iPhone 4's Camera Capabilities Evaluated

[FoxyKaye]

Hopefully this will translate to the next iPod Touch and the revised iPad next year. I think MegaPixels, like Megahertz from yesteryear, are just the hot selling points for camera phones right now. I'd rather have better optics, low-light pickup, color and sound and fewer megapixels any day of the week - how many people are going to make giant, poster sized prints of their cell phone photos anyway? Nothing beats a real camera, of course, but for casual use this is good news.

 

[onigami]

Ummm, really, you expect Macworld to give an honest assessment of the iPhone 4 and a fair comparative analysis with other phones?

Seriously. It's like Official Xbox Magazine comparing the Kinect with the Wii controller, or the Move. Its name already imposes a selection bias.

You might as well have written the headline as "Macworld Performs Stenography Admirably."

Won't argue with the Boy Genius Report, though.

 

[byulasfjazz]

Is it just me or does the droid look like cheap plastic in comparrison to the iphone 4

 

[plazmatyk]

Regardless of the quality, I'm just glad that basic optics and image quality for once took precedent over a megapixel numbers war...

Yeah, seriously. I'm sick of companies and users spec-bumping each other without any regard for real-world applications.

 

[violaboy]

Is it just me or does the droid look like cheap plastic in comparrison to the iphone 4

it is not just you...

 

[plazmatyk]

Is it just me or does the droid look like cheap plastic in comparrison to the iphone 4

I think so too. Even my iPhone 3G looks clunky and cheap compared to the iPhone 4 and yet it seemed so pretty at launch.

 

[Mr. Gates]

Ummm, really, you expect Macworld to give an honest assessment of the iPhone 4 and a fair comparative analysis with other phones?

Seriously. It's like Official Xbox Magazine comparing the Kinect with the Wii controller, or the Move. Its name already imposes a selection bias.

You might as well have written the headline as "Macworld Performs Stenography Admirably."

Won't argue with the Boy Genius Report, though.

Welcome to " Mac"Rumors

 

[Manie Frizzle]

finally something positive lol

 

[nwcs]

Among other things I'm a professional photographer and anyone who follows the technology could have predicted this. Megapixels is a terrible way to measure quality. Backlit sensor technology is a big improvement on small sensors but ultimately there are two factors that lead to photo quality: photosite size and the A2D conversion.

What would have been more interesting for the average people would be a scale. Is the difference between #2 and #3 bigger than the distance from #3 and #4? Relative scale would be nice.

Personally, I'd rather have a 1.2 megapixel camera on the phone with the photosites of a Nikon D3s and Nikon's processing.

 

[mangohippo]

It amazes me that people still only look at the megapixels in cameras to evaluate their quality. Its been reported for years that megapixels aren't directly proportional to image quality. It's the reason Canon (in my opinion) cameras blow most cameras out of the water, they just have a better lens.

 

[plazmatyk]

Ummm, really, you expect Macworld to give an honest assessment of the iPhone 4 and a fair comparative analysis with other phones?

Seriously. It's like Official Xbox Magazine comparing the Kinect with the Wii controller, or the Move. Its name already imposes a selection bias.

You might as well have written the headline as "Macworld Performs Stenography Admirably."

Won't argue with the Boy Genius Report, though.

I see your point, but I still think this is a fair comparison, though from a biased source. I presume that the tests were done with the judges being unaware of the source of the images so there isn't much opinion bias that goes in. With stuff like the controllers in your example, sure, it's completely subjective and there is no way to make the judges unaware of what product they're evaluating.

It amazes me that people still only look at the megapixels in cameras to evaluate their quality. Its been reported for years that megapixels aren't directly proportional to image quality. It's the reason Canon (in my opinion) cameras blow most cameras out of the water, they just have a better lens.

And often larger sensors

 

[Lord Vader]

Welcome to " Mac"Rumors

Evidence is on the table.

 

[jacollins]

Ummm, really, you expect Macworld to give an honest assessment of the iPhone 4 and a fair comparative analysis with other phones?

What? You mean you think a Mac magazine that says an Apple product is better might be biased? Are you shocked that there's gambling in this establishment too?

The info looks good, but probably would have been better if done by a third party.

 

[Mr. Gates]

Evidence is on the table.

I'm not all that intelligent. Can you unwrap that comment so I might understand to whom and what it may refer to?

Evidence of what?

 

[sswanky]

I've noticed that the iPhone 4 tends to overexpose a bit. It would be nice to have a slider, like the digital zoom, to adjust the exposure.

You just tap the screen on the part of the video that you want to re-meter. The guy in the video never did that.

 

[strangeday]

So far (from reading the overview) I haven't seen anything mention the "shakiness" issue. Everything might be great, but it's still really shaky. It doesnt matter if it beat the other phones in the other categories if the recording is all jittery. Not a good thing

 

[the-oz-man]

I must say that personally I'm thrilled with the camera and particularly the HD video. Coming from the 3G it simply is amazing!

 

[JonB3Z]

What? You mean you think a Mac magazine that says an Apple product is better might be biased? Are you shocked that there's gambling in this establishment too?

The info looks good, but probably would have been better if done by a third party.

First party: Apple
Second party: You
Third party: Macworld

 

[fo0bar]

While the 4's video is very good, I'm a little disappointed that the built-in Upload to YouTube option doesn't give you the option of uploading 720p to YouTube, even over WiFi.

Here's a test I did at work yesterday. The handheld shakiness is annoying, but I'm used to a video camera with gyroscopic image stabilization. Understandable, since the assembly needed to float the lens would probably need to be bigger than could fit in the iPhone.

Does anyone know if the iPhone version of iMovie has digital image stabilization like the desktop version?

 

[macduke]

Even though I shoot with the Canon 7d, my wife still uses an old Canon Powershot 5mp camera. Often times that's the only camera we have on us when we're out and about at places like the park, because my camera is too bulky for such casual outings. I feel like a comparison between the Powershot and iPhone 4 might be in order. These types of cameras are perfect for snapshots and 4x6, 5x7 small prints.

I didn't visit the links, but has anyone tested the flash quality between the different phones? I feel like the iPhone's flash is pretty good so far.

Off-topic: has anyone made a drop test of the iPhone 4 wearing the bumper? It would put my mind at ease to see it work well!!

 

[thetexan]

The camera was one of the reasons I figured I'd check out the iPhone 4. I was reminded quickly why I don't own an iPhone anymore when at lunch a coworker with an iPhone 4 kept dropping signal / going into "Searching" where us Verizon users had full signal. My iPhone envy disappeared before the waitress brought us our food.

There's no question it's a great music player, great digital organizer, has great apps, plays great video, and now records great video and takes great pictures but it's a mediocre phone at best and has been since day one. Even some of the most rabid Android fanboys can admit the iPhone is great at doing some specific things.

If Apple went back to basics for one generation and put their R&D into the "phone" part of iPhone instead of focusing on camera and fun but pointless features such as Facetime I think it'd be the perfect phone.

 

[Lord Vader]

I'm not all that intelligent. Can you unwrap that comment so I might understand to whom and what it may refer to?

Evidence of what?

Don't play with the dark side. Pictures and videos are provided.

 

[jayducharme]

So far (from reading the overview) I haven't seen anything mention the "shakiness" issue.

Just run it through iMovie's stabilization feature. See, it's an all-encompassing ecosystem....

What I was most impressed with was the audio quality. While MacWorld thought the iPhone's mic inferior, I actually preferred the sound of it. The Droid had that electret mic "tinniness" to it, while the iPhone sounded more like a professional mic.

 

[xfiftyfour]

The contrast is artificial in the Droid. I doubt that's what you would see in real life. You can always fix the video's color/contrast in a video editor. Or maybe there's an app for that!

The droid stuff looks hyper saturated to me, especially outdoors. I do agree the indoor stuff looks a little washed out, but it's obvious which video you'd rather have in that particular case! Plus, you can always add deeper blacks in post. Can't go the other way.

Yeah, the saturation is a personal pref for sure. I like the up'd saturation, personally.. others might not. As for the blacks, the average user just taking quick home videos is not going to want to do post work, and it seems silly to argue that as a solution to the drawback.

Anywho, I'm still thrilled with the capability and happy to have that feature rolled into a device I'm carrying around anyways, so no real complaints. Just sayin'.. the comparison vids definitely show where the iPhone falls short to the Droid.

 

[sswanky]

...compared to the Droid I'm a little disappointed with the color/contrast of the iPhone and its audio.. could be personal prefs (saturated vs. truer and whatnot), but just IMO. The blacks in the second vid are definitely poorer for the iPhone than the Droid though.

Contrast can be ajusted on the fly (with a screen tap) and the guy who took the vid did not adjust when walking from a darker area to a lighter one, so most of the video turned out over exposed. Black levels on iPhone video look great when metered properly.