[dbs]

A work colleague has ordered the new Iphone 12.
Knowing that I use a dslr opens up with " my iphone is better than your dslr ".
Can this possably be ?
It has lots of mega - pickles and is therefore better according to him.
Me I'll wait for real facts.
May the discussion begin

[LeeRunge]

Photo battle between an iPhone 11 Pro and a $7,500 DSLR might surprise you – BGR

iPhone 11 Pro's camera replaces my DSLR on supercar tour of the Scottish Highlands - CNET


I still prefer a DSLR but I can respect how good the iPhone gets with each iteration. I only wish we had that computational stuff applied to our APS-C and FF cameras.

I'm pretty curious about the ProRAW feature in the 12 and how much improved the night mode will be.

[UncleVanya]

The iPhone 12 Pro Max could be Apple?s biggest camera jump in years - The Verge

Not sure where captain iphone lover is getting "loads of megapixels" information from. 12 MP is a good number and my moto z4 has 48 before downsampling to 12. The number of megapixels is not where we separate photo systems. I can shoot some very small sensors with absurdly high megapixels but still have garbage. The iPhones are excellent at some types of photography and getting better. The inclusion of multiple lenses has really upped their game - but bear in mind that they use computational photography tricks to enhance the way the images look. This can be fantastic when your vision of the image matches that of the creator of the enhancement - not always the case.

Is there anything that DSLR's can do that the iPhone 12 can't? Sure - extreme wide and extreme telephoto are just two areas. Macro work is another. The lovely thing about DSLR's is that you have a wide variety of lenses to pick from including some funky vintage ones that give unique character like for example the Helios swirl. Additionally the ergonomics of shooting with a DSLR vs. a phone are unquestionable. The usefulness of a viewfinder and electro-mechanical controls is undeniable. Battery life, lack of interruption from calls, popups, etc. There are benefits to being a little more specialized that are almost intangible.

That said, if I had a phone that was as good as the iPhone 12 Max is supposed to be - I would feel less compelled to take something like a Panasonic LX7 on vacation. The real losers in photography wars between phones and cameras have been the enthusiast level compact cameras - here ergonomics are less clear and sensor sizes are more comparable.

[Adam]

A work colleague has ordered the new Iphone 12.
Knowing that I use a dslr opens up with " my iphone is better than your dslr ".
Can this possably be ?
It has lots of mega - pickles and is therefore better according to him.
Me I'll wait for real facts.
May the discussion begin

Certainly not a popular opinion among many photographers, but the reality is that modern phones are in many ways better than a lot of dedicated cameras. The gap has unquestionably been narrowed. This also is why the compact camera segment has been eradicated and replaced by specialty cameras for action, outdoor, or 360 shooting.

DSLRs are specialized tools and will therefore provide additional "niche" features/performance that simply wouldn't make sense in a phone, and of course generally offer better handling and control. However, despite their advantages, even modern DSLRs do fall behind in certain areas, such as in-camera processing. Camera makers should pay close attention to this.


So it really depends on what you're trying to compare. A phone snapshot will probably look just as good (or better, in auto mode) as what comes out of a DSLR. But if you really need to push the equipment to its limits, it's a completely different story.

Another thing to keep in mind: given the rate at which technology evolves, you never know what breakthrough might give one type of camera, or the other, a boost.

Adam
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[PJ1]

My reading of the specs is that the iPhone 12 would be fine for snapshots. The top models have a 12 MP 1/1.9" sensor which should render a nice image if the wide angle lens is up to it (and I would expect it to be). I suspect that the vast majority of images taken with DSLRs fit the definition of "snapshot" too. But a DSLR is a tool for different purposes - and that is why we have them. As just one example, I think a dedicated bird watcher would find an iPhone 12 next to useless no matter how much digital magnification it offers. So the answer is "It's not better. It's just made for a different purpose."

[RobA_Oz]

One thing the new iPhones bring to the fore is the use of a Lidar focussing system. Lidar was being promoted as essential for accurate aerial measurement of terrain when I was working in estate management a few years ago, and was so expensive that only large corporations and government could afford it, but recent developments have enabled its use in small, inexpensive applications. It’ll be interesting to see how this goes and whether it translates across to dedicated cameras. ILCs, of course, are a different proposition to fixed-lens cameras such as phone cameras, but perhaps, for example, a future GR could benefit from the tchnology.

Certainly not a popular opinion among many photographers, but the reality is that modern phones are in many ways better than a lot of dedicated cameras. The gap has unquestionably been narrowed. This also is why the compact camera segment has been eradicated and replaced by specialty cameras for action, outdoor, or 360 shooting.

DSLRs are specialized tools and will therefore provide additional "niche" features/performance that simply wouldn't make sense in a phone, and of course generally offer better handling and control. However, despite their advantages, even modern DSLRs do fall behind in certain areas, such as in-camera processing. Camera makers should pay close attention to this.


So it really depends on what you're trying to compare. A phone snapshot will probably look just as good (or better, in auto mode) as what comes out of a DSLR. But if you really need to push the equipment to its limits, it's a completely different story.

Another thing to keep in mind: given the rate at which technology evolves, you never know what breakthrough might give one type of camera, or the other, a boost.

Hear, hear. The advantage of a DSLR is that you can hold it close to your body when using the OVF. It makes you holding the camera steady, whereas the mirrorless iPhone and any mirrorless ILC without EVF moves through the air and if you watch carefully you will see that most people do not choose a comfortable stable position to take a picture, what you automatically do with a DSLR and mirrorless camera's that have an EVF. The one advantage of an iPhone over any DSLR or mirrorless is that while speaking on the telephone you can still make pictures... ()

[MarkJerling]

A work colleague has ordered the new Iphone 12.
Knowing that I use a dslr opens up with " my iphone is better than your dslr ".
Can this possably be ?
It has lots of mega - pickles and is therefore better according to him.
Me I'll wait for real facts.
May the discussion begin

Probably for video, but as a stills camera - no.

Here's the video specs:
HDR video recording with Dolby Vision at up to 30 fps
4K video recording at 24 fps, 30 fps or 60 fps

[MossyRocks]

My opinion is that for how most people use cameras a phone camera is better than a DSLR, however there are hard physical limits and the silly numbers you see from cellphones are beyond those. Diffraction is a killer giving false magnification and with their "telephoto" camera/lens is even worse, the noise on those little sensors with tiny pixels gets bad fast. Computational photography is interesting and can provide some good benefits in some cases but isn't a panacea that some make it out to be.

For example looking at the iPhone 11 (chosen because I could find the details I need) which has a pixel pitch of 1.4um but has a maximum aperture of f/1.8. However even at f/1.4 the airy disk from diffraction is 1.9um but at f/2 is 2.7um so that would give an airy disk size of about 2.4um. So there is substantial overlap. For those who are unfamiliar with what this means is that if you had a point source of light what is the area on the sensor that it would illuminate. if the area is less than the pixel size it means that diffraction is not limiting the image quality. However if the area illuminated from that point source of light is greater than the pixel size it means it is providing false magnification and the resolving power is limited by the diffraction. Also at this level diffraction blurs fine detail away. The iPhone 12 is stated as having a bigger sensor and an f/1.6 lens so diffraction will be less of a problem but it will still be there unless they have a 12mp sensor where the pixel pitch is 2.1um resulting in double the area. I did find one source showing a pixel pitch of 1.7um on the iPhone 12 but that is still under what the lens would be theoretically able to resolve.

The diffraction limit calculation also assumes that you are dealing with an ideal lens which those little cell camera lenses are not. Not having an ideal lens means that your image quality only goes down.

This ignores chromatic aberrations that are corrected in software which I would assume are a problem unless they are using some exotic glass. Software can hide most of these problems but the loss of fine detail is something that can't be recreated. The aggressive noise reduction and sharpening are what is used to make up for these but I find a lot of the images on the crunchy side of things where it just looks off, especially since it lacks fine detail.

With each sensor upgrade things like noise performance become better which is a good thing and is applicable to any sensor size. However I have seen some of those max ISO shots (ISO 3072) from the 11 and it was about as bad as the K-3 when you get it up to the 25600 to 51200 range.

The night mode in the 11 left me unimpressed even though it was raved about. My stance is that until a cellphone can take a single astro shot (not the multishot stack they do now) that is somewhat comparable to this single shot they have nothing to offer for astrophotography. Yes that is a single shot that I manually processed but to get that image there has to be a lot of good data there. Also I could probably reprocess it and get better results now.

[vector]

The real problem is that the majority of people will only ever see an image on their phone, and likely not even at full screen. At these sizes the images from my circa 2005 3mpix point and shoot cameras look amazing. The bar for cell phone cameras to look good is incredibly low. The reality is when you pull the full size image off the phone and put it side by side with an ILC image the difference become obvious (yes, even from the latest iPhone 11/12). You can see the grotesque over smoothing, the poorly finished edges where the fake blurred background is badly stitched in, the poor iso noise performance and serious smudging, the list goes on. But... no one but serious photographers ever does or even would look at that. That is why the camera industry is in trouble. Even the best phone pictures are technically garbage, but they are tailored to their viewing platform where they look amazing (really anything does including old faded 1970s scanned in prints).

This is why you should shoot for yourself and not worry about others, and print and hang your work. It's so much nicer than a tiny over saturated, over bright, handheld screen.

[Wasp]

You might want to challenge him on the quality of his photos. The guy may have this nifty camera in his iPhone, but is he able to take great (or even good) pictures with it? If he has a better camera, he should be able to take better pictures. That's what counts in the end. When looking at a good photograph, the viewer does not care what equipment was used.

[slartibartfast01]

The night mode in the 11 left me unimpressed even though it was raved about. My stance is that until a cellphone can take a single astro shot (not the multishot stack they do now) that is somewhat comparable to this single shot they have nothing to offer for astrophotography. Yes that is a single shot that I manually processed but to get that image there has to be a lot of good data there. Also I could probably reprocess it and get better results now.

Astro mode of Pixel phones was also raved about. I took a photo of Orion and Betelgeuse turned green

[awscreo]

Lol. All those tech website, desperate for that delicious click bait..

[automorphism]

The real problem is that the majority of people will only ever see an image on their phone, and likely not even at full screen. At these sizes the images from my circa 2005 3mpix point and shoot cameras look amazing. The bar for cell phone cameras to look good is incredibly low. The reality is when you pull the full size image off the phone and put it side by side with an ILC image the difference become obvious (yes, even from the latest iPhone 11/12). You can see the grotesque over smoothing, the poorly finished edges where the fake blurred background is badly stitched in, the poor iso noise performance and serious smudging, the list goes on. But... no one but serious photographers ever does or even would look at that. That is why the camera industry is in trouble. Even the best phone pictures are technically garbage, but they are tailored to their viewing platform where they look amazing (really anything does including old faded 1970s scanned in prints).

This is why you should shoot for yourself and not worry about others, and print and hang your work. It's so much nicer than a tiny over saturated, over bright, handheld screen.

Here's why I like my camera over my phone: it doesn't take phone calls.

[asahi67]

My K1 and K3 have never gotten a 'scam' call which my I Phone gets on a daily basis