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Hooray! I was considering getting a new HD video camera. But if the iPhone can now zoom, I'm a happy puppy! 2x-3x isn't much, but it should do fine for my needs.

However a word of caution.

Any good HD video camera will 'zoom' to a point with an optical lens, preserving image quality. iOS devices rely on digital zooming which although may increase zoom 2x/3x, will also degrade your image quality proportionally.
 
correction

A small correction, zoom only work on iPhone 5 and above. So yeah it's great but there will be feature segmentation which is OK I guess. After all there is only so much you can do with older hardware and also Apple needs a way to get all those new toys off their shelves ...
 
So yeah...I don't think it works how you're thinking. I think it already starts off using the 2 MP in the center for video mode, and any zoom after that is actually digital zoom.

If I was designing a video camera with a sensor larger than the end resolution, I would make each pixel on film, several pixels on the sensor, that way it collects more light.

So for 1920 x 1080 video you could use 4 physical pixels for each recorded pixel. This means that you can capture better footage in low light because your "bucket" for capturing light is four times the size.

Then when you zoom in you would be using less physical pixels affecting the lowlight performance but not the number of pixels, so its still hd quality.

Perhaps this is how Apple does it?
 
However a word of caution.

Any good HD video camera will 'zoom' to a point with an optical lens, preserving image quality. iOS devices rely on digital zooming which although may increase zoom 2x/3x, will also degrade your image quality proportionally.
In this case it won't affect the quality of the image. Read the entire thread as to why since its been stated multiple times.
 
One feature I hope returns in 7 is the ability to turn on or off the LED light while recording. In iOS 5 it was possible and was inexplicably removed in 6.
 
Finally. But digital zoom on any phone absolutely sucks and I don't even use it on my S III.
 
Am I the only one who hates the new camera app? Zoomed video? Square photos? Cheesy vintage filters? I may stay on iOS 6.

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Exactly. I'd rather not have the feature at all. A lot of people use it without knowing the harm it causes and then wonder why their photos look so terrible.

not like you are being forced to use these features. You could just use the camera app the same what as you did with iOS 7
 
I don't get the concept of digital zoom... you'd be better just cropping the image, or moving closer, rather than degrading the quality.

agreed, it's like capturing 3.2MP photos from an eight MP camera, it's logical and better to just move closer or if you cant move closer just crop it.
 
well that's new - and pretty useful. i hope it doesn't affects the quality much. good thing apple is innovating again
 
Exactly. I'd rather not have the feature at all. A lot of people use it without knowing the harm it causes and then wonder why their photos look so terrible.

Lol at "the harm it causes"....
Hahahahahaha......
Does it kill polar bears?
Also, how would zooming in slightly whilst shooting a video make your PHOTOS look terrible?? *confused*
 
Well that's good news. Thank you for doing the legwork for folks like me. I was going to get a new iPhone, but if the 4S runs everything, I will probably wait for the 6.

Do you guys get contract pricing on phones in Canada or pay full price?
If paying full price... I can see waiting. If not, letting your upgrade go unused for over a year isn't fiscally sensible, as you are paying the same whether you take the $450 subsidy or not. I always use my upgrades the very moment they are available, so I can start that clock marching towards another huge subsidy again!! =)
 
I don't get the concept of digital zoom... you'd be better just cropping the image, or moving closer, rather than degrading the quality.
Since video is recorded in 1080p at most, there is no degradation of quality because the camera is an 8 MP camera ("2448p"). It's simply incrementally cropping the photo, but not enlarging any pixels that would cause smearing/pixelation. My Fujifilm FinePix X100 has a similar 3x zoom mode which is "magic" in the same way.

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Finally. But digital zoom on any phone absolutely sucks and I don't even use it on my S III.
This is not your typical digital zoom that enlarges the pixels and hurts quality. This is also why the zoom range is limited.

While I also dislike zooming, it's more because it hurts immersion. But I can't say this feature is bad in any way. At least it doesn't hurt quality.
 
Their existence really annoys me. They get in the way of my photo taking. I mean, you have to swipe from photo, to 'square', to video, where in iOS 6 you just flip the photo/video switch.

So... you're basically complaining because you you haven't actually educated yourself on how the software works and are crying about something that is an non-issue because you don't understand it?

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Really, Ask that newspaper in NY that fired it's entire photography staff and told the reporters to user their iPhones for photos on their articles. They'll really enjoy the fact that they can now use video because it can zoom. :eek:

It was actually Chicago...

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I'm pretty sure you're wrong. What you're saying would make sense if video mode used all 8 MP in the first place. But if you notice, when you switch to video mode, the camera is much more zoomed in--that's because video mode on the iPhone (at least the iPhone 4S does this...I actually don't know about the iPhone 5) only uses a fraction of the sensor (I think it's because it's too much information to process trying to take video with all 8 million pixels and downsizing to 1080p).
So yeah...I don't think it works how you're thinking. I think it already starts off using the 2 MP in the center for video mode, and any zoom after that is actually digital zoom.

I agree with this one. The whole sensor isn't used and never has been used to begin with... If it were we'd be able to shoot 4K from an iPhone and we know for a fact that the iPhone currently doesn't shoot anything above a 1080p resolution. Zooming on (even based on looking at that video) a subject is the same digital zoom... though the output will still be 1080p... (as it is captured at that resolution) the out of focus blur of a cropped-in video will still be there. It would technically be like an up convert of a low quality source.
 
Do you guys get contract pricing on phones in Canada or pay full price?
If paying full price... I can see waiting. If not, letting your upgrade go unused for over a year isn't fiscally sensible, as you are paying the same whether you take the $450 subsidy or not. I always use my upgrades the very moment they are available, so I can start that clock marching towards another huge subsidy again!! =)

We get contract pricing. That said, they use the end of a contract to rev the terms of your agreement. For the past many years, I've been buying the phone outright to keep my grandfathered original plan. I am one of very, very few people in Canada who can boast an unlimited data package on my iPhone, and it's only because I buy the devices outright and swap out the SIM cards. So yeah, I wait until I can't wait anymore. :)
 
For once I can say this should have been a feature for years...I'm surprised it wasn't
 
On an image, it's pointless, but on video, it's a lot easier than editing afterwards. I'd still try my hardest to not use it on video.

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What he's saying is that on images, there is zero use for digital zoom. All you're doing is cropping the image beforehand instead of cropping it after, which means you permanently lose the rest of the image. And you could even crop then use some pixel prediction.

i understand that it's equivalent to cropping, but what I said was-a higher resolution would allow you to crop (or zoom) and still have the same resolution as unzoomed pictures....if your camera has those additional pixels available. you're not actually focusing on the image more closely, you're just not losing resolution.
 
i understand that it's equivalent to cropping, but what I said was-a higher resolution would allow you to crop (or zoom) and still have the same resolution as unzoomed pictures....if your camera has those additional pixels available. you're not actually focusing on the image more closely, you're just not losing resolution.

Oh, OK. I also realized that if you're going to crop, you have to make sure that the camera is focused on the item you are going to "zoom" onto.
 
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