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iPhone 11 Pro Is it just me, or was "Deep Fusion" just a gimmick?

zorinlynx

zorinlynx

macrumors G3
Original poster
May 31, 2007
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Florida, USA
I've been using my 11 Pro Max for quite some time now after the 13.2 update that supposedly added "Deep Fusion", and frankly have not noticed any difference in quality between photos taken before and after the update.

If anything, I've noticed some unpleasant edge/contrast enhancement in a few photos that wasn't there before the update, and occasional instances of "doubling" motion blur.

Has anyone had a better experience with this update than I did? I was hoping to see vastly improved photos but have only felt disappointment.
 
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AustinIllini said:
Deep fusion is objectively better at showing subtle textures. No one with any knowledge of the situation would say Deep fusion is actually worse.
Click to expand...

What most people who use cellphone cameras (or to be more accurate, what most people who use cellphone cameras and post about them) seem to completely fail to understand, is that sharpness (detail, textures, etc.) is way way down on the list of things that makes a “good photograph“. :).
A “good photograph“ can be made with, practically, any camera, Deep Fusion (good marketing term btw “ohhhhhh man ”Deep Fusion” it must be something very special) aside. 😉😊
 
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I’m a photographer, I can definitely see a difference. Shots in low light using the 2X camera (not night mode) is impressive, iso 1250 is very clean and noise free. Deep fusion images are much better than without. I’m sold on it. I’ve never gotten such clean images from an iPhone as I do with the 11 pro max...
 
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akash.nu said:
There’s a lot of misunderstandings in terms of how and when deep fusion work. Here’s a solid video that explains it.


Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, the only person in this thread to actually provide any further information other than just throwing an opinion at others.

Looking at this video the differences seem to often be subtle and take a bit of focus to spot.
 
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I can see the difference in some pictures too with much more details and less noise. But for my opinion the issue is coming on how Apple implemented it (i.e. User Experience) since this is not so obvious to see when Deep fusion happened e.g. Why not adding such a flag against any pic where Deep fusion were activated?. Also why not having an option to activate manually Deep fusion from the camera app settings? I am hoping that a further update will give some enhancement to Deep fusion and especially on the user experience side.
 
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chrono1081 said:
Deep fusion is awesome. I’ve gotten night shots of moving animals (without flash) that ended up decent instead of the nasty blur they should have been.
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That’s an impressive scenario, and if you think about the difficulty of that photo at night and with a moving object/animal, that’s not an easy task to achieve a decent photo from.
 
Deep fusion works in somewhat low light to low light, just before night mode would kick in. It does improve things. It might not be a huge deal, but when you add up the smart HDR from last year, IS, night mode, deep fusion, and everything else... Pretty decent upgrades in total.

ToddH said:
I’m a photographer, I can definitely see a difference. Shots in low light using the 2X camera (not night mode) is impressive, iso 1250 is very clean and noise free. Deep fusion images are much better than without. I’m sold on it. I’ve never gotten such clean images from an iPhone as I do with the 11 pro max...
Click to expand...

In low light, it usually doesn't use the 2x lens, instead, it crops the main lens to 2x. You can see if it's doing this in the exif data.
 
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loybond said:
Deep fusion works in somewhat low light to low light, just before night mode would kick in. It does improve things. It might not be a huge deal, but when you add up the smart HDR from last year, IS, night mode, deep fusion, and everything else... Pretty decent upgrades in total.



In low light, it usually doesn't use the 2x lens, instead, it crops the main lens to 2x. You can see if it's doing this in the exif data.
Click to expand...
I have seen the iPhone use the 1x camera cropped to the 2X mode just a couple of times, it usually doesn’t happen on my device. I can tell when it does, night mode doesn’t turn off, I use the app Big photo to look at the exif data in the photo and check the f/ratio of the lens used and retake the photo if f/1.8 was used. If I can’t get f/2, I turn to the app “Camera M” which is the only app so far to use deep fusion and smart HDR from the iPhone. Great app! But most of the time, like 95% the 2X camera is the priority camera used. ISO 1250 on the 2X camera is very clean! I like to pixel peep and I can tell the difference.
 
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Jim McN said:
I can see the difference in some pictures too with much more details and less noise. But for my opinion the issue is coming on how Apple implemented it (i.e. User Experience) since this is not so obvious to see when Deep fusion happened e.g. Why not adding such a flag against any pic where Deep fusion were activated?. Also why not having an option to activate manually Deep fusion from the camera app settings? I am hoping that a further update will give some enhancement to Deep fusion and especially on the user experience side.
Click to expand...

The Game 161 said:
maybe people would use it as more useful if they knew when it was being used. maybe a separate button for It might help
Click to expand...

It’s just another way of processing image from the captured data. Apple doesn’t really want people to think about all this. In their philosophy of - it just works - they want the users to just take pictures and depending on the situation the device is supposed to automatically generate decent final product. This is why even night mode kicks in automatically.
 
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it’s only visible in certain situations
An example would be taking a picture of someone’s head, you will be able to see the individual hairs as opposed to a hairy blur
It works with landscapes etc but not all pictures
 
fred98tj said:
What most people who use cellphone cameras (or to be more accurate, what most people who use cellphone cameras and post about them) seem to completely fail to understand, is that sharpness (detail, textures, etc.) is way way down on the list of things that makes a “good photograph“.
Click to expand...

What photographers seem to completely fail to understand is that the majority of cell phone pictures aren't artistic. The majority of cell phone pictures are evidentiary, like a crime scene photographer, where somebody wants to capture all the details of something to extract information later. These are things like a sign with directions, their parking spot, a business card, etc. Here, detail, sharpness, contrast, focus and macro performance are far more important than artistic photography where we care about composition and lighting.
 
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