A decade of "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd have clearly highlighted what is happening here.
1: In a/b testing, nearly everyone including pixel peepers prefer a more vibrant photo.
2: the traditional perspective of "a photo should look as close as possible to what my eyes see if I drop the viewfinder" is increasingly uncommon and not pursued in the digital age by nearly anyone.
3: phone companies know the above, and basically all of them engage in varrying degrees of "crank vibrance until people start to look like clowns, apply a skin correction so you can keep the rest mega vibrant" with an extra dash of "if culturally accepted to the primary audience, add additional face filtering to improve how people look, including air-brushing and thinning of the face"
This is rightfully compared to the loudness wars and I think that's accurate. It really became a race to the bottom once we collectively decided that "accurate" photos were not interesting and we want "best" photos.
> "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd
Also in normal phone reviews, they always put pictures of different phones next to each other so that people can form their own opinion on what they prefer. How is the reader to know what it really looked like? The reviewer should compare it against what they actually saw and felt the mood was in the moment and give a verdict of which camera captured that
Of course nicer colors look nicer but that's not the camera's job: I can turn that up if I want it. For that to work well, the camera needs to know what's there in the first place
Eyeing the raw results from the pro capture mode vs. the automagic results of my five year old 300⏠phone, it does an amazing job of removing sensor noise and improving lighting in ways that I usually can't replicate short of using a tripod and a whole lot of image stacking. The only exception is extreme contrasts, such as a full moon on a dark sky or rays of direct sunlight (at sunrise) on half of a rolling hill when the other half is still in complete shadow. Then the only solution is to take two pictures, one where you can see the dark bit and one where you can see the bright bit, and stitch them together
I fully agree with your observations, and would add the irony of such a pursuit by phone makers is that serious hobbyist/amateur/professional photographers and videographers understand that cameras are inherently inaccurate, and that what weâre really capturing is an interpretation of what weâre seeing through imperfect glass, coatings, and sensor media to form an artistic creation. Sure, cameras can be used for accuracy, but those models and lenses are often expensive and aimed at specific industries.
We enjoy the imperfections of cameras because they let us create art. Smartphone makers take advantage of that by, as you put it, cranking things to eleven to manipulate psychology rather than invest in more accurate platforms that require skill. The ease is the point, but ease rarely creates lasting art the creator is genuinely proud of or that others appreciate the merit behind.
> We enjoy the imperfections of cameras because they let us create art
For something as widespread as photography I'm not sure you can define a "we". Even pro photographers often have a hard time relating to each other's workflows because they're so different based on what they're shooting.
The folks taking pictures of paintings for preservation are going to be lighting, exposing, and editing very differently than the folks shooting weddings who will be shooting differently than the folks doing architecture or real estate shots. If you've ever studied under a photographer or studied in school you'll learn this pretty quickly.
There's a point to be made here than an iPhone is more opinionated than a camera, but in my experience most pro photographers edit their shots, even if it's just bulk application of exposure correction and an appropriate color profile. In that way a smartphone shot may have the composition of the shooter but not the color and processing choices that the shooter might want. But one can argue that fixed-lens compacts shooting JPG are often similarly opinionated. The difference of opinion is one of degrees not absolutes.
As an aside, this appeal to a collective form of absolute values in photography bothers me. It seems to me to be a way to frame the conversation emotionally, to create an "us vs them" dynamic. But the reality of professional photography is that there are very few absolute values in photography except the physical existence of the exposure triangle.
There's no such thing as "accurate photographs". I don't think we can even agree if two human perceive the same picture the same way.
I do think the average person today should learn about the basics of photography in school simply because of how much our daily lives are influenced by images and the visual language of others. I'd love to see addition to civics and social sciences classes that discuss the effects of focal lengths, saturation, and DOF on compositions. But I don't think that yearning for an "accurate photo" is the way.
I don't spend too much time thinking about cameras or lenses but this kind of conversation makes me wonder... when I take photos of receipts or street signs or just text in general, is it possible that at some point the computational photography makes a mistake and changes text? or am I being paranoid?
Worse, Xerox scanners specifically meant for digitizing documents have changed text for a long time. The compression algorithm they used (I think even in the default settings) sometimes replaced e.g. 6 with 8, and similar things. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0 (german, but there should be news articles from back then in english as well, somewhere)
> is it possible that at some point the computational photography makes a mistake and changes text?
Yes it is. I've seen that happen in real-time with the built-in camera viewfinder (not even taking a photo) on my mid-range Samsung phone, when I zoomed in on a sign.
It only changed one letter, and it was more like a strange optical warping from one letter to a different one when I pointed the camera at a particular sign in a shop, but it was very surprising to see.
iPhones can definitely garble text, although it's not clear whether they can substitute some text for another. Seems possible but unlikely (in a purely statistical sense).
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1m5zsj7/ai_photo_ga...
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1jbcl1l/iphone_16_p...
https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/17bxcm8/iphone_15_n...
Xerox scanners/photocopiers had this problem.
Yes, and before photography existed, people expected painters to prioritize a flattering appearance instead of realism when commissioning portraits, too. And landscape painters used more vivid colors than in real life to convey a mood. But now that it's regular people preferring the same, it's suddenly bad.
The "Beginner Photographer" samples in the article look the best to me, out of all the samples. Is that not supposed to happen?
Yeah, TFA's point is that the basic/inexpensive camera in the hands of an unskilled user can be higher quality than an equivalent iPhone camera shot. In my opinion from the example shots used this is definitely the case. Camera phone distortion is pretty bad (you have to stand back further from your subject offset this, use a higher res setting, and crop in) and the processing has gotten out of hand in recent years to the point where it starts making photos look worse and worse.
Ah I see now that I read more closely. Man the difference is really stark!
The points really boil down to:
1. Difference in focal length/ position.
2. Difference in color processing
ButâŚthe article is fairly weak on both points?
1. Itâs unclear why the author is comparing different focal lengths without clarifying what they used. If I use the 24mm equivalent on either my full frame or my iPhone, the perspective will be largely the same modulo some lens correction. Same if I use the 70mm or whatever the focal length is.
2. Color processing is both highly subjective but also completely something you can disable on the phone and the other camera. Itâs again, no different between the two.
Itâs a poor article because it doesnât focus on the actual material differences.
The phone will have a smaller sensor. It will have more noise and need to do more to combat it. It wonât have as shallow a depth of field.
The phone will also of course have different ergonomics.
But the things the post focuses on are kind of poor understandings of the differences in what theyâre shooting and how their cameras work.
I disagree, I thought the article highlighted the differences beautifully. I'm on a professionally color calibrated 27" monitor that came with one of those color calibration "certificates" at the time of purchase. The second I loaded the article, the differences were just stark. The skin tones alone were a dead giveaway.
It is no secret that Apple does a lot of post processing on their mediocre photos to make them look good - more so than most other Androids - because, it's all software. But, from the article, it is understood that the author is trying to point out that Apple could've done a better job to represent skin tones more accurately atleast. The fish-eye defense for Apple is totally understandeable, but, why are we defending the weak skin tones? Every year, they keep launching and claiming grandoise statements "This is the best smartphone camera out there is".
And no, this is not a limitation of smartphone sensors. In fact, if you look at the latest Xperia series from Sony, they have the same software from their DSLRs translated into the smartphones that addresses the skintones perfectly well.
I hope we can skip past the biases and personal preferences we have towards Apple and treat them neutrally like any other manufacturer. This "Apple can do no wrong" narrative and attacking anyone who points out their flaws is just tired and boring at this point.
>more so than most other Androids
It the old days Apple used to somewhat pride themselves with taking more "realistic" photos. While Android had it the other way around and basically post processes a lot of things as well as colouring. Mostly used for Social Media like Instagram.
And then came iPhone X. They started changing the colour of Sky and sharpening a lot of things. To the point of a lot of Photos taken by my camera looks great but also looked fake.
> And then came iPhone X
Did the iOS/Android situation actually swap, or was the X an outlier? I have photos from a recent event taken entirely with phones, and the result mirrors my experience for the past many years.
iPhone (11-15 including Pro Max) photos look "normal". Very, very similar to what my eyes saw in terms of colors. Photos taken with Android phones (Pixel 9 Pro XL, recent Oppo or Samsung A series, etc.) look terribly unnatural. The blue of the sky, the green of the plants, the red of the dress, they look "enhanced" and unnatural, nothing like what my eyes saw. I can tell apart almost any iPhone vs. Android picture just by looking at the colors on the same display.
The resolution or sharpness are harder to judge with one look and I wasn't trying to compare quality. But the colors are too obvious to miss.
> And then came iPhone X. They started changing the colour of Sky and sharpening a lot of things. To the point of a lot of Photos taken by my camera looks great but also looked fake.
The phone processing is lagely shaped by social media culture. Camera makers also started to incorporate in-camera editing features on vlogger targeted models.
My hunch is that you'll find more fans of Apple's color profile than detractors. This particular shot may have done it badly (to your eyes, some people prefer the more saturated look) but as a whole I have my doubts.
Color profiles vary per body at the least and are variable based on what post processing you do. I can load up Adobe Vivid and it'll look completely different than Adobe Portrait.
Shoot a Canon, Sony, and Fuji in JPG on the same scene (so same focal length and DOF) and auto white balance. Each body will output a different image.
I get the point⌠but I would counterargue, perhaps facetiously, that if one needs a professionally color calibrated screen to notice the difference, then it is really not something that would matter for mere mortals.
Without hyperbole I could give people a badly calibrated CRT from the 90s and it doesnât matter to some. Some people just donât see anything wrong with pictures, and donât even know what to look for or what itâs called.
The inverse are the professional photographers who work with pictures day in and out, they see everything.
Do those photos look similar to you? Those color differences are huge to me. And some of the stylistic choices the image processing has made make them look like photos of different people.
I don't think the point was to say you need the calibrated monitor to notice, rather that it's _even more stark_, and clearly points to the issues raised in the article.
And to be fair, the thrust of the article was "Why don't you see printed and frame iPhone photos", and these things that might be a bit subtle on an un-calibrated screen are going to be a big deal if you professionally print it.
Youâre somehow both reading far too in to my comment (none of my comment is specific to Apple) and not reading my comment enough (because you m missed the point about color profiles)
Iâm not defending the default color choices, Iâm saying that theyâre comparing apples to oranges because theyâre comparing an output designed to be opinionated with one thatâs designed to be processed after the fact. The iPhone is perfectly capable of outputting neutral images and raw files.
The non-iPhone pictures are probably also in-camera jpegs so they are also 'opinionated', not RAWs.
The biggest real differences between iPhone and whatever ye-olde-good-standalone-digital-camera are sharpening/edge enhancements and flattening of lighting.
If you take a lot of landscapes with detailed textures in high-contrast lighting you'll see the differences pretty quickly.
The iPhone photos will look better at first glance because they have a lot of tricks to deal with lighting that would otherwise give a photographer difficulty. For instance, that shot of the child could easily have a completely blown-out background in slightly different circumstances for a typical use of a digital camera's auto-exposure mode. But it results in a certain look that this article really doesn't show well, in terms of the more fake-looking aspects of it. The gravel in the shot of the child hints at it, and you can start to see it more if you view the image full-size vs the scaled down presentation. The asphalt under the car, too - there's something very harsh and fake about the iPhone texture rendering approach that gets worse the larger you display the image. This started around the iPhone 11, IIRC, with it's ML processing.
Both things can be avoided with Halide's raw mode (more "raw" than Apple's) if you want side by side comparisons on your own device. Though IIRC it doesn't support full-res on the newer phones.
The trick, though, is that if you want images that look better in tough conditions, there's a learning curve for using a standalone camera or to shooting in RAW with Halide. In terms of lighting it's not even "more realistic" right out of the gate, necessarily, because your eye has more dynamic range and your brain has more tricks than most any straight-out-of-camera non-ML-enhanced image.
But if you want images you can print out at 8x10+ you'll benefit from the investment.
(Samsung cameras are even wilder in their over-enhancement of photos.)
Yeah I like to take photos of my cast iron cooking with my S25U, on a black induction glass surface - and I find myself swapping to Pro mode all the time as the colour temperature is often way too warm and or oversaturated.
It's a great camera in automatic mode most of the time, but not for that scenario.
Yup, that was the thing that jumped out at me too: in the photos with the golf players, the trees in the background appear much smaller in the iPhone photo than in the "real camera" photo, which means the "real camera" photo was taken from further away and zoomed in, so it obviously will have less distortion. Same for the building and car pictures, but the article doesn't mention that at all (except for writing that "the fish eye iPhone lens creates distortion" - of course it does, that's why the iPhone has other lenses as well)!
Yeah it's disappointing to see photographers getting this wrong. Most of them know better.
It's the _distance_ that causes distortion, not the _lens_. You can prove this by doodling light rays on a sheet of paper. There is no lens that will get you a good photo at 1 meter from a person. They stand back 2 or 3 or more and then say "ho ho fish eye lens". I'm so sick of it
Someone agrees: https://petapixel.com/2021/08/02/lenses-dont-cause-perspecti...
Agreed, in particular the distortion of the players on the ends, the smaller shoulders and chest, as well as the lean can all be attributed to the wider lens used on the iPhone (and as such that the photo was taken closer to players). I'd guess the author was using the "1x" lens on the iPhone, a lot of these issues go away if they use the "3x" or "5x" lens. I'd even consider that most of the jawline change of the player is simply the angle of their chin/face as well as expression.
The 2x mode of the wide lens is basically the standard ânifty fiftyâ of a big camera and what the author should have compared to. The 1x is 24mm equivalent which is a focal length I donât particularly care for, but I get why they picked it (easy to frame a group of people indoors).
For portraits the ideal length is 85mm equivalent which would be 3.5x, rumored to be on the next iphone pro. At this length there is minimal facial feature distortion without getting the flattening effect you get at longer focal lengths.
This is post fails to disclose an important detail, which is that the photographer was not standing in the same spot for all photos.
For iPhone golf player shot, they were standing closer to the players and using a wide-angle lens. For the âbeginner photographerâ shot they were standing farther away and using a longer focal length lens. You can tell by the size of the trees in the background. This difference in positioning, not âbecause iPhone,â is why the playerâs faces are distorted on the left.
These details might not matter to random folks grabbing snapshots. But I expect something posted to HN to actually contain useable detailed information, rather than vague âlooks worseâ comparisons with an obvious thumb on the scale.
It is true that I was standing closer and using a wide-angle lens with the iPhone. But it wasn't on purpose to tip the scales, I was just taking an iPhone photo as I've done many times.
So it would be a fairer comparison to use a longer focal length, but it's also true that I am the Average Joe, and Average Joe took a better photo with the camera, because it guided me in that direction more than the iPhone did.
You were guided to stand where you were because of the lens on the camera. If your lens was a 23mm you would have stood in the same spot as you did with the phone.
I agree with this. The comparison is one tool versus another and the way you would naturally apply them figures into that equation. There's a million apples-to-apples pixel peeping technical tallies, this compares experiences as a whole.
> But it wasn't on purpose to tip the scales, I was just taking an iPhone photo as I've done many times.
It tipped the scales and the post became overwhelmingly misleading, attributing the "distortion" to the camera, instead of the distance and zoom.
Right but at the same time, Average Joe will take better photos with a digicam because they'll behave exactly like I did and make the same mistakes, so arguably it's very naive but also an accurate depiction of the average idiot who clicks a shutter
My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water.
Add a nice lens and there's no comparison.
However:
- The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone)
- The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us
- The iPhone picture quality, though worse, is still fine
Looking back at travel and family pictures, it has been very much worth it for me to have a dedicated camera.
I agree with your iPhone camera advantages, but to that list I'd add that I'm already going to buy an iPhone, which means any comparison of value for the price is effectively between the price of a camera (which for even an entry-level mirrorless isn't exactly cheap) and literally zero dollars. You could argue that the phone would be cheaper without the nice camera to make for a fairer comparison, but such a product doesn't really exist.
This applies only if you assume that you are not willing to spend more on a phone with a better camera and a lot of people do. I have friends who decided to buy an iPhone over way cheaper Android phones in the past, because "the iPhone camera was so much better". Funny enough, the differences were obviously negligible when compared with any actual camera.
And upgrade frequency. You might give your old iPhone another year or two if the phone isnât your limiting factor for photo quality.
$200 for iphone pro vs regular (I only got Pro for the camera). But otherwise, yeah.
Not only is the iPhone always in your pocket, but itâs easier to carry and deal with.
I remember hearing a story from a well known photographer about a trip he took with a few others, including his wife. They woke up early to head out on a small boat in a lake or something. He was lugging all this gear and having to put a lot of focus into tuning the settings on his camera, he was pretty miserable. Meanwhile, his wife was enjoying morning with no baggage and snapping pics with her phone. She ended up having the best picture of the day, while actually enjoying herself, by not being bogged down by the gear.
Dedicated cameras have their value, but itâs been decreasing for years, and requiring higher and higher levels of skill to make it worth it. Most people could improve their photos dramatically by learning about framing and light, while just using a phone. These things have a much bigger impact on the resulting photo. A professional with an iPhone will always take a better and more interesting picture than an amateur with a DSLR for this reason.
Those sound like the 2 extremes, though. You don't have to take a lot of gear or tune a lot of settings manually with dedicated camera if you don't want to, but it's an option if you want to have more control or go for the ultimate quality.
I get sent a lot of photos of me cosplaying at conventions, and something I've noticed is that the phone photos are almost always nicer in general. The people who do photography as a hobby seem to always edit the photo too extreme and you get whack HDR type effects or they just aren't as skilled at manually setting settings as the iphone auto mode.
But, the dedicated camera photos are always massively higher resolution. You can zoom in on details and they look great, while phone photos seem to use AI upscailers and they look bad
Wack HDR is usually the sign of a novice photographer, assuming it's not the phone (my experience is that phones go absolutely insane with the HDR and saturation).
We all go through a period of abusing HDR and saturation, but we usually get over it.
Thereâs a saying in the photography world:
âThe best camera is the one you have on youâ
> âThe best camera is the one you have on youâ
Which only holds true if you don't care much about the result.
I've seen people trying to take photos at an airshow using their phone camera. A small black dot in the centre of frame, rendered as an Impressionist oil smudge by post-processing. Was that worth even trying?
The best camera+lens combo is the one suited to the scene. Anything else isn't.
The point is: who cares what the âbestâ camera is if one doesnât have it with them to take a photo of the fleeting moment anyway?
Not really, because the scene you want to capture is there at that moment and probably wouldnât be there anymore if you went back to the apartment/hotel/camera store and swapped out for a technically better kit. Thatâs what the âbest cameraâ saying is about.
To me, the "hotdog skin complexion" aspect is a dead giveaway for when a photo was taken on an iPhone. It's so over the top and unrefined that I wonder how not only Apple let it happen, but seemingly entertain it/make it worse over generations of devices? Certainly such photos won't "age well"? And it's not like it has to be this way because of technological limitations, take Pixel photos, for instance, they get their colors much more balanced and faithful.
Same with Pixel, which actually did it years before I'd presume.
I'm white as ghost. Pixels are determined to make me looked tan for absolutely no reason. I mean, maybe I look 'better', arguably, but it's not me. Is that what people want?
I bought the kid some newfangled Polaroid type thing, and she uses that way more than phones anymore for photos. Maybe the kids will be ok.
Google made an publicized effort to better represent darker skin tones, which may explain the tan. It probably thinks you're overexposed and desaturated instead of pale.
"What we need is a great big melting pot
Big enough to take the world and all it's got
Keep it stirring for a hundred years or more
And turn out hot-dog-coloured people by the score"
I would bet that they are user testing the processing algorithms and that people actually prefer the slightly more saturated picture.
It's similar to the loudness war in music. Slightly louder/more saturated looks subjectively better when compared side by side. Apply this slight increase over and over again and you get something that no longer reflects reality.
This is complicated with pictures of people because people want them to look "good", not accurate.
I got interested in photography during my travels, and my wife is very interested in it.
I bought a decent camera. I really enjoyed playing with it, and spent some happy hours learning about it. I even took some decent photos (well, I liked them anyway).
But in the end, carrying it became a chore and trying to take off-the-cuff photos during adventures took too long. I found that we needed to go for specific "photography adventures" with the camera, with the intent of taking photographs with the camera, in order to use it. If we were going for a trip without the specific aim of taking photographs it was just easier to use the phone cameras.
Also the camera photos were stuck on the camera, while the phone photos were instantly usable in social media, and shareable from the Google/Apple Photos. I have a portable drive folder somewhere with all the camera photos, but I never see them. The phone photos are a search away.
I think it's the difference between "being a photographer" and "taking photos". I am not a photographer, I just want to take some photos and share them with my friends. They're going to look at the photo for approximately 5 seconds max, on their phone, and never again. All the comments in the article are accurate but meaningless in this context.
On the other had, if you're a photographer and want to take a photograph that someone will hang on their wall, all the comments in the article are accurate and relevant.
> Also the camera photos were stuck on the camera, while the phone photos were instantly usable in social media, and shareable from the Google/Apple Photos. I have a portable drive folder somewhere with all the camera photos, but I never see them. The phone photos are a search away.
Seems like you don't really care much about those photos then. If you have them on a portable drive, how long would it take to do a drag-and-drop to put them on Google photos? 40 seconds + waiting for the upload? It's really minimal amount of friction.
> They're going to look at the photo for approximately 5 seconds max, on their phone, and never again
Sure, no need to do anything else for such snaps. But it's also nice to keep some long term photos to show your kids or grandkids. Like people did from the 70s up till the 00s. In fact, there are inexpensive services that help you arrange your photos in quality printed book-form albums, similar in principle to the physical photo albums of the past, where individual printed photos were glued. I find that picking such a book off the shelf happens much more readily than any urge to load up an external hdd to view photos on a screen.
> the camera photos were stuck on the camera
I'm surprised no camera manufacturer has created an easy way to get all your photos to Google Photos / iCloud/ Dropbox / etc. They have some wireless photo transfer things, but they're clunky and unusable. Just connect the camera to WiFi and auto-upload everything to the service of my choice. I'm guessing it's a mix of:
* Camera manufacturers are hardware companies and can't do software and cloud stuff.
* It wouldn't interact well with swapping SD cards, which is what all the pros want.
* The camera would need to stay powered when off to upload photos. Current cameras have a hard power switch.
Why can't you be both? I am an amateur photographer, but it doesn't mean that I carry my camera with me everywhere that I go. I see photography as a hobby, so when I feel like I want to do "hobby things" I bring a camera with me. I prepare myself to do so. It doesn't mean that I don't use my phone camera at all (in fact I upgraded my phone purely for the "better camera").
If you are just taking snapshots to share with friends, then it makes sense to not bring the camera. But if it's your hobby, where you sit down and take time and care to take a photo, then it's a different game altogether.
I don't often print my photos out and put them on a wall, but I do have my own photography blog where I post the photos I take (with a camera). I think the article is still relevant to that kind of scenario too.
I think the purpose of this kind of page is to outline differences between taking a snapshot and taking a photo. This is to argue back at people who think that taking a photo with an iPhone is just as good _in any situation_ and think that _anyone_ with a camera is wasting their time. It also attempts to combat the prevalent myth that more megapixels = better photos. Yes that myth still exists in 2025.
yeah agree. I decided I wasn't a photographer, though I'm still interested in it.
> This is to argue back at people who think that taking a photo with an iPhone is just as good _in any situation_ and think that _anyone_ with a camera is wasting their time.
"Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience". Seriously, are there people who think that iPhones are just as good as dedicated cameras, and can still tie their own shoelaces?
This article is mediocre because smartphone is perfectly happy to take pictures that look like the "beginner photographer" pictures. You just have to know what you're doing.
- Don't use the super wide lens and stand too close to people
- Use the super easy edit features to fix distortion
- Pay attention to lighting & exposure
- Don't just accept the iPhones default settings
If you want toned down contrast and color smartphones are perfectly happy to do that.
Otherwise.. I do configure my fancy digital camera to capture reduced contrast and color saturation compared to the defaults on a smartphone. So a lot of the time my samples would look like his.
Average people want contrast + saturation turned up like crazy. This is why the defaults ship that way. This is why a lot of the beginner non-phone digital cameras often shipped with the defaults that way. This is why TVs ship with the brightness/contrast/saturation boosted. The average person might look at your more subtle photo and appreciate it as better than theirs but then they will go right back to being super happy with their high contrast/saturation images.
I'm generally annoyed with the amount of processing going on in modern phone cameras, they often take pictures that "look fine" on the screen, until you zoom in to native resolution and discovered most of it is some fever-dream of approximations, it's amazing that we (people) are accepting this.. Lots of fine memories degraded by cheating cameras..
It's annoying especially because at a glance, the pictures taken by my S24+ look just fine, and it sometimes makes me not pull out the aging DSLR.. but then when I get the pictures onto my PC and want to actually look at them.. I always regret my mistake.. Even a 10 year old DSLR on automatic no-flash mode kicks its butt so bad it's not even a comparison..
I believe the biggest problem here is that the author of the blog was using the ultra-wide-angle lens. I can tell by how the players are "leaning" and how the software is "fixing" the curvature of the photo. 90% sure of it. I always use the "regular" lens, and the pictures are much better.
You can also set styles in the camera settings to fix these problems: incorrect AI white balance and lighting.
It's because the consumption side has completely changed. Most people now don't even own a PC so they're not likely to even notice this problem.
probably.. I was at a range and took a quick snap of my target, because I wanted to review it in a bit calmer environment.. I remember standing there, seeing the bullet holes in the paper, and I distinctly recall two holes that had multiple hits. When I opened the picture on the phone to look, lo and behold, those were generic bullet holes, they except, not mine.. I zoomed in and nope, they're fake.. I have had so many experiences with this on different Samsung phones.. that stuff is just OFF, like, a picture of my kid in low light, and the phone just decided part of his face was probably the wallpaper, so it just put wallpaper pattern there instead of skin.. I've been over every setting I can dig up, can't find anything that should do this..
Get a daily email with the the top stories from Hacker News. No spam, unsubscribe at any time.