Looks really good, great choice of colors, beautiful gradients. 8x also impressive.
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iPhone 17 Pro Unimpressed with 17 series camera quality
DeftwillP
macrumors 6502a
Specs on your dob? Looks like a huge primary cell. My xt8 has never given me very good pics.
ToddH
macrumors 68040
I have a 5” f/10 Celestron cassegrain / spotting scope. I bought it on Amazon a couple of years ago.
Did you use. Ight mode for 30”?
ToddH
macrumors 68040
miemo
macrumors member
Well that was quick, basically just had to wait over a weekend to get a new device in (shipped from completely different part of Europe vs where the old one was sent to, so clearly not the same unit).
Have had the new 17 Pro unit for a couple of days, haven't had a chance for a thorough review but at quick glance seems to be quite a bit better than my previous unit on the same bookshelf test shots – but still not quite on the level of 14 Pro in ProRAWs, esp. if the ISO gets raised from 100 or so. And HEICs still look better than ProRAWs in terms of details. And I still occasionally get photos that are completely unsharp, looking like a misaligned focusing.
Unless anything major pops up later with more detailed testing, I'll probably stick with this one and just lower my expectations, blaiming the overall era of ens***tification we're living in – and keep on carrying a proper camera with me more often.
ToddH
macrumors 68040
I started using the No Fusion app for HEIF & ProRaw photos. So much better than the default camera app. However I still use the default camera at time because I like photographic Styles when shooting HEIC shots. I believe I posted a YouTube video link in this thread for No Fusion. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend watching. The app is great.
Anyway I hope your replacement iPhone is better. I’m getting to where I’m buying the new iPhone three months after release date as I feel quality control is better. Manufacturing is slower and more precise. I look forward to reading your review of the replacement.
The same photographer Alex Artimage made a new in depth video of new fusion,
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kamikazeeMC
macrumors 6502a
Nice, answered my questions, what shooting modes and level of processing can be disabled. I can hide buttons I don't use as I just want a clean app where I'm shooting in auto (not a fan of touch screen ergonomics), easy exposure comp compared to stock app. I would use HEIF+ only with recipe, no sharpness, mid latitude, some grain and glow.
This defiantly makes the overall package of an iPhone more appealing to me. I dislike carrying stuff, went from a DSLR, to a mirrorless Fuji to a Ricoh GR. I don't have high requirements of a camera, for a while I was thinking phones were getting good enough for me, then came excessive post processing (nor do I want to edit RAWs). I also like the iPhone will brave weather elements better.
This defiantly makes the overall package of an iPhone more appealing to me. I dislike carrying stuff, went from a DSLR, to a mirrorless Fuji to a Ricoh GR. I don't have high requirements of a camera, for a while I was thinking phones were getting good enough for me, then came excessive post processing (nor do I want to edit RAWs). I also like the iPhone will brave weather elements better.
miemo
macrumors member
Have been planning to give NoFusion a spin for a while now, Alex's earlier video raised my interest and I did also watch the recent comprehensive walkthrough he made. Will be trialing it with my new unit now that we finally start to have some sunlight after the long dark winter…
After using the 17 pro for almost 6 months, I’ve found:
- it’s best at stills
- image quality falls off a cliff in most semi-dark interior environments
- noise reduction turns things to mush and has introduced artefacts for me
- it excels in bright environments
- freezing motion is only possible in very well lit environments because the phone aggressively reduces the shutter speed in low light (because of the fixed aperture) and increases it to compensate for bright environments (thus allowing motion to be ‘frozen’)
- night mode kicks in a lot and introduces motion blur (I know to turn this off but most casual users have no concept of shutter speed and leave it on, leading to blur. My cousin took a dslr on holiday and tried to get shots of him at the northern lights, and it used a 20 second shutter speed… The background was good, but he looked like a ghost haha)
-24mp on my 14 year old apsc looks better than the 48mp mode on my iPhone
- why no 24mp proraw? 🙁
- mixed opinions on proraw. It’s not as good as raw. But true raw is limited to 12mp and reveals a lot of the limitations of the tiny sensor
Most of the tests in the videos I have seen are in bright environments and are stills (very little motion in the pictures). If you’re inside and taking pictures of subjects who like to move (animals, kids, etc), the images will most likely be blurry (motion blur)
Interested to hear how other people are finding it.
- it’s best at stills
- image quality falls off a cliff in most semi-dark interior environments
- noise reduction turns things to mush and has introduced artefacts for me
- it excels in bright environments
- freezing motion is only possible in very well lit environments because the phone aggressively reduces the shutter speed in low light (because of the fixed aperture) and increases it to compensate for bright environments (thus allowing motion to be ‘frozen’)
- night mode kicks in a lot and introduces motion blur (I know to turn this off but most casual users have no concept of shutter speed and leave it on, leading to blur. My cousin took a dslr on holiday and tried to get shots of him at the northern lights, and it used a 20 second shutter speed… The background was good, but he looked like a ghost haha)
-24mp on my 14 year old apsc looks better than the 48mp mode on my iPhone
- why no 24mp proraw? 🙁
- mixed opinions on proraw. It’s not as good as raw. But true raw is limited to 12mp and reveals a lot of the limitations of the tiny sensor
Most of the tests in the videos I have seen are in bright environments and are stills (very little motion in the pictures). If you’re inside and taking pictures of subjects who like to move (animals, kids, etc), the images will most likely be blurry (motion blur)
Interested to hear how other people are finding it.
miemo
macrumors member
100% agree with these. And this is also with my new, better unit.
My 14 Pro was much more consistent in low light, it didn't suddenly fall into mush like the 17 Pro does very quickly even in low triple-digit ISOs. And weirdly at least for me it seems that HEIFs actually keep the details better in low light than ProRAW, used to be absolutely the opposite with the 14 Pro.
In bright sunlight things look pretty great throughout the cameras, but then again that has been the case with much less expensive phones for quite some time already, so the bar is not very high there.
ToddH
macrumors 68040
Didn’t the 14 pro have a CMOS sensor instead of a Bayer? If so, that would explain a lot for IQ
ToddH
macrumors 68040
Excellent feedback.. I use No Fusion constantly. The Fuji Nostalgia Negative (NN) and Kodak portra 400 (K1) are my favorites. K1 works best on foliage, NN I use for a slight retro look for indoor photography as I really like the look of it. I don’t use my Sony A7RV much anymore, all iPhone now. The iPhone is just too convenient and fun to use.
I am also not really impressed with the 17 P M main camera. Made a few shots of a test chart to compare it with my old 13 P M and the photos from the older phone were sharper.
Comparison
The thread is in german but I think the screenshots speak for themselves.
Comparison
The thread is in german but I think the screenshots speak for themselves.
Ok, my rose tinted glasses have finally worn out like a paint that is chipping off some 17 Pro models.
Initially I’ve started this thread after watching numerous reviews of the phone. And I saw a common pattern: soft focus, blurred images. I didn’t even own the phone at the moment and I know it was a bad move to talk about the camera you don’t own yet.
But in fact because of silly accident few green lines appeared on my old 11 Pro display I upgraded somewhere in February. Instead of fixing it I decided that “it’s time” and finally bought 17 Pro.
I was testing camera a lot and all the modes. At first everything seemed good and fun. But then I realized my photos are not as sharp either. I blamed processing (and it is a big part in the equation too). In pure RAW mode and even in ProRes RAW I could clearly see that phone doesn’t actually focus into ∞ as it is supposed to. This is an issue on main 24mm camera, telephoto seems to be “ok”.
This is both hardware and software issue and Apple does nothing to test quality of their lenses.
Their post processing also is to blame. HDR look, gain maps, noise reduction all make iPhone images soft and cheap.
Yesterday I had found video comparison of old Canon point-and-shoot with smaller sensor and 17 Pro. In my opinion, 17 Pro totally lost in terms of landscapes. Lens design doesn’t make it any favor either - natural lens bokeh is pure trash, and it has been like that for many iPhone generations already.
It is a sad state of iPhone and I honestly dunno what to do. On Android I can at least download Open Camera, enable Camera API 2, disable all processing and noise reduction and finally make PHOTOS that qualify as PHOTOS, not AI generated slop that iPhone camera makes.
ProRAW is useless too. I was testing it a lot. Yes it can remove sharpening, but it doesn’t make textures any better. Also I don’t really get why this camera is labeled as 48MP since it is not even a default mode and also there is almost no detail increase compared to 12 mp. And yes, these photos are still not croppable. I mean you can crop them but result will look nasty, not like something you would expect from nearly 1’ sensor camera
Initially I’ve started this thread after watching numerous reviews of the phone. And I saw a common pattern: soft focus, blurred images. I didn’t even own the phone at the moment and I know it was a bad move to talk about the camera you don’t own yet.
But in fact because of silly accident few green lines appeared on my old 11 Pro display I upgraded somewhere in February. Instead of fixing it I decided that “it’s time” and finally bought 17 Pro.
I was testing camera a lot and all the modes. At first everything seemed good and fun. But then I realized my photos are not as sharp either. I blamed processing (and it is a big part in the equation too). In pure RAW mode and even in ProRes RAW I could clearly see that phone doesn’t actually focus into ∞ as it is supposed to. This is an issue on main 24mm camera, telephoto seems to be “ok”.
This is both hardware and software issue and Apple does nothing to test quality of their lenses.
Their post processing also is to blame. HDR look, gain maps, noise reduction all make iPhone images soft and cheap.
Yesterday I had found video comparison of old Canon point-and-shoot with smaller sensor and 17 Pro. In my opinion, 17 Pro totally lost in terms of landscapes. Lens design doesn’t make it any favor either - natural lens bokeh is pure trash, and it has been like that for many iPhone generations already.
It is a sad state of iPhone and I honestly dunno what to do. On Android I can at least download Open Camera, enable Camera API 2, disable all processing and noise reduction and finally make PHOTOS that qualify as PHOTOS, not AI generated slop that iPhone camera makes.
ProRAW is useless too. I was testing it a lot. Yes it can remove sharpening, but it doesn’t make textures any better. Also I don’t really get why this camera is labeled as 48MP since it is not even a default mode and also there is almost no detail increase compared to 12 mp. And yes, these photos are still not croppable. I mean you can crop them but result will look nasty, not like something you would expect from nearly 1’ sensor camera
I switched to a small compact camera that I try to carry in my pocket and only use my phone as a secondary camera. Now I don't have to upgrade my phone every few years. It's a shame that phones have eaten away the small compact P&S market though. I don't see it ever bouncing back.