All of the New iPhone 13 Camera Features: Macro, Cinematic Mode, Photographic Styles, Sensor Improvements and More

[KrisBv1]

So with these camera updates, is night sky/star gazing photos a thing now? The ones take on a Samsung S21 I have to admit, are amazing.

 

[matrix07]

Macro is what Huawei had like 4-5 years ago on the Huawei P30 Pro. Dual SIM card features have been available on many Chinese smartphones for many years now. In another 1-2 years they will introduce telescope/periscope which Huawei also had on their P30 Pro many years ago. Start with Macro on one lens this year and add a telescope/periscope one next year or year after. Probably do x5 then a year after do x10 for marketing purposes so they can say we doubled the zoom feature. Still waiting for USB-C port but hey we got 8GB or RAM this year

People still doing this? Saying someone doing it first?

It's almost like they have never understood Apple.

 

[PeteS1963]

A tiny camera with a tiny lens and sensor is never going to collect enough light in a reasonable amount of time to be useful for astrophotography. Physics just won’t allow it. If you compare a typical smartphone sensor coupled to a 12mm f/1.8 (full frame equivalent lens, actually it is only about 1.9mm focal length due to tiny sized camera) to an actual full frame camera 12mm f/1.8 lens, the full frame lens lets in 39x more light. Imagine looking through a pinhole in a piece of cardboard and comparing that to looking through 1 inch hole in another piece of cardboard. You will see a lot more light looking through the much larger hole. Same thing with cameras. The bigger the hole (aperture opening) the more light that will make it to the sensor. These tiny smartphone lenses just don’t let in enough light. The phone can compensate a little bit through artificially brightening the image through in-camera processing, but not that much, and what they do via this processing lowers the over all image quality. It sounds good in their BS marketing blurbs, but in reality smartphone cameras are terrible in low light situations. If they ever bump the sensor size up to a 1” sensor, then they will be much better, but then the lenses will need to be a lot bigger. So I doubt we will ever see smartphone cameras that do well in low light.

It depends on what you mean by astrophotography. Most wide field astrophotography is done on a star tracker mount with multiply exposures, sometimes over many hours and then staked using software on a PC. This is great but it’s expensive and beyond many people who just want to point and shoot.

Just as an example. These pictures were taken by my 10 yr old daughter (granted with my assistance) using my iPhone 12. The moon pictures simply taken (one single snap) by hovering the iPhone over a small telescope eyepiece. The Milky Way (in southern Crete) using a small £10 tripod. Again a single shot in night mode. They are holiday snaps of the night sky. Of course they could be better but this has been done by a child with no knowledge of astrophotography techniques. She’s shown these pictures to her friends and teachers at school who have been impressed. Even to an astronomy expert who did a talk at school. He was also impressed.
And using the iPhone plus telescope

I’ve also managed to get pictures of deep sky objects like galaxies. Now, they won’t win any prizes but it’s a phone and it’s simple and easy. And with better phone cameras and software there’s one hell of a lot of potential improvement.

 

[matrix07]

Just once (once!) I'd like Apple to demo its shallow-depth-of-field fakery using people with REAL HAIR, rather than actors and models who are bald, wearing tight caps, or sporting perfectly tight or slick-and-flat hairstyles. The softballs they lob to the algorithm are pretty misleading: when we get these phones out into the real world where there's real hair (and sometimes real wind blowing it around), the depth-map cuts never look very good.

What are you talking about? Apple doesn't do any "fakery depth of field" on video.

 

[matrix07]

The max apertures are exactly the same as the lenses on my iPhone 11. How do these new lenses offer so much better low light photography (it says they let in more light) when they appear to be the same?

I believe they're talking about wide lens, not ultra wide lens.

Ultra wide on the pro is f/1.8 though. Maybe that's where the confusion comes from.

 

[Menneisyys2]

How does the work bokeh effect on 'cinematic mode', software or hardware ?

SW. It's impossible to have everything in focus at shooting time with a large(ish) sensor, comparatively bright lens (f/1.5) and subjects being both very close and far away at the same time.

 

[kirkster501]

Even on iPhone 12 Pro max, pic quality is nearly on-par with my Fuji X-T2 and Canon 5D. Of course, these other systems offer much more in the way of versatile lenses, flash, ISO, aperture control etc but iPhone has now reached the stage where, if you can live with the focal lengths offered (which are perfectly acceptable 99.9% of the time) these phones are perfect for nearly everyone's photography needs. It is testimony as to how far photography on smart phones has progressed, despite the "compromises"in sensor size etc. Unless pixel peeping, few people can tell the difference.

 

[Menneisyys2]

What are you talking about? Apple doesn't do any "fakery depth of field" on video.

OK, then, please go to 00:48:11 in the video and explain why the annotated individual hairs etc. are completely in focus, while the rest of the hair is completely defocused and inseparable? This is just a static shot crop; if you zoom in the video, you can see the "focus" (that is, the software "cinematic" effect) behaving very strangely. A real camera with real focus racking would never do something like this.

All in all, this is everything but pro, just like the photo "Portrait" mode.

EDIT: just started a dedicated thread on this at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-13-pro-cinematic-mode-being-pro-grade-bad-joke.2310995/

 

[matrix07]

OK, then, please go to 00:48:11 in the video and explain why the annotated individual hairs etc. are completely in focus, while the rest of the hair is completely defocused and inseparable? This is just a static shot crop; if you zoom in the video, you can see the "focus" (that is, the software "cinematic" effect) behaving very strangely. A real camera with real focus racking would never do something like this.

All in all, this is everything but pro, just like the photo "Portrait" mode.

Now I remember a part they said you can shift focus in video after shooting! Didn't put much thought about it then.

So that's software? Hmm.. Interesting.

Thanks for bringing this up. 👍
(Wonder if we could disable it in settings to have only manual focus)

 

[adrianlondon]

I believe they're talking about wide lens, not ultra wide lens.

Ultra wide on the pro is f/1.8 though. Maybe that's where the confusion comes from.

The wide lens also has the same aperture on the 13 and the 11. Hopefully it'll become clearer over time, although it's just curiosity on my part as I'm not upgrading this year.

 

[Menneisyys2]

Now I remember a part they said you can shift focus in video after shooting! Didn't put much thought about it then.

So that's software? Hmm.. Interesting.

Thanks for bringing this up. 👍
(Wonder if we could disable it in settings to have only manual focus)

Yup, if it was shooting time-only with for example settable transition speed (as opposed to the almost immediate current refocusing), it'd be useful and would indeed deliver proper results, unlike with anything software-based.

EDIT: I demo this very problem at https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-13-pro-cinematic-mode-being-pro-grade-bad-joke.2310995/

 

[foliovision]

I agree. Not to forget that we did not get many chances. A couple of shots and with no preview and hope for the best. It was an expensive and time consuming.

At least people knew to pose for pictures and try to make some kind of an effort, as making a good photo meant something. These days many people just start complaining about again photos or start randomly and aggressively complaining about their privacy rights (even when shooting them outside in a public place, i.e. street photography). Hopefully the soul is not stolen when photographed as otherwise everyone would be without a soul. Hey, wait a minute, sounds a lot like contemporary materialistic life.

 

[foliovision]

Dare I say it, iPhone 13 produced porn? 🙃😹

iPhones are in very active use already in the industry (as publishers of a video player we have clients in the business) . From the iPhone 11 video quality in good light is amazing, including rock solid stabilisation. The OIS is already more than good enough as careful head to head testing comparing the iPhone 11 Pro Max (OIS) vs iPhone 12 Pro Max (IBIS) has borne out. The wide angle lens is much better on the iPhone 13 Pro, which is a nice improvement for those who use it (many filmmakers do in industrial and personal projects).

 

[locrumo]

With this bsht update i love more my SE 2020.

 

[applyr]

I don't understand the "Night mode on the telephoto for the first time", I'd swear my 11 Pro has night mode on the telephoto since the beginning.

 

[ediks]

No astrophotography. I was hoping it would be there.

from the newsroom

Apple unveils iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max — more pro than ever before

The most advanced pro camera system ever on iPhone, Super Retina XDR display with ProMotion, a big leap in battery life, A15 Bionic, and so much more.

www.apple.com

 

[Mac Marc]

Does anyone know if Cinematic Mode is coming to the Camera in iPhone 12 Pro?

 

[roeiz]

so many things and they couldn't build a little telescope with more optical zoom 😔
only reason i consider not updating from X, when they'll have telescope in a year or two..
what to do?

 

[samplez]

This is unfortunate, I don't see any significant upgrades.

 

[Ansath]

The Night Mode Portraits, is this their way of doing Astrophotography? I was hoping for it, but no mention.

 

[adrianlondon]

The Night Mode Portraits, is this their way of doing Astrophotography? I was hoping for it, but no mention.

Only if you're taking a photo of someone standing on the moon 😁

 

[Ansath]

Only if you're taking a photo of someone standing on the moon 😁

I thought we would have had it by now. iPhone got night mode the year after the Pixel had it. Pixel had Astrophotography for like 2 years now. Shame!

 

[PeteS1963]

I thought we would have had it by now. iPhone got night mode the year after the Pixel had it. Pixel had Astrophotography for like 2 years now. Shame!

According to The Sun (if you believe that) it does. It’s called “space mode”…

iPhone 13 has new 'space mode' that takes amazing pics of the night sky

APPLE has created a new version of its “space mode” to take better pictures of the night sky on iPhone 13 Pro. The new smartphone was unveiled last night – with a faster processor, impr…

www.thesun.co.uk

 

[samplez]

Who cares about astrophotography... Practically nobody. So I couldn't care less if the new phones had them or not. The bigger issue is there are no significant upgrades that warrant a buy.

 

[The Game 161]

Does anyone know if Cinematic Mode is coming to the Camera in iPhone 12 Pro?

Nope