Minolta A1 vs. iPhone 13 Pro, or the king is naked

Look at this picture in dpreview gallery of the latest iPhone:

https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/4660266261/apple-iphone-13-pro-sample-gallery/1081683410

Now look at this picture I took 16 years ago (minus three days):

Minolta A1, JPEG from camera, 1/25 s, f/4.5, ISO 100, 200 mm equiv. focal length

It's handheld, sorry for the motion blur.

Focus is not perfect, it's on the eyelashes more than the iris.

Comparing the two pictures, in spite of slight motion blur, imperfect focus, darker lighting conditions (EV 12 vs. EV 13⅓), lower resolution (5 vs 12 megapixels), several generations older sensor technology, which is clearly visible in the speckle noise in the iris (that's not detail, it's color noise), immensely fewer resources Minolta had for all their gear than Apple... There's still more detail in the iris than in the iPhone shot that dpreview edited from RAW and selected for the samples gallery as representative of the quality possible with the iPhone.

I mean, it had all going for it. Quite bright lighting conditions, lens wide open, so lowest potential diffraction, lowest ISO, very fast shutter speed, so no motion blur. And yet there's less low contrast detail. The iris is uniform textureless brown mush.

On top of that, iPhone's bokeh is simply horrible.

All reviewers are simply gushing about image quality of any flagship phone, including my Sony XZ1 and XZ2. Computational photography features were supposed to bring out even more image quality vs. compact cameras.

Reviewers heralded the end of compact cameras, prosumer compact cameras and now DSLRs with every new generation of phones.

And there I thought to myself, I must be blind or there's something wrong with me. I'm not seeing that quality. Either I don't know how to take pictures with my phone, or the phones I'm buying only work well in some conditions and I'm trying to push them too hard.

But dpreview staff is proud of this eye shot as exemplary quality in the sample gallery for the latest Apple flagship phone.

And I realize I was right all along. I know how to take pictures. It's just that all these phones are crap cameras. The king is naked.

I wasn't pushing the phones any harder than reviewers told me is possible. They just can't be pushed at all.

If that is the best the latest and greatest 2021 smartphone can do in bright conditions, it's not good enough.

Rishi Sanyal wrote:

Your setup with 2/3" sensor, 50mm focal length, F4.5, with a min focus distance of - and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt & suggesting you shot at the closest focus distance possible - let's say 0.5m, gives you a DOF of 2cm.

The iPhone image, shot at about 2cm w/ a 13mm F15.5 equiv lens has a DOF of .08cm, 25x less than yours. In fact, as I'm composing the frame it's wildly changing as the camera-subject distance changes from handshake & subject/photographer movement. Not only is it difficult to compose the frame, it's amazing AF can even keep up. Naturally, I have no control over what's in focus, and manual focus it out of the question.

With that much needed perspective, and taking into account the much smaller sensor on the iPhone, are the results surprising? Or, in context, are they perhaps impressive, if you assess the detail at the focus plane and consider the roughly 25x less depth-of-field than your example?

(Please correct me if I'm off on my calculations or assumptions)

Wow, why so defensive? I wasn't attacking you, I was pointing out how phone cameras definitely didn't break the laws of physics and they definitely are not better than advanced digital compact cameras, let along interchangeable lens cameras, despite all the claims from phone makers.

First of all, I mentioned that the iris in my shot would be slightly out of focus and there may be some motion blur.

Replying to your comment in the gallery (not here), yes, I shot my wife's picture straight on and you shot from an angle. I clearly said that the iris in my picture is somewhat out of focus, but still shows some detail. Your picture shows lack of detail even within the focus plane.

Focal distance in EXIF data shows 25 cm distance (shortest possible).

I used this DOF calculator:
https://www.vision-doctor.com/en/optical-calculations/calculation-depth-of-field.html

I input 3.4375 µm CoC diameter (equal to pixel pitch of 5 mpix 2/3" sensor), 50 mm focal length, f/4.56 and 250 mm working distance for my shot.

iPhone 13 Pro data: 4.032×3.024 mm sensor (1/3.27" tube size). Pixel pitch equal to 1 µm, so diagonal pixel count is 5040, and the diagonal length is exactly 5.04 mm, which means focal length equivalent is 8.585× nominal. For 13 mm equivalent focal length, the actual focal length is 1.514 mm.
For your iPhone shot, I input: 1.575 µm (equal to pixel pitch of the iPhone UWA camera sensor if it had 5 megapixel instead of 12), focal length 1.514 mm, aperture f/1.782, 20 mm working distance.

The resulting total depth of field for A1 is 0.78 mm and for iPhone is 0.98 mm. If I drop the CoC diameter to 1 µm, the DoF is 0.63 mm, but then we'd be comparing pixel sharpness, not sharpness of a resolution-independent medium like print of full screen. Even if you wanted to argue for per-pixel sharpness, DoF is in the same order of magnitude and nowhere close to 25× difference.

Oh, and the Minolta out of camera JPEG didn't have any fancy processing, let alone computational photography features and in my opinion, still comes out ahead.

It’s pretty easy to google eyeball photos to see example that show more detail than your posted example.

https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/pw7ldf/picture_of_my_eye_taken_on_the_new_iphone_13_pro/

Left, iPhone 13 Pro

Right, Minolta A1

DarnGoodPhotos wrote:

Left, iPhone 13 Pro

Right, Minolta A1

I took the picture for a quick and dirty comparison where the iPhone had zero detail and the old Minolta had some despite being out of focus.

The iris is somewhat out of focus in my picture, you can see the eyelashes are in focus,.

You took the entire frame from the iPhone shot and cropped mine. And despite all that, there's still detail present in my picture.

And even then, there's some mushiness visible in the iPhone shot.

And I could just as well point out that you can see eyelashes clearly in my picture and they're soft in the iPhone's. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

toughluck wrote:

DarnGoodPhotos wrote:

Left, iPhone 13 Pro

Right, Minolta A1

I took the picture for a quick and dirty comparison where the iPhone had zero detail and the old Minolta had some despite being out of focus.

The iris is somewhat out of focus in my picture, you can see the eyelashes are in focus,

The same was true for the sample gallery photo where the iris is not in focus, but you are basing your argument on that photo.

You took the entire frame from the iPhone shot and cropped mine. And despite all that, there's still detail present in my picture.

I cropped so the irises would be of similar size.

And even then, there's some mushiness visible in the iPhone shot.

And I could just as well point out that you can see eyelashes clearly in my picture and they're soft in the iPhone's. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would respond by pointing out that the eyelashes are also in focus in the sample gallery which is why there isnt good iris detail.

I’m not going to state that your premise is incorrect, everyone can draw their own conclusions.

Rishi Sanyal wrote:

toughluck wrote:

Rishi Sanyal wrote:

Your setup with 2/3" sensor, 50mm focal length, F4.5, with a min focus distance of - and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt & suggesting you shot at the closest focus distance possible - let's say 0.5m, gives you a DOF of 2cm.

The iPhone image, shot at about 2cm w/ a 13mm F15.5 equiv lens has a DOF of .08cm, 25x less than yours. In fact, as I'm composing the frame it's wildly changing as the camera-subject distance changes from handshake & subject/photographer movement. Not only is it difficult to compose the frame, it's amazing AF can even keep up. Naturally, I have no control over what's in focus, and manual focus it out of the question.

With that much needed perspective, and taking into account the much smaller sensor on the iPhone, are the results surprising? Or, in context, are they perhaps impressive, if you assess the detail at the focus plane and consider the roughly 25x less depth-of-field than your example?

(Please correct me if I'm off on my calculations or assumptions)

Wow, why so defensive? I wasn't attacking you, I was pointing out how phone cameras definitely didn't break the laws of physics and they definitely are not better than advanced digital compact cameras, let along interchangeable lens cameras, despite all the claims from phone makers.

I wouldn't say I was being defensive, but I did find the title of the thread a bit hyperbolic, and your glossing over of the fact that the focal plane was at the eyelashes, not the iris, well, odd, as has been pointed out.

First of all, I mentioned that the iris in my shot would be slightly out of focus and there may be some motion blur.

Replying to your comment in the gallery (not here), yes, I shot my wife's picture straight on and you shot from an angle. I clearly said that the iris in my picture is somewhat out of focus, but still shows some detail. Your picture shows lack of detail even within the focus plane.

The eyelash at the focal plane (yes, there's one very small eyelash that appears sharpest) looks sharp to me at 100%, keeping in mind I don't expect any lens to perform its best at its minimum focus distance. I don't understand why in your comments you keep talking about the lack of detail in the iris - clearly the iris is not what's in focus. Had you seen how dramatically the composition and distance-to-subject was changing as I was trying to frame the shot (at those close distances / magnifications), you'd probably appreciate that I had no control over what would be in focus.

Also, keep in mind that nearly all browsers enlarge images to 200% on HiDPI displays when you click on '100% zoom' in our gallery viewer. If you download the image and view it at 100% in Photoshop or Preview on, for example, a recent HiDPI 13" - 16" MacBook Pro, it looks very sharp.

Focal distance in EXIF data shows 25 cm distance (shortest possible).

I used this DOF calculator:
https://www.vision-doctor.com/en/optical-calculations/calculation-depth-of-field.html

I input 3.4375 µm CoC diameter (equal to pixel pitch of 5 mpix 2/3" sensor), 50 mm focal length, f/4.56 and 250 mm working distance for my shot.

iPhone 13 Pro data: 4.032×3.024 mm sensor (1/3.27" tube size). Pixel pitch equal to 1 µm, so diagonal pixel count is 5040, and the diagonal length is exactly 5.04 mm, which means focal length equivalent is 8.585× nominal. For 13 mm equivalent focal length, the actual focal length is 1.514 mm.
For your iPhone shot, I input: 1.575 µm (equal to pixel pitch of the iPhone UWA camera sensor if it had 5 megapixel instead of 12), focal length 1.514 mm, aperture f/1.782, 20 mm working distance.

The resulting total depth of field for A1 is 0.78 mm and for iPhone is 0.98 mm. If I drop the CoC diameter to 1 µm, the DoF is 0.63 mm, but then we'd be comparing pixel sharpness, not sharpness of a resolution-independent medium like print of full screen. Even if you wanted to argue for per-pixel sharpness, DoF is in the same order of magnitude and nowhere close to 25× difference.

Thank you for that DOF calculator, as the one I was using clearly gave me some incorrect numbers. This is the one I used:

https://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

... where if you enter a 2/3" sensor with 50mm focal length, F4.5, 0.5m subject distance, it indicates a DoF of 0.02m or 2cm, which is nearly an order of magnitude off! (It should be 3mm, so given my 0.5m assumption, had I used a correct calculator, I would've said 4-5x less DoF). Also, last night I was digging in the EXIF of your file for a subject distance but couldn't find it, which is why I made that assumption, but now I see the 0.25m distance in parentheses in the depth-of-field field.

So I agree with your calculations, though if we're really being technical here, I'd say that since you're drawing your conclusions from comparing the images at 100% magnification, you should actually use a CoC of 1µm for the iPhone.

But even then, as you say, the the DoFs are comparable, and the differences probably have to do with a number of things: quality of optics, optical performance at minimum focus distance, higher SNR on a 2/3" sensor, less noise reduction on the Minolta... but one can only guess without setting up a controlled experiment.

-Rishi

I'm actually going to try my hand at a controlled experiment. I have several different cameras that I want to check to find out whether detail in the iris is actually possible with small sensor cameras at all, or if diffraction will destroy all detail before it ever reaches the sensor.

If detail is lost in noise reduction, then computational features should show details at least sometimes. If it's lost because the sensor is too small and the lens is already beyond its diffraction limit, no amount of computational trickery will ever improve the result.

toughluck wrote:

And I realize I was right all along. I know how to take pictures. It's just that all these phones are crap cameras. The king is naked.

I wasn't pushing the phones any harder than reviewers told me is possible. They just can't be pushed at all.

If that is the best the latest and greatest 2021 smartphone can do in bright conditions, it's not good enough.

It's like.. you've ignored why people talk about phone photography, the YoY improvements, the capabilities, and just hyper focused on one thing, and then trying to create a non sense conversation around that 

Ainisru wrote:

toughluck wrote:

And I realize I was right all along. I know how to take pictures. It's just that all these phones are crap cameras. The king is naked.

I wasn't pushing the phones any harder than reviewers told me is possible. They just can't be pushed at all.

If that is the best the latest and greatest 2021 smartphone can do in bright conditions, it's not good enough.

It's like.. you've ignored why people talk about phone photography, the YoY improvements, the capabilities, and just hyper focused on one thing, and then trying to create a non sense conversation around that

So are you saying camera phones of today exceed the image quality of current or recent DSLR's and mirror less cameras ?

I don't know about the Minolta A1 , but my Minolta A200 is superior to the camera phones I've seen results off . And that's a fifteen year old camera , with a relatively small sensor .

Try compare a camera phone with apsc or full frame cameras , then look at the detail captured .

Ainisru wrote:

toughluck wrote:

And I realize I was right all along. I know how to take pictures. It's just that all these phones are crap cameras. The king is naked.

I wasn't pushing the phones any harder than reviewers told me is possible. They just can't be pushed at all.

If that is the best the latest and greatest 2021 smartphone can do in bright conditions, it's not good enough.

It's like.. you've ignored why people talk about phone photography, the YoY improvements, the capabilities, and just hyper focused on one thing, and then trying to create a non sense conversation around that

No. The problem is that I read reviews (not necessarily this one) which gush about night picture quality and how they're "better than anything the reviewer ever saw". Then I take a picture with the phone they were reviewing and think that either I can't take pictures or the camera in the phone isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I read years ago that there's no reason to own a digicam, since phones are not only more convenient, but also take better pictures.

Then reviews stated that, thanks to advances in computational photography, phones take better pictures than advanced digicams. And finally that image quality rivals DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.

And that was already several years ago.

Digital cameras improved too, didn't they? So one would have thought that my 16 year old digital camera can't have possibly taken better pictures than the most recent, most advanced, in one word — best — phone camera on the market ever made, can it? It turns out that it can.

It was a comparison done at a whim because I knew I had a picture of my wife's eyes somewhere, and I wanted to make a comparison. I didn't realize it was slightly out of focus... and it still had more detail.

Sure, Rishi said that his wife's eyes are rather featureless. Fine, but if you look at skin detail and eyelashes, you'll realize that there's still less detail in the phone picture. And  iPhone's bokeh is simply dreadful.

I just bought a mint Minolta Dimage A1 for £30 complete with battery pack. My first digital camera back in 2003 was a Minolta Dimage 7Hi, which was basically the same camera, except it used 4 x AA batteries to power it and it did not have Anti Shake. But even today, like you say, the A1 produces high quality photos