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https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/12/iphone-7-plus-sensor-size/

the telephoto sensor is 1/3.6" vs 1/3", pretty significantly smaller.

Thanks for that info. A little larger since the aperture is smaller. Still cannot make up the difference though to equal the 1/3" sensor and 1.8 aperture. Although I do wonder why not include the larger sensor with the wide angle lens. That might have been enough to surpass Samsung for low light capability.
 
Thanks for that info. A little larger since the aperture is smaller. Still cannot make up the difference though to equal the 1/3" sensor and 1.8 aperture. Although I do wonder why not include the larger sensor with the wide angle lens. That might have been enough to surpass Samsung for low light capability.

You have it backwards. The main camera has a larger sensor and a larger aperture. The telephoto camera uses a more restrictive aperture and a pretty significantly smaller sensor. That's why the software is setup to use the normal camera and digital zoom even at 2x when the lightning gets low.

1/3" is larger than 1/3.6"

Just for reference again:
iPhone 7 sensors.png
 
You have it backwards. The main camera has a larger sensor and a larger aperture. The telephoto camera uses a more restrictive aperture and a pretty significantly smaller sensor. That's why the software is setup to use the normal camera and digital zoom even at 2x when the lightning gets low.

1/3" is larger than 1/3.6"

Just for reference again:
View attachment 662462

ahh... gotcha. just not sure why they would not use the same larger sensor in both.
 
Nice troll. iPhone 7 camera is truly stunning, DSLR in your pocket basically.
No, it's actually not that great. It's good, but not fantastic. And the tele lens is pretty gimmicky I think. Being able to shoot raw is nice, but it's not terribly helpful on a phone and I suppose thats why people have real DSLRs. Needless to say, I'm underwhelmed by the 7 plus's camera as well. Thankfully I have a nice DSLR :D.
 
ahh... gotcha. just not sure why they would not use the same larger sensor in both.

I'm thinking it was due to size and cramming all that stuff in there. The purpose is pretty clear, it's for portrait shots in good light, so not a lot of advantage to put so much time, energy and possible design changes for something it wasn't intended for.

The problem is, there are a lot of misconceptions about that secondary camera and it's abilities.
 
I'm thinking it was due to size and cramming all that stuff in there. The purpose is pretty clear, it's for portrait shots in good light, so not a lot of advantage to put so much time, energy and possible design changes for something it wasn't intended for.

The problem is, there are a lot of misconceptions about that secondary camera and it's abilities.

That smaller sensor also gives them "reach". Personally, i haven't been impressed with the secondary camera. I was going to upgrade, but find my 6s plus just fine. I usually upgrade every year so feels weird to skip this one.
 
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That smaller sensor also gives them "reach". Personally, i haven't been impressed with the secondary camera. I was going to upgrade, but find my 6s plus just fine. I usually upgrade every year so feels weird to skip this one.
I agree - the secondary camera isn't impressive. I'm happy with everything else about the phone, though!
 
I think how useful you find the secondary telephoto camera is going to depend largely on your lifestyle and where you live. Personally, I live in California and go on hikes in the mountains around where I live all the time, go to the beach where there is a lot of pretty scenery and cliffs, and I find the telephoto camera incredibly useful. Most of the views I get while hiking in the mountains or at the beach are of far off scenery (other mountains, waves way out, miles of rocky shoreline, etc) and the wide angle lens just can't capture any of those things that are far away very well. You can be standing in front of a massive mountain, but if you take a picture of it with the wide angle lens, it looks tiny as hell. I find that the telephoto takes shots that match up more closely with what I see and show off a lot of the scenery and landscapes I shoot a lot better.

As an example, here are two shots, one from the Galaxy S7 Edge and one from the 7 Plus telephoto lens. Now neither of these turned out to be super awesome or exciting shots, but I just want to highlight what the telephoto lens allows you to do. These photos were taken in almost exactly the same spot on the trail and I was trying to show the building and radar there on the top of the mountain. And the great thing is, if I want to get a wide shot including more of the surroundings, the iPhone 7 Plus gives me that option too.

S7 Edge
SZjpmaA.jpg


iPhone 7 Plus
sa66rIj.jpg
 
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It's funny the op made this thread and then just vanished, didn't even comment.
 
Here are a few other comparisons to other phone cameras where I think the telephoto lens helped me to get a better shot of things that were far away.

First up, Moto X Pure 20 MP camera vs iPhone 7 Plus. Same exact spot. The shot from the Moto X Pure is about 50% rocks even though that's not really what I was trying to shoot because the lens was just so wide there was nothing I could do. The iPhone 7 Plus shot makes the mountains in the background look bigger (how they actually look in real life) and gets a lot of the rocks out of the frame. The 7 Plus also got me some detail on a ship that you would have hardly seen had it been there for the Moto X shot.

Moto X Pure
LJZaQ4d.jpg


iPhone 7 Plus
fXNahf0.jpg


In this second shot, the telephoto just allowed me to get a much closer shot of the bridge and ferry compared to the Nexus 5 shot.

Nexus 5
sXHVpum.jpg


iPhone 7 Plus
6C6T5iA.jpg


Finally, I wanted to get a shot of the top of the Ferry building with some tall buildings in the background. With the Nexus 5, I couldn't help but get all of the crappy tents and people in the foreground. Walking closer would have given a worse angle and you wouldn't see any of the tall buildings behind. The 7 Plus tele lens allowed me to zoom past all of the foreground chaos and just capture what I originally wanted to capture.

Nexus 5
CBI2WBK.jpg


iPhone 7 Plus
sUlyDOo.jpg



I could seriously go on all day with comparisons like this, so it really surprises me that a lot of people are saying the telephoto lens is a gimmick or not very useful. To me, it has so far been one of the most useful camera advancements in smartphones since... ever. I use it all the time to capture things that just weren't possible with a smartphone before due to the wide angle lenses used on all previous smartphones.
 
It's funny the op made this thread and then just vanished, didn't even comment.
That's most likely because the title was patently false. And with so many actual photographers giving their input the original trolling nature of the thread failed. It's quite clear that each of the phones and their cameras have strengths and weaknesses. Such that neither is grossly better than the other. Subject matter, lighting conditions favor one camera over the other, but only slightly. As a carry along camera attached to your portable computing device (no longer a phone) either will serve well. If you are interested in photography a DSLR is still the way to go.
 
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Wait, the Nexus 5X has a larger sensor but takes crappy pictures? Can anyone explain?
 
Wait, the Nexus 5X has a larger sensor but takes crappy pictures? Can anyone explain?
There is a lot more involved these days than just sensor size for great pictures. Software, combining multiple pictures, multiple sensors, sensor design, individual sensor element size vs surrounding dead space, lens composition and layers, processor speed. Each successive camera/software/processor improvement offers more and more capabilities such that a single feature no longer can account for "crappyness" or "goodness" (technical terms :D) of a picture in given condition.
 
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