Review: How does Apple's new iPhone 5s perform as a camera?

A camera with a sensor 10x smaller than Nokia 808 placed 2nd? Are they hallucinating? Without the side-by-side comparison of photos, that DX0Mark should not be taken seriously.

Usually when I go to tech sites, there is always an anti-Apple army who posts unrelated comments just because they hate Apple. I hadn't expected it here.

So if I have an iPhone, and like taking pics, and go to this site to read the review, maybe hoping to learn something or to validate my choice, I would inevitably get to the comments where people say Apple is the worst camera in the world?

What's up with that? If you've got a Samsung or Nokia, then take your pics and upload them, so the whole world will know that there are other phones that take great pics. But quit talking trash about a camera that a lot of people own and love. We don't need your stupid Apple hate/jealousy/frustration on every freaking comment page.

I've got an 808, arguably the best camera with the biggest sensor in a phone in existence.

While I often love the ouput of the camera on the 808 it can be frustratingly slow to use that camera.

Unfortunately the modern dpreview reviews do little to inform me as to how the speed of the camera/app in my phone (or any other phone) objectively compares to other phones.

I really miss phill's old timing section in his reviews. While he did not do much of a comparison he provided the data to let me compare amongst the various phones of the era :

Example:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/casioz750/4

It would be great if you had something similar for connect phone reviews but perhaps updated for smart phones. (maybe add time to email to time to first shot or something?).

Why don´t you all have a look at this shootout between iphone 5s and lumia 1020. http://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-camera-compared-to-nokia-1020-2013-9
It´s redicoulous to see how some people try to elevate the iphone 5 S when its not deserved. There are practically no change at all in pic-quality from iphone 5

Apple's (free) iMovie software makes the iP5s ideal for videomakers, especially if, like me, you shoot quickie in-the-field stuff for uploading.

It feels surprisingly lighter than the iP4s too, and thankfully retains the flat-sided design, so you can lay it on a table for rock-steady results.

Well worth the upgrade I reckon.

Conclusion - if you consider upgrading from the 5 to 5s because of the camera - don't bother. The difference is minuscule and will make absolutely zero difference to what is average smartphone picture quality.
Personally, I was hoping the camera improvements would have a bigger impact on the quality, but this reviews makes me completely comfortable sticking to my 5.
Could not care less about the stronger flash (direct flash looks awful regardless) finger print scanner and extra processor speed - no apps are utilising the full potential of the 5 yet anyway.
So waiting for the 6

Ive never been a fan of connect, its sits in an awkard no-mans land between serious photography and gadgetry, not really knowing what it should be and sometimes being guilty of very tenuous photographic links to some technology.

I promise i will never visit this site again, having read this review that lists, amongst the bad.

"Less detail in good light than some higher-res sensors"

there it is, insight at its lazy worst - bordering on tautology. And what does 'smallish screen' really add to this, surely (given the 4" size of the iPhone screen being larger than most dedicated cameras) all SLRs and compacts barring the frankly silly galaxy camera, should also have 'smallish screen' listed as a 'bad'. terrible fence sitting review ruined by the awful lazy conclusion

having used android phones in my sony Acro S and also the Nokia 808. i still went and preferred the iphone.

The reason is that the overall usage is rock solid. Fast to shoot and supports shooting with the headset volume buttons, tons of 3rd party casing and tripod mounting and apps like Hipstamatic/Oggl.

Overall, for mobile photography, its the overall availability of it.
Other phones often lags for no apparent reasons when invoking the camera apps lacks 3rd party accessories like mcam lens etc.

If i wanted the best quality, well, the e-p5 and the nikon d4 would fulfill my needs, but for an everyday "camera with me". Its the iphone.

Too bad this review, while useful, does not compare the cam with....its competitors. Yes, we know it "takes photos," yes, we know it gets grainy at hi-ISO, but...what about a comparison? For example, "flare" is mentioned, but again, compared to...? (I have a 5-yr old Nokia N95-8G with a 5Mpixel cam, which is fine, except for very bad (in my opinion) flare.

Isn't it that every NEW model is the best XXXX*phone yet?

What with de title?

* - replace this XXXX with your favorite phone: Lumia, iPhone, etc.

.

So lemme guess Nokia should score 10/10 and Galaxy 9/10 and Apple 8/10

The best iPhone? Maybe. The best of all? It's from Nokia. You know it's the best of phone cameras when it's better than most compacts. Big sensors rule.

Samsung screen, Sony camera module, ...... Whats apple about it apart from the usual high price - sub-standard image quality and the usual itunes lock-in exploitation soft ware.

Then apple will again sue Samsung for using their very own screens!

If you ware a brown cardigan, you probably love being charged by apple for what everyone else gets for free!

Lets be honest. If you are a photographer used to using good cameras, the iPhone, or any phone for that matter, sucks big time as a camera. A royal POS.

"Apple’s iPhone line arguably launched both the mass-market smartphone era and the practice of what we now call mobile photography."

This might have been true in the United States, the only market in the world where Nokia wasn't dominant when Apple's first smartphone launched. Everywhere else Nokia mobile camera smartphones outsold Apple's iPhones until just two years ago, not to even speak of Nokia's camera featurephones and other manufacturers phones.

So yes, this claim is quite arguable.

Most of the cons look like fishing for something negative to say.

"Underexposed video in very low-light conditions"

Not on the evidence of that video. Unless it was actually early evening and much lighter, the video was just right.

Citation from the article: "HDR modes typically work by taking two or three exposures and blending them into one that has (hopefully) both intact highlights and shadow detail. The blending process often creates ghosting artifacts around moving subjects, limiting the mode to static scenes. Apple appears to have largely beaten this problem, presumably by selecting discrete areas to combine into a single photo rather than blending entire frames."

Nope - it is blending. It's just that the two frames are captured in a very rapid succession - I think during the photodiodes' filling with photons. Therefore, you'll very rarely see artefacts, unlike with the traditional, fully separated shot-stitching approach.

An example shot (iPhone 5, this Summer, shooting a stopped truck from some 10 metres while cycling with about 20 km/h):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/33448355@N07/9368690108/in/set-72157634791582799

"Apple’s iPhone line arguably launched both the mass-market smartphone era "

You mean all those tens (if not hundreds) of millions smartphones sold before the first iPhone were not mass-market? ;) Sheesh.

Citation from the article: "Overall, the new slow motion feature is a lot of fun, and the video quality of the actual file is excellent."

Are you absolutely sure about this? Based on my examining the currently available footage, it seems the 5s uses pixel binning in the 720p120 mode (as does the iPhone5 in 720p60 - see http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/will-ios7-indeed-support-60fps-video-recording-yes-it-will ; the final iOS7 works in exactly the same way as beta2), effectively reducing the sensor's input resolution to 360p. If it's indeed binning (which I think is pretty certain) the video quality, resolution-wise, is a far cry away from HD resolution or even that of the LG G2's 1080p60 mode, which also produces somewhat lower resolution in the 60 fps mode than in the regular 30p one...

Citation from the article: "The 5s has a narrower angle of view in video mode than when taking stills, presumably a side effect of its digital video stabilization. Unlike most other phones with digital video stabilization, you can’t turn the feature off on the 5s."

1, Yes, the narrower FoV is *partly* because of the EIS.

2, however, if you do disable EIS for video, the view will still be only 10% wider - and still significantly narrower than in stills or 4:3 standard-res video modes (e.g., 640*480).

3, you *can* disable EIS if you do need a wider FoV - and you definitely should if you, say, shoot on a tripod. FiLMiC Pro allows you to dynamically enable and disable IS. If you don't need IS at all, some cheaper alternatives with IS is disabled (it's OFF all the time):

Camera Awesome (free)
King Camera (free)
BetterCam (free)

More info on all these: http://www.iphonelife.com/blog/87/why-you-may-want-disable-image-stabilization-during-video-recording

it's like everyone forgets that consumers purchase apple products because they, by and large, make the decisions for the consumer.. everything must be approved by apple..

i have a 4s, and it is the last iphone i plan on purchasing.. and while the live fliters are alright, and i dont' mind how their HDR mode works, or the burst.. it's no longer about doing things differently.. that was steve jobs apple.. tim cooks apple want's to compete with other manufacturers.. which is fine, bc he clearly lacks the vision for what apple was, that steve jobs had.

Citation from the article: "Once you start recording, you get a white button under the record button for taking still images. This is the first iPhone to perform this trick and while it’s a nice feature to have, the images are disappointingly low-res at 2 megapixels. They’re in HD video’s 16:9 aspect ratio."

Not exactly right. The iPhone 5 has also been capable of this since its introduction, even under iOS6.

"The iPhone 5s, running Apple’s fresh iOS 7, is an excellent phone with a very good camera."

How do you know that? Did you test how well the 5s functions as a TELEPHONE?

I'm troubled by a discrepancy between the Apple 5s chart showing how it performed as compared to the Samsung Galaxy S4's chart.

The "Summary" for each phone gave the S4 an 8.0 and the 5s an 8.1, yet if you look at the bar graphs for the 6 different categories in the ratings box, the S4 overall wins out. In fact, I even measured the pixel length of the blue lines in Photoshop and found that the S4's bars are a net 88 pixels longer. Or said differently, the average bar length for the Apple is 320 pixels across all 6 categories whereas the average bar length for the Samsung is 334 (4.4% longer), yet they somehow rank the Apple as better overall?

Unless they have some *really* weird weighting scale, the final summary scores and the bar charts are out of whack. Can we find out the details how the 8.0 and the 8.1 were calculated?

Size is an issue that impacts other concerns. I accept the smaller screen size because I want a smaller phone to carry around. Until someone comes out with a holographic or foldable display, we make our choices and live with the constraints. First and foremost... I want a phone... small, high quality, seamlessly integrated and rock solid. The iPhone 5s gives me all of that. The camera works well enough for me. If I need more, I'll carry the RX100 around. It was a good review and told me what I needed to know. Thank you.

There are probably 1000 times more pictures taken in one day with phones compared to cameras. The quality of a phone image does matter.

To DPReview:

IMO, you are spending too much space on cell phones and other gadgets whose primary purpose is not photography.
Leave the phone and other gadget reviews to sites that specialize in those things and are better suited to review all aspects of he product. Cell phones may take amazing pictures for what they are, but they are not serious cameras.Better images are available from most simple and inexpensive point and shoot cameras. Please stick to cameras. That is what built your site and your reader base.

Well it does call better than my D3S or D800 for sure....that is why I use a phone and not a camera which pretends to be a phone for calling and social messaging.

I'd definitely add "Low light performance worse than that of predecessor" to "The Bad" part of the summary. Every part of the chart a happened to look at was noticeably better rendered by iPhone 5 than by 5s -- and that at more than twice the ISO.

Given that 5s picked ISO320 and 5 picked ISO800, in real life photos taken by 5s should also be [much] more affected by motion blur...

Compare the 1600 ISO with the 320 ISO IPHone? What kind of absurd test is this? How much IPhone paid for this test?

"Smallish screen"? it's bigger than regular camera screen. 5" screen its not compact anymore.

"Manual controls"? This is phone, not DSLR:))

"Photographic ergonomics not the best" and "No dedicated, two-stage shutter button." You are kidding, right?

Thats a really high score for such a long list of significant cons.. e.g. the "photographic ergonomics not the best" alone demoted the Sony RX100/2 to a silver award.

hmmmm

I've had both the 4s and the 5s side by side. In limited light, what I'm seeing is that the 5s (like the 5) doesn't render low contrast details as well as the 4s, but still produces hard edges and boundaries that the typical iPhone user would find pleasing. Agree that the flash seems to overexpose, but the dual led flash can sometimes get it *really* wrong a make the image look like it was shot with an orange gel filter.