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

[MacDawg]

If you spend much time on MR at all you will find that the photo snobs don't take a back seat to the audio snobs
Both are quick to tell you how beneath them you really are
Go sit in a corner, because you will never take pictures as beautifully or hear music so clearly as they do

 

[Kebabselector]

I like having a 50mm lenses. Very useful thing. So glad to have it on my new 7.

But calling the 50mm lens "telephoto" or this silly half-ass artificial effect, ... It's just kinda embarrassing for Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephoto_lens

Kinda embarrassing

 

[mixel]

Bit a Marmite picture for you all

Aha! This is one of the most interesting ones to me as it shows clearly where the focus levels are. I really hope they can get the artifacts and steps removed in the long run.

Guinness flavour marmite?
[doublepost=1475153275][/doublepost]

Can the Nikon make phone calls?

I guess the point is everyone has a device capable of making phone calls at this point, so it's not like anyone meaning to primarily text/make phonecalls needs to buy more iphones...

 

[Kebabselector]

Guinness flavour marmite?

Was a limited edition a while back.

 

[dwaltwhit]

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

much to the chagrin of camera companies

 

[FilipeTeixeira]

It's hardly dead. It's alive and kicking. You just can't assume that everyone who owns a camera, whether a phone cam or dSLR, want's to create a compelling "artistic" photograph. Phone cam or dSLR, they're all good and have the capacity of making photos that stir a viewer's imagination. Still, most people just want to document their lives and family. Nothing wrong with that.

Fortunately, with a phone cam, anyone can make an expressive photo anytime they feel inclined and motivated.

It has nothing to do with being artistic or not. Art can be a form of documenting things, such as writing.
What I'm talking about is people taking photos of bushes like on this post, and stating that they are "beautiful photos". I am a photographer, and some years ago, I saw friends doing amazing things. Nowadays, people buy a camera, or a cellphone, and they apply filters, a bit of DOF and puff they thing that everything is great. Same with design. Everybody who downloads an illegal version of illustrator, calls himself a designer. Which is wrong as hell and you see it everywhere. The problem is that the real artists are being forgotten. I've heard not long ago that Sebastião Salgado, had weird photos because they weren't sharp enough.

 

[840quadra]

I am really Meh and most of the example images.

You can actually get really good DOF with iOS cameras as far back as the 4S, it's all in the shot compisition, and lighting. In some cases, going into apps like Camera+ and others can further enhance this, as you can lock the f stop to a wider aperture and adjust exposure and ISO manually. I honestly didn't see much DOF in some of the example images.

The shots below are taken using iOS devices that don't have this new feature, and using the stock camera app. Neither are what I would consider to be good DOF images, but, do posses some acceptable background blur.


IPhone 7, Taken using a 5S in low light



Taken outside in the rain, using a iPhone 7

 

[olorsha]

Maybe I'm just crazy or misunderstanding something, but hasn't the iPhone had the ability to take such pictures for quite some time? Focusing subjects in the foreground while keeping subjects in the back progressively out of focus (which is what this seems to be doing) or vice versa, has been a capability of iPhones certainly at least since the 5. How is this different from that? Here is a picture shot with my 6. Can someone explain in what way this is different than the photos in the story? I'm not trying to be a smart alec here; I genuinely do not understand

 

[pee jay bee]

That Chanel bottle is really bad - hope it will do better than that, just got my iP7 plus yesterday

 

[citysnaps]

It has nothing to do with being artistic or not. Art can be a form of documenting things, such as writing.
What I'm talking about is people taking photos of bushes like on this post, and stating that they are "beautiful photos". I am a photographer, and some years ago, I saw friends doing amazing things. Nowadays, people buy a camera, or a cellphone, and they apply filters, a bit of DOF and puff they thing that everything is great. Same with design. Everybody who downloads an illegal version of illustrator, calls himself a designer. Which is wrong as hell and you see it everywhere. The problem is that the real artists are being forgotten. I've heard not long ago that Sebastião Salgado, had weird photos because they weren't sharp enough.

Disagree. Strongly.

I'll be the last to judge what other people do with their cameras. Not my place.

If others are shooting bushes and enjoying the experience that's great. Why should it bother me? It's not hurting me, or the craft/art of photography.

Most people with a phone cam will simply use it to document their life and friends. There's nothing wrong with that. Some, with an artistic bent, will go deeper and embrace photography more fully, creating amazing work.

Your camera, your pixels, you shoot whatever you want. And that's good.

My camera, my pixels, I'll shoot whatever I want. And that's good as well.

Like cream, good photography will still rise to the top. There's a lot out there.

 

[cube]

Can the Nikon make phone calls?

This one can make phone calls, but I am not sure how sturdy the lens is:

http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/smartphones/galaxy-s/SM-C1010ZWABTU

 

[BeatCrazy]

The cloud and edge of the building is really really buggy in the first photograph.

It's good for a phone. But if you use a high-end DSLR and Lens, it's hard to not notice the flaws (they're everywhere...).

Yep. And it's almost has "too much" of the bokeh effect, IMO.

 

[Macinva]

Awesome photos. As a DLSR owner, I fully welcome being able to take the same shot on a device I always have with me and doesn't make me look like a tourist.

 

[dotnet]

Pfff. Haters gonna hate!

Hehe, see, I'm a Nikon man. I can out-snob any Canon shooter

The gist is, if you don't know what you're doing then no amount of gear is going to save you. You simply chose the wrong lens for these critter shots. Short ultra-fast lenses produce copious amounts of longitudinal CA, and the Canon 50/1.2 is a particularly bad example. It also delivers extremely busy (i.e. not creamy) bokeh in the transitional zone, which ruined the second shot. A longer lens, such as a 200/2, perhaps stopped down to f/2.8 or f/4 or so, would have given much better results in these situations.

 

[1041958]

So why aren't we seeing comparisons between the iPhone and its competitors?

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Tough to bash Apple when it's better. So let's compare it to something completely out of its range (a DSLR) instead. Then we can trash it all we want.

 

[citysnaps]

So why aren't we seeing comparisons between the iPhone and its competitors?

Oh, sorry, I forgot. Tough to bash Apple when it's better. So let's compare it to something completely out of its range (a DSLR) instead. Then we can trash it all we want.

Indeed. This graphic sums it up. In comparison with other phones, and with non-phone cameras.

.

 

[fredr500]

I have a Canon 5D mark II that I use a lot. But my wife takes a lot of snaps with her iPhone by just opening the camera app and hitting the shutter icon. I cringe as I see the camera shake as she does it but her pictures are find for her Facebook posts and they look ok. This will make them look a lot better. I don't see a problem here other than I need to make sure to keep my skills up.

 

[daimos]

I would like a gadget
- designed as a camera with "lots" of buttons
- bright lens, big sensor
- still pocketable
- then as an afterthought put iOs or Android in it

 

[cube]

I would like a gadget
- designed as a camera with "lots" of buttons
- big lens, big sensor
- then as an afterthought put iOs or Android in it

http://www.samsung.com/uk/search/?q=galaxy nx

But not many buttons, or pocketable. And you cannot make phone calls.

 

[Jack Burton]

Damn these shots are impressive.

 

[rp2011]

Uhhhhh..... didn't think this one through did you? Telephoto is *any lens* that's longer than your "normal" lens. This lens is double the length of the normal lens.

When trying to be pedantic about something, at least succeed.

Sounds like you're the one being pedantic, and you succeeded!

 

[wdowell]

Frankly, with the first beta, it looks terrible. Photoshop can give more precise line declinations than this. Which begs the question - what's the point!? Of course, following forward a year or two it could be pretty amazing.

 

[needfx]

The cloud and edge of the building is really really buggy in the first photograph.

It's good for a phone. But if you use a high-end DSLR and Lens, it's hard to not notice the flaws (they're everywhere...).

and the eagle-eye award goes to.... [drum roll]

 

[mlochowitz]

I've spent more money on camera gear than apple products. This reminds of of when we had early digital cameras and people who shot film and slides were talking about how awful the digital files were compared to film.

The iPhone 7 images are pretty good, and they will only get better and better. 9 depth layers today, 1000+ in a few years. I'm sure we will have apps that will simulate specific characteristics from different lens. Do you want an image that looks like a canon 50mm 1.2...no problem. How about a classic Leica?

Depth of field is a tool to help tell a story. You can isolate your subject, set a mood and minimize distracting backgrounds. Or you can show more background and give a photo a sense of place. The iPhone can now do both.

 

[Dave00]

It's interesting, and gives you lots of creative options. But it's also not a true bokeh, where you should see a gradient of the level of blurring. This isn't obvious when there's just a foreground and a background, like with the child picture above. But when you shoot something in perspective, you can see the somewhat binary effect of in-focus or out-of-focus. If you're used to taking and viewing photos with actual shallow depth-of-field, the artificial effect can be somewhat jarring. So, you have to reserve its use for appropriate scenes and situations.

I think what some of the "SLR snobs" are objecting to is the idea that simply blurring the background makes something a beautiful photo. There are two main uses for bokeh. One is to de-emphasize the background so that it doesn't distract from the foreground. The other is to create more a of a subtle difference between parts of the scene to replicate what your eyes see. It's not just about whether or not to have a bokeh. It's about how much of a bokeh to create (or, more technically, how shallow to have a depth of field.) To photos of the same scene, both with bokeh, can have dramatically different artistic appeal depending on the degree to which the effect is applied.

Regardless, it's nice that Apple is attempting to give more creative control to photographers. It's an artificial effect - actual bokeh is not possible given the physics of the lens, unless you are shooting something very close to the camera - but it's got real possibilities, particularly as the beta function is refined.

Dave