[KineticLensman]

> I think the photo of the woman is terrible

This is partly because the flash has blasted her face with light losing all the shape except for an ugly shadow under her nose. With my Nikon I could try at (very) high ISO for a natural-light shot or use an off-camera flash to shape her face in a more flattering way. But perhaps people used to the very flat / boring light common in mirror selfies won't care about this.

The blur on the edges of the fur look digitally smeared rather than optically blurred.

[edit - okay, I didn't spot that he used off screen light rather than flash. But the effect is similar and hasn't given any pleasing sculpting of the subject. Other processing may have made things worse]

[kristofferR]

He didn't use a flash for that image, the only light was from another phone screen. And it was a three second hand-held, it's impressively clear for what it is.

> This Portrait mode w/ Night mode 3-second exposure was shot with the iPhone 12 Pro in my right hand. Simultaneously, in my left hand, I held my iPhone 11 Pro and used the light emitting from the screen (not the flash) as an off-camera fill light for Esther’s face.

[inasio]

I don't think there was flash involved in the shot, it says he held another phone on his left hand and used the light from the screen (not flash) as an indirect light source. The washed out look I think is from software averaging to correct motion blur from the 3 second exposure.

[sudosysgen]

The blur is actually insane amounts of noise reduction, it's not an attempt at bokeh, I think! You can tell because all other shadows are just as blurred out.

I think that it doesn't look flat just because of the flash, but really as a mix of incredibly severe noise reduction as well as a ton of dynamic compression necessary to keep the background in roughly the same exposure.

[wlesieutre]

He says it’s “Portrait mode”, so it does have the fake bokeh on the background in addition to any smoothing from night mode denoising. That’s why he also mentions the depth map for the fuzzy hood.

[bitL]

It's unrealistic to get off-camera flash on iPhone unless two could be paired together with a friend holding iPhone acting as a flash. But what could be done easily is a ring flash around the rear camera that would make most portraits bearable instead of horrible basic flash.

There are also Deep Learning models that change angle of light on a final photo, so you would be able to get your Rembrandt lighting that way soon.