MacRumors Readers Share Beautiful Depth-of-Field Photos Shot With iPhone 7 Plus

[sidewinder3000]

Hooray, now we'll have a thread full of photography snobs talking about how their DSLR is sooooo much better and how these photos look terrible by comparison.

At first I thought maybe your comment might be a tad bit too snarky. But after reading some of the defensive, self-important and self-righteous comments by the "I own expensive gear" club, I realize how prescient you were.

 

[cube]

Too many people here assume that when somebody talks about a proper camera they mean expensive gear.

What is expensive is Apple stuff.

 

[ke-iron]

Where's the optical zoom? This is the first thing consumers would look at in a point and shoot.

[Mostly the wrong way, focusing at the long end without paying attention to wide angle or aperture.]

You missed the whole point.

The point is the iPhone 7 takes fantastic photos whether you like it or not. Doesn't matter that it isn't good as some point and shoot or dslr, doesn't matter that it doesn't have multiple optical zoom, doesn't matter that the bokeh is created in combination of both hardware and software or is artificial, doesn't matter that it isn't like bokeh on multi thousand dollar cameras, it just doesn't matter.

It is a cellphone that takes fantastic pictures that people all around the world loves. That is what matters.

 

[Light in the Dark]

Hooray, now we'll have a thread full of photography snobs talking about how their DSLR is sooooo much better and how these photos look terrible by comparison.

It's rater that we will have a thread full of "It's Apple it must be the best snobs" don't understanding that this bokeh is hurting eyes. There are app's that do the same. But not even close You get the same results as with good optical lenses.
And... using the iPhone when it's getting dark is like taking pictures from sand on a beach.
Except Ren Kockwell will throw away all his gear only using the new iPhone for his growing family, so this Phone is genius for the fact that we are saved from his awfull reviews.

 

[CarlJ]

There's plenty of people that think they don't need a camera because they have a phone.

And they are right.

I think most of the time it's just ignorance.

It really depends on your definition of "need", doesn't it? If most people taking pictures with their phones are happy with the pictures they get, then they don't need a DSLR. Could they learn to take substantially better pictures with a DSLR and a two week basic photography course? Sure. But they're not required to pass any sort of photographic skills test - Ansel Adams isn't going to come grade their work - they just need to be able to take pictures that make them happy.

Apple is working towards cameras, in their phones, that are more likely to make people happy, because the cameras are more likely to take pictures that look good, with minimal input from the user (i.e. user simply says, by choosing a setting, "ooh, this is a portrait - I mostly care just about the person who is front and center in this picture", and given that little bit of input the camera does some really smart things to make the picture look somewhat better. Perfect? Absolutely not. As good as they could get with that DSLR and two weeks of training? Highly unlikely. But the average phone buyer is unlikely to want to invest either the time or money for the DSLR and training. And they don't really care about any of that anyway, if they can take pictures with their phone that make them and their friends happy. It isn't ignorance, it's that they have a different set of goals that you have.

 

[Light in the Dark]

No - not most places. But I personally don't think I would use this effect on my phone given the results. I would rather shoot it normally and do my own blur effects when/if I wanted to. Did you see the odd borders on the images in the thread mentioned. Maybe when reduced down to a mobile screen they look perfect - but not full size/desktop size. Also I'm not really sure you can call the effect in the photos I've seen bokeh. They simply look DoF blur.

Here's an example of bokeh - it's not just about blur.

[doublepost=1475107594][/doublepost]

Exactly.

Thank You ! Saved my day. The iPhone "blur" is pain for the eyes. There are App's that do the same effect.
Shure i have a iPhone too... but this feature is really not a killer... Still looking for what makes this Phone "the best iPhone we ever build"
And... how can You get pictures whit it when the battery is allready empty after a 2 hour trainride...

 

[cube]

It really depends on your definition of "need", doesn't it? If most people taking pictures with their phones are happy with the pictures they get, then they don't need a DSLR. Could they learn to take substantially better pictures with a DSLR and a two week basic photography course? Sure. But they're not required to pass any sort of photographic skills test - Ansel Adams isn't going to come grade their work - they just need to be able to take pictures that make them happy.

Apple is working towards cameras, in their phones, that are more likely to make people happy, because the cameras are more likely to take pictures that look good, with minimal input from the user (i.e. user simply says, by choosing a setting, "ooh, this is a portrait - I mostly care just about the person who is front and center in this picture", and given that little bit of input the camera does some really smart things to make the picture look somewhat better. Perfect? Absolutely not. As good as they could get with that DSLR and two weeks of training? Highly unlikely. But the average phone buyer is unlikely to want to invest either the time or money for the DSLR and training. And they don't really care about any of that anyway, if they can take pictures with their phone that make them and their friends happy. It isn't ignorance, it's that they have a different set of goals that you have.

And again talking about DSLRs.

What I say is that when people go on holidays, they should at least take a small P&S, not just a phone.

 

[HiRez]

These are pretty good, but I can't wait for iPhone 8/9. Hoping for:

- More than 9 layers of depth. 15+ layers would give a big boost in the smoothness of blur falloff and allow for a lot of graduated blur from foreground objects very close to the lens and background objects at the same time.

- Better software handling of specular highlights being blurred. These should get special treatment to simulate optical bokeh highlights. This is not a simple problem to solve in software, but I'm confident it can be done. One cool thing about simulating these in software is you won't get the "cat's eye" effect towards the edge of frame that's typical of fast SLR lenses.

- Better handling of blur behind the edges of focused objects. Still some unpleasant artifacts present along the edges.

- User-selectable blur amount AND depth of field amount (the range that objects are focused/not blurred in), with real-time preview.

 

[dotnet]

Praise be for the nifty 50!

( https://www.flickr.com/photos/57897385@N07/28747409860/in/dateposted/ )

That nifty 50 and your DSLR conspired to produce some terrible chromatic aberration. I would have discarded that shot (or at least tried to remove the CA in PP).
[doublepost=1475129934][/doublepost]

Here's another one with the nifty fifty, and a ten dollar macro extension. Delicious! ( https://www.flickr.com/photos/57897385@N07/24378146049/in/album-72157660293166384/ )

Another example that should dissuade people from buying this lens. The bokeh is downright ugly in this shot (extremely busy), and makes the background the foreground.

If you want to diss the iPhone camera by showcasing DLSR shots then at least find some good ones.

 

[CarlJ]

What I say is that when people go on holidays, they should at least take a small P&S, not just a phone.

"should" because why, precisely?

If you mean, because their pictures won't meet your standards (or some mythical set of standards), they don't care about those standards - if the pictures make them happy that's all that really counts.

If it's that you're worried that they'll be disappointed, afterwards, with the resulting pictures from their phone, I can understand, and somewhat identify, with that logic. But, again, they aren't likely going from no camera at all to buying (say) an iPhone 7 Plus and heading out the door on their around-the-world honeymoon the next day. More likely they have experience with their phone's camera and know roughly what to expect from it, and whether they're generally happy with such results, before they take it on a trip. Yes, they'll be missing out on the better pictures they might get from more specialized equipment, but they likely don't care.

The camera I took on my honeymoon, way back when, was a Canon S500 Elph - 5 megapixels with a 3x optical zoom (it was the nicest camera I'd ever owned, at that point). Took a ton of pictures, and some of them are really fabulous, and they stand up quite well today. Didn't use the zoom much. And I think most of those pictures could have been taken just as well with the iPhone 7 Plus today, and in many cases would end up looking better than the results I got back then. (On a related note, my avatar is one of my personal favorites from that trip, an enigmatic self-portrait - my shadow on the floor of Abbey Fontevraud in France, backlit by a really lovely stained glass window - it loses a lot in the compression to avatar size, but it brings back fond memories whenever I see it. I was having fun messing with the exposure and such on that trip, specifically while shooting stained glass, trying to get it to look as sublime on "film" as it did in real life, all while only having the camera's 1.5" LCD for judging the results, until we got home. I suspect that shooting stained glass like that might give even the latest phones some trouble, getting great images in those conditions.)

 

[arobert3434]

I appreciate what Apple's trying to do, but all of these photos look kind of fake to me. They say they are computing this fancy depth map but the blurring looks uniform across the entire background no matter how far away it is. The texture of the blur does not look realistic either. Apple should try working with Nvidia on this, since they have shown more impressive results in their demos in recent years.

 

[iZac]

I think a lot of average people will never realise that this is an entirely software processed effect, that's made possible by the additional info from the dual camera system. This level of understanding fuels that frustration from SLR users.

Funnily, if Apple added this in the filters menu, photographers would not hate it so much but consumers might dismiss it as tacky.

It may never accurately replicate the optical effect of an incredibly expensive lens, but does a pretty good job for the average user.

Also, these examples prove clearly that having a pronounced DoF does not automatically make you a better photographer. The Pros can breath easy

 

[odedia]

The image of the leaves under "Chanel" is a good example. It is "almost there", but the point between sharp and blurry is too fine.

A little more software tweaking and this will be really amazing.

 

[FilipeTeixeira]

The iPhone 7 camera is indeed impressive, but I wouldn't call these photos beautiful. It's not because you have a blurry background that a photo is even close to be a good one. Same applies to people with 5000 usd cameras.
Now excuse me as I'm just going to puke a bit, now that photography as an art is dead.

 

[futurist101]

And again talking about DSLRs.

What I say is that when people go on holidays, they should at least take a small P&S, not just a phone.

You missed CarlJ's point. It doesn't matter if it's a DSLR or P&S. People take photos for different reasons and may prefer convenience over image quality. For my part, I have never understood the obsession with taking photos on vacation. My family and friends takes hundreds upon hundreds of photos with their DSLR/P&S cameras and relegate the images to a hard drive never to be seen again except when they finally decide to comb through them to delete the unwanted photos. The only photos that are really ever shared come from their phones via social media postings or emails. And honestly, when they do want to share their "high quality" photos most people could care less about viewing them.

 

[threesixty360]

80% rule ... if it does 80% of what you need it do in a far easier way then it's a go.

its the same with MP3 vs cd or vinyl. You put up with the imperfections because it's just so convenient.

I do think this feature is going damage dslr sales. The reason so many normal people buy them is to get that effect. Which you can do with a cheap nifty fifty lens on a dslr and is pretty easy to shoot. This portrait mode does 80% of that now.

I had a Panasonic gf-1 which is a small micro thirds camera capable of dslr shots and that only had 10 mega pixels. This has 12 already so in good light most shots should be pretty similar to 5-8 yr old dslrs. Which is pretty good going.

the other thing is that so much of a photo nowadays is digitally manipulated on the fly anyway or then in photoshop from the raw file. So we say it's cheating but when did you ever see a raw file posted as a finished photo? Manipulation is the name of the game , sharpness, colour corrrevtion and now brokeh to.

It's all good.

 

[x34]

I appreciate what Apple's trying to do, but all of these photos look kind of fake to me. They say they are computing this fancy depth map but the blurring looks uniform across the entire background no matter how far away it is. The texture of the blur does not look realistic either.

i agree.

 

[cube]

"should" because why, precisely?

If you mean, because their pictures won't meet your standards (or some mythical set of standards), they don't care about those standards - if the pictures make them happy that's all that really counts.

If it's that you're worried that they'll be disappointed, afterwards, with the resulting pictures from their phone, I can understand, and somewhat identify, with that logic. But, again, they aren't likely going from no camera at all to buying (say) an iPhone 7 Plus and heading out the door on their around-the-world honeymoon the next day. More likely they have experience with their phone's camera and know roughly what to expect from it, and whether they're generally happy with such results, before they take it on a trip. Yes, they'll be missing out on the better pictures they might get from more specialized equipment, but they likely don't care.

The camera I took on my honeymoon, way back when, was a Canon S500 Elph - 5 megapixels with a 3x optical zoom (it was the nicest camera I'd ever owned, at that point). Took a ton of pictures, and some of them are really fabulous, and they stand up quite well today. Didn't use the zoom much. And I think most of those pictures could have been taken just as well with the iPhone 7 Plus today, and in many cases would end up looking better than the results I got back then. (On a related note, my avatar is one of my personal favorites from that trip, an enigmatic self-portrait - my shadow on the floor of Abbey Fontevraud in France, backlit by a really lovely stained glass window - it loses a lot in the compression to avatar size, but it brings back fond memories whenever I see it. I was having fun messing with the exposure and such on that trip, specifically while shooting stained glass, trying to get it to look as sublime on "film" as it did in real life, all while only having the camera's 1.5" LCD for judging the results, until we got home. I suspect that would give even the latest phones some trouble, getting great images in those conditions.)

I am not talking about image quality, but about capturing what you really want.

 

[CarlJ]

I am not talking about image quality, but about capturing what you really want.

So if these people going on vacation are capturing what they really want, with a phone's camera, where does your "should take a P&S" fit into that picture?

 

[cube]

So if these people going on vacation are capturing what they really want, with a phone's camera, where does your "should take a P&S" fit into that picture?

If they have no adequate zoom, many times they are not taking the picture they would really like.

This is the biggest problem with phone cameras.

 

[CarlJ]

If they have no adequate zoom, many times they are not taking the picture they would really like.

Okay, that I can buy. Fair enough.

 

[PigsOnTheWing]

I appreciate what Apple's trying to do, but all of these photos look kind of fake to me. They say they are computing this fancy depth map but the blurring looks uniform across the entire background no matter how far away it is.

I agree. The example shown in the original post reminds me of fake 3D ViewMaster images. Ever see any of those? Most ViewMaster images are real 3D, where someone uses a stereo camera rig to capture separate images for each eye. But some are fake, where after-the-fact, they basically cut out the foreground from a single 2D photo (e.g., Batman & Robin) and separate it from the background (Gotham City), resulting in what looks like totally flat cardboard cutouts floating in front of a totally flat background. I always felt ripped off when I bought a set of reels like that.

 

[bniu]

iPhone 7 Plus camera is like a very good high school state champion football team.

A full frame DSLR like the Nikon D810 is like a super bowl winning NFL team. Both dominate their respective leagues but don't think that even for a second the high school team could beat a NFL team.

 

[PigsOnTheWing]

don't think that even for a second the high school team could beat a NFL team.

I'm from Detroit. I'm pretty sure there are high school teams out there who can beat the Lions.

 

[SgtPepper12]

They honestly did a good job on this one. It's far from perfect, and I would probably never use this, but for what it is, it's pretty good, especially compared to what the competition did with this. I remember some HTC phone had the same feature, and the results were completely useless in 99% of all cases with very apparent and irritating artefacts along contours and very unnatural looking blur effects. But then again, everybody who tried to add depth of field afterwards in photoshop knows that it's much more difficult than it looks. It's easy to blur the background somehow, but achieving actually natural looking results is pretty difficult, even for simple compositions.