iPhone 15 Camera: Apple Explains UI Design Decisions, Limitations, and Hidden Features

[deg0ey]

Because venturing out with an expensive DSLR wrapped around your neck on a daily basis will not only make you seem like a sinister pervert, it's also not practical - the difference between HEVC and ProRes has already been proven to be beneficial enough back when the 13 Pro launched, so that argument can be put to bed

Like saying why take your Airpods with you on your train journey when you can drag along a Japanese tube amplifier, because it's mental

Their point was about creating pro video. Smartphones will always be limited by their size - there's some crazy automated post-processing going on to improve the results, but they still have small lenses and small sensors which put a cap on the quality they can produce. If you're a pro videographer making pro videos you're going to use pro equipment - and despite the Apple putting 'pro' in the name of some models, iphones are not pro equipment.

And if you're just taking videos of your kid taking their first steps or your neat skateboard tricks so you can post them on instagram, nobody's going to tell the difference between a video you shot in HEVC compared to ProRes anyway.

Your Airpods analogy is backwards - you don't use Airpods as a PA system in a stadium because it's totally the wrong tool for that application. An iphone shooting in HEVC is the "Airpods on a train" in this example - and if you're doing something where quality is more important than convenience you get yourself a device that meets that use case.

 

[Attirex]

So what happened to the much-vaunted periscope lens/zoom? I know the new 15 pros got a 5x telephoto improvement from some kind of fancy teleprism lens, but no mention in any post-mortems about periscope. Did I miss a naming memo and prism/periscope are the same thing?

 

[newyorksole]

I just want to be able to turn off HDR and sharpening. I thought my iPhone 5S took great photos, except in really low light or if I wanted to view them on paper or a big hi-res display.

I can’t stand the HDR and sharpening.

makes great photos look so processed/fake.

 

[jz0309]

So Apple has a VP of camera software engineering, interesting.
So now I have to reset my expectations on camera hardware especially seeing a true optical zoom, imho we’ll continue to see fixed focal length lenses, maybe they’ll add a 4th one…

 

[jz0309]

Hopefully the new Blackmagic Camera app will allow us to fully exploit the hardware.

Try Halide

 

[jlc1978]

Do DSLR’s even approach the image processing capabilities of the iPhone?

No need to; they cater to a different market.

“The best camera that you can have is the one that’s on you when you need it.”​

Hmm… That's an old saw which has always struck me as a lame excuse or rationalization for the limited cameras of smartphones.

Not really, smartphone camera are limited by a number of factors - size, cost, etc.

I'd rewrite it as:

”The best camera that you can have is the dedicated digital camera you never bought or the one you left at home!”​

After all, if I’m out walking or hiking and spot a distant bird, the *best camera* to photograph that bird is surely not the one in my iPhone! In my case, it's the Canon compact zoom camera (say, Powershot SX720 or ELPH 330) that's sitting in our family room at home.

I don't even bother to take a photo with my iPhone because I know it will show me nothing more than a speck!

If you want those sort of photos take the compact zoom, it's all about the right tool of the job

The elephant in the room no one is talking about, Apple is adopting the BMW model of renting heated seats to owners of their cars.*

In this case the features are built in to the phone, but by not allowing us to access them through the built in camera app, Apple will collect an additional 15% per month from each developer’s subscription fee. Win-win except for the person that wants to use their heated seats.

More like Apple is designing for the majority of their user base, most of whom just want to point and shot, but building in the capability of 3rd parties to develop apps that meet users with more capabilities.

A better BMW comparison would be BMW building a car that can be customized via tuners.

 

[MikeX]

it is an iphone camera not a Leica. so don't hope too much. you'll get low quality pics for instagram and you'll apply ton of filters to them anyways. iphone photography is a big joke.

 

[Razorpit]

That's a cynical way of looking at it (and not really valid with the BMW comparison). The other side is that rather than putting everything in and competing with developers, Apple lets people other than Apple employees make money through iOS app development. Putting everything in would run the risk of more anti-monopoly lawsuits.

It’s not cynical at all. Apple is literally locking down things you have to pay a developer for to access.

BMW did literally the same thing. When you “subscribed to heated seats“ a BMW tech didn’t come out and install them for you, or remove them if you decided to cancel the subscription.

 

[dstow]

Their point was about creating pro video. Smartphones will always be limited by their size - there's some crazy automated post-processing going on to improve the results, but they still have small lenses and small sensors which put a cap on the quality they can produce. If you're a pro videographer making pro videos you're going to use pro equipment - and despite the Apple putting 'pro' in the name of some models, iphones are not pro equipment.

And if you're just taking videos of your kid taking their first steps or your neat skateboard tricks so you can post them on instagram, nobody's going to tell the difference between a video you shot in HEVC compared to ProRes anyway.

Your Airpods analogy is backwards - you don't use Airpods as a PA system in a stadium because it's totally the wrong tool for that application. An iphone shooting in HEVC is the "Airpods on a train" in this example - and if you're doing something where quality is more important than convenience you get yourself a device that meets that use case.

I wouldn't waste ProRes 4K60 on filming my kids or "neat" skateboard tricks for Instagram thankfully, the application of the codec isn't the issue here, it's the needless artificial limitation applied by Apple for no justifiable reason apart from saving it for the 16 Pro

No one is saying the 15 Pro is a substitute for an Arri Alexa or high end DSLR, that wasn't my point - It's still noticeably better than HEVC 4K60 so naturally one would rather choose the better codec not only for quality, but editing purposes - especially when storage isn't an issue

The phone camera sensor which obviously isn't as good as a DSLR is irrelevant, relative to the device itself the ProRes codec is noticeably superior and much easier to edit than the mushy HEVC 4K 60 - so my point still stands, if the hardware supports it, I would like to use it irrespective of me being a professional photographer or divorced bird watcher

 

[FunkyTang]

After they release a Pro mode, we’re going to want an Ultra mode.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Use raw mode.

Is there RAW anymore? Kinda putting this question out there so anyone that’s already done the searching I’m doing can say. I found this from the makers of Halide that made me think that one may not be able to usefully go beyond ProRAW (which is still processed to some degree).

“Ever since our look at iPhone 8, we noted a ‘watercolor effect’ that rears its head in images when noise reduction is being applied. At times, this was mitigated by shooting in RAW (not ProRAW), but as the photography pipeline on iPhones has gotten increasingly complex, pure RAW images have deteriorated.”

 

[Unregistered 4U]

They don’t have to (for their use case), as most of the image processing is basically trying to get an acceptable picture from constrained hardware (as in small sensors, small lenses, jittery hands holding the phone etc.)

Right, they don’t have to be and, as a result, they’re not (and, I wouldn’t be surprised if they all just agreed to not ). However, I DO wish they felt like they needed to have a hefty ISP because, just as it extends and enhances the experience of a tiny sensor, it could to far more with a much more capable sensor and optics.

 

[Sevendaymelee]

Still want an explanation for ios 7 and why they allowed the 4s and 4 to run it. Practically ruined my phone on the spot.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

So, what happened to the much-vaunted periscope lens/zoom? I know the new 15 pros got a 5x telephoto improvement from some kind of fancy teleprism lens, but no mention in any post-mortems about periscope. Did I miss a naming memo and prism/periscope are the same thing?

No they’re not the same thing. If I had to guess, they probably couldn’t order and have a company deliver 200+ million parts over the course of a year. The tetraprism solution is simpler with no more moving parts than they currently have.

 

[RedWeasel]

However, I DO wish they felt like they needed to have a hefty ISP because, just as it extends and enhances the experience of a tiny sensor, it could to far more with a much more capable sensor and optics.

In a way, you could probably say a computer with Lightroom and Photoshop (or alternatives) is the hefty ISP for these use cases.

 

[allenvanhellen]

Because venturing out with an expensive DSLR wrapped around your neck on a daily basis will not only make you seem like a sinister pervert, it's also not practical - the difference between HEVC and ProRes has already been proven to be beneficial enough back when the 13 Pro launched, so that argument can be put to bed

Like saying why take your Airpods with you on your train journey when you can drag along a Japanese tube amplifier, because it's mental

I see your point, but the biggest iPhones are nearing the size and weight of the smaller mirrorless cameras. I’ve seen loads of people actually wearing their big iPhones on basically camera or purse strap attachments.

 

[allenvanhellen]

I don’t carry my DSLR unless I know I’ll need it. The best camera that you can have is the one that’s on you when you need it. In most cases, it’s a phone camera.

But then who wants to treat a small little sensor like a pro level camera to tweak and photoshop? Just let it be a good snapshot camera.

 

[Mario6]

Umm, can we write 4k 24fps ProRes to an external drive?

 

[sergekills]

I don’t know about the 15 series, will check it out once they become available but ever since I upgraded to iPhone 13 Pro Max from iPhone XS, I’ve been hating iPhone’s default camera

 

[CouldBeWorse]

When shooting at 24-megapixels...

the photos look exactly the same, but we are able to take up more storage on the users' phones, forcing them to upgrade their device in the future to one with a higher capacity, or to upgrade their cloud storage subscription tier.

FTFY

There are several reviews live already that have side-by-side comparisons. The 24mp photos are noticably sharper. Peta Pixel did a good job showcasing the difference.

 

[jaster2]

no...it says that ONLY prores4k60 can be placed on external storage directly
So probably other video formats cannot be recorded directly to external storage
So yeah...still Apple way...too bad if its the case

Yeah. That's just weird. I never shoot high resolution footage in 60p. I wonder if this will change down the road or if 3rd party apps can give better options.

 

[EM2013]

Bring back the option to save a normal photo without hdr or be able to turn it off period. Instead of being forced to take hdr photos with unrealistic colors.

 

[CouldBeWorse]

no...it says that ONLY prores4k60 can be placed on external storage directly
So probably other video formats cannot be recorded directly to external storage
So yeah...still Apple way...too bad if its the case

Reviews seem to indicate otherwise. One thing that the Petapixel did point out is that recording to external devices is *only* available for the ProRes/log formats. You can’t record non-ProRes video to external storage. One nice bonus is that you can record externally to SD and CFII cards, not just SSDs.

 

[tomekwsrod]

Only ProRes files recorded in 4K at 60p can be recorded to an externally attached SSD. All other video and phot modes must be saved to the ‌iPhone‌ first and transferred later (...) this was an in-house design decision (...)

Hehehe.

 

[svish]

Great to hear more about the cameras of iPhone 15