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iPhone 4 Camera Vs. iPhone 4S Camera

Yes, and the reason I am posting full size crops is because I want people to be able to see that grain to judge how well the sensor is performing, even though you might not typically look at a photo in that way. dSLRs are nice because they have larger sensors and generally much less noise than cameras with small sensors but it's hard to fit one of those in an iPhone. :) I'm totally happy with the camera upgrade so far by the way.

I agree that using the auto exposure it's hard to compare directly because each exposure could be slightly different, but I've been taking multiple photos with each camera of the same scene and then picking the ones that look the best from each camera. That's about as good as I can do for comparison shots.

I just took a whole bunch of mid-low light sample shots and I'll post them in a few minutes after I get them edited together like I did with the others.
 
Here's a shot right after the sun was down over the horizon but there was still light in the sky... sort of mid level between daylight and night. Again, this is cropped 100% so you get a good feeling for the difference in the sensors.

comparisonmedcenterlowl.jpg
 
They're both pretty noisy, but it seems like the 4 is noisier... impressive considering the density difference. That's probably the 4S's faster lens talking
 
Here are the same two photos, resized to 1024x768 (a decent size for emailing) so you can get the idea of what the photos will look like practically (rather than cropping and zooming in on the noise).

iPhone 4:
87164591.jpg


iPhone 4S
19311343.jpg
 
The 4S is a bit more detailed, but it's not THAT drastic. I may stick with my iPhone 4 even though my upgrade is next month...
 
HiRez said:
It's also hard to test 2 autoexposing, auto white-balancing, autofocusing cameras because you can't be sure of getting the same exposure. In any comparison test you want to minimize the differences (variables) as much as possible and that's hard to do here.
Click to expand...

I think in this situation the comparison is more for real world use and not a fine detail comparison of the cameras. While it would indeed be ideal to have everything the same, I think these shots do a nice job showing some real use differences.
 
I just took some self portraits on my hammock in the dark. These are "real world" comparisons, reside to 1024x768 as if I was going to email them to somebody.

iPhone 4
img0026xb.jpg


iPhone 4S
img0180ca.jpg


----------

Here are some 1024x768 shots of my setup here on my patio.

iPhone 4:
img0194opb.jpg


iPhone 4S:
img0195nm.jpg
 
The 4S looks more granular/washed out on the picture above.

Hmm, I'm not sure what to think. Are these with or without flash?
 
Here are some photos I cropped (but not to 100%). I cropped these so that the skyline would fit about equally in each one. This was a bit later after dusk when it was starting to get dark.

iPhone 4:
img0027ruq.jpg


iPhone 4S:
img0181ko.jpg
 
Thanks for the comparison, the colors are so much better on the iPhone 4S, soo. now I've to buy one :/ :p
 
Glad I could help!

I'm digging my iPhone 4. Siri is actually cooler than I expected and the camera is a big enough jump to be worth it for $300. Also since you can likely sell your old iPhone for $300 the upgrade probably won't really end up costing anything.
 
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