Nope make the ring more functional. It would be nice to see it turn into a magnetic mount for filters and the like. Old school I know but using a filters gives you results in real time.
Benj just wants the phones to be as thin as a credit card. Anything that prevents that is no good for him.
Not sure I agree. With RAW you can try out lots of filters not be stuck with a single result. I'd like to see Apple go RAW.
That's another thing I've been yelling at them about. I could understand it when phones had little storage, but now, we can go to 128GB. Someone who wants RAW stills or video can buy that high storage model. Indeed, I'm sure that's why Apple has them
Filters, yes, though I rarely use them. The big deal here is that none of the smartphones have a good auto light correction algorithm. The iPhone is better than it used to be, but it's still not too great. The good thing about RAW is that you can easily correct it when it gave you daylight instead of flash, or worse, tungsten! Try correct for that with a JPEG, and it's ruined. RAW is sharper too.
I didn't miss that point at all, that's what "more megapixels can actually do harm because they heat up and cause noise, especially at high ISOs..." means, although I should have been clearer and said that "photosites heat up", not "they".
This is only a problem with very high IQ cameras. That problem comes from the use of CCDs. CMOS a chips don't suffer from that problem nearly as much.
That's not quite true. There are some incredibly sharp pro lenses out there, from several companies, including Canon, Leica, Nikon, Zeiss, Schneider, and even Sigma. There are a couple of smaller lens makers that make extremely good super achromat lenses. Costal Optics, for example. These are all for 35mm DSLR size cameras. There are two or three tele models for Hasselblad
Canon and Bikin both make apochromatis lenses, but don't advertize them as such as Leica and Zeiss do.
I'm not stating that there aren't sharp lenses, just that imager resolution is improving at a significantly faster rate than that of lens optics.
Nope make the ring more functional. It would be nice to see it turn into a magnetic mount for filters and the like. Old school I know but using a filters gives you results in real time.
Benj just wants the phones to be as thin as a credit card. Anything that prevents that is no good for him.
You speculate incorrectly.
I prefer the thickness of the 5 to the 6. AllI the 5 needs is more rounded sides and corners and it's perfect.
More Megapixels don't make the pictures better. They just make them bigger, which is of limited use to everyone except for the few of us who use their iPhone for capturing pictures for poster-sized prints.
More megapixels also have some big downsides that are felt by everyone: More noise in the picture, worse low light performance, increased file sizes and increased processing time.
Better pictures instead of bigger pictures is the right trade off!
Or you're cropping the image quite a bit! Zooming into the part you saved. A Higher MP would matter more in this case. Again, that's not a normal thing people do. I don't remember the last time I went and cropped a picture. Unless you're cropping something that's way out in the distance, a higher MP is just pointless. You can get great 8x11 pictures with a 5MP camera, so 8MP is more then good enough for large poser size.
Yup. For normal 5x7 pictures even a 2MP camera is fine.
The only rationalization for huge 16-20MP sensors that makes alittle sense is using it as a zoom through cropping.
But if that's someone is doing that on a regular basis, then a cellphone camera clearly isn't the right choice.
They should invest in a DSLR/good regular camera with a zoom lens instead, and will not only have an actual zoom but also better pictures.
What would be totally kick-ass is for them to somehow put a full frame sensor into the iPhone, they could still stay at 8MP as well. That would be interesting. Don't see that happening, but I wonder if it's even possible? They would probably have to make the lens bigger I would imagine.
That would be like putting a V12 Ferrari engine in a little Chrystler/Fiat 500... Kinda cool, but totally pointless and waste of a car, since you're putting a 500 HP engine into a chassis that was built for an 80 HP engine. ????
You obviously haven't either. The 1020 has a xeon flash . IT also saves In raw format. So your jpeg lossiness comment shows you have no idea what your talking about.
If you think a xenon flash is a xenon flash, and the flash in the 1020 can be compared with the kind of flash you put in a hotshoe, then I'm afraid it's you who's punching above weight here...
Not sure I agree. With RAW you can try out lots of filters not be stuck with a single result. I'd like to see Apple go RAW.
I don't think that's something we will ever see. If you want or need RAW, then an iPhone isn't camera enough for you. A DSLR would be more along your needs/wants
As usual, with these things, it's not that simple. Nikon and Sony came out with a 24MP sensor a few years ago, then a 36MP. Now Canon is coming out with 51MP cameras, and likely so will Sony and possibly Nikon. We've got 80MP backs for medium format, and scanning backs go to hundreds of MP.
inning, which still leaves you with, at a lower resolution, lower noise and a sharper image. And you still get the higher resolution for when you need it.
For smartphone cameras, the issue is somewhat different because of the tiny imaging sites, which are pretty much at the limit of practical lens resolution. So is the usage model. 8MP is high enough for a sharp 8x12. For most people, as long as they're not doing a lot of cropping, that's enough. The problem comes in because of the lack of optical zoom. Once you do crop, 8MP may not be enough.
But for Facebook, email, etc. it's fine.
For Facebook and holiday snapshots a 2MP camera is fine. Heck, a 2MP Nikon DSLR with a good lens will in many cases take better pictures than an iPhone 6.
And if you need a high MP camera to use instead of a zoom, is like using a screwdriver for a hammers job. Yeah, you can probably get the nail in. But using a hammer would still have been a better idea.
And somebody using his 20 MP camera instead of a zoom, should just go out and get a camera with a zoom lens instead. The pictures will be better.
Canons new 50MP cameras is made for professionals that use them for landscape photography. The same kind of people who often use an analog Medium size camera.
And with the resolution in medium sized film cameras approaching hundreds of MP, it's no wonder they might get a 50MP camera, or that cameras with higher MP counts may be available in the future.
But the other pro's: The newsphotographers won't have a camera much above 20-30 MPs in the future, most likely lower than that in fact.
For them, and the amateurs, the MP race has effectively stopped. In 4-5 years the majority of cameras for pro's and amateurs will be below 30MP, most of them somewhere between 8-20 MP, just like today.
The trade offs you have to make in order to get a bigger picture (more MP) just aren't worth it for most of us.
The lens is actually quite good. I see notproblems at the edges and even the corners. I'm impressed, and I come from a commercial photography background.
The lens is fine, but not impressive compared to what you get in a DSLR lens. It's a matter of physics. You just can't gather as much light as you can in a big lens. And photography is all about light.
In the old Rebel, you don't have programs that perform optical correction, among other enhancements that are readily available in most modern cameras and smartphones. But, if you take RAW and perform those corrections, I think the picture from the old Rebel can still beat latest iPhone.
Undoubtedly. Even one of the old 2 MP Nikon D2- cameras with a good lens could get better pictures than an iPhone 6 in many cases. It's all about the light, and a full size lens can gather much more light than the lens on an iPhone.
And the most important part for many photographers: Freedom. A DSLR gives you much more freedom in how you compose you picture with limited depth of field settings you have on an iPhone.
There is more to the MP count that simply perceived quality. Agreed in consumer products it is irrelevant unless you want digital zoom ability with no loss. Example, thanks to the 20+ MP on a Canon Tn range and others, you can digitally zoom x3 to still have a genuine 1080p video image. With the spread of 4K over the next few years 50 MP and up sensors will be required to allow digital zooming and still hold full resolution in video. It isn't about one up-manship at all. It's about flexibility.
Then you dont need lots of MP, you need a zoom lens. Don't get me wrong, it may be fine for an occasional holiday movie, but anything much beyond that, you'd need a zoom lens.
The result you get through cropping a huge 40 MP picture is much worse than what you'd get by using a proper zoom lens instead.
You obviously haven't either. The 1020 has a xeon flash . IT also saves In raw format. So your jpeg lossiness comment shows you have no idea what your talking about.
Its also slow as a dog and can't shoot good video; I am pretty a hundred reviews mention that. So, great for landscapes or portraits, bad for candid shots, and anything that needs speed or where there is significant movement.
Should I even upgrade my 4S ??? It has same camera
As stated, MANY times, over and over again, 8 MP from one device is not equal to 8 MP from another. Compare pictures side by side taken by a 4S then a 6 or 6 Plus. You'll quickly see how much can be done with an 8 MP sensor.
I've had my 6 since December, and it's been in a case since day one, a very slim case at that. The camera lens doesn't even protrude to match the thickness of that slim case.
Since most people use a case on their iPhones, the protruding lens is basically irrelevant.
For Apple to fit the sensor into the thin chassis of the iPhone 6, that means protrusion. Otherwise, they'd have to make the phones thicker, which we all know won't happen.
Many Android phones, even fairly thick ones, have/had protruding camera lenses, but we all know the image quality wasn't very hot.
Have you seen the 41 MP Nokia? That's protrusion at new levels.
You missed the obvious point that low-light performance suffers with higher resolution. Since phones can't pack in full size high powered flashes, they have to leverage what they can. Apple can still make some more improvements to the Camera system (8MP is "at least as good as most DSLR's"... from 2008) before increasing the megapixels.
Like have you seen what an image produced by the Nokia Lumia 1020 (41MP) look like? Sure they look nice when outside, but not when you zoom in, or take pictures indoors. Any real benefit of the larger sensor just compensates for the jpeg lossiness. It's a handwave really. The high resolution sensors are really only of any good when they are in a full size DSLR that can write raw files. In a mobile phone you have to deal with image stabilizing (no tripod), fixed lens profile, and low-light conditions where a flash is inappropriate.
I'm not going to knock the Nokia 1020 too hard, it's biggest drawback is that Nokia and Microsoft create disposable devices/software, so you might buy a phone because it has a 41Mpixel camera, but you will have to throw it away once the next OS comes out. Older devices were supported long past the point of caring.
The 1020 has one of the best low-light photography performances out there, only bested by other PureView devices... Also, you can take advantage of taking photos in RAW.
But you're missing the point in having 41 Mpx. It's not about taking a giant picture. It's about oversampling and lossless zoom (and, to a lesser extent, quick reframing).
When you take a picture with the 1020, you get two images: One 5 Mpx oversampled image, and one 41 Mpx full size image (you can choose if the later one is saved in JPG or RAW). The oversampled image has an aggressive noise reduction, while loosing almost no detail, taking advantage of all the extra pixels. That allows you to have an incredible low-light performance.
When you zoom in, you're just cropping into the 41 Mpx, instead of blowing up pixels, like on the iPhone and almost every other phone in the market.
Also... "Disposable devices"... Do you know that the 1020 will get Windows 10? And not only the 1020, but also the 920, which came out in 2012. Only Apple beats this support, and not by a wide margin. I don't think that Microsoft makes "disposable devices". I think you're thinking in Google/Samsung...
While it's true that megapixels is not the only indicator of quality and that in small sensors, more megapixels can actually do harm because they heat up and cause noise, especially at high ISOs, to claim as Gruber apparently did, that a cell phone camera can offer DSLR quality when it has such a small sensor and a tiny lens is completely absurd. All it demonstrates is that Gruber knows nothing about the physics of digital photography.
good thing he never said that, as a dSLR shooter. if you can quote him otherwise, please link.
Not sure I agree. With RAW you can try out lots of filters not be stuck with a single result. I'd like to see Apple go RAW.
The files are too big and take up too much room and time to write to disk.
Apple has always done an excellent job with processing what the iPhone camera captures, always, since the first 2 megapixel cameras went up against 5 megapixel cameras from other manufacturers.
The proof was in the file size of the results way back in 2007 and 2008.
As usual, with these things, it's not that simple. Nikon and Sony came out with a 24MP sensor a few years ago, then a 36MP. Now Canon is coming out with 51MP cameras, and likely so will Sony and possibly Nikon. We've got 80MP backs for medium format, and scanning backs go to hundreds of MP.
What really matters is per pixel IQ, as long as they are equal, I'll take higher resolution any day. Even if the per pixel IQ is slightly less, much higher resolution allows binning, which still leaves you with, at a lower resolution, lower noise and a sharper image. And you still get the higher resolution for when you need it.
For smartphone cameras, the issue is somewhat different because of the tiny imaging sites, which are pretty much at the limit of practical lens resolution. So is the usage model. 8MP is high enough for a sharp 8x12. For most people, as long as they're not doing a lot of cropping, that's enough. The problem comes in because of the lack of optical zoom. Once you do crop, 8MP may not be enough.
But for Facebook, email, etc. it's fine.
The problem with higher resolution is, that there is no better IQ possible when the diffraction limit is exceeded by a certain amount. it is solely defined by the aperture of the lens and the sensor pixel size. And when the sensor pixels are significantly smaller than the airy disk of the light ray, it's just over. Pixel binning does not anything at this stage too. Having a lens / sensor combo which is already exceeding the limit too much trying to use a sensor with an even higher pixel count is reducing the image quality further no matter what.
The sensor / f2.2 lens combo in the iPhone 6 is already diffraction limited (when I am correct, that the pixel size is 1.5 µm), so an increase in pixel density to e.g. 10 or 12 MP would result in more noise and in less sharp pictures, less contrast. What they could do is to increase the sensor size appropriately, but this would increase the size of the whole camera module quite a lot.
For that reason I am also very sure, there will never be a FF camera with more then 51MP, as the the 5Ds. Image degradation from diffraction can start to become visible between apertures f6.2 and f9.3. I am looking forward to see some tests with apertures f8 and higher, once they will be available.
Quote:
This is only a problem with very high IQ cameras. That problem comes from the use of CCDs. CMOS a chips don't suffer from that problem nearly as much.
The same problem exists for CMOS cameras too, but it's noticed almost exclusively when making long exposures in the dark using high ISO (requiring more electric energy flowing through the sensor, heating it up).
Fun fact: all professional astrophotography cameras are CCD cameras. CCD cameras are much more sensitive to light than CMOS sensors, but they require about 20x times more power. So the cameras used for long exposures are required to be actively cooled.
Comments
Benj just wants the phones to be as thin as a credit card. Anything that prevents that is no good for him.
That's another thing I've been yelling at them about. I could understand it when phones had little storage, but now, we can go to 128GB. Someone who wants RAW stills or video can buy that high storage model. Indeed, I'm sure that's why Apple has them
Filters, yes, though I rarely use them. The big deal here is that none of the smartphones have a good auto light correction algorithm. The iPhone is better than it used to be, but it's still not too great. The good thing about RAW is that you can easily correct it when it gave you daylight instead of flash, or worse, tungsten! Try correct for that with a JPEG, and it's ruined. RAW is sharper too.
This is only a problem with very high IQ cameras. That problem comes from the use of CCDs. CMOS a chips don't suffer from that problem nearly as much.
That's not quite true. There are some incredibly sharp pro lenses out there, from several companies, including Canon, Leica, Nikon, Zeiss, Schneider, and even Sigma. There are a couple of smaller lens makers that make extremely good super achromat lenses. Costal Optics, for example. These are all for 35mm DSLR size cameras. There are two or three tele models for Hasselblad
Canon and Bikin both make apochromatis lenses, but don't advertize them as such as Leica and Zeiss do.
I'm not stating that there aren't sharp lenses, just that imager resolution is improving at a significantly faster rate than that of lens optics.
You speculate incorrectly.
I prefer the thickness of the 5 to the 6. AllI the 5 needs is more rounded sides and corners and it's perfect.
More Megapixels don't make the pictures better. They just make them bigger, which is of limited use to everyone except for the few of us who use their iPhone for capturing pictures for poster-sized prints.
More megapixels also have some big downsides that are felt by everyone: More noise in the picture, worse low light performance, increased file sizes and increased processing time.
Better pictures instead of bigger pictures is the right trade off!
Yup. For normal 5x7 pictures even a 2MP camera is fine.
The only rationalization for huge 16-20MP sensors that makes alittle sense is using it as a zoom through cropping.
But if that's someone is doing that on a regular basis, then a cellphone camera clearly isn't the right choice.
They should invest in a DSLR/good regular camera with a zoom lens instead, and will not only have an actual zoom but also better pictures.
That would be like putting a V12 Ferrari engine in a little Chrystler/Fiat 500... Kinda cool, but totally pointless and waste of a car, since you're putting a 500 HP engine into a chassis that was built for an 80 HP engine. ????
If you think a xenon flash is a xenon flash, and the flash in the 1020 can be compared with the kind of flash you put in a hotshoe, then I'm afraid it's you who's punching above weight here...
I don't think that's something we will ever see. If you want or need RAW, then an iPhone isn't camera enough for you. A DSLR would be more along your needs/wants
For Facebook and holiday snapshots a 2MP camera is fine. Heck, a 2MP Nikon DSLR with a good lens will in many cases take better pictures than an iPhone 6.
And if you need a high MP camera to use instead of a zoom, is like using a screwdriver for a hammers job. Yeah, you can probably get the nail in. But using a hammer would still have been a better idea.
And somebody using his 20 MP camera instead of a zoom, should just go out and get a camera with a zoom lens instead. The pictures will be better.
Canons new 50MP cameras is made for professionals that use them for landscape photography. The same kind of people who often use an analog Medium size camera.
And with the resolution in medium sized film cameras approaching hundreds of MP, it's no wonder they might get a 50MP camera, or that cameras with higher MP counts may be available in the future.
But the other pro's: The newsphotographers won't have a camera much above 20-30 MPs in the future, most likely lower than that in fact.
For them, and the amateurs, the MP race has effectively stopped. In 4-5 years the majority of cameras for pro's and amateurs will be below 30MP, most of them somewhere between 8-20 MP, just like today.
The trade offs you have to make in order to get a bigger picture (more MP) just aren't worth it for most of us.
The lens is fine, but not impressive compared to what you get in a DSLR lens. It's a matter of physics. You just can't gather as much light as you can in a big lens. And photography is all about light.
Undoubtedly. Even one of the old 2 MP Nikon D2- cameras with a good lens could get better pictures than an iPhone 6 in many cases. It's all about the light, and a full size lens can gather much more light than the lens on an iPhone.
And the most important part for many photographers: Freedom. A DSLR gives you much more freedom in how you compose you picture with limited depth of field settings you have on an iPhone.
Then you dont need lots of MP, you need a zoom lens. Don't get me wrong, it may be fine for an occasional holiday movie, but anything much beyond that, you'd need a zoom lens.
The result you get through cropping a huge 40 MP picture is much worse than what you'd get by using a proper zoom lens instead.
You obviously haven't either. The 1020 has a xeon flash . IT also saves In raw format. So your jpeg lossiness comment shows you have no idea what your talking about.
Its also slow as a dog and can't shoot good video; I am pretty a hundred reviews mention that. So, great for landscapes or portraits, bad for candid shots, and anything that needs speed or where there is significant movement.
Please just make the lens flush this time, Jony.
That's all we're begging you.
I've had my 6 since December, and it's been in a case since day one, a very slim case at that. The camera lens doesn't even protrude to match the thickness of that slim case.
Since most people use a case on their iPhones, the protruding lens is basically irrelevant.
For Apple to fit the sensor into the thin chassis of the iPhone 6, that means protrusion. Otherwise, they'd have to make the phones thicker, which we all know won't happen.
Many Android phones, even fairly thick ones, have/had protruding camera lenses, but we all know the image quality wasn't very hot.
Have you seen the 41 MP Nokia? That's protrusion at new levels.
You missed the obvious point that low-light performance suffers with higher resolution. Since phones can't pack in full size high powered flashes, they have to leverage what they can. Apple can still make some more improvements to the Camera system (8MP is "at least as good as most DSLR's"... from 2008) before increasing the megapixels.
Like have you seen what an image produced by the Nokia Lumia 1020 (41MP) look like? Sure they look nice when outside, but not when you zoom in, or take pictures indoors. Any real benefit of the larger sensor just compensates for the jpeg lossiness. It's a handwave really. The high resolution sensors are really only of any good when they are in a full size DSLR that can write raw files. In a mobile phone you have to deal with image stabilizing (no tripod), fixed lens profile, and low-light conditions where a flash is inappropriate.
I'm not going to knock the Nokia 1020 too hard, it's biggest drawback is that Nokia and Microsoft create disposable devices/software, so you might buy a phone because it has a 41Mpixel camera, but you will have to throw it away once the next OS comes out. Older devices were supported long past the point of caring.
The 1020 has one of the best low-light photography performances out there, only bested by other PureView devices... Also, you can take advantage of taking photos in RAW.
But you're missing the point in having 41 Mpx. It's not about taking a giant picture. It's about oversampling and lossless zoom (and, to a lesser extent, quick reframing).
When you take a picture with the 1020, you get two images: One 5 Mpx oversampled image, and one 41 Mpx full size image (you can choose if the later one is saved in JPG or RAW). The oversampled image has an aggressive noise reduction, while loosing almost no detail, taking advantage of all the extra pixels. That allows you to have an incredible low-light performance.
When you zoom in, you're just cropping into the 41 Mpx, instead of blowing up pixels, like on the iPhone and almost every other phone in the market.
Also... "Disposable devices"... Do you know that the 1020 will get Windows 10? And not only the 1020, but also the 920, which came out in 2012. Only Apple beats this support, and not by a wide margin. I don't think that Microsoft makes "disposable devices". I think you're thinking in Google/Samsung...
Would her middle name be 'the', perchance?
While it's true that megapixels is not the only indicator of quality and that in small sensors, more megapixels can actually do harm because they heat up and cause noise, especially at high ISOs, to claim as Gruber apparently did, that a cell phone camera can offer DSLR quality when it has such a small sensor and a tiny lens is completely absurd. All it demonstrates is that Gruber knows nothing about the physics of digital photography.
good thing he never said that, as a dSLR shooter. if you can quote him otherwise, please link.
But you can bet they will market the heck out of the fact they did it.
try harder. i know you can find something better.
Please just make the lens flush this time, Jony.
That's all we're begging you.
thats not up to him. if the minimum component size provided is too big, it's too big. Ive dosent design camera components.
Not sure I agree. With RAW you can try out lots of filters not be stuck with a single result. I'd like to see Apple go RAW.
The files are too big and take up too much room and time to write to disk.
Apple has always done an excellent job with processing what the iPhone camera captures, always, since the first 2 megapixel cameras went up against 5 megapixel cameras from other manufacturers.
The proof was in the file size of the results way back in 2007 and 2008.
Some are, and some are APS-C, and some are 4/3.
I don't understand your point.
The point is dedicated cameras and phone cameras are chalk and cheese.
Phone cameras are constrained by the size of the components you can use.
As usual, with these things, it's not that simple. Nikon and Sony came out with a 24MP sensor a few years ago, then a 36MP. Now Canon is coming out with 51MP cameras, and likely so will Sony and possibly Nikon. We've got 80MP backs for medium format, and scanning backs go to hundreds of MP.
What really matters is per pixel IQ, as long as they are equal, I'll take higher resolution any day. Even if the per pixel IQ is slightly less, much higher resolution allows binning, which still leaves you with, at a lower resolution, lower noise and a sharper image. And you still get the higher resolution for when you need it.
For smartphone cameras, the issue is somewhat different because of the tiny imaging sites, which are pretty much at the limit of practical lens resolution. So is the usage model. 8MP is high enough for a sharp 8x12. For most people, as long as they're not doing a lot of cropping, that's enough. The problem comes in because of the lack of optical zoom. Once you do crop, 8MP may not be enough.
But for Facebook, email, etc. it's fine.
The problem with higher resolution is, that there is no better IQ possible when the diffraction limit is exceeded by a certain amount. it is solely defined by the aperture of the lens and the sensor pixel size. And when the sensor pixels are significantly smaller than the airy disk of the light ray, it's just over. Pixel binning does not anything at this stage too. Having a lens / sensor combo which is already exceeding the limit too much trying to use a sensor with an even higher pixel count is reducing the image quality further no matter what.
The sensor / f2.2 lens combo in the iPhone 6 is already diffraction limited (when I am correct, that the pixel size is 1.5 µm), so an increase in pixel density to e.g. 10 or 12 MP would result in more noise and in less sharp pictures, less contrast. What they could do is to increase the sensor size appropriately, but this would increase the size of the whole camera module quite a lot.
For that reason I am also very sure, there will never be a FF camera with more then 51MP, as the the 5Ds. Image degradation from diffraction can start to become visible between apertures f6.2 and f9.3. I am looking forward to see some tests with apertures f8 and higher, once they will be available.
The same problem exists for CMOS cameras too, but it's noticed almost exclusively when making long exposures in the dark using high ISO (requiring more electric energy flowing through the sensor, heating it up).
Fun fact: all professional astrophotography cameras are CCD cameras. CCD cameras are much more sensitive to light than CMOS sensors, but they require about 20x times more power. So the cameras used for long exposures are required to be actively cooled.
I'm not speculating. You've been saying that the phone isn't thin enough. The 6 is thinner than the 5. So now you're changing your views.