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For me, like other alterations with originals, what are the rules, where do you stop and who is watching what is being done?

This, for me is THE problem.

It's either a photo direct from a device, and it could be ANY device, not just an Apple product, and that photo is the genuine article.

Once you give it to someone, esp. a professional, and they start to tweak it, well, as they can in effect change every single pixel in the entire image, if they wanted where exactly are you going to draw the line, say stop, set when they must stop adjusting or changing it.

I would rather have and see the real image that's left alone.

Can it be made a bit better with some professional adjustment, yes of course it can, just like a 400lb women could be made into miss surfing beauty 2015 with photoshop.

And this is to any maker of any brand of any device.

Let's compare real unaltered images please.
I'm sure there is no real need to edit them.

For me it ends when the photo is edited off the device
 
Before I had a smartphone, the common refrain I would hear was that people with smartphones stop using their point and shoot cameras because smartphone cameras are that great. Last summer I got an iPhone 5s (my first smartphone). I've used it a lot as a camera, but I haven't been that impressed with the picture quality. The phone I had previous to that was an LG Dare (not smartphone) from 2008 or so and the picture quality didn't seem remarkably different. The iPhone pictures are wavy, and they're almost never in sharp focus due to the lack of image stabilization.

I was committed to keep using it and hoping I would get better at taking good pictures with it. But then I went back to my Canon S110 (a point and shoot) and the difference is night and day. There's no struggling to focus. No difficulty with macro shots.

I'm not quite sure how they got these photos with an iPhone, but my guess is that it was very, very carefully.

Also my only other experience with a smartphone camera was my dad's Nexus 5. I actually thought that took better pictures than the iPhone 5s. It focused much better.

A big huh! Smart phone cameras have larger depth of field (so, focus should rarely be an issue in good light), and the Iphone in particular is reputed for its great focus (that's one spot were it kicks every other smart phone's cameras ass), so I have no clue what you're talking about.

I think your talking about camera movement, which would make more sense since a camera phones would have less sensitivity to light and need longer shooting times (or much higher ISO with lots of noise). The Iphone 6 has much better correction for movement. But, there's a limit to even that; it can't do miracles. If its not a snapshot, you could use a tripod.

As for a S110 being better than anything phone... Well duh (optics, sensor, sensitivity, all is better), got the G16, which is one step up from your camera and yes, it produces fantastic images.

But even there, focus is not really faster than a Iphone 6 and almost certainly slower when it is dark. The Iphone 6 has a massive processing advantage, even dedicated circuitry in the A8, coupled with a huge depth of field. Those two together means that it will focus really fast.
 
What's scientific about appreciating a photo?
As for the rest, you make absolutely no sense and that's certainly lollable...

I made sense, you just didn't understand what I said. When I said it was unscientific I didn't mean that it was a bad thing. All you did was agree with me with your response. Now that, is laughable.
 
It's good to see how far smartphone cameras have come. The best camera is the one that you have with you.
 
There are some beautiful shots in there. Your turn, photocopier -- er, samsung.
140530_seoul_photocopiers.jpg


----------

Fancy the iPhone Pro and iPhone Air distinction?

Pro: Better battery life, better performance. Slightly thicker.
Air: Slim, lighter.

It would be iPhone Air and iPhone Mini.

----------

So, this is some sort of mass iPhone 6 photo spree..... We know how good the photos are, why do we need this ? I guess if this are showcased on Apple's own site, then it kind of "proves" something else too.

People still buy samsung phones. So this needs to be done.
 
It's our world!

It's our world that's this beautiful.
It's us people making these great shots.

I don't want to think of iPhone when seeing this beauty.
These pictures could have been taken by (m)any camera.
 
I am extremely pleased with the camera on the iPhone 6.
I have used Hasselblads extensively and of course, I can get an excellent image using a tool like that, but for down and dirty, quick photos, I have owned many, many pocket cameras. The results of the iPhone 6 camera have equaled and exceeded all, yes all, of the pocket cameras that I have owned. I'm talking about cameras made by Casio, Canon and others that are great little cameras, but the quality of the iPhone has been just as good if not better in most cases.
This photo display is proof.
What a great camera - and being on the iPhone 6 allows me to share and use these images any way I want.
 
i'm calling BS. they must be using some prototype iPhone 6 camera. I'm not professional photographer but I've owned a DSLR for years and know how to use it. I really liked my iP5 camera but the iP6 has been a disappointment with the quality of photos. see this thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1790221/

I'm pretty certain all those example photos they have in the Photos app on store models were all taken on professional equipment, too. But with these iPhone 6 photos, you can see the JPEG compression in some of them. Definitely taken on iPhone.
 
They've obviously done this to promote the iPhone against all the new phones announced today and this week. Clever Apple marketing. Now all they need to do is put OIS into the iPhone 6S this year... I wouldn't buy one without it.

It's in the iPhone 6 Plus, right?
 
To be fair, I can post process any photo to look amazing. I want to see what these look like "out of the box".

you have a portfolio that you can share before and after of all your post-process work?

I agree that they should show more "out of the box" but to say that you can post-process anything to look amazing is a bold statement.
 
It's good to see how far smartphone cameras have come. The best camera is the one that you have with you.

Or, the best camera at the exact moment you need to take a photo is the one that you have with you :D

Anyway, regardless of the camera, the photos on the gallery showed superb composition and timing by the "photographers" ... post-process just made it better.
 
No doubt it takes nice photos, especially if you know what you are doing, but blowing up an 8megapixel image to the size of a billboard?
 
These pictures are great. It just reminds me how much I need to improve at my picture taking skills. Even with Aperture to fix up photos, I can't get close to most of these photos :(
 
For me, like other alterations with originals, what are the rules, where do you stop and who is watching what is being done?

This, for me is THE problem.

It's either a photo direct from a device, and it could be ANY device, not just an Apple product, and that photo is the genuine article.

Once you give it to someone, esp. a professional, and they start to tweak it, well, as they can in effect change every single pixel in the entire image, if they wanted where exactly are you going to draw the line, say stop, set when they must stop adjusting or changing it.

I would rather have and see the real image that's left alone.

Can it be made a bit better with some professional adjustment, yes of course it can, just like a 400lb women could be made into miss surfing beauty 2015 with photoshop.

And this is to any maker of any brand of any device.

Let's compare real unaltered images please.
I'm sure there is no real need to edit them.

I really don't understand this mentality. It's not a double blind science experiment. You don't need to set a bunch of rules. These are just great pictures, and like it or not they were taken using an iPhone.

Maybe it's because I do photo manipulation for a living but I just flat-out disagree with you. Almost all the great photos you will see on the internet have had some artistic or technical input from a human being who's aim was to optimise the image caught on the film/sensor. What is the point of being hypersensitive about post production in one gallery when its is absolutely ubiquitous around the world. Suppose Apple stripped all post production from these photos. What would you learn from that? Wouldn't you first need to strip post production from all photos ever taken before you'd have a balanced understanding of what you're looking at?

All cameras produce images that aren't as good as the final retouched version. In the case of professional gear its actually quite deliberate that the captured image be dull and grey. It's the potential of the camera that matters, and in professional photography a great deal of effort goes into how data is captured by the sensor, and preserved by the storage medium. What that initial grab looks like, is of less concern. And no matter what you say about retouching there is a very practical limit to how much an image can be improved in post, and as one professional photographer has already remarked, without RAW shooting, the limit is actually pretty low.
 
I really don't understand this mentality. It's not a double blind science experiment. You don't need to set a bunch of rules. These are just great pictures, and like it or not they were taken using an iPhone.
.

Sorry, but I still disagree.
Rather, to explain more exactly.

If the purpose of the image is just to "Show a great image" then by all means photoshop the hell out of it.

If the purpose is to demonstrate the quality of a piece of hardware, then leave the dam photo alone.

Or, come up with a set of acceptable adjustments that can be made.
For examples, only brightness and contrast have been adjusted and the image cropped.

Otherwise where are you going to draw the line?

How about I take say a LG, Samsung, Motorola photo, run Noise Ninja over it to make the sky nice and smooth, run other plugins to improve other aspects, adjust purple fringing, sort out the focus/sharpness in various areas.

Let's use the clone / repair tool to sort out areas.

Let a pro, like yourself spend a day on it, tearing the photo to bits, and then say.

"Wow look at the quality of the camera on the LG, Samsung, Motorola Phone"

Somehow I don't think many, if they knew you had done that would be best pleased.

So, no, sorry, I cannot agree than an uncontrolled amount of image manipulation, as you suggest. Is ok. Not by me anyway.

Unless, as I say you are not using the pictures to promote the hardware that took them.
 
People complaining that the iPhone hasn't replaced their DSLR yet are not getting the point here. It's like expecting the iPhone to replace your iMac.

Yeah, sure, it's a computer in your pocket. And a great one at that. You can do things on an iPhone that were once only possible on a desktop. But it's not a desktop and it can't do all the things a desktop can do. And you'd be wasting your time expecting it to.

Same goes for the camera. It's a great camera that can produce some spectacular results. But it's not a DSLR. And that's ok.
 
Or, the best camera at the exact moment you need to take a photo is the one that you have with you :D

Anyway, regardless of the camera, the photos on the gallery showed superb composition and timing by the "photographers" ... post-process just made it better.

Yup.

The right tool in the right hands can produce excellent results - even with very old gear. PP just adds to it.
 
The camera in the iPhone 6 is really great, I'm not denying that. I've achieved some really nice shots on it. My frustration with shooting with my iPhone 6 Plus is that I can't shoot RAW. You end up with somewhat compressed, lossy JPEGs which don't edit well. So you're very restricted with what you can do afterwards. I'm used to shooting RAW with my camera and then having the freedom to make it into exactly what I want in Lightroom. You just can't do that with iPhone shots, you get the photo you take and that's pretty much it. Well, you can apply a bunch of filters with apps like VSCO, but ultimately you still end up with compressed, lossy JPEGs with which you can't do much.

If Apple brings out a phone that shoots RAW, THEN I'll be impressed!

RAW from what's essentialy a point & shoot?!??
 
They look great, but seriously, vs a 20+ MP camera? Side by side there would be no comparison.

You can have a 20+ MP camera but if the sensor and IQ on that camera is crap, well, you get crap too ... megapixels isn't everything.
 
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