That digital zoom was indeed just that, taking what was on the CCD and blowing it up. That digital zoom is not like the digital zoom being done on phones today.
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iPhone 15 Pro Max's 5x Optical Zoom Lens Enables 25x Digital Zoom
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I don’t get why digital zoom is even there as a metric, number, or feature. Companies should just focus on the non-blurry measurements like optical zoom if that’s what it’s called. Why even list the 25x or whatever for “digital zoom” when it’s effectively a useless number?
How much better realistically is the pro max telephoto lens over the regular pro? Like besides the extra bit of reach is there a big quality difference?
That IS pretty good. My assumption is that it could be using tricks I’ve seen described where, since human beings are always in motion when trying to take a picture, the CCD gets an opportunity to capture far more samples and the ML can take advantage of all that extra data to improve the resulting image.
Compared to old camcorders with digital zoom, you get a blocky frame, then capture another blocky frame while tossing the prior one. Then another, tossing the one before that. The iPhone’s first frame would be relatively blocky (physics), it’s second frame (because of human motion) is also blocky BUT because the sensors let the phone know exactly how far it moved, it can then interpolate and create a better image based on those two frames. Multiply that a hundred times, continuing to build on lower quality samples, they can get a better result.
They do actually list digital zoom as the very last item in a list of photographic capabilities. It appears they are indeed putting their focus on the non-digital capabilities. One doesn’t even find out about it even being able to DO digital zoom until they get to the end of the list.
I was planning to wait for the 15 Pro Max soley because of the rumored 6x optical zoom, but I got such a good trade-in deal on my XR for the 14 Pro Max that I decided to go for it. Much to my surprise, I use the 1x and 0.5x lenses 90% of the time, the 2x lens maybe 8% of the time, and the 3x lens the rest of the time. Except in bright light, 3x-lens images don’t seem to be as sharp as images from the other lenses, and cropped 1x or 2x photos look just as good. Also to my surpise, I rarely feel the need for a longer zoom. If I know I’m going to want it (such as for nature photography), I use my Sony a6000 and my multiple lenses. I’m curious to see photos taken with the 15’s 5x zoom, but I‘m not sorry I didn’t wait for the 15 PM, and I‘ll probably stick with my usual practice of upgrading every three generations. The 17 Pro Max is going to be awesome, and I know I’m gonna love it!
The degradation is still evident. It certainly does not work as well as on TV crime shows, where some technician hits an "Enhance" button and a blur of pixels resolves into a license plate--or a portrait quality photo of the actor playing the crook.
Yes of course you are right: at 28mm and 35mm a smaller area of the 48 megapixel imaging sensor is used. However the pixels that are used are clevery resampled to the base 12mp resolution.
It does mean, however, that 28mm and especially 35mm settings will increasingly need good light, just like the “2x” camera on the 14 pro models
Yeah, and at 100x digital zoom, everything looks like a video capture of Minecraft.
It’s not the pixels nor the digital zoom; it’s a combination of all components that allow it to achieve a great image that doesn’t look like a mosaic.
Apple has done it again, they didn’t go crazy on the specs, but produced an excellent camera, not a toy loaded with ayón of mediocre features.
This, it's really annoying. I want a true periscope zoom.
I mean, it's still an improvement, but itäs not what I was expecting.
Yep, no one is buying a Pro vs Pro Max based on features, they buy it 100% on size. Then they choose either Pro or non-Pro based on features.
As a non-Max user, who DOES NOT want the bigger form factor, it annoys me that features are different. If it was due to physical size limitations, then why do those same features always end up in the non-Max the year after?
And as a MacBook user who DOES want the biggest screen I can get, it also annoys me to tears that the bigger the laptop, the more upgraded parts are foisted onto me, resulting in an overpowered and overpriced machine for my use case, simply because I want a bigger screen. Case in point, this 16" M1 Pro MBP that I am writing this on. I just need the 16" screen. I'd be fine with the base M1 chip and many other base features (although, I do want the 32 GB RAM that I chose, and that is another gripe, see below). The advent of the 15" MBP (and 24 GB RAM) is nice, but it is still not 16". And even with the 14" vs 16" MBP, the 14" has a lower performance, and thus cheaper, base M1 Pro chip than the 16". My 16" also has a super thick body with the cooling ability to handle intense graphics processing, of which I do zero, and thus it is merely extra weight, size, and cost that I don't need, simply so I can get a 16" screen.
Regarding the need for more RAM, I am a software dev, and need 2/3 of sweet FA GPU power, and thus DO NOT need, nor want, a Pro/Max/Ultra chip, as all they give me is a ton more GPU and very little to none extra CPU. And simply adding CPU cores won't help unless your use case can effectively multi-thread to actually use the extra CPUs. Extra GPUs massively help video/graphics processing, due to the nature of the vector/matrix maths involved. Extra CPUs quickly loses its benefits with compiling code, and speed gains are minor. So nope, throwing either extra GPU or CPU cores at me makes almost nil difference. However, I can definitely make use of the extra RAM.
So please just give me a 16" MBA with a base M chip, and as much RAM and SSD options as the MBPs. That would be many software dev's dream machine. A LOT of software devs use MacBooks.
Oh yeah it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience. Why should I believe the actual engineers when they say they needed the room of the bigger model when some rando on a web forum said they shoulda been able to do what he wanted? lol you dudes crack me up.
But like the original OIS feature which was a Plus exclusive, eventually they’ll get the miniaturization down and we’ll see it elsewhere. But this requires time and work. Always have a chuckle when non-engineers tell me things should be easy for us. Or when people fail to realize we improve techniques over time and that’s why things get better, smaller, faster.
Digital zoom for me is more for practical purposes, to capture things from far away. Even if it’s blurry, it can still help to make out words on a sign, or an object.
Hey now, some of these people have respectable degrees in internet forum commentology.
Well, Apple's spatial recording requires viewing via Apple's Vision Pro goggles thingo that hasn't even been released yet. Otherwise all you see is the same 2D image as any other photo/video.
The short distance between the lenses is certainly limiting. However, there is also quite a short distance between our eyes, and yet it gives us enough depth perception to effectively judge distances for the sort of hand eye coordination required to, for example, throw and catch a ball.
I'll be curious to see the result. But yeah, requiring Vision Pro definitely kills the excitement, and limits it to very particular use cases.
Even with phones with 100 to 120x zoom i often zoom mainly 5x to 30x. So as long as quality is good up to 25x i think this is fine. googles is good and theirs is only up to 30x
while true it doesn't mean apples 5x can't match samsung's 10x when cropped in.
I think apple will be adding bigger zoom range for 16 pro max from sounds or ultra as they will call it
Yeah, the best lenses on "real" cameras are prime lenses, being lenses with no zoom capability. Zoom introduces a whole swathe of compromises to the physics.
You get a much higher quality lens by buying a selection of prime lenses, rather than a single zoom lense to cover all those lengths. You also get a better f-stop range, providing better performance in low light, and more background blur when you want it.
Zooming is then done by either changing lenses, changing your distance to the subject, or cropping.
Improved zoom on the Pro Max model is great. 25x digital zoom is also good
I get what you're saying but transitioning between magnifications doesn't have to be smooth to be called zoom. Modern phones have multiple lenses that can smoothly step up to each lens through AI algorithm in a bit of a hybrid system. Its important to note that each lens magnification is in fact optical and not digital as this causes confusion when people say its "not optical zoom" when it is definitely optical but just not traditional zoom. Computational photography is why photos taken on our phones look as good as they do now. If we can accept the results these technologies provide on other pictures then I see no reason we can't accept that it is able to zoom by seamlessly cycling through a series of optical lenses.