iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras
418 comments
·July 29, 2025Lord-Jobo
stego-tech
I fully agree with your observations, and would add the irony of such a pursuit by phone makers is that serious hobbyist/amateur/professional photographers and videographers understand that cameras are inherently inaccurate, and that what we’re really capturing is an interpretation of what we’re seeing through imperfect glass, coatings, and sensor media to form an artistic creation. Sure, cameras can be used for accuracy, but those models and lenses are often expensive and aimed at specific industries.
We enjoy the imperfections of cameras because they let us create art. Smartphone makers take advantage of that by, as you put it, cranking things to eleven to manipulate psychology rather than invest in more accurate platforms that require skill. The ease is the point, but ease rarely creates lasting art the creator is genuinely proud of or that others appreciate the merit behind.
mcny
I don't spend too much time thinking about cameras or lenses but this kind of conversation makes me wonder... when I take photos of receipts or street signs or just text in general, is it possible that at some point the computational photography makes a mistake and changes text? or am I being paranoid?
matrss
Worse, Xerox scanners specifically meant for digitizing documents have changed text for a long time. The compression algorithm they used (I think even in the default settings) sometimes replaced e.g. 6 with 8, and similar things. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0 (german, but there should be news articles from back then in english as well, somewhere)
coredog64
Having uploaded my share of receipts to Concur, there's 2 checks & balances: If you still have the original, then you can correct the OCR'd value. And then Concur will recognized both line items and totals and whine if they don't match.
null
rasalas
Xerox scanners/photocopiers had this problem.
sjsdaiuasgdia
It's definitely a possibility if there's a point where LLM-based OCR is applied.
See https://www.runpulse.com/blog/why-llms-suck-at-ocr and its related HN discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42966958
mcdeltat
As someone into photography as a hobby, I don't get why we invest in smartphone cameras nor why people care. It all looks like the same trash.
If you want a photo to reminisce on, sure use a smartphone. In which case anything short of 1800s camera quality will do the job great. If you want to make a photo that might look good then do yourself a favour and get a cheap dedicated camera.
svantana
The big difference is in low light conditions, where a 10-year old phone or cheap camera will give you 90% noise, and a new-ish phone or quality camera will actually be pretty good.
dagmx
The points really boil down to:
1. Difference in focal length/ position.
2. Difference in color processing
But…the article is fairly weak on both points?
1. It’s unclear why the author is comparing different focal lengths without clarifying what they used. If I use the 24mm equivalent on either my full frame or my iPhone, the perspective will be largely the same modulo some lens correction. Same if I use the 70mm or whatever the focal length is.
2. Color processing is both highly subjective but also completely something you can disable on the phone and the other camera. It’s again, no different between the two.
It’s a poor article because it doesn’t focus on the actual material differences.
The phone will have a smaller sensor. It will have more noise and need to do more to combat it. It won’t have as shallow a depth of field.
The phone will also of course have different ergonomics.
But the things the post focuses on are kind of poor understandings of the differences in what they’re shooting and how their cameras work.
neya
I disagree, I thought the article highlighted the differences beautifully. I'm on a professionally color calibrated 27" monitor that came with one of those color calibration "certificates" at the time of purchase. The second I loaded the article, the differences were just stark. The skin tones alone were a dead giveaway.
It is no secret that Apple does a lot of post processing on their mediocre photos to make them look good - more so than most other Androids - because, it's all software. But, from the article, it is understood that the author is trying to point out that Apple could've done a better job to represent skin tones more accurately atleast. The fish-eye defense for Apple is totally understandeable, but, why are we defending the weak skin tones? Every year, they keep launching and claiming grandoise statements "This is the best smartphone camera out there is".
And no, this is not a limitation of smartphone sensors. In fact, if you look at the latest Xperia series from Sony, they have the same software from their DSLRs translated into the smartphones that addresses the skintones perfectly well.
I hope we can skip past the biases and personal preferences we have towards Apple and treat them neutrally like any other manufacturer. This "Apple can do no wrong" narrative and attacking anyone who points out their flaws is just tired and boring at this point.
ksec
>more so than most other Androids
It the old days Apple used to somewhat pride themselves with taking more "realistic" photos. While Android had it the other way around and basically post processes a lot of things as well as colouring. Mostly used for Social Media like Instagram.
And then came iPhone X. They started changing the colour of Sky and sharpening a lot of things. To the point of a lot of Photos taken by my camera looks great but also looked fake.
close04
> And then came iPhone X
Did the iOS/Android situation actually swap, or was the X an outlier? I have photos from a recent event taken entirely with phones, and the result mirrors my experience for the past many years.
iPhone (11-15 including Pro Max) photos look "normal". Very, very similar to what my eyes saw in terms of colors. Photos taken with Android phones (Pixel 9 Pro XL, recent Oppo or Samsung A series, etc.) look terribly unnatural. The blue of the sky, the green of the plants, the red of the dress, they look "enhanced" and unnatural, nothing like what my eyes saw. I can tell apart almost any iPhone vs. Android picture just by looking at the colors on the same display.
The resolution or sharpness are harder to judge with one look and I wasn't trying to compare quality. But the colors are too obvious to miss.
petre
> And then came iPhone X. They started changing the colour of Sky and sharpening a lot of things. To the point of a lot of Photos taken by my camera looks great but also looked fake.
The phone processing is lagely shaped by social media culture. Camera makers also started to incorporate in-camera editing features on vlogger targeted models.
Karrot_Kream
My hunch is that you'll find more fans of Apple's color profile than detractors. This particular shot may have done it badly (to your eyes, some people prefer the more saturated look) but as a whole I have my doubts.
Color profiles vary per body at the least and are variable based on what post processing you do. I can load up Adobe Vivid and it'll look completely different than Adobe Portrait.
Shoot a Canon, Sony, and Fuji in JPG on the same scene (so same focal length and DOF) and auto white balance. Each body will output a different image.
dkga
I get the point… but I would counterargue, perhaps facetiously, that if one needs a professionally color calibrated screen to notice the difference, then it is really not something that would matter for mere mortals.
prox
Without hyperbole I could give people a badly calibrated CRT from the 90s and it doesn’t matter to some. Some people just don’t see anything wrong with pictures, and don’t even know what to look for or what it’s called.
The inverse are the professional photographers who work with pictures day in and out, they see everything.
josephg
Do those photos look similar to you? Those color differences are huge to me. And some of the stylistic choices the image processing has made make them look like photos of different people.
ubercore
I don't think the point was to say you need the calibrated monitor to notice, rather that it's _even more stark_, and clearly points to the issues raised in the article.
And to be fair, the thrust of the article was "Why don't you see printed and frame iPhone photos", and these things that might be a bit subtle on an un-calibrated screen are going to be a big deal if you professionally print it.
dagmx
You’re somehow both reading far too in to my comment (none of my comment is specific to Apple) and not reading my comment enough (because you m missed the point about color profiles)
I’m not defending the default color choices, I’m saying that they’re comparing apples to oranges because they’re comparing an output designed to be opinionated with one that’s designed to be processed after the fact. The iPhone is perfectly capable of outputting neutral images and raw files.
ubercow13
The non-iPhone pictures are probably also in-camera jpegs so they are also 'opinionated', not RAWs.
sharpshadow
If anyone working on skin color representation try to emulate Agfa Precisa it has with the best skin colors in natural light.
nikhizzle
Thanks for this, this is very useful for a related ai project I’m working on.
dotancohen
What about other colours? Isn't that film famously under saturated for sky, water, vegetation, etc?
hopelite
You and most Apple neggers are not really any better by ignoring what all this comes down to, choices and trade-offs. Apple’s primary objective is clearly related to taking photos that provide a positive impact on the user while being as easy to do so as feasible, not accuracy of the image. They likely care more about the most number of users being satisfied, not accurate reproduction of an image.
I would not be surprised if they don’t actually want accuracy in imaging at all, they want a positive impact on the user, and most people don’t want reality. If that means causing “hotdog skin” under some conditions or with some skin tones, or maybe even if most users prefer “hotdog skin”, while having an overall positive photo outcome for most other users; they will likely always choose to produce “hotdog skin”. They are also serving a far greater and, frankly an increasingly less light skinned audience than most understand. Maybe it’s just an effect of “whites” having given away their control over things as ever more “non-whites” become revert increasingly important and an ever increasing number and percentage of Apple’s users. Do Asians and Africans get “hotdog skin”? I don’t know the answer to that.
It is the narrow minded perspective of DSLR purist types that this stuff bothers, largely because they cannot look beyond the rim of their plate. Some platforms are for accuracy, others for impact and user experience.
People should maybe consider stop saying things like “this Apple is an absolutely horrible, awful, no good orange!”
hopelite
You and most Apple obsessed curmudgeons are not really any better by ignoring what all this comes down to, choices and trade-offs. Apple’s primary objective is clearly related to taking photos that provide a positive impact on the user while being as easy to do so, not accuracy. They want the most number of users to be satisfied, not accurate reproduction of an image. I would not be surprised if they don’t actually want accuracy in imaging, they want a positive impact on the user, and if that means causing “hotdog skin” under some conditions or with some skin tones, while having an overall positive photo outcome for most other users, they will always choose to make you have “hotdog skin”. They are in serving a far greater audience than most understand.
It is the narrow minded perspective of DSLR purist types that this stuff bothers, largely because they cannot look beyond the rim of their plate.
You may want to stop saying “this Apple is a horrible, awful, no good orange.”
sheiyei
Could say, the goal is an OK photo every time, even if it means you only get really good photos by accident.
majormajor
The biggest real differences between iPhone and whatever ye-olde-good-standalone-digital-camera are sharpening/edge enhancements and flattening of lighting.
If you take a lot of landscapes with detailed textures in high-contrast lighting you'll see the differences pretty quickly.
The iPhone photos will look better at first glance because they have a lot of tricks to deal with lighting that would otherwise give a photographer difficulty. For instance, that shot of the child could easily have a completely blown-out background in slightly different circumstances for a typical use of a digital camera's auto-exposure mode. But it results in a certain look that this article really doesn't show well, in terms of the more fake-looking aspects of it. The gravel in the shot of the child hints at it, and you can start to see it more if you view the image full-size vs the scaled down presentation. The asphalt under the car, too - there's something very harsh and fake about the iPhone texture rendering approach that gets worse the larger you display the image. This started around the iPhone 11, IIRC, with it's ML processing.
Both things can be avoided with Halide's raw mode (more "raw" than Apple's) if you want side by side comparisons on your own device. Though IIRC it doesn't support full-res on the newer phones.
The trick, though, is that if you want images that look better in tough conditions, there's a learning curve for using a standalone camera or to shooting in RAW with Halide. In terms of lighting it's not even "more realistic" right out of the gate, necessarily, because your eye has more dynamic range and your brain has more tricks than most any straight-out-of-camera non-ML-enhanced image.
But if you want images you can print out at 8x10+ you'll benefit from the investment.
(Samsung cameras are even wilder in their over-enhancement of photos.)
sundvor
Yeah I like to take photos of my cast iron cooking with my S25U, on a black induction glass surface - and I find myself swapping to Pro mode all the time as the colour temperature is often way too warm and or oversaturated.
It's a great camera in automatic mode most of the time, but not for that scenario.
sazylusan
Agreed, in particular the distortion of the players on the ends, the smaller shoulders and chest, as well as the lean can all be attributed to the wider lens used on the iPhone (and as such that the photo was taken closer to players). I'd guess the author was using the "1x" lens on the iPhone, a lot of these issues go away if they use the "3x" or "5x" lens. I'd even consider that most of the jawline change of the player is simply the angle of their chin/face as well as expression.
Joeri
The 2x mode of the wide lens is basically the standard “nifty fifty” of a big camera and what the author should have compared to. The 1x is 24mm equivalent which is a focal length I don’t particularly care for, but I get why they picked it (easy to frame a group of people indoors).
For portraits the ideal length is 85mm equivalent which would be 3.5x, rumored to be on the next iphone pro. At this length there is minimal facial feature distortion without getting the flattening effect you get at longer focal lengths.
bayindirh
I'll kindly disagree with you. Like the other commenter, I'm on a 27" HP business monitor comes with color calibration certificate, and the differences are very visible. Moreover, I'm taking photos as a hobby for some time.
The angle, different focal lengths doesn't matter in rendering of the images. The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people. Moreover, we want to be liked as human beings, it's in our nature.
So, phone companies driven by both smaller sensors (that thing is way noisier when compared to a full frame sensor) and market pressure to reduce processing needed to be done by end users (because it inconveniences them), started to add more and more complicated post-processing in their cameras.
The result is this very article. People with their natural complications reduced, skin tones boosted on red parts, sharpened but flatter photos, without much perspective correction and sometimes looking very artificial.
Make no mistake, "professional" cameras also post process, but you can both see this processing and turn it off if you want, and the professional cameras corrects what lens fails at, but smartphones, incl. iPhone makes "happy, social media ready" photos by default.
As, again other commenter said, it's not a limitation of the sensor (sans the noise). Sony supplies most of the higher end sensors in the market, and their cameras or other cameras sporting sensors produced by them got the "best color" awards over and over again, and XPeria smartphones comes with professional camera pipelines after that small sensor, so they can take photos like what you see.
I personally prefer iPhone as my smartphone of my choice, but the moment I want to take a photo I want to spend time composing, I ditch default camera app and use Halide, because that thing can bypass Apple's post-processing, and even can apply none if you want.
lonelyasacloud
> The issue is, cameras on phones are not for taking a photo of what you see, but a way to share your life, and sharing your life in a more glamorous way is to get liked around people.
Is nothing new.
When film was mass market almost no one developed their own photos (particularly colo(u)r). Instead almost all printing went through bulk labs who optimised for what people wanting to show to their family and friends.
What is different now is if someone cares about post processing to try and present their particular version of reality they can do it easily without the cost and inconvenience of having to setup and run a darkroom.
bayindirh
Personally coming from the film era, I don't think it's as clear cut as this.
Many of the post-processing an informed person does on a digital photo is an emulation of a process rooted in a darkroom, yes.
On the other hand, some of the things cameras automatically does, e.g.: Skin color homogenization, selective object sharpening, body "aesthetic" enhancements, hallucinating the text which the lens can't resolve, etc. are not darkroom born methods, and they alter reality to the point of manipulation.
In film days, what we had as a run of the mill photographer was the selection of the film, and asking the lab "can you increase the saturation a bit, if possible". Even if you had your darkroom at home, you won't be able to selectively modify body proportions while keeping the details around untouched with the help of advanced image modification algorithms.
mattwilsonn888
You're completely off base on the focal length argument.
A traditional camera has the choice and can choose the most appropriate length; an Iphone is locked in to a fish-eye clearly put in there to overcome its inherent limitations.
So it doesn't really matter "if it's fair" or not, because it's not about a fair comparison, it's a demonstration that a traditional camera is just better. Why should the traditional camera use an inappropriate focal length just because the Iphone is forced to?
dagmx
I’m sorry, if you’re going to argue it’s completely off base at least make a statement that isn’t easily dismissed by looking at the back of a phone.
My iPhone pro has 3 lenses of 15,24 and 77mm equivalents. This is far fewer than many Android phones.
Even the cheapest iPhone 16E has a super sampling sensor which allows a cropped 50mm equivalent. (And yes that’s a digital crop but that’s why I mention a super sampling sensor)
So yes, unless they were shooting on a budget phone or a much older iPhone, they have a choice of focal lengths that would better match whatever camera they’re comparing to.
Twisell
Every hardware have it's limitations, my DSLR don't fit in my pocket for instance. But that wouldn't be a fair point when comparing photo quality against a smartphone.
Comparing quality with non equivalent focal lengths is as pertinent as to mount a fisheye on the DSLR (because you can!) and then claim that the smartphone have less distortion.
josephg
> Comparing quality with non equivalent focal lengths is as pertinent as to mount a fisheye on the DSLR (because you can!) and then claim that the smartphone have less distortion.
I was about to disagree with you - but I think you're right. The photographer clearly took a couple steps back when they took the DSLR photo. You can tell by looking at the trees in the background - they appear much bigger in the DSLR photo because they're using a longer focal length.
I think a DSLR would struggle with the same perspective distortion if you put an ultrawide lens on it. It would have been a much more fair comparison if they took both photos from the same spot and zoomed in with the iphone.
DiogenesKynikos
The article is comparing photo quality between two different cameras. The lens affects image quality, so it's completely fair to discuss.
If it were possible to switch out the lens on the iPhone, and the photographer had just chosen the wrong lens for the job, that would be a fair criticism of the article. But that's not what happened. The iPhone is just very limited when it comes to the lens, compared to a DSLR.
vladvasiliu
I'm not sure I get your point.
Most appropriate length for what? Some iPhones have multiple focal lengths, just like some "real camers" have fixed lenses with a fixed focal length (Fuxji x100 and the medium-format one whose model I can't remember, Leica something-or-other, Sony R1).
Plus, for what is a traditional camera "just better"? It's highly usage dependent.
I have both a bludgeon, which can be used as an interchangeable lens camera, and an iPhone. The first doesn't fit in my pocket, so sometimes the latter is the one I grab, since it's "better" for that specific use case.
arghwhat
> Most appropriate length for what? Some iPhones have multiple focal lengths, ...
Most appropriate length for portrait photography is well established to be somewhere between 50mm and 100mm (35mm equivalent). The lower end is often considered more "natural" for such photo type, while the longer focal lengths are considered more flattering.
An iPhone 16 Pro Max has three focal lengths, 12, 24 and 120 (35mm equivalent). The first two are much too short unless significantly cropped, and the last one is excessive and requires stepping way back and has the worst image sensor and likely worst compromise of a lens - a lot of lens chonk is elements to manage chromatic aberration and distortion, which smartphone lenses have no room for.
> ... just like some "real camers" have fixed lenses with a fixed focal length (Fuxji x100 and the medium-format one whose model I can't remember, Leica something-or-other, Sony R1).
People using fixed lenses do so because they prioritize a particular type of image or style, and decided to get an even better (and lighter) lens for that instead of carrying around a compromise they don't need.
> Plus, for what is a traditional camera "just better"?
When it comes to getting the best picture, a chonky camera always wins - although they have had some catch-up to do on the software side, physics and our current technical limitations do not care about pocketability.
But a less perfect picture is better than no picture because you left the "real camera" at home. The best camera is the one you have on you.
(Also note that this is not binary between a smarpthone and an Olympic DSLR setup. Good compact cameras with collapsing lenses and mirrorless with smaller lenses are a middleground.)
kqr
Yes and no. Modern phone cameras are strong enough that you can crop out the centre and get a passable image as if taken with a longer focal length.
nateroling
Looking at the trees in the background of the first photo, it’s clear he’s using a longer focal length on the non-iPhone.
He has some good points, maybe, but in general it’s a pretty naive comparison.
geldedus
they don't even know what "bokeh" means
ksec
>Color processing is both highly subjective but also completely something you can disable on the phone
How do I disable Colour processing?
subscribed
I think you can get RAW on iPhone? I don't own one so I can't confirm.
On my Pixel RAW is also available, even moreso with the non-standard camera software.
mh-
Yes, I shoot in RAW by default most of the time. It can be quickly turned on and off from the stock camera app without even leaving the main screen.
You may have to enable it once in Settings -> Camera -> Formats; I've been using it so long I don't remember what the defaults are. But once you've done that, it's in the top right of the camera app - just tap where it says RAW.
FredPret
My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water.
Add a nice lens and there's no comparison.
However:
- The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone)
- The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us
- The iPhone picture quality, though worse, is still fine
Looking back at travel and family pictures, it has been very much worth it for me to have a dedicated camera.
rainsford
I agree with your iPhone camera advantages, but to that list I'd add that I'm already going to buy an iPhone, which means any comparison of value for the price is effectively between the price of a camera (which for even an entry-level mirrorless isn't exactly cheap) and literally zero dollars. You could argue that the phone would be cheaper without the nice camera to make for a fairer comparison, but such a product doesn't really exist.
snicky
This applies only if you assume that you are not willing to spend more on a phone with a better camera and a lot of people do. I have friends who decided to buy an iPhone over way cheaper Android phones in the past, because "the iPhone camera was so much better". Funny enough, the differences were obviously negligible when compared with any actual camera.
snackernews
And upgrade frequency. You might give your old iPhone another year or two if the phone isn’t your limiting factor for photo quality.
loeg
$200 for iphone pro vs regular (I only got Pro for the camera). But otherwise, yeah.
al_borland
Not only is the iPhone always in your pocket, but it’s easier to carry and deal with.
I remember hearing a story from a well known photographer about a trip he took with a few others, including his wife. They woke up early to head out on a small boat in a lake or something. He was lugging all this gear and having to put a lot of focus into tuning the settings on his camera, he was pretty miserable. Meanwhile, his wife was enjoying morning with no baggage and snapping pics with her phone. She ended up having the best picture of the day, while actually enjoying herself, by not being bogged down by the gear.
Dedicated cameras have their value, but it’s been decreasing for years, and requiring higher and higher levels of skill to make it worth it. Most people could improve their photos dramatically by learning about framing and light, while just using a phone. These things have a much bigger impact on the resulting photo. A professional with an iPhone will always take a better and more interesting picture than an amateur with a DSLR for this reason.
kalaksi
Those sound like the 2 extremes, though. You don't have to take a lot of gear or tune a lot of settings manually with dedicated camera if you don't want to, but it's an option if you want to have more control or go for the ultimate quality.
brianmcc
>> The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us
This is why my Canon 80D sits and gathers dust. Too many family moments fluffed, vs my Android's basically 100% hit rate. Yes this is largely a skill issue on my part, which is sad, but modern phone photos are more than adequate these days.
SchemaLoad
I get sent a lot of photos of me cosplaying at conventions, and something I've noticed is that the phone photos are almost always nicer in general. The people who do photography as a hobby seem to always edit the photo too extreme and you get whack HDR type effects or they just aren't as skilled at manually setting settings as the iphone auto mode.
But, the dedicated camera photos are always massively higher resolution. You can zoom in on details and they look great, while phone photos seem to use AI upscailers and they look bad
Espressosaurus
Wack HDR is usually the sign of a novice photographer, assuming it's not the phone (my experience is that phones go absolutely insane with the HDR and saturation).
We all go through a period of abusing HDR and saturation, but we usually get over it.
master_crab
There’s a saying in the photography world:
”The best camera is the one you have on you”
throw0101d
> ”The best camera is the one you have on you”
dingaling
Which only holds true if you don't care much about the result.
I've seen people trying to take photos at an airshow using their phone camera. A small black dot in the centre of frame, rendered as an Impressionist oil smudge by post-processing. Was that worth even trying?
The best camera+lens combo is the one suited to the scene. Anything else isn't.
amarshall
The point is: who cares what the “best” camera is if one doesn’t have it with them to take a photo of the fleeting moment anyway?
rafram
Not really, because the scene you want to capture is there at that moment and probably wouldn’t be there anymore if you went back to the apartment/hotel/camera store and swapped out for a technically better kit. That’s what the “best camera” saying is about.
lambdasquirrel
> but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in
And so, the reasons why Fuji and point-and-shoots are popular. Lots of “serious” photography enthusiasts don’t really get this and call Fujis “hype” cameras but it’s like bashing Wordpress because most people don’t want to learn AWS to post cat pics.
> The iPhone is always in my pocket
Rationale for both point-and-shoots as well as Leica (also hated by lots of serious camera people ;)).
Ancapistani
This is the opposite of my experience.
I went from a D300s kit with about $10k of lenses to Fuji. I had an X100s, then an X-E2, and now an X-Pro3.
The X-Pro3 especially is light, has excellent physical controls, and very much feels like a vintage Leica. It's what I'd consider an "art camera" -- not what I'd choose if I were shooting weddings regularly, but perfect for street photography, family stuff, and perfectly capable of higher-end commercial work if you're willing to put up with its quirks.
The quirks are the point, though.
SchemaLoad
They were popular. Are they still? Just observationally there are two groups left, phone users, and people with very expensive complex setups. Everyone who would have bought those simple cameras moved on to using phones.
lambdasquirrel
By the numbers, the casual cameras are having a quiet turnaround.
Fuji and Ricoh can hardly keep their X100 and GR cameras stocked. Fuji added extra production capacity in China because it exceeded their expectations. I brought them up specifically because the serious camera people rag on them for being hype cameras, but I see plenty of everyday people with them. Go to places like the High Line in NY and there’s folks with A6700s and various X-mount cameras in addition to the serious full-frame mounts. Leica is doing financially well because of their Q series.
I think five years ago you could say it was just two groups, but by the numbers and by what I see in the streets, the point and shoots have been prematurely declared dead. Fuji and Sony are meanwhile figuring out how to sell APS-C to a more casual crowd, after the other old players effectively left that market.
ileonichwiesz
You’d be surprised. Point-and-shoot cameras have become extremely popular with young people in the past ~2 years or so because of the nostalgia factor.
PaulHoule
I put a 90mm prime [1] on my Sony, set it to aperture priority, put the strap over someone's head and deputize them to get headshots ("frame it up with the viewfinder and push the button") and they do OK so long as the light is predictable. I wish I could tell the auto mode to let the ISO go higher than it will because I do noise reduction in developing such that there is no real quality loss at 6400.
[1] takes lovely portraits and no focus to deal with
jauntywundrkind
Viltrox, Sirui, Sony themselves, and Samyang have all kicked out really nice 85mm fast primes. $600 down to $400, listed in decreasing weight order (down to 270g!). Yes, whatever you have: it's a massive amount of gear to carry compared to a phone. But what results!
The past 2-4 years have been amazing for lenses: Sony's willingness to let other people make lenses has been an amazing win for photography.
jeswin
What has changed is the last four years is that Chinese and Korean lens makers have caught up in a big way, and are now producing excellent optics at a fraction of the price with AF and weather sealing (as of now, primes only). For example, the Viltrox Lab and Pro series, or the Samyang 135/1.8. The other Chinese manufacturers are a cut below.
Also, Sigma and Tamron (both Japanese) are putting out more higher quality lenses compared to a decade back. With optical quality rivaling Sony's own G Master series and the Zeissen.
roesel
I would love to do: - set aperture priority (fully open for most cases) - set shutter speed to AUTO with a limit (never open for longer than 1/100 s) - set ISO to AUTO with a limit (never go above 6400)
If there is insufficient light, then by all means, the camera should adjust the shutter speed past the limit, but not until it has used all the available "reasonable" ISO range.
It's a shame I have to wrestle my Sony a6400 to get something even remotely close to this.
AuryGlenz
My entire photography career I was incredibly frustrated that there was no good way to change the minimum shutter speed in aperture priority.
Sure, I could go into a menu and change it from the range of 1/60 or a second to 1/200th (or 1/250th, depending on the camera), but that was it. This is on Nikon, btw.
But yeah, give me more options damnit. It’s something that comes up so frequently when shooting that it blows my mind it’s not an option.
FredPret
I love the idea of that 90mm prime.
But usually when I have passers-by take photos, the context is that we are posing in front of a church in Europe or something, and space can be limited.
I can't very well ask people to take a photo and but first to take 20 paces back and then do a crouch!
My wife wants to see our shoes as well as the church spires in the same photo. Maybe a 35mm or even 28mm would work well in our case.
PaulHoule
Definitely thinking of getting another prime but a ‘normal’ one with autofocus doesn’t really do anything I can’t with my zooms, I like 7artisans primes and might get one that is crazy wide but those are manual focus and take more skill —- I was so happy to get home and see I nailed this one
zensavona
Pro tip: 28mm on full frame (or equivalent) is exactly the same focal length as iPhone 1x ;)
sudosysgen
On many Sony models, you can set the camera to aperture priority instead of auto, set ISO to Auto ISO, and then change the max ISO to whatever you want; this is what I do in your situation.
roesel
If I set aperture priority to "maximum possible light in", I often have an issue that when there is insufficient light, the camera decreases shutter speed instead of cranking up the ISO (to the set upper limit), which would be much more desireable. This results in blurry images due to the longer exposure. I would much more prefer a grainy image over a blurred one in this case.
Do you know if there is any option of setting a limit on shutter speed while in aperture mode?
(I understand I can go full manual, but that just doesn't allow for the same point-and-shoot experience in changing light conditions.)
dale_glass
There's always micro four thirds. I think it's a bit of an underappreciated format, really. It can have really compact cameras, and also they tend to have quite a lot of fancy tech in them.
PaulHoule
If I transition from semi-pro to pro I am thinking of picking one of those up because the 300mm lens is the equivalent of a 600mm and good for taking pictures of birds but fits in a reasonable backpack. Built in focus-stacking is another advantage over my Sony.
piva00
Mirrorless APS-C platforms pushed micro 4/3 out, similar footprint with APS-C sensors is hard to beat.
dale_glass
True, but I think micro 4/3 still can be a good deal smaller. It's just that a fair amount of the cameras didn't make good use of that.
tormeh
An APS-C lens is just going to be bigger than an M43 lens. That means you can carry more lenses for an M43 camera. I have an Olympus/OM camera plus three lenses and charger, and it all fits in my flight carry-on luggage together with a laptop, underwear, and an extra set of clothes. APS-C and full-frame are cool, but they're annoying to carry around. For travel, nothing beats M43.
ezst
To me, the "hotdog skin complexion" aspect is a dead giveaway for when a photo was taken on an iPhone. It's so over the top and unrefined that I wonder how not only Apple let it happen, but seemingly entertain it/make it worse over generations of devices? Certainly such photos won't "age well"? And it's not like it has to be this way because of technological limitations, take Pixel photos, for instance, they get their colors much more balanced and faithful.
silisili
Same with Pixel, which actually did it years before I'd presume.
I'm white as ghost. Pixels are determined to make me looked tan for absolutely no reason. I mean, maybe I look 'better', arguably, but it's not me. Is that what people want?
I bought the kid some newfangled Polaroid type thing, and she uses that way more than phones anymore for photos. Maybe the kids will be ok.
dialup_sounds
Google made an publicized effort to better represent darker skin tones, which may explain the tan. It probably thinks you're overexposed and desaturated instead of pale.
nmeofthestate
"What we need is a great big melting pot
Big enough to take the world and all it's got
Keep it stirring for a hundred years or more
And turn out hot-dog-coloured people by the score"
globular-toast
I would bet that they are user testing the processing algorithms and that people actually prefer the slightly more saturated picture.
It's similar to the loudness war in music. Slightly louder/more saturated looks subjectively better when compared side by side. Apply this slight increase over and over again and you get something that no longer reflects reality.
This is complicated with pictures of people because people want them to look "good", not accurate.
mikewarot
I thought the article was parody/sarcasm at first.
I've got an old Nikon D5100 DSLR which I sometimes pull out and take photos with, and a cheap $200 Motorola phone, which does amazingly well, if there's plenty of light and the subject happens to take up most of the frame (and can thus focus)
Getting a good photo with the Nikon is easier for me, but I've had a lot of practice. The main issue is getting things to focus in macro land.
dusted
I'm generally annoyed with the amount of processing going on in modern phone cameras, they often take pictures that "look fine" on the screen, until you zoom in to native resolution and discovered most of it is some fever-dream of approximations, it's amazing that we (people) are accepting this.. Lots of fine memories degraded by cheating cameras..
It's annoying especially because at a glance, the pictures taken by my S24+ look just fine, and it sometimes makes me not pull out the aging DSLR.. but then when I get the pictures onto my PC and want to actually look at them.. I always regret my mistake.. Even a 10 year old DSLR on automatic no-flash mode kicks its butt so bad it's not even a comparison..
OldfieldFund
I believe the biggest problem here is that the author of the blog was using the ultra-wide-angle lens. I can tell by how the players are "leaning" and how the software is "fixing" the curvature of the photo. 90% sure of it. I always use the "regular" lens, and the pictures are much better.
You can also set styles in the camera settings to fix these problems: incorrect AI white balance and lighting.
mahmoudhossam
It's because the consumption side has completely changed. Most people now don't even own a PC so they're not likely to even notice this problem.
dusted
probably.. I was at a range and took a quick snap of my target, because I wanted to review it in a bit calmer environment.. I remember standing there, seeing the bullet holes in the paper, and I distinctly recall two holes that had multiple hits. When I opened the picture on the phone to look, lo and behold, those were generic bullet holes, they except, not mine.. I zoomed in and nope, they're fake.. I have had so many experiences with this on different Samsung phones.. that stuff is just OFF, like, a picture of my kid in low light, and the phone just decided part of his face was probably the wallpaper, so it just put wallpaper pattern there instead of skin.. I've been over every setting I can dig up, can't find anything that should do this..
ChuckMcM
Interesting discussion here, I particularly like that people have recognized that the people who use phones to take pictures and the people who use cameras to take pictures often have different goals.
There are lots of areas where there is a ‘convenience’ / ‘art’ split. One I recognized early was houses that were ‘architected’ and those that were just ‘built’. Looking at cabins from the 1800’s vs houses you can really see a cabin is practical, it is focused on utility that is easily built with a wide variety of materials at hand and skill sets of the builders. Whereas homes that were architected and built used a lot of craftspeople, bespoke materials, etc.
My dad was a professional photographer and he would take pictures and I would take pictures and his looked great and mine looked ‘ordinary’? I was just capturing the view in a given direction and he was composing a view to have various elements in relation to make a picture.
Phone cameras are “free” in that you bought a phone and it happened to come with a camera, and you carry it with you everywhere because phone. So a lot of the image capturing that is done is what you see. People do compose shots, and I’ve seen great photographs from phone cameras. But it is pretty clear that a photographer using a phone works harder to get their shot than someone who just wants a snapshot, and it goes the other way too, a person who just wants a snapshot works a lot harder to figure out how an SLR works, “just to take a picture” while the photographer seems to effortlessly bring it up to take a wonderful shot.
So if you take the whole set of people who are using a tool, you optimize for the largest portion of that population which is where the culture aspects kick in it seems. People grabbing snapshots with ‘one button activation’ vs people taking photographs composing with scenes and light.
marcus_holmes
I got interested in photography during my travels, and my wife is very interested in it.
I bought a decent camera. I really enjoyed playing with it, and spent some happy hours learning about it. I even took some decent photos (well, I liked them anyway).
But in the end, carrying it became a chore and trying to take off-the-cuff photos during adventures took too long. I found that we needed to go for specific "photography adventures" with the camera, with the intent of taking photographs with the camera, in order to use it. If we were going for a trip without the specific aim of taking photographs it was just easier to use the phone cameras.
Also the camera photos were stuck on the camera, while the phone photos were instantly usable in social media, and shareable from the Google/Apple Photos. I have a portable drive folder somewhere with all the camera photos, but I never see them. The phone photos are a search away.
I think it's the difference between "being a photographer" and "taking photos". I am not a photographer, I just want to take some photos and share them with my friends. They're going to look at the photo for approximately 5 seconds max, on their phone, and never again. All the comments in the article are accurate but meaningless in this context.
On the other had, if you're a photographer and want to take a photograph that someone will hang on their wall, all the comments in the article are accurate and relevant.
TorKlingberg
> the camera photos were stuck on the camera
I'm surprised no camera manufacturer has created an easy way to get all your photos to Google Photos / iCloud/ Dropbox / etc. They have some wireless photo transfer things, but they're clunky and unusable. Just connect the camera to WiFi and auto-upload everything to the service of my choice. I'm guessing it's a mix of:
* Camera manufacturers are hardware companies and can't do software and cloud stuff.
* It wouldn't interact well with swapping SD cards, which is what all the pros want.
* The camera would need to stay powered when off to upload photos. Current cameras have a hard power switch.
acherion
Why can't you be both? I am an amateur photographer, but it doesn't mean that I carry my camera with me everywhere that I go. I see photography as a hobby, so when I feel like I want to do "hobby things" I bring a camera with me. I prepare myself to do so. It doesn't mean that I don't use my phone camera at all (in fact I upgraded my phone purely for the "better camera").
If you are just taking snapshots to share with friends, then it makes sense to not bring the camera. But if it's your hobby, where you sit down and take time and care to take a photo, then it's a different game altogether.
I don't often print my photos out and put them on a wall, but I do have my own photography blog where I post the photos I take (with a camera). I think the article is still relevant to that kind of scenario too.
I think the purpose of this kind of page is to outline differences between taking a snapshot and taking a photo. This is to argue back at people who think that taking a photo with an iPhone is just as good _in any situation_ and think that _anyone_ with a camera is wasting their time. It also attempts to combat the prevalent myth that more megapixels = better photos. Yes that myth still exists in 2025.
marcus_holmes
yeah agree. I decided I wasn't a photographer, though I'm still interested in it.
> This is to argue back at people who think that taking a photo with an iPhone is just as good _in any situation_ and think that _anyone_ with a camera is wasting their time.
"Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience". Seriously, are there people who think that iPhones are just as good as dedicated cameras, and can still tie their own shoelaces?
Saline9515
This is why I enjoy analog camera - aside from the fact that any 100$ camera can take crisp photos, they don't try to be perfect and add creative and artistic aspects to photography. Each film has its own color balance and sensitivity, each lens will render light differently, you can choose between them to create the aesthetics you want. I enjoy it more, and take really good family pictures with it!
jpatten
I’m sure that Apple did tons of A/B testing, focus groups etc. with different image processing parameters to arrive at the settings that their phones use for photos, and from these comments it’s clear that a lot of people prefer the iPhone photos. When I was in grad school (in the pre-iPhone era) I photographed lots of weddings on the weekends, and one thing I noticed during the process was that people often have a set idea of what good photos look like. This idea of a “good” photo is often not tied to what the scene in front of them looks like. For example a “good” photo that includes a sunset will show a highly saturated orange/red sky, even if that’s not what the sky looks like at the moment the photo is taken.
Personally, I carry around a Ricoh GR3, and shoot random shots with the iPhone, but when it really matters I’ll use the Ricoh. The way the iPhone flattens the lighting is what bugs me the most. Recently I was at a kid’s birthday party and each kid had a cupcake with a candle in it. The room was a bit dark, and the Ricoh photo showed that each kids face was illuminated just a bit by the candle in their cupcake… The color temperature of the candle light is warmer than that of the room light. The photo makes you feel like you’re really there. My friend shot a photo on her iPhone at the same time and we compared afterwards. In her photo, every kid’s face is well lit and the candle effect is gone. She likes her shot better and I like mine. Some people want a shot that reflects what they saw, and some people want a shot that looks like what they think good photos look like.
mcdeltat
I have found that non-photographer people have generally have absolutely no sense of what makes a good photo. They don't care about composition, lighting, colours, detail, or ambience. Their mental/emotional impression of what the photo represents is more important than the photo itself
Neywiny
MKBHD does a phone camera tournament (yearly?) and I believe at least once he found that people prefer a brighter image, even if that didn't match reality. No source or proof, just something I vaguely remember
nmstoker
The colour corrections are also annoying when you're trying to take photos of things like cuts and bruises as you want an accurate record (eg to show a doctor) but instead it effectively says "let me clean that up for you" and you're left with the blemishes you wanted diminished!
prmoustache
Ironically I have a few framed photos, from mobile (because that is what I had in the pocket), digital and film cameras but most photos that I have framed are Polaroid and Instax ones. An instant camera is a major PITA to carry, the film are expensive, a lot of pictures end up bad because of limitations of the media, the colors are often not very neutral but you are 100% sure that you end up with physical photos after every take, and thus some good memories. While smartphone pictures are more likely to end up in a family whatsapp group, I have tons of mobile and digital pictures I don't even remember I have taken and they mostly just take up space in my NAS and backup storage. Nowadays I never travel without either my Polaroid, Instax Wide or Lomo Instant Square Glass. It is also a great way to make gifts. I tried portable printers. It is nice to make gifts but it was just a hassle to even connect and launch the print most of the time.
A decade of "the best smartphone camera competitions" by mkbhd have clearly highlighted what is happening here.
1: In a/b testing, nearly everyone including pixel peepers prefer a more vibrant photo.
2: the traditional perspective of "a photo should look as close as possible to what my eyes see if I drop the viewfinder" is increasingly uncommon and not pursued in the digital age by nearly anyone.
3: phone companies know the above, and basically all of them engage in varrying degrees of "crank vibrance until people start to look like clowns, apply a skin correction so you can keep the rest mega vibrant" with an extra dash of "if culturally accepted to the primary audience, add additional face filtering to improve how people look, including air-brushing and thinning of the face"
This is rightfully compared to the loudness wars and I think that's accurate. It really became a race to the bottom once we collectively decided that "accurate" photos were not interesting and we want "best" photos.