Quality of Photos

[redman042]

Apple's shots are real unedited iPhone shots. Of course, they carefully plan the shooting conditions and use tripods and perhaps additional lighting, and they take 1000s of shots and select the best five or so.

My wife and I have taken many frame-able shots from our iPhones, including prior-gen iPhones. It is possible. But you have to have an eye for photography and know what conditions are most ideal for a great shot.

If you zoom in on a photo after shooting it with your iPhone, yes you will see some graininess and lack of detail that will not compare favorably with a DSLR shot. The lenses and image sensors on DSLRs are MUCH larger and more refined than anything on a smartphone. That's just physics. But for a typical uncropped print at a typical size (say 8x10 or less), an iPhone image shot in good lighting conditions will look great.

My wife and I love to take pictures, and we own a DSLR, but these days we are confident taking just our phones to 90% of outings where we want to take pictures. We reserve the DSLR for special cases where we are aiming for images that we can frame in large format. That's not very often.

 

[Genkakuzai]

This is a case where I wish we could define the default camera app.

Yup that would certainly help quite a bit.

 

[Genkakuzai]

Apple's shots are real unedited iPhone shots. Of course, they carefully plan the shooting conditions and use tripods and perhaps additional lighting, and they take 1000s of shots and select the best five or so.

My wife and I have taken many frame-able shots from our iPhones, including prior-gen iPhones. It is possible. But you have to have an eye for photography and know what conditions are most ideal for a great shot.

If you zoom in on a photo after shooting it with your iPhone, yes you will see some graininess and lack of detail that will not compare favorably with a DSLR shot. The lenses and image sensors on DSLRs are MUCH larger and more refined than anything on a smartphone. That's just physics. But for a typical uncropped print at a typical size (say 8x10 or less), an iPhone image shot in good lighting conditions will look great.

My wife and I love to take pictures, and we own a DSLR, but these days we are confident taking just our phones to 90% of outings where we want to take pictures. We reserve the DSLR for special cases where we are aiming for images that we can frame in large format. That's not very often.

While I agree with the vast majority of what you're saying there are two scenarios where any smartphone will fall short; low light photography, due to a tiny sensor, and any time you need either tele and/or are shooting something along the lines of sport, i.e. when the autofocus and general layout of a smartphone simply aren't ideal. But yeah, I've printed photos I've taken with my iPhones over the years. If you're not going big it's usually fine.