iPhone 17 Pro Apple needs to make an iPhone with DSLR features

[CalMin]

Love OP's idea, but despite all of Apple's marketing and hyperbole, the iPhone can never be more than a really great pocket camera. Since iPhone 11 Pro, I've dispensed with carrying an extra camera with me in most situations and my dSLR and lenses mostly collect dust, but that's because iPhones are now 'good enough' for most situations involving casual photography (family snaps, vacation photos etc.)

Apple wants us to believe in the notion that these are 'Pro' devices, but they are not. If you make your living taking professional photos, I doubt that you wouldn't very quickly bump into the limitations of a small sensor and limited lenses. Plus the heavy processing introduces artifacts that don't hold up to pixel peeping.

I do miss my dSLR's incredible quality at times but the payoff is convenience. It was always a pain to travel with the gear plus my wife has very little patience these days when we're trying to be 'in the moment' on vacation and I'm fussing around with lenses and tripods - all to get pictures that we only view on an iPhone or iPad.

 

[Blaidd]

It doesn’t.. buy a dslr.

 

[rui no onna]

I do miss my dSLR's incredible quality at times but the payoff is convenience. It was always a pain to travel with the gear plus my wife has very little patience these days when we're trying to be 'in the moment' on vacation and I'm fussing around with lenses and tripods - all to get pictures that we only view on an iPhone or iPad.

Lol, this. I bought a mirrorless camera for vacation a couple of years ago but it's too big to be carrying around all the time and it's quite fiddly. This time around, I'll just stick to the 17 Pro.

 

[Sami13496]

Uh, no. About 0.01% of Apple users are the kind of people who might actually use this. The remaining 99.99% just want a light, thin phone they can point and shoot with. Even most Pro (Max) buyers don’t really need the advanced camera features. They’ve just convinced themselves that they do. Or maybe they just wanted the more premium version with the shiny edges.

Although even that changed this year. The Pro looks like a bar of soap now, and the Air has become the real premium one. Maybe they will add lenses to the Pro now

 

[cateye]

It's a bit like nvidia dlss, it's upscaling/ai tech which takes a lower resolution image and makes it higher res. It was okay at the start but it's gotten so good that most people can't tell the difference now.

This is a great way to think about it. This is why phone cameras have become so ubiquitous and for most people they're all the camera they need or even want. So when we start talking about things like swappable lenses or capabilities beyond the careful sandbox that smartphones provide, it's time for a different form factor, not over-complicating the existing one.

To use your analogy, DLSS is great, until you notice the upscaling and decide a 5090 is in your future.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

No thanks. Right tool for the job for me please.

Phones are already doing quite good with their little tiny sensors. They are all the camera that many people want, and there are iterative improvements with each new model. If most users want better images than what phones offer, the improvement will come from the larger sensor you get by using a mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses, and not from just attaching a supplemental lens to the phone.

Adding new lenses to a phone doesn't improve the rest of the imaging system.

Like most others here, I advise using a purpose-built camera if you want the features of a purpose-built camera.

 

[uacd]

Echoing what cateye said, this isn't going to happen because of physics quite frankly. The sensors in the iphone are TINY and the huge ones that you get on APS-C and full frame cameras are required to capture enough photons to give you the dynamic range to compose a decent image. On top of that the glass in front of that is as important and you literally can't build a lens into a phone that is practical that isn't compromised.

What we have on the iPhone 17 pro which can be considered at least state of the art, is three tiny sensors, three extremely compromised prime lenses and a hell of a lot of post processing to get anything usable out of them. This is a remarkable feat but still does not touch an ass end 15 year old entry level DSLR on image quality.

Image quality in this sense is irrelevant to megapixels, the common selling point, but is a combination of distortion, dynamic range, colour reproduction and the capability of the glass in front of the camera sensor. The glass and geometry of the optical path defines a lot of the artistic control you have like depth of field/aperture.

---

However, if you want to take photos buy a camera. If you want to record your life, a phone is probably fine.

---

Straight out of a 2013 Nikon D3100 with 18-55mm kit lens, no post processing at all...

View attachment 2566282

And a more modern Z50ii with 18-140mm lens...

View attachment 2566284

Good luck getting even 25% of the way there in a phone package.

Yep, D3100 is lovely. Decided to resurrect it and ordered 18-140 lens.

But there is another thing in these old DSLR cameras - processing.

I was choosing for a long time between jumping to new Sony camera vs just buying a new lens, and when I saw the horrible processing that they apply in recent a6700 and such I decided I am not getting that camera… I mean it takes images that look like iPhone took them, lots of sharpening, unnatural noise reduction. Yes there is RAW, but on D3100 I don’t need RAW, it takes beautiful JPEGs.

Yeah and I hate portrait modes on smartphones. Better no portrait mode than cheap imitation. I don’t believe smartphones are gonna ever be able to imitate real lens.

Though I loved older iPhones. My 5 made perfect images, and if they were dull I could use some editing skills to pump them up. People nowadays seem to hate all sorts of lens flares, but these older iPhones had lens flare, beautiful and fun purple lens flare in my case, it complemented shots a lot. In fact iPhone was my lofi camera and Nikon was my hifi camera back in the days.

Having seen newer iPhones and their “camera performance” I decided D3100 will get me covered for now🙂 At least until something better comes out, because D3100 is not as portable as I would love to and my current 11 Pro is not the best in terms of camera performance, and it makes poor RAW shots tbh

 

[CalMin]

Lol, this. I bought a mirrorless camera for vacation a couple of years ago but it's too big to be carrying around all the time and it's quite fiddly. This time around, I'll just stick to the 17 Pro.

Yep. The other truth for me was that even though the bigger camera is capable of taking better pictures, I almost always find that right out of the camera, the iPhone results were more pleasing. I know that this is because of all the computational stuff they do to manipulate the image and that it's less accurate, blah, blah, blah.... BUT - they're more than good enough for capturing the moment, and most of the time that's all I want to do.

My SLR is now a hobby-ist thing and, as a working man, who has time for that!

 

[jay-A]

This is not going to work because image quality (ie high SNR, shallow depth of field, high dynamic range, huge color depth) comes at the price of a large sensor, large lenses, with the two separated by a flange distance that, even with the best current mirrorless designs, cannot be less than about 16 mm. These factors negate the size and thinness advantage of a phone. A phone has and will always have tiny sensors, tiny lenses, and will always overprocess the photos out of this to make them look acceptable to the majority.

 

[uacd]

I think the latest iphones are getting better and better with image quality, yes they are using more and more digital processing but the masses are enjoying the picture/video quality.

For me the iPhone's picture quality is good enough but I know there's an entire market out there which film or take pictures with those big dslr cameras.

If they made an iphone with a huge lens in the back and add those detachable lens things (I don't know too much about this). Then a lot these photo and video enthusiasts would definitely buy this. They could keep it as a standalone product and only update it every couple of years (or every year like iphones).

It wouldn't be too thick in the base form, but with the detachable lenses it would add semi professional photo and video features.

Excuse the mockup.

View attachment 2566299

Interesting idea but I would rather keep it to simple formula:

- FULL access to processing pipeline to disable or partially disable noise reduction, sharpening, edge enhancements, color setting and profiles in professional sense with saturation sliders and WB modes, all hidden in settings app – for those who are not “casual users”;

- 1 or 1/1.1 inch sensor, probably a 200MP variant from Sony, because it seems 48MP Quad Bayer is incapable of capturing 8K footage. Samsung Galaxy can do that with no problems;

- Better lens quality. Current lens designs are very bad. Images look plasticky and these lenses are incapable of capturing more light;

- 35mm for main lens, 120mm for telephoto, 19mm for wide. That’s a proper design for photography;

- ProRAW enhancements, access to processing parameters so you can fine tune the output

 

[Abydos]

on second thought, at least he did not ask for optics equal to my cassegrain

 

[Moreplease]

My camera gear is worth more than my car and I know how to use it, but I still think a late-model iPhone is the best tool for a lot of photography and video these days.

Some areas where a standalone camera still excels:

• viewfinder for more accurate composition especially in sunlight
• ergonomics while being bumped in a crowd, secure one-handed use (e.g. Ricoh GR), comfort for long use, etc.
• buttons and dials for instant adjustment of key settings, especially control of autofocus in dynamic situations
• rapid bursts for capturing an exact moment – phone sensors can technically do this but adequate UI control doesn’t exist
• sustained use for video or stills where phones run into battery problems (and heat problems if you try to charge them in use)
• outright image quality, e.g. advertising or studio photography
• depth-of-field control, e.g. an environmental portrait with a messy background you can’t control so need to blur with a large aperture
• flash or studio strobe timed to the exposure, which enables light modifiers like gels, soft boxes, umbrellas, snoots, gobos: the stuff that makes fashion mag photos look like they do
• special-purpose lenses like tilt-shift, macro, zooms (optical zoom), long teles, wide-aperture lenses generally.

As you can see, making an iPhone accept interchangeable lenses would not change this list very much.

A lot of people would still need a camera with hardware UI controls, flash synch, viewfinder, etc.

One big improvement Apple could do is add a built-in variable ND filter. Pro video looks ‘cinematic’ in large part because the shutter speed is slow and fixed, usually 1/48 second. iPhones in daylight use shutter speeds like 1/2000 s (but it varies), which gives a camcorder-like staccato effect. See this video for more on ND filters:

 

[cjsuk]

Yep, D3100 is lovely. Decided to resurrect it and ordered 18-140 lens.

But there is another thing in these old DSLR cameras - processing.

I was choosing for a long time between jumping to new Sony camera vs just buying a new lens, and when I saw the horrible processing that they apply in recent a6700 and such I decided I am not getting that camera… I mean it takes images that look like iPhone took them, lots of sharpening, unnatural noise reduction. Yes there is RAW, but on D3100 I don’t need RAW, it takes beautiful JPEGs.

View attachment 2566309

Yeah and I hate portrait modes on smartphones. Better no portrait mode than cheap imitation. I don’t believe smartphones are gonna ever be able to imitate real lens.

Though I loved older iPhones. My 5 made perfect images, and if they were dull I could use some editing skills to pump them up. People nowadays seem to hate all sorts of lens flares, but these older iPhones had lens flare, beautiful and fun purple lens flare in my case, it complemented shots a lot. In fact iPhone was my lofi camera and Nikon was my hifi camera back in the days.

View attachment 2566310


Having seen newer iPhones and their “camera performance” I decided D3100 will get me covered for now🙂 At least until something better comes out, because D3100 is not as portable as I would love to and my current 11 Pro is not the best in terms of camera performance, and it makes poor RAW shots tbh

Nice shots!

Agree with the Sony stuff. I got given an earlier camera from that series and it does weird things.

I shoot JPEG and RAW. I’ve taken to using the JPEGs and printing them on a little Canon Selphy printer though. Feels more personal!

 

[Shirasaki]

Today’s generation seems to have no concern about these large companies stripping the planet for profit. It’s unsustainable practice

And they are used to it. Absolutely horrifying to see. Yet, despite such yearly upgrade, iPhone camera will never catch up on real DSLR in image quality. Maybe the same group of folks don’t use DSLR at all.

 

[bill-p]

If they made an iphone with a huge lens in the back and add those detachable lens things (I don't know too much about this). Then a lot these photo and video enthusiasts would definitely buy this.

What you're thinking of is a way to make the iPhone camera more versatile, which... I guess may please some users. But ultimately, it's just a more versatile "phone camera" if that makes sense.

There's a reason computational photography is a thing. AI can sort of be used to bridge the gap between the physical sensor sizes for specific images. I will admit that as a photographer, I cannot at a glance tell whether portrait mode was applied on some photos. But for most of them, the way depth of field falls off and how physical distance works is quite obvious, and it does not require pixel-peeping. It gets even weirder when we talk about tilt-shift effect.

Ultimately, nothing beats a real organic photo that is recorded on a larger image plane. "Right tool for the right job" applies here.

 

[ThailandToo]

I think Apple should make a camera. They really have the knowledge about software no other company has. They could buy Canon or Nikon and do it better for sure. And, those are luxury products with high margins.

The other thing I would like to see is an iPhone Air with a 200mp ultrawide camera on it with as big of a sensor as possible. This would allow macro, UW, wide and even a 4x 12mp image. Greatly improving the use of one camera. I think one camera is fine if it’s the right camera. Have iPhone Air, 17 and Pro Max. Tried all of them and love the Air best for everything except the dang camera situation. Not having ultrawide is far worse than not having telephoto. I would imagine Apple gets upgrades next year by adding functionality in some way to the one camera or just adding a second camera to the Air.

 

[RRC]

Apple already sell the most popular camera; the iPhone.

Yes they could make one, or buy out a camera company but the market just isn’t there anymore.

 

[subjonas]

For me, the only thing lacking in iPhone cameras is really good zoom. But it seems to keep getting better so I suppose I just have to be patient. I'm waiting for at least optical 12x, but more the better of course.

But the other conundrum I have is I dearly miss using an unobtrusive lightweight phone. This and a good camera system on a phone are at total odds. Unless it's somehow modular, like the Xiaomi 15 camera concept. Or unless I get two dedicated devices--iPhone Air and ?.

 

[uacd]

I’d never buy this as apple would no doubt gimp the software, hiding away useful functions for no reasonable reason & forcing users to use an App Store style with subscription models for features that are standard with a dslr.

Updating every year horrifies me purely from pov of wasted rare earth materials.

Today’s generation seems to have no concern about these large companies stripping the planet for profit. It’s unsustainable practice

Indeed. I own 15 year old DSLR. Any iPhone that is older than 3 years is considered obsolete by many folks. And that DSLR takes better photos than newest iPhone, because laws of physics apply and Apple’s computational algorithms ruin image quality.

And that DSLR is alive because I popped in a new battery, third-party one because Nikon is greedy and they are also fostering this consumerism culture: there was literally zero reason to make new lens mount or to discontinue old ones. New mirrorless systems? I don’t believe. Money?💸 Yeah I think so. But the problem is that this tactic gets them less money since many users (like me) are not inclined to upgrade from DSLRs at all, and I would rather buy another DSLR second-hand than new Z5 or Z6. Nikon is losing money and userbase, just like Apple with their controversial choices

 

[uacd]

Apple already sell the most popular camera; the iPhone.

Yes they could make one, or buy out a camera company but the market just isn’t there anymore.

Market might be “not there” but people still want real cameras and LESS processing. There are lots of gen Z people out there hunting for and using old cameras for the sake of “vibe” as they call it (basically much more natural processing vs iPhones). Young women for example specifically ENJOY skin tones out of older cameras and hate how their iPhones fail to capture anything, partly due to XENON flash that is present on 95% of old point-and-shoots, I don’t get why smartphones still don’t have it.

Many people also buy cameras as travel gear. Traveling has become even more expensive in recent years due to global economic hardships, and so people want to have not “good enough” but BEST image quality for their memories

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Focal length is relative to sensor size: so if one is made larger, the other generally follows, due to the distance required between both components. This is why traditional cameras are thickness/depth that they are.

In the picture from the OP, the iPhone would need to be at least 8 x the thickness.

 

[Boeingfan]

What about a DSLR with iPhone features? 😁

 

[unchecked]

I think by default they should have a large lens which doesn't stick out much by default. Then have the option of attaching those lenses.

If I need to bring attachments, then I'll just bring a camera.

The whole point of the phone is that it needs nothing else. Photographers usually have a second camera, and usually that's a compact that's useful when you don't need to change lenses and something that's more discreet and disarming. The phone already does that to most of those people.

Trying to add more to it defeats it's entire purpose.

 

[Madonepro]

The reason Apple haven’t gone down that route, and either designed that into their cameras, or made a camera of its own, is because it’s not there thing.

A camera on the back would look ugly, would cease to be useful as a personal device, and sales volumes would be low (or lowered).
Just like they haven’t made a TV, they leave others to do that, and stick to the niche of what Apple is.
I’d personally like to see Apple create an iPhone for business. That doesn’t have a rear camera, just one for video calls, and focuses more on the business users need. Effectively a BlackBerry feature set within iPhone.
When some of the worlds leading politicians (Trump & Obama for example) can’t use iPhones, Apple has a business need it isn’t addressed.

 

[subjonas]

If I need to bring attachments, then I'll just bring a camera.

The whole point of the phone is that it needs nothing else. Photographers usually have a second camera, and usually that's a compact that's useful when you don't need to change lenses and something that's more discreet and disarming. The phone already does that to most of those people.

Trying to add more to it defeats it's entire purpose.

It would only defeat its purpose if the attachment was required (which it shouldn't be). If it's optional, then an attachment wouldn't defeated the purpose of the phone any more than bringing along a dedicated camera would. In both cases, you're bringing along more equipment for extra functionality.

There are variables--how good and big and expensive the attachment is, how good and big and expensive the dedicated camera we're comparing to is--but there are a few potential advantages to the attachment, provided it's a full-on first party hardware solution, something vaguely similar to the Xiaomi 15 camera concept.
- utilizes phone's computation
- no separate library syncing/transferring
- more compact/portable
- less expensive