Ephemeris wrote:
CamerEyes wrote:
MarshallG wrote:
Interested in your thoughts. Not trying to upset anyone, just create a comparison and discussion.
I decided to compare my iPhone 14 Pro to my R5 today. To be fair, there are infinite things that I can do with my R5 which the iPhone cannot possibly do... such as shooting sports, birds in flight, breaching whales, using artificial light.
I tried my best to make two closely identical photos. I used the same lighting, tripod and distance from camera, and timed release. I zoomed my 24-70mm lens to about 26mm to match the Apple. And I set the Apple camera to "Apple ProRAW", 48 MP, which produced much larger files than the Canon cRAW: The Apple photos were 74 MB each, vs 22 MB for the cRAW's. The iPhone produces a DNG in this mode. I brought the photos into Lightroom and applied "Auto" editing, then boosted the shadows to make the items on the lower shelf more visible. I tried to match the two as closely as possible. Also note that this 48 MP mode only works with the 1x, rear-facing lens.
Oddly, Lightroom exported the iPhone photo to a much smaller size, even though identical settings were used. I think this is a result of the AI processing performed inside the phone, which is exceptionally good, but overall the image has a lot more smoothing. This is especially noticeable if you look at the woodgrain along the right side of the two photos; it has completely vanished in the iPhone photo.
Anyway, please be the judge. If you think I should set this test up differently and re-shoot it, let me know and I'll give it another try.
EOS R5 with 24-70 f/2.8 lens
Apple iPhone 14 Pro with Apple ProRAW 48 MP resolution
Your post emphasizes the adequacy of what's always in our pockets for several photographic needs.
In a typical travel, our family members and I will upload photos from our smartphones and from my RF bodies to the same Dropbox album (uncompressed) and social media pages (compressed). The iPhone 13 Pro Max and the iPhone 14 Pro of our kids produce images that are unimaginable even just ten years ago. And it's not even 2025 yet.
Some flagship Android phones narrow the gap even more closely - especially for most people who do not pixel peep.
I think your final paragraph really helps to describe the trajectory phone based imaging systems are on. Some have features which are very novel using ToF sub systems to aid focus for example or adding Infrared to produce a fused optical/IR image.
I recently was taking images at an indoor young children's party that was lit with LED ceiling panels. My R5 captured the flicker beautifully when taking 120fps video yet my S22 doing something similar showed no Flickr at all.
We are a S22/S20 user and the S23 flagship looks interesting but I do wonder if a little more could be done with some magnetic mount lenses, ergonomic bodies/cases to help us friendly photographers.
One of my biggest problems is the physical interface (the grip of you like) with a phone taking images.
The OP brings up a really interesting and helpful post.
Indeed!
I've been using OnePlus 9 Pro since they partnered with Hasselblad and in many ways, travel and casual events photography has never been easier.
Computational photography is yet to fully evolve. Digital photography is all about information stored in the image captured and therefore software in many ways is the new hardware, so to speak.
It's also encouraging to see some practical smartphone camera features recently migrating to mirrorless cameras (pre-shot preview, etc.). I bet even touch screen interfaces can benefit a lot from smartphones. There really is no reason for camera software not to be founded on Android or iOS going forward. My DJI Mini 3's controller is now very Android in functionality and appearance.