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iPhone 15 Pro Another year, another iPhone with near ZERO improvements to camera color rendering and white balance (everything is yellow)
- Thread starter zakarhino
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I've been using an iPhone since the 4S. I'm on my third Android-based phone, a Google Pixel 6a. It's really bad compared to my 2022 iPhone SE. It's bad compared to my OnePlus 8T. Google can't seem to create a device that works smoothly.
Lately, Qualcomm is getting closer to Apple's processor performance but they're still not there. You need the 12 GB of RAM to handle Android's sloppiness. I've noticed this between the OnePlus 8T with 12 GB of RAM and Snapdragon 865 and the Google Pixel 6a with 6 GB of RAM and the Tensor SoC.
I could live with Android, if it was necessary, but it's like Windows before Windows 7--rough.
I'm not following, what specifically about this thread makes you think I want to use a Pixel phone instead of an iPhone?
If I buy an Audi and love everything about it except the creaking headrest, do you think the response is "buy a Volvo" or something? What about just fixing the headrest?
It sounds like the iPhone, year after year, has not met to your standards something that is important to you. You can still like something that isn't right for your needs.
Yes exactly, it hasn't met my needs all the way. It gets maybe 80% of the way there and I would like an additional 5% fixed, it sounds like a lot of other people do too based on MKBHD's blind camera test. Why must I move to a device that only meets 20% of my needs because I'm not allowed to lobby for fixing the 5% issue on my preferred device?
Again, I'm not asking for iOS to be Android and I'm not asking the iPhone to be a Pixel, I'm asking for Apple to fix a bug on my phone.
The only way to combat this is to use a third party app for taking photos like Halide or something similar. Apple is pretty set in their ways with how they handle computational photography.
Basically money. People are voting with their money to buy this thing - apple thinks that warmer tone are more likeable by the mass.
My redmi note 4 was reading hdd, ssd drives, was charging anything connected to it, had 5000mah battery that lasts 14.5 hrs and all of that for 200 bucks 6-7 years ago.
My 2011 galaxy s3 could also do hdd, ssd and mouse/keyboard usb connection. So where is Apple and when they did that? Well 15 introduces reverse charge.
There are things that will not be improved and it is your decision to live with it or not or especially to vote with your dollar bill.
Well yeah, I like a warmer tone too sometimes. Sometimes I use a custom 'Photographic Style' that bumps up the warmth and contrast a bit. I don't mind warm photos, I just don't like green photos.
Take a look at the coke bottle example in the first post. Do you think that's a 'warm' photo or a 'green photo'. In Lightroom you can adjust both the temperature (a scale between blue and yellow) or tint (a scale between green and magenta) in the White Balance settings. More often than not I don't mind photos that push too far to the warm side in the temperature scale, but I hate photos that push too much into the green side of the tint scale. In fact when I made the quick corrections in the first post I was mostly manipulating the tint slider, not the temperature one.
🙋🏼 Q: The metric of comparison for the iPhone are all of the other phones, yeah (Pixel, etc.)? What makes those the definitive objective standard? How might those phones' photos actually be the ones that are off-color?
I might've missed it, but I didn't see any comparison of all of the phones to an objective, industry-wide standard for color balance. Is there such a way?
I think, without a comprehensive, objective, industry standardization by which to compare all of the phones (once the 15 is out, OC), then this comparison, as it stands, is subjective, as others have stated. Personally, with the photos side by side, I see how the iP photos look yellow or green-shifted, but that's because the other phones' photos look blue-shifted. They all seem 'off' to my eye when compared side-by-side, which is because they are when compared to one another.
I might've missed it, but I didn't see any comparison of all of the phones to an objective, industry-wide standard for color balance. Is there such a way?
I think, without a comprehensive, objective, industry standardization by which to compare all of the phones (once the 15 is out, OC), then this comparison, as it stands, is subjective, as others have stated. Personally, with the photos side by side, I see how the iP photos look yellow or green-shifted, but that's because the other phones' photos look blue-shifted. They all seem 'off' to my eye when compared side-by-side, which is because they are when compared to one another.
show all of your photos to my wife and she likes the one taken on iphone. I guess Apple does some marketing right.
I am coming from an era, where people used to haul dslr(not mirroless) with the box that has reference colors in it.
So if we speak white balance, I don’t really approve anything except pure Raw + lightroom where i click on that reference box with white cell and tell lightroom that it is my true white.
Otherwise i am just taking everything else as is - cause i also come from an era where the dslrs had veryyy bad jpgs.
At this point for me this equals to discussion of why instant noodles are not equal timo italian pasta somewhere in south Italy. If i want pasta then i get that reference box and move with my mirrorless.
For anything else, iPhone would suffice as is.
Same for me. Mirrorless camera for real work. iPhone for literally every other situation.
Bruh… they’re ALL taken on iPhone except the second one 😂 this is not a pixel vs iPhone thread, the single pixel photo is only meant to show that this problem is unique to iPhone.
Hmmm… I don’t know about the MKBHD test, but I prefer the ones on the left in all the photos you presented. The colors look better warmer to me, I don’t like the blue-shifted ones so much.
I do agree faces kind of look “pastelized” on the iPhone’s post-processing, but in terms of color science… it’s very subjective IMO.
Why not buy a camera exclusively for photography? It seems you already have a Leica Q2?
Well again I’m not asking for any major change besides removing some of the green. Not even asking for cooler photos necessary.
The fact that a majority of other phones don’t have this problem means this isn’t a comparison of instant ramen to fresh handmade pasta, like it would be if I were comparing any smartphone to an M11, but between instant ramen where one has too much salt.
Maybe salt concentration is subjective, well in that case hundreds of thousands of people that voted in MKBHD’s blind test are in agreement.
In many senses I actually agree with you. In general I prefer warmer photos over cooler photos (well, for some environments) to the point where I sometimes activate the "Warmth" Photographic Style. I tried to avoid this problem of introducing too much blue shift or magenta into the "corrected" photos but I failed. I attempted to disclaim in the OP that the photos on the right are not meant to be what I think the final images should look like, they're only meant to contrast with the straight out of camera photos so people can more easily see the yellow-green tinge.
If you take a look at the MKBHD screenshots I uploaded, to me the Vivo and Pixel photos are "cool", the Oppo photo is "warm" and the iPhone photo is a highly unrealistic, vomit "yellow-green." Without exaggeration he looks jaundice in the iPhone photo and completely healthy in all the rest.
It’s threads like this that make me so happy to be color blind. I would hate to spend this much time thinking about the minutia of a phone camera.
That’s the genius of Apple’s strategy. They snare you with the ecosystem and make it so inconvenient to break out that you just decide to live with their other apathetic shortcomings.
Anybody who is "IT-oriented", especially who knows a thing or two about software development and security, would choose the iPhone and wouldn't touch Android for free. Developing anything for Android is a nightmare.
In my experience, people who make spec driven buys are passionate about technology on a declarative level, but don't actually work in the field and don't have advanced engineering/technical knowledge.
Yeah but Apple isn’t Sony, or Leica, or Fuji, or Canon, or Nikon, or Kodak.
These photos are meant to be taken on the fly, in the moment. For social media or memories. They’re not meant for studio shoots or intricate landscape shoots. Not meant to take photos for billboards or for the sides of busses.
They’re not a photography company or a video company. If they’re consulting with one, that’s probably the best idea. Otherwise, meh, I’ll just use my Sony and use the iPhone for funny stuff I see on the subway.
These photos are meant to be taken on the fly, in the moment. For social media or memories. They’re not meant for studio shoots or intricate landscape shoots. Not meant to take photos for billboards or for the sides of busses.
They’re not a photography company or a video company. If they’re consulting with one, that’s probably the best idea. Otherwise, meh, I’ll just use my Sony and use the iPhone for funny stuff I see on the subway.
How dare you say anything bad about the most perfect phone in the universe and beyond? 😤
These things are highly subjective though. I'm a pretty serious, though amateur, photographer and I think that the warmer tone from the iPhone in that example looks much more natural than the colder tones of the other images.
Color balance in general is tricky in nightscapes because there is no natural "white" to begin with. Sunlight and tungsten lamps are true white because they originate from blackbody radiation where different temperatures give different tones of white. In a city with sodium vapor lamps, LEDs, and mercury vapor lamps there is no proper white to begin with. The warmer tones of the night images in the first post look better to me than the colder ones as they better represent what I imagine a city at night to look like.
In your example of corrected images, only the Coke bottles looks better corrected in my opinion. But to make the point again, this entire thread is based on subjective opinions. Luckily, white balance is easy to correct afterwards.
I don't see how some people here conflate warm with yellow/green...
Apple need to up their photography game, it's very obvious, but sycophants will bash you or defend Apple blindly because you're daring to criticise them.