I'm a budding photographer and this is the place for pursuit of my hobby. Most of what I post will be my own photos, as well as whatever knowledge base about photography I find that I feel the need to share.
Smartphone cameras are NOT getting worse. (See below for phone photography tips)
I've now seen 3 pro photographers reviewing the iPhone 16 and complaining the cameras are "worse" and blaming Apple for not including revolutionary new camera technology.
And I suppose this is partly Apple's fault. Their marketing and hype machine always goes overboard. But also, that's just how marketing works. Samsung has a "200 megapixel" sensor and Sony has a "Zeiss" lens. And I think it is unrealistic to expect smartphone companies to say "This product has entered the iterative phase and each new model will only be marginally improved over the last one."
Smartphones (from any brand) have become an appliance. You don't buy a new model of microwave every year. And you don't expect every new model of microwave to have new revolutionary technology. And that is pretty much the expectation you should have with most computer hardware from here on out.
And in some ways, that is a good thing. That means the design of the phone has pretty much been perfected and it will last you a long time if you take care of it. You will not be left behind and your phone will be able to handle any new software for most of its lifespan.
So, is Apple getting lazy or is there a reason their hardware is stagnating?
It seems that neither money nor marketing can change the laws of physics.
They cannot make transistors much smaller. Phones and computers are about as fast as current hardware designs can make them (unless there is a shocking scientific breakthrough). From here on out, heavy compute tasks that are beyond your phone or computer will be done in the cloud on giant computer clusters. Thankfully computers and phones seem to be plenty fast for the majority of tasks we ask of them.
I remember Katrina telling me her new computer didn't seem any faster. And I explained the computing tasks she does regularly were not really affected by the increased power and speed of her new computer. If something took 0.1 seconds before and now it takes 0.05 seconds, that is twice as fast. An increase in speed that looks fantastic in advertisements. But it is hard for our brains to perceive. She just didn't do anything on her computer that took it long enough for her to notice. But having a faster and more powerful computer/phone will increase its lifespan and resale value, so it is still prudent to get the best things you can afford at time of purchase.
And I'm afraid smartphone cameras are hitting their own hardware limitations. They can't make the sensors much larger to get better depth of field and low light performance. And cramming in more megapixels doesn't actually add much more detail, if any.
It's physics.
Again.
You cannot get any more performance out of a small plastic lens. Why do you think pro photographers haul around 10 pound lenses still?
There is a formula for detail that never seems to be explained in any camera marketing.
Here is the simplified version...
Detail = Sensor x Lens
Let's say 1 is perfection. You have a sensor that performs at 0.5 and a lens that performs at 0.2.
The total detail will be 0.1.
But in the new model you increase the performance of the sensor to 0.8. WOW! That's so close to 1!
The total detail will be... 0.16.
Now let's imagine we've discovered a magic, physics-defying tiny plastic lens that performs at 0.8 as well.
The total detail jumps to 0.64!
But we all get sucked into a wormhole because we violated the laws of the universe.
Even if you were to design a near perfect (perfect is impossible) sensor that scores 0.99.
Without that magic plastic lens... 0.198
This is why I put Samsung's "200 megapixel" sensors in quotes. Because when paired with the same tiny plastic lens, there isn't much improvement. And that's why a 12 megapixel DSLR from 10 years ago with a giant honking lens can still capture more detail.
Most of the quality from smartphone cameras comes from the computational software processing. Phones actually take many photos at once and combine them to get you a decent image.
While that is still improving a little bit each generation, those improvements are stagnating as well. Until image processing can do a better job of inventing more detail realistically, smartphones are going to have to obey the laws of physics.
So... why are photographers saying the iPhone cameras are worse?
First, the ultra wide angle lens looks softer in low light.
And if you zoom between 1x and 5x, the images look less detailed.
But neither of those things make the cameras *worse*. In fact, the cameras are better for the most part. It's just that Apple decided to compromise on one aspect to improve another. Probably due to market research telling them most people prioritize certain things over others when taking photos.
They increased the resolution of the ultra wide angle sensor to match the detail of the main sensor, but that seems to have lowered the low light performance of the ultra wide. So in good light, you will see an improvement in sharpness. But they could not increase the sensor size to compensate and smaller pixels can have trouble with dim conditions. They probably discovered that people mostly use that lens in good light and they would appreciate the bump in detail more.
But pro photographers often photograph in more challenging lighting conditions because you can capture a more artistic shot. I don't think I could have gotten this shot on a smartphone.
But photo normies are just taking pics of their kids doing weird kid shit.
They aren't really trying to push the limits of their ultra wide angle lenses.
And they increased the zoom of the telephoto lens to 5x from 3x because most people never used the 3x. So images at 5x look great now, but unfortunately if you use anything between 1x and 5x, your image will be *digitally* zoomed. Which is never as good as optical zoom. They basically crop the photo, zoom in, and add sharpening.
So they prioritized people having longer reach and more zoom at the expense of that middle zoom range. Every camera system makes tradeoffs and compromises.
And I hate that I always feel like I am defending Apple, because they do have misleading and dishonest marketing regarding a lot of aspects of their tech. But hating on Apple gets more clicks so content creators also make misleading and dishonest claims.
And so we are just surrounded in a circle of hyperbole from all sides.
Now, if you know these limitations, you can change your approach to photographing stuff to keep them from being an issue. You can reap the benefits without dealing with the new compromises.
Here are some tips to help owners of the new iPhone, but also everyone else too.
Smartphone Photography Tips
Whenever possible, try to use the main 1x camera at only 1x zoom.
This has the largest sensor with the most detail and works best in the lowest light. Only use the ultra wide or telephoto if you cannot get the photo otherwise. If you aren't sure you have enough light for ultra wide, take the photo, and then as a safety, take two photos with the main camera side by side and stitch them later with a pano app.
"Zoom with your feet" and don't use "in-between" zooms.
Let's say your lenses do 0.5x, 1x, and 5x zoom. Even though you have the option to use other zooms, like 2x or 3x, that is going to compromise your picture quality. It is essentially going to crop your photo and enlarge it, which causes a loss of detail. If fact, if you use 4.5x instead of 5x, your picture will probably look like trash. You are always going to get better results if you can move closer or step back so that you are using the native focal length of your chosen lens.
For example, let's say you are taking a photo and you judge the best framing to be at 4x. But you still have 10 feet of space behind you. If you back up and then zoom in to 5x, the phone will switch to that lens and you will get a much clearer picture.
Rule of thumb...
1 to 3x... try to move closer.
4 to 5x... try to move back.
If you hit a wall and end up at 4.5x, you might see if you have a panorama mode and try that instead. Switch to your 5x and do the pano. Or you can take two photos and then stitch them together with software later on. (Stitching panos with an app later will give better quality than pano mode, especially in low light.)
Low light needs stability.
Get some sort of stabilizing device for low light photos. Either a phone case that lets you stand up the phone on its own or a mini tripod.
This thing folds to the size of a credit card.
Your phone will detect when it is stable and not being handheld. It will then automatically extend its shutter speed allowing it to drink in more light and give you a better picture.
Tripods are photography magic and will improve your low light photos quite a bit. Motion blur of moving subjects can still be an issue, but photos of a cityscape or landscape will look great.
For selfies, shoot a little bit wide and then crop in.
This goes a little contrary to my earlier advice saying cropping lowers detail, but this is specifically for shooting a face. The 0.5x and 1x lenses on smartphone cameras are fairly wide angle. This can cause unflattering proportions with human faces. Wide angle lenses exaggerate distance. Near things look very near and far things look very far. To a wide angle lens, the tip of your nose looks like it is super close but your ears seem like they are a mile away. And that's why you may look a bit "alien" in your selfies.
People's natural instinct is to "fill the frame" with a face. The outer edges of a wide angle lens are more distorted than the very center. So try to keep faces away from the edges of the frame.
And one other trick you can do for selfies and pictures of faces is step back a few feet. Sometimes this is hard, especially with selfies, as your arm is only so long... but if you can take your face photos from just a little bit farther back, you will almost entirely eliminate unflattering distortion. In some cases, just stretching out your arm as far as it will go is enough.
Then you just crop the image with the framing you originally wanted, and your facial proportions will look great.
An example...
Here the distortion is bad because I am not in the center and the lens is too close to my face. The lens thinks my nose is really close and my ears are in Canada.
But when the lens is farther back the edge distortion is less prevalent and my nose and ears (relative to the lens) seem roughly the same distance away. So my proportions look great, but I don't quite have the framing I want.
But with a little cropping...
For social media there is still plenty of resolution to crop in. Cropping isn't bad, it's just always better to use it as a last resort or in a special circumstance like this. I get roughly the same framing as in my wide angle shot, but I don't look like I'm behind a door's peephole trying to sell you the Good News.
I wish they made a "mini" selfie stick that only extended a foot or so. With the main camera that is usually all people need to undo any wide angle issues. I have one of those mini tripods and that works well, but there is no activation button so I have to do a timer. Mirrors work great to help you get some selfie distance.
In any case, all cameras have limitations and compromises. Clickbait titles saying something is WORSE THAN THE OLD ONE are frustrating and wrong.
And people upgrading phones every year are silly. All current name brand smartphones have promised at least 5 years of software updates. I think Google and Samsung are offering 7 years on some models. And Apple has always just let you use your phone until it literally will not work with new software. Which has worked out to 8 years in some cases (with a battery swap).
Phones are now appliances. For now, hardware will improve 10 to 15% from generation to generation until physics breaks. So if you want a 50% improvement, wait 5 years and you'll think your new phone is awesome. If you upgrade every year, it is going to be difficult to see the change.
I hope to be starting a little course on smartphone photography in the near future. All modern phones are capable of taking amazing pictures. And as long as you understand their limitations you can mitigate or avoid them. And that is what I plan to teach.
Some people think panoramas need to be these long wide slivers of many stitched photos. But if you are too close you can just stitch 2 or 3 photos together to get the entire scene.
One pano tip, if you have people in the scene, put them in their own single photo so the stitch is more seamless.
And there are plenty of apps (including Lightroom and Photoshop) that do the stitching automagically. Takes just a few seconds.
Experimenting with black and white, and portrait shots with the only model patient enough for my work, myself. I know my backdrop is wrinkled. Some days you just have to do what you can. I had about 4x5 foot space for both myself and my equipment, and very very limited resources for backdrops. Actually that’s just a sheet pulled from a storage bin, doubled up and stuffed under a drop ceiling to hang it.
A few black and whites I took at work today. I like photographing heavy equipment. Don’t really know why. its just an interesting thing to me. A little glimpse at something a lot of people don’t really see up close. I really like the johnboat in its superman pose as well.
Exposure: The beginning of a great photo
Sill Level: Beginner
Getting a proper exposure is at the heart of all photography. I will now attempt to explain it in the simplest terms possible.
The Basics
You camera has a sensor.
This sensor collects light. Too much light and the image is bright or “overexposed.” Not enough light and your image is dark or “underexposed.”
There are 3 main elements that determine your exposure: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.
Aperture
The aperture is just an adjustable hole inside your lens that lets in light.
The bigger the hole, the more light it can let in. The smaller the hole, the less light it can let in.
Aperture is measured in f-stops. This indicates the size of the hole. Though it seems backwards, a lower number means a bigger hole. A higher number means a smaller hole.
Your lens will be rated with its maximum aperture. So if it is a “17-55mm f/4 lens”–that means f/4 is the biggest hole it can make. Most lenses can go to f/22, which would be the smallest hole it can make.
A “fast lens” is one that has a very large maximum aperture. These lenses have an f-stop of 2.8 or lower. They are great for doing photography in low light.
A large aperture (low f-stop number) can also give you shallow depth of field. This allows you to make your background blurry to better isolate your subjects.
This is a very desirable thing for many photographers, so they try to get the fastest lens they can.
Shutter Speed
Shutter speed is how long your sensor is exposed to light. Think of two sliding doors in front of the sensor. They open, let in light, and then close. A fast shutter speed lets in very little light. A slow shutter speed lets in a lot of light.
Shutter speed is measured in seconds. A fast shutter speed will be a fractional value, like 1/500th of a second. A slow shutter speed can be entire seconds.
Your camera might display fractions as just the bottom number in the fraction. So 1/500th would just show as 500. Whole seconds will have a double quotation mark after. So 5 seconds will appear as 5".
Faster shutter speeds let in less light, but will allow you to freeze action.
Slower shutter speeds let in more light, allowing you to take images in darker environments. With a long enough exposure, you can make night look like day.
With slow shutter speeds you risk your image blurring due to your hands shaking the camera or movement of the subjects in your photos. So if you do a long exposure, you will almost certainly need a very still subject and a tripod.
There is a formula for keeping camera shake from blurring your photo. You just put 1 over the length of your lens. So if your lens is 50mm, you need a shutter speed of 1/50th or faster. Note: This will not stop blurring due to your subject moving.
ISO
ISO is the amplification of your sensor. Similar to the volume knob on your radio, ISO amplifies the sensitivity of the sensor so you can increase your shutter speed or make your aperture smaller. It makes the light “louder.” However, this can come at a cost. The more you amplify the sensor, the more noise will show up in your image.
Some cameras can go to a very high ISO and have very little noise. These cameras are usually frickin’ expensive. As technology advances, cheaper cameras get better and have less noise at higher ISOs.
Getting the Balance
A proper exposure requires balancing aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to get your desired result.
To get shallow depth of field you’ll need a large aperture. So you make your f-stop the lowest number possible. But that lets in a lot of light, so you need a fast shutter speed to balance it out.
To take a long exposure, your shutter speed will now let in a ton of light. To keep from overexposing you may need to make your aperture very small so the image does not overexpose.
If it is darker and things are moving, you’ll need a fast shutter speed and a large aperture. But you can’t get a fast enough shutter speed to avoid blur. So you raise your ISO to amplify the light, allow you to get the proper exposure, and keep your subjects from blurring. Yes, it will cause your image to have some noise, but it is a worthy compromise to get the image you desire.
Photography is often about making compromises. Sacrificing a little bit of quality in one area to create the intended effect with a proper exposure. Learning this balancing act can take years to truly master and in further posts I will go deeper into how to figure out how to get the best exposure possible for any situation.
TL;DR
Exposure is the amount of light captured on your sensor or film
Not enough light = underexposed
Too much light = overexposed
Aperture is the hole in your lens that lets in different amounts of light
A large hole is a small f-stop
A small hole is a large f-stop
A large hole creates shallow depth of field (sharp subject, blurry background)
A shutter opens and closes to expose your sensor for different amounts of time
A fast shutter speed freezes motion, but lets in less light
A slow shutter speed lets in a lot of light, but can cause motion blur if subject is not still
ISO is the amplification of the sensor
HIGH ISO makes the image brighter, but creates noise
LOW ISO makes the image darker, but gives you the cleanest result
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