will look at for 5 seconds
| and never see again.
| mkaic wrote:
| I agree with this. I own both a mid-range DSLR and an iPhone 12
| Mini. In the past six months since I got the iPhone, I've
| transitioned all my short films to being shot with its tiny
| sensor over the DSLR's -- it just looks much, much better and
| saves me a ton of work. I really wish there was someone making
| the equivalent of an iPhone's computational photography, but
| used on a full-size sensor. Imagine the capabilities!
| switchbak wrote:
| Same boat. My Sony mirrorless is great (mostly), but the
| firmware/software just doesn't evolve, and it adds enough
| friction that I barely use the thing. Even though the
| resulting images can be better, they're only better with 5x
| the work (in front of a real computer). A high quality
| phone/ipad has a lot of benefits for HCI over a laptop,
| certainly for casual use.
|
| I'd be happy with a mirrorless shell that I snap a phone into
| to control the rest of the workflow. Give me that iPhone
| auto-AI picture magic (and some tunables to turn it down when
| needed) and I'd be happy. Well not in bright sun, but
| whatever.
|
| I was just looking for an EyeFi the other day, which are
| apparently no longer a thing. The Wifi workflow on my A6000
| is just so bad as to be unusable, so I end up batching photos
| into a big editing session every 1-2 weeks, uggh :(
| Jiejeing wrote:
| > a cellphone can beat all but the absolute top end dedicated
| cameras and even then only for niches
|
| Until you zoom in, and then it's all a big smudge. Unless you
| are talking about $1k+ cellphones only, which is outside of the
| price range of most.
| lupire wrote:
| $1k cellphones are extremely popular with the public and
| people who post photos online.
| astrange wrote:
| Prime lenses on cameras are much better quality for the same
| price, so the best kind of zoom is already the one with your
| feet.
| Jiejeing wrote:
| I meant, when you open the image at its true resolution on
| a computer. But I agree that prime lenses are close to
| always better in quality than variable length ones, even if
| for some situations you need a telephoto anyway (and having
| a fixed 300mm in my pocket does not seem practical).
| astrange wrote:
| There is that, but I feel like pixel resolution turns out
| to not matter pretty often. Obviously it does matter if
| you're cropping or blowing it up for a background etc,
| but even printing can look good with a low res image if
| you're viewing it from far enough away.
|
| They do make clip-on zoom lenses for phones but I haven't
| actually used any, not sure how much they help.
| gerbilly wrote:
| Sun Microsystems used to have a tagline: "The network is the
| computer," now it's starting to look like the network is the
| camera.
|
| Basically photography is about Pentagram, Twatter and Faceborg
| more than it is about the photo itself.
|
| The medium is starting to alter the aesthetics of the images
| themselves1.
|
| Joking aside, a professional photographer needs to be able to get
| reproducible results. Because the algorithms in the phones are
| mostly black box, with few parameters, they can't be used in a
| professional setting.
|
| Even if you have the control over the algorithm, they are still
| really weak. Portrait mode for example can't reliably separate
| the subjects hair from the background properly.
|
| Doing this optically does not suffer from these problems at all.
|
| 1: For example, vertical videos.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/0843H
| can16358p wrote:
| I think it's a welcome effect for many average people on the
| street. As a hobbyist photographer who likes nature and
| astrophotograpy with quite serious gear (5D Mark IV, Sigma 14
| f1.8, Canon 50mm f/1.2 etc) I find iPhone camera really
| impressive and is actually the primary reason of upgrading every
| year.
|
| Yet, I'd love to see an "off" switch when needed. But at least
| we've got RAW shooting which doesn't apply much effects (but
| still overprocesses a little too much for "raw", agreed.)
| tomduncalf wrote:
| Third party camera apps like Lightroom and Halide can take much
| "RAWer" RAWs than the ProRAW option of the stock camera
| daggersandscars wrote:
| After watching far too many videos comparing the iPhone 13 Pro
| Max, Samsung S22 Ultra, and Pixel 6 Pro, I decided against the
| iPhone because of the automatic skin smoothing.
|
| The iPhone 13 Pro Max removed wrinkles, sun spots, moles, hair,
| etc to the point where the results looked like overprocessed,
| manually edited photos. This wasn't subtle -- the reviewers
| commented on it as well.
|
| While I don't do video, I was struck by a specific example: the
| iPhone 13 Pro Max's automatic enhancement for dark scenes decided
| a barely visible wall was red and recently painted. It looked
| like someone had drawn a box in the photo and did a red fill.
|
| I suspect it is only a matter of time before Samsung and Pixel's
| photos look as overprocessed. But, for now, we have some choice.
| Geonode wrote:
| The Pixel 6 photos are quite over processed.
|
| You can shoot raw, but I just want the same normal workflow
| without the run around.
| heartbreak wrote:
| This is fantastic. You've confused the over-sharpening that
| some Android cameras do with Apple's non-existent "skin
| smoothing" feature.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Are you saying that iPhone doesn't do the "skin smoothing" as
| described?
| heartbreak wrote:
| Yes that is what I'm saying. The iOS camera app does not do
| skin smoothing.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Check some side-by-side comparisons of of same portrait
| scenes on youtube. Apple removes all moles, freckles,
| wrinkles and so on so folks look like (very good looking)
| plastic toys from fashion magazine covers. Some like it, some
| don't.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Just took some pictures with my iPhone 13 Pro and it 100%
| doesn't do this. Not even in Portrait mode.
|
| Maybe there's some way to monkey with it just right.
|
| I think people are confusing low light noise reduction for
| something else.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Check some side-by-side comparisons of of same portrait
| scenes on YouTube._
|
| No one is going to go dig for that, if you wish for folks
| to make such a comparison, it would be better to post a
| link so that everyone is on the same page.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Do people really choose between Android and iOS based on the
| camera? They are all very close on quality, and IIRC if you
| don't like the stock camera apps you can get a third party app
| with less opinionated processing. But even so, the whole
| experience, including the ecosystem, matters so much more to me
| than the camera. I have a real camera for when it matters that
| much.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I did, and went with S22 ultra at the end. Long term nikon
| full frame shooter. I must say both iphone 13 pro max and
| this are _very_ formidable devices, each has their strengths
| and weaknesses, took quite a bit of time to decide. I like
| how S22 feels like a real computer where I can plug my
| variometer for paragliding via OTG cable, side load apps of
| my own choice, use normal charging cables like rest of the
| universe, upload /download files straight from filesystyem
| without any installed apps and so on. I am getting into whole
| S pen experience, its pretty nice for sketching or precise
| mouse-like work ie when editing photos in phone. Apple notch
| making it look like some basic 2015 chinese phone is just a
| cherry on the top.
|
| As for cameras, 10x physical zoom is not something to
| neglect, Apple doesn't have anything to offer there. In past
| 2 weeks I have it, I've shot quite a lot of otherwise
| impossible kids, family, nature, animals etc. pics with this
| zoom. That was my main motivation for new phone - a camera
| for pictures I always have with me, unlike dedicated camera
| (2.5kg being just a detail, I didn't mind carrying it but I
| didn't have it a lot of casual times where great situation
| happened).
|
| Another reason that swayed me - with this upgrade I wanted to
| improve headphones, priority being quality of sounds and
| battery life to play my collection of flacs. Airpods Pro were
| just not cutting it, went with Sennheiser momentum 2. You
| can't connect iphone and Senns via some above-default
| bluetooth protocol, they support aptX, Apple has their own
| solution and nothing else.
|
| Rest of cameras are +-comparable, sometimes one wins other
| times the other. BUT - this over-processing that Apple is
| famous for is something I don't like, as long term DSLR
| shooter I 'have it in the eye' how processing should look
| like. A lot of people got so used to it though, they consider
| ie full frame pictures with normal level of processing bland
| and artificial compared to Apple's.
| npteljes wrote:
| >Do people really choose between Android and iOS based on the
| camera?
|
| We did. My wife wanted an Iphone because it takes great
| pictures, and I got an S9 because I can tinker with the ROM.
| ta8903 wrote:
| Have you looked at the marketing material for any of those
| phones (or any modern flagship for that matter)? Over half of
| it focuses on the various cameras they have and their
| specs/features.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My wife is thinking of upgrading her iPhone for better
| snapshots of our baby.
|
| I'm a professional photographer. Hell, she is too - she
| second shoots at my weddings. We have the best cameras and
| lenses money can buy...but they aren't in her pocket when our
| baby does something cute.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| > Do people really choose between Android and iOS based on
| the camera?
|
| Kinda. I have a 4a because of the camera more or less. It was
| between that and the iPhone SE 2020.
|
| I did kinda wanna switch up to Android (I've gone back and
| forth over the years. I don't lock myself into any one
| company's eco.)
| simion314 wrote:
| Probably some people are not heavily plugged into an
| ecosystem, they need at max 3-5 apps to work and that is
| enough for them. other sure have laptops,watches, TVs already
| in the ecosystem, tons of money already spent into apps and
| media so they are prisoners.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Even without the ecosystem, it seems like the actual UI
| experience is different enough that it would be the
| dominant factor. Every time I switch back and forth between
| Android and iOS it's like whiplash. They do tend to copy
| each other heavily, so it's converging, but there are still
| plenty of behavioral differences.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| As someone who dislikes both iOS and Android, I chose my
| phone based on other factors. I chose my phone due to its
| size and form. In their case, they would be choosing it
| based on photography.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| > Do people really choose between Android and iOS based on
| the camera?
|
| iPhone 13 launch marketing/advertisement was almost entirely
| about camera.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKfgdkcIUxw
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Samsung is the king of oversmoothing. I've used the note 4, s8,
| 10+ and s21 ultra and imo the camera has always been subpar
| exactly because of that. I actually have no idea how most
| reviews have been constantly praising the cameras of flagship
| Samsung phones when in practice even at launch it was always a
| disappointing experience.
|
| Even with the s21+, the only way to really get decent shots
| from the camera in low/medium light before a recent update was
| to use modded Gcam builds. Even with the update I'd say it
| maybe compares to an iPhone 8 or x
|
| Overprocessing and oversaturation were so bad before the s10+
| that I remember not even bothering with the camera at all
| because of how frustrating it was to always get mediocre
| pictures.
| astrange wrote:
| > I decided against the iPhone because of the automatic skin
| smoothing.
|
| There's no such thing. I doubt any reviewer making videos knows
| what they're talking about unless it's from a very few sources
| like DPReview.
|
| The iPhone camera has never had skin smoothing - that's
| something only Asian camera apps do. Deep Fusion is more like
| the opposite of that.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > The iPhone camera has never had skin smoothing
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_XS#Excessive_smoothing_.
| ..
|
| You were saying?
| astrange wrote:
| Indeed, that's a case of people conspiring a skin smoothing
| filter out of a bug, like it says.
|
| Actually I really didn't like the denoising on that camera,
| it seemed poorly tuned in general...
| AnonHP wrote:
| Haven't Samsung's flagship phones favored over (or more than
| normal) saturated photos over the years? I think the key to
| liking a phone camera is to get one that takes photos you like
| (I know this is tautological). Or play with apps that will
| allow you to change from the defaults. This may not help as
| much on iOS since the default camera app that can be launched
| quickest from the Lock Screen is Apple's camera app.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I feel like it is inevitable that consumers gravitate towards
| cameras that make them look the prettiest, if that is not
| already where manufactures are going.
|
| Samsung absolutely does not want someone to switch, and then
| find out that they "look worse" on their new samsung phone.
|
| I guess its just a matter of whether or not they implement
| options for post-processing.
| gumby wrote:
| I feel the opposite: I don't care about the camera. I just take
| snaps of people and random things and like the memory more than
| anything else. I wish apple made high end phones with cameras
| that were flush in the body. For me the extended lenses are just
| an annoying and user hostile design statement.*
|
| And ditto ipads: since the first ipad came out I've taken a grand
| total of one photo with it. The aggressive cluster of lenses is a
| real downer since I can't lay it flat.
|
| * Yes I know some people chose their phone by the camera and need
| the physics of a longer lens barrel. They are not wrong, nor am
| I: I'm just saying that one size doesn't fit all.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I feel like a lot of that was just a reaction to the reality
| that _overwhelmingly_ , people put their $800 smartphone in a
| protective case, and that that protective case typically adds
| 1-3mm of thickness on the back of it.
|
| It was the hardware designers saying "welp, we could really use
| that extra few mm of depth for the camera lens, and keeping the
| rest of the body thinner is a better deal than beefing up the
| whole thing for those handful of users who don't use a case.
|
| Maybe there's a non-case case out there for you that just
| sticks on the back and is thick enough to make the whole thing
| flush without adding any bulk around the sides? Or even just a
| strip of foamy tape or something that can run across the top of
| the device adjacent to the camera pop-out so that the device is
| able to sit flat on a table.
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| While I agree with you on the design choices made, the camera
| bump has gotten to _absurd levels_. It 's now roughly _50%_
| the thickness of the phone body [1]. This means that unless
| one gets a case that 's unnecessarily thick, it'll still rock
| on a table with even with a case on. There's also a limit to
| case thickness without affecting other features like wireless
| charging and magsafe.
|
| I'm not sure this is good design anymore. Perhaps if the bump
| was centered so the phone doesn't sit lopsided on a table, or
| maybe even a tapered design.
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/UVt4FyH
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Okay, yeah, that is pretty thick. I'm still rocking an
| iPhone 7 and for me, the bump is well under 1mm and doesn't
| protrude at all from a fairly normal-thickness case.
|
| My partner has an iPhone 13, though, and my impression was
| that it wasn't all that different for her, but clearly
| that's not the case-- I should examine it more closely. I
| see from looking at some phone cases online, many of them
| do have a raised "frame" around the camera area, so I can
| see how that would contribute to issues with it rocking
| when set down on a flat surface.
|
| EDIT: Okay, I realised she uses a popsocket on the back of
| hers, so this has never come up because it either sits on
| the table face down, or is face-up but propped up on the
| socket.
| Markoff wrote:
| > flush camera
|
| isn't that what phone case is for?
| gumby wrote:
| Case simply makes the whole device larger.
|
| Apple could make the camera flush by bulking out the back of
| the phone with more battery (though these days battery life
| is adequate for me so this wouldn't be as much of a win as it
| might have been a few years ago).
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| I tried to show mates how filthy I was turned over my new
| apartment, and what I'm assuming to be the anti shadow AI in the
| sensor removed so much of the dirt..
| taylodl wrote:
| If the iPhone provided access to the RAW image then this wouldn't
| be a big deal. Discard the processed image if you want. Maybe
| Apple could make it a setting for whether to keep the RAW photo?
|
| I have an iPhone SE and you can take good photographs with that
| camera - if you know what you're doing. I've been doing
| photography as a hobby since the days of processing my own film
| and having my own darkroom and I can tell you the iPhone is
| capable of capturing great shots. But you have to know what
| you're doing and you can't have the camera's software interfering
| with what you're doing.
|
| Can an iPhone replace your DSLR (assuming you know what you're
| doing)? No. The DSLR simply captures more information, has more
| detail, especially in low-lit situations, and has better color.
| But for a device you always have in your pocket? It's a pro-level
| snapshot camera! But it's not replacing your DSLR and for most
| people that's just fine.
| culopatin wrote:
| They offer ProRAW if you have a pro phone. Silly because the 12
| and 12 pro have the same cameras except for telephoto afaik
| ben7799 wrote:
| This is a terrible article full of outright falsehoods with no
| examples.
|
| It seems like they just quoted a bunch of older "get off my lawn"
| photographers who either don't know how to use the latest iPhones
| or haven't even tried them.
|
| Pretty much everything they're talking about is either outright
| wrong, or it's behavior that can be turned off in the settings or
| influenced in the camera app, or just go use an alternate app.
|
| Some of the complaints in the article are as simple as the person
| complaining doesn't know how to control exposure compensation or
| automatic exposure lock on the iPhone. Both of these are things
| that have not changed in a long time on the iPhone. Portrait mode
| is imperfect for sure, but the author doesn't seem to understand
| that a large aperture on a traditional camera is also liable to
| produce weird effects in a picture and will most certainly do
| things like make things in the background disappear. Using that
| wisely separates a good photographer from a bad one.
|
| There is a RAW mode for people who are complaining about that.
| Maybe it's not "RAW enough" but the same thing has happened in
| the DSLR/MILC world for a while too. Sony was doing processing on
| their RAW files a long time ago.
|
| Some of the stuff going on with DLSRs/MILC is targeted very
| heavily at spec sheet chasers these days and far less so
| artistic/working photographers. It's gotten a bit out of hand
| lately. I have a bunch of pro level photo gear and a lot of it
| has lost a lot of fun over the last 10 years.. the smartphone
| photography has gotten a lot more interesting. I've printed 60"
| wide photos on one of my cameras and it's 10 years old now. Zero
| reason for me to upgrade it for any realistic improvement in
| megapixels and the other things the camera companies are selling,
| for which they want $4000. Likewise ultra expensive new lenses
| which improve performance in the corner of the frame but weigh 2x
| as much as what I have already. The spec chasers love all this
| stuff to death but if the subject of the photo isn't in the
| corner no viewer cares, and not many quality compositions focus
| on the corners. And it's certainly not worth upgrading a $1000
| lens to a $2000-3000 lens. Even MILC is in many ways a sideways
| move and often focuses on the same stuff smartphones are doing.
|
| The 3 lens smartphones have gotten really really compelling for
| anyone who really thinks about how they shoot. If you're not
| chasing printing big prints you can take the smartphone and get
| the same results as having to take an entire bag of expensive
| camera gear that cost you thousands.
|
| The biggest weakness of the smartphones is flash & external
| lighting.. but there have been hacks & add on devices to control
| external flashes for quite a while now too. As in years. A lot of
| that is the same kind of stuff you used to have to do with "Pro"
| photo gear.
|
| No matter what the camera is someone will always complain about
| the camera being the cause of their bad photography. It is almost
| never the camera's fault. It is almost always a problem between
| the floor and the shutter button. Be a maker not a taker, etc..
| nkingsy wrote:
| Seems there are quite a few ways to get around this.
|
| Didn't know you could change the keyframe in a live photo, and it
| appears that removes the processing.
|
| https://appletoolbox.com/disable-photo-auto-enhance-iphone/
| tomduncalf wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the live photo frames are lower quality though,
| as it stores the live photo part as a compressed video rather
| than individual images, so you're looking at a grab of a video
| which could have artefacts and lower resolution.
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