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Comprehensive Comparison Shows Camera Improvements From Original iPhone to iPhone 6s

The Verge has a comparison of the iPhone 6S camera against other cameras, and they find the iPhone 6S's pictures slightly tinted.

Having taken pictures on my 6S Plus, I find the results similar to Bethany's ones and not tinted like the Verge's pictures

I don't know if any other 6S/6S+ owner has noticed any issues with the camera, but mine seems OK
 
I still feel the 6 takes very good photos. I'd personally have taken the same camera as last year with cheaper (higher base) storage options, but that's just a personal preference. It's always nice to see improvements, even if minor. Everything else bout my phone (6s plus) is better than my previous (6 plus) by many measurable factors, so overall I'm happy.

I guess what I'm saying is I never felt the camera left a whole lot to be desired on the 6 series.
 
Razeus said:
The iPhone 5S was the best iPhone and mobile camera ever.
Click to expand...

agreed!

the 5s makes still the best pics of all iphones incl. 6, 6s.

too bad, it's really too hard to stay on the 5s now, the 6s has so much to offer :(
 
PJWilkin said:
The Verge has a comparison of the iPhone 6S camera against other cameras, and they find the iPhone 6S's pictures slightly tinted.

Having taken pictures on my 6S Plus, I find the results similar to Bethany's ones and not tinted like the Verge's pictures

I don't know if any other 6S/6S+ owner has noticed any issues with the camera, but mine seems OK
Click to expand...
Did you compare your photos to another camera taking the same photos in the same conditions? For me, personally, noticing tints is very difficult if I don't have a direct comparison. I didn't even notice how yellow my 6 plus was until I compared it to my 6s plus.
 
The 4s looks consistently better than the iPhone 5 in my opinion! The 5 shots all look soft.
 
ChrisCW11 said:
I see virtually no difference between 6 and 6s, another person trying to gush about how much "superior" the iPhone 6s is over the last phone and the reality is it just doesn't seem to hold up to the patronizing again. Comparing against older iPhones is moot, nobody is updating from an iPhone 1 to the 6s these days, and everybody knows that the first few generations of iPhone cameras were horrible.
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Thanks - I thought there something wrong with my eyes
If this is at 12MP, Apple should be really careful before they move 16mp+ - there is a lot of noise on the 6s

- same thing CNET found in their camera shutout
http://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-6s-plus-camera-comparison-6-samsung-galaxy-s6/
 
realeric said:
Apple should have improved camera more. Image quality lag behind other competitors' since iPhone 5s.
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No it doesn't. Ive been a professional photographer for 11 years and the iPhone camera are hands down the best as far as phone cameras go. Megapixels are pretty much meaningless. What iPhones lack in MP, they make up for in everything else. You can't get much more accurate testing results then from DxO. You can expect the 6s to score even higher. Here you go

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/ph...-camera-the-best-ever-on-a-smartphone-1266815
http://www.dxomark.com/Mobiles/Appl...et-gold-standard-for-smartphone-image-quality
 
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realeric said:
Apple should have improved camera more. Image quality lag behind other competitors' since iPhone 5s.
Click to expand...

In what way? I would love to see some good comparison tests on this subject. Most of the articles quickly posted as link bait by most websites failed to provide serious photographic tests of the 6S camera, some even stating that the "jury is still out".

I am not saying the linked article is perfect, however she did go into much farther detail than most of the shootout videos / articles I have seen on Android v.s. iOS cameras, with most of them lacking any scientific process whatsoever.
 
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That's a very well done comparison. It's interesting how fast the camera was improving up until the 4S. Since then the changes are not that dramatic. What's also very apparent is how aggressive the post processing has become since the iPhone 6. It's really ruining many of the photos. In some of the photos I'd even say the older iPhones make better pictures than the 6s. Look at the portrait for instance. I'd say of all the photos the iPhone 5 shot is the clearest. Look at how you can't see any structure on her skin in the 6s shot. Her face is basically just an uniformly skin coloured blob. That's pretty sad to see as I'm certain that the camera would be capable of more if they just toned down the ridiculous amount of noise reduction and sharpening. I wish they'd just provide an option to turn off post processing (at least the stuff that I can easily myself).
 
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At first I thought this test was biased. No way the original iPhone could be that bad. Then I went thru my Photo library and saw how horrific those pictures really were lol. I mean, wow. I don't know why I even bothered. All my pictures back then look significantly worse then the FRONT camera of the 6/6s.
 
Kinda confirms my feeling about the 4s producing better photos than the 5 in some areas..
Darker, but more details preserved.. Apple went allt-in with the noise reduction after the 4s..
 
For anyone else's speculative opinion, I believe that apple tends to have the "S" cameras as warmer in general, and cooler for the whole number cameras. If anyone else wants to comment on that feel free.
 
Biggest improvements are 3GS, 4S, and 6S in that order in my opinion.

Honestly, I just don't think it can get substantially better than this with a single lens (with similar dimensions).

Hint: Apple did buy a company that incorporates multiple lenses together while reducing the thickness of the camera (no more protrusions once this is implemented).
 
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It's nearly impossible to see the difference between 8MP and 12MP on the phone, only when blown up a bit larger, on a retina laptop or printed can one really see any real difference at these levels. more cleavage would help too. (I just had to go there with these images)
 
slicecom said:
Wow, the 6 actually looks significantly better than the 6S in some categories. Too much noise reduction in low light on the 6S, it's killing the detail.
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So much of this can be subjective.. - e.g. the close-up of the coins:

1.) The background detail is noisier on the 6, but then the exposure is also higher.
2.) It looks a little out of focus on the 6 picture.
3.) The noise level is much higher on the 6s, but there's more noise reduction on the 6.

Hard to be conclusive there.

The biggest difference for me HAS to be the Gummy Bears with the sun as backlight. The lack of light-bleed through the bears is really impressive. Every other phone blows out the highlights big time, but the 6s keeps those bears looking very "neutral" indeed.
 
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Wow, if you go to the low light and click between the 6 and the 6s, the 6 is noticeably brighter (unedited) in low light pictures (all those indoor non flash pictures people take) than the 6s.

I was disappointed when Apple said they upped the pixel count on the same sensor size by 50%...thinking it would probably show in low light. But they often pull the rabbit from the hat with regards to camera performance. So if you want bright low light pics without editing the 6s doesn't appear to be an improvement (its what you'd expect to see if you just dropped in a sensor with 50% more pixels into the same lens assembly and shutter timer logic...dividing that same amount of light up...you'd get darker pics). I'm probably one of the few, but wish they had stuck with 8MP and put in the sensor improvements for the 6s.

Love that web page, awesome.
 
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The color pencil flow image is very misleading considering it is showing only a close up detailed photo. Granted the progress is staggering from 1 to 6S (this shouldn't be shocking to anybody, hopefully camera technology progressed over the last 8 years), it creates the illusion the first iPhone took blurry, unfocused photos in every setting. This was clearly not the case, if you recall the first keynote Apple spent a good amount of time highlighting the camera quality. They should probably include a few different types of image flows to show the full scale of progress.
 
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so, A this comparison is nicely done from a use case, display, compare standpoint so VERY nice.. as a prior posted noted it's very dpreview in the quality..

but, YES the iphone 6 does seem to actually do better in many scenarios which is odd. I really wonder if they have the correct images there. sharpness, contrast, low light ability, it's not really what we expected with all the "everything is new" rhetoric from apple...
 
yaxomoxay said:
the jump between 3G and 3Gs is impressive...
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A big part of it was that the lens started to autofocus with the 3G, before that it was a fix-focus lens which obviously is useless for macro shots but also compromised in most other situations where the focus is almost never dead-on. Low resolution of the sensor naturally hides that to some extent.
 
Razeus said:
Confirmed by thoughts all these years. The iPhone 5S was the best iPhone and mobile camera ever.
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I have to agree with you, I did prefer my 5s over my 6. I've often wonder if there is a camera quality issue with the six. My photos don't seem as sharp as my 5s.
 
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