It is may be worth mentioning that it is very difficult to get such amazing pictures without a very stable setup -- both for the subject and for the camera. Even if you have enough light for a high shutter speed, it can be difficult to compose a macro shot if there is any motion at all. And, as was pointed out, lighting/shadows can be tricky when the "camera" lens is just a few inches away.
Halide does focus peaking, albeit only in manual-focus mode.
In general, though, you're right - I wouldn't want to try for the same kinds of shots with a phone that I get with a DSLR. My macro rig weighs about five pounds, which sounds like a lot and is in comparison with a phone, but between the damping effect of all that mass and the ability to get a good grip with both hands, it makes for a much more stable platform overall.
Also, you can avoid touching the iPhone when you shoot by using a timer, a Bluetooth shutter remote, or your Apple Watch (Halide has a watchOS companion app).
Forget about composing the shot, it's often even a struggle just to keep the depth of field centered where you want it. (Apple might be handling that via smarter autofocus, though)
A little sway left or right can be cropped away, but missed focus ruins the shot.
I've tried this functionality in Halide on my 12 mini, and it's not half bad in good light. No doubt the 13s with built-in macro do better, and it's certainly nowhere near the same realm as the D850 and 105mm macro lens I use for real [1] work [2], but it's not a bad capability to have in a device that fits in a pocket.
While this is obviously a promo for the Halide camera app (which is awesome, mind you) it's full of useful information on macro photography, regardless.
This bit in particular caught my eye: "What makes Halide 2.5’s Macro Mode so special? For one, it brings Macro capabilities to all iPhones." (not just the iPhone 13 Pro)
I will admit that I got a little tinge of resentment when I realized it was an ad/announcement for their app but that quickly subsided when I realized that I would much rather have educational/informative ads like this than the alternative. Even if I don't download their app, I got something useful from this and that's ok with me.
yeah, content marketing doesn't annoy me nearly as much when it's this good (and this isn't technically CM since they're open about the fact that they're announcing their new app version)
I just clicked buy on Halide. I'd downloaded and played with it back when I got my iPhoneXR, and I only upgraded from that recently purely because I wanted some of the camera advances.
$80 to buy specialised software for my $1800 camera (that also happens to be a phone) feels totally like the right thing to do.
Yeah I just tried it out and holy shit it's light years better than the default camera app when it come to letting you adjust manual focus and what not. I signed up for the trial. The yearly fee is only $11.99. How did you spend $80?
I am always happy to defend an advertisement that has informative content and is up front about it’s true nature as an ad. An honest ad would be a win-win, consumers understand things more and the product, if its good, gets increased sales or awareness.
While the 13 Pro's lens is undoubtedly a marvel of engineering, I feel like all those 'mind.blown' reviews must have been written by youngsters who never used a dedicated macro lens on a (D)SLR.
Having that functionality in your pocket, instantly usable, beats having an SLR in the closet at home with a macro lens that you can switch to for a passing need.
And FWIW, the curse of SLR macro lenses is minuscule depth of field, so much so that many take many photos (presuming a perfectly stationary subject), bracket the focus, and stack by sharpness. It's a hugely involved process. A macro lens with a tiny focal length instantly has a big advantage, though depth of field is still going to be a problem given the fixed aperture.
It most real world scenarios I think the average person will have a much better chance of successful results.
Few who have ever taken macro photographs would claim this is a "fixed issue". Macro photography is a giant pain. Further the difference between a 4mm focal length and a 50mm focal length, as a function of DoF, is massively larger than that 50mm going between f2.8 to f16. You'd have to go to a hypothetical F/512 to get the same advantage in that particular realm (though in reality small apertures suffer from their own problems).
This is basic math. It's interesting that someone else claimed it's "physics" as a retort, when yes indeed it IS physics. It's why you can make a tiny lens fixed focus camera that seems to have everything in focus, from near to far, because the DoF becomes enormous.
I have a macro lens in my hands and a stabilized sensor camera. I can take a picture of the crown of my watch with a fair amount of detail.
You have a 4mm lens at f/2. To get the same depth of field you'd need a 50mm lens at f/25, not f/512.
You don't need to use a 50mm lens though. Macro lenses are typically 24mm or so. So you need to shoot at F12 to have the same depth of field in reality, certainly not f/512...
And my camera actually moves the sensor AND the lens instead of just the lens. Because of that it can stabilize in the near field MUCH more efficiently than an iPhone ever could.
"You have a 4mm lens at f/2. To get the same depth of field you'd need a 50mm lens at f/25, not f/512."
Humorously years back I had authored a giant depth of field essay with online calculators specifically because so many people just couldn't understand why their iPhone couldn't get bokeh. Yes, f/512 would be the impossible equivalent. This is easily calculated.
Regardless, the lens Apple uses for macro mode has a 1.54mm focal length. The 4mm example was just demonstrating how fundamentally small cameras win on depth of field, at least if you want maximal depth of field. Conversely they lose when you want to limit depth of field, which is why we have computational bokeh.
"Macro lenses are typically 24mm or so."
The smallest from most makers is 35mm, but the majority are 50mm+.
This conversation has turned weird. As someone who has had many SLRs, and many lenses, and has taken thousands of macro photos, I know that in the real world macro photography is a massive pain. That DoF is by far the number one obstacle (which is why focus stacking is simply necessary, often with ten or more varied focuses). Physics benefits small camera systems for that specific scenario.
The most popular macro lenses for dSLRs are 60mm, 90mm, and 105mm. Of course, there are other focal lengths. I don't think I've ever seen a 24mm macro lens, unless we're talking micro 4/3 or some other non-35mm sensor size.
Do you think that photo demonstrates that it's a fixed issue? You seem to have around 3mm of depth actually in focus, and even with a very, very shallow subject, parts are unpleasantly out of focus.
I don't think that is the demonstration you think it is. Most macro photographers would not rack that up as a successful photo.
And again, focus stacking is what everyone does to compensate for the DoF weakness.
Not necessarily, no. If you want a pin-sharp image at 48MP yes, but if you want something comparable to the iPhone jacking up the shutter speed to 1/400 makes it manageable handheld with good stabilization.
Depth of field is a direct function of real-world focal length. An iPhone has camera systems with a focal length in the 1.4mm - 5mm range (the equivalent framing is not relevant to the impact on DoF). Most SLRs have lenses with focal lengths from 35mm - 100mm.
(That site has different camera selections purely because the circle of confusion differs based upon the sensor size / resolution, so it's the relative values that you should pay attention to)
Take a gander at the DoF variations for a 4mm versus a 35mm FL system.
This is the reason why iPhones have to implement fake bokeh -- because the depth of field on tiny cameras is so much larger, even with a wide open aperture. But the inverse is that where you want a wide depth of field it is a feature of the size. It's also why people seem to be much more successful taking photos on smartphones, because the focus is much more forgiving.
You should read up on how crop factor works. It just doesn't work out like that. Try a DOF calculator that allows you to choose the crop factor and set a crop factor of 8.4.
I wouldn't call it a "trick" but I suspect Apple is doing some focus stacking under the hood.
The image pipeline in the iPhone gets more and more advanced with every IOS release. The state of the art for computational photography is pretty amazing.
If you're doing something under the hood without disclosing it but calling it something else, it's a trick. It doesn't have to be nefarious, but you are tricking the user into thinking they are doing something which they are not actually doing.
I see where you're coming from, but here's the thing: every single photo taken on a modern phone goes through a pipeline of 10+ stages of image processing, including multiple exposure merging. The iPhone isn't even taking a single photo... it's picking the best frame(s) out of a running buffer of video.
(unless you shoot in raw, and I haven't read enough yet to know what processing, if any, Apple does to ProRes/RAW photos).
Call it "tricks" if you want. I call it using technology to give the non-professional camera user the best photo possible at the time. If that bothers you, pull out the DSLR, shoot in RAW, and spend time afterwards in Photoshop/Lightroom.
edit this is also why apps like Halide (or ProCamera or Filmic Pro) exist... if you want to control more of the options instead of letting Apple choose, the capability is out there. Most users probably don't care. They just want a good photo of their kids to post on Instagram.
DSLRs use extensive such tricks to process the image. Enthusiast groups will show the pathological cases for the image processing that happens. Ultimately, ceci n'est pas une pipe applies to the picture. It's a representation and it is meant to evoke the scene.
Specifically, what is 'state of the art' in the iphones image pipeline? Many of these computational techniques (focus stacking, image averaging, subject recognition, face recognition, etc) have been in use for decades - but just not in a handheld device.
By the same token, I wouldn't call Google docs as 'state of the art' since its duplicating existing desktop software, but in a browser (not to minimize their effort, I'm sure its hard).
It's not a software trick. Just one of the unintended benefits of having a smaller sensor.
Full frame sensors have thin depth of field. Small sensors like an iPhone don't have that, so they fake it with portrait mode.
But when you do macro photography, having thin DoF becomes a drawback, so with big DSLRs you have to do focus stacking (which is unnecessary on an iphone).
...when they have a large aperture. Stoping down the lens will widen the DoF on that full frame sensor
>so with big DSLRs you have to do focus stacking
you don't have to. only if that is the style you are wanting to achieve. you can also stop down the aperture. it's not as obvious as non-macro, but still something doable.
Have you ever stopped to think about HOW MUCH wider the DOF is when you stop down on a DSLR? Because when it comes to macro, the answer is "usually not enough", even at f/22. And at such small apertures, diffraction becomes a big issue.
This is why focus stacking exists for macro on DSLRs, as when using a true macro 100mm lens you basically have only a thin sliver of usable DOF at reasonable apertures.
I’ve been seriously into photography since well before usable digital cameras were a thing. I have used very expensive cameras, lenses, and lighting rigs with 35mm, medium format, 4x5 and pro-level digital. I am under no illusions about the difference between a high end dedicated rig and what my phone can do. But I still find it amazing and delightful to be able to get such great results from a device that fits in my pocket, I have with me all the time, and also does so many other things. It’s all about context.
I noticed it during my vacation in Italy. Yeah, I still run around with a big mirrorless camera with a huge zoom lens (Fujifilm’s weird X-H1 absolutely no one bought but I still love very much with the very large and heavy 16-55 mm F2.8 lens) and I’m sure I will only use its photos for my 2022 week calendar or whatever else photo projects I will do – but the photos from my iPhone still provided an instant satisfying value in the way in which they are instantly and easily shareable and just immediately can populate my digital live (even if I have the huge camera with me – which I don’t always have!).
These are two different ways of using photography and both are valid. More importantly, both benefit from any new capabilities you gain.
I guess what I want from my Fuji is to integrate itself more tightly and easily with my smartphone, something they really suck at. And I want my smartphone to be good enough in more situations. Like macro photography.
And the weird thing about macro is that even if you do have a big camera and great lenses (I have the 35mm F1.4, 23mm F1.4, 16-55mm F2.8 and I sometimes rent the 90mm F2.0) you might not prioritize macro photography, so if you just get a new thing that’s pretty good at it that just very cool to play around with. And I don’t think your sneering attitude is justified …
Certainly not the case for this review. Lux produces several well-reviewed iOS camera apps and regularly publishes articles about the iPhone camera hardware and software.
I've never been able to get good macro shots on a DSLR, despite decent optics and lighting, and an ok-for-most-purposes tripod. I eventually decided that to do it really right takes a massive copy stand, maybe on a concrete slab. Stuff wobbles too much without it.
Here's the thing about iPhone photography (and Android too, I suppose): if you know what a DSLR is, or the difference between DSLR and mirrorless bodies, you are not the target audience.
Apple isn't trying compete with a $3500 Sony A7R4 with a $1000 90mm macro lens. They're aiming for people who see the example "macro" photos and say "neat! I want to try that". Or the people who have already bought a Moment macro lens (or one of the other clip-on/screw-on iPhone macro lenses) and are tired of carrying it around.
Also always worth bringing up in these discussions: the best camera is the one you have with you. A DSLR is obviously a better camera, but you usually don't have one on you 24/7.
The best camera you have with you with the lens you have on it at the time.
If I have to pick which of my heavy glass to carry around with me on a regular basis, the 90mm macro is going to stay on the shelf most days unless I'm specifically going out to shoot macro photos.
My iPhone Pro 13 is always going to be in my pocket.
Even further, it's the best camera with the lens AND tripod you have with you
Went for a night walk yesterday and saw a cool snail. The new iPhone 13 pro took a decent shot of the snail in the dark with automated long exposure and built in stacking. But I thought you know for a really excellent shot of the snail, if only I had with me my mirrorless camera.. AND macro lens.. AND tripod so I can get properly long low light exposure. Not to mention another 5-10 minutes out of my day to process the photo. Missing any one of these ingredients the iPhone wins.
But you know if I had to lug around all that camera gear I probably wouldn't have gone for the walk and seen the snail in the first place.
I think that's largely true -- if you frequently need to take professional macro shots, you'll already have your own, better setup anyhow, and won't be switching to a phone camera anytime soon. However, somewhat surprisingly (for me at least), this seems to actually be good enough to also satisfy those that do carry fancy cameras, but don't need to take macro shots that often... from https://austinmann.com/trek/iphone-13-pro-camera-review-tanz...:
> As a photographer passionate about the natural world, I carry a macro lens with me no matter what project I’m working on, just because I never know what tiny detail of interest might present itself. Now with the macro capability of the iPhone 13 Pro, I feel like I have my “in-a-pinch” macro shots covered and I can leave the rarely-used macro lens at home.
no, the difference between a full-frame DSLR and any phone camera is night and day. It's just ridiculous to read articles about phone cameras with their ugly photos where authors are writing something like “wow it's amazing - best camera ever, you don't need a pro camera anymore”. It's so funny.
No, the difference between a large-format 8″×10″-negative view camera + dye transfer printing process vs. a cute little digital DSLR is night and day. It’s just ridiculous to read articles about DLSRs with their ugly photos where authors are writing something like “wow it’s amazing – best camera ever, you don’t need a pro camera anymore”. It’s so funny.
He doesn't have to -- he's making the point that many professional photographers swear by full-frame DSLRs, but there are people who would treat that with the exact same dismissal that you applied towards iPhone photos.
The implication is that it's no more "ridiculous" to read articles about professional photographers using iPhones for their rarely-used macro shots than it is to read comments from people who find the idea of using phone cameras for this purpose laughable.
I think the cellphone versus DSLR/mirrorless debate is largely an artificial internet debate.
Every real-world photographer I know is very happy that they can have both a cellphone and a full-size camera and choose appropriately for the situation.
I would have guessed quite the opposite: that people who know about and use DSLRs would be particularly interested in advancements in smartphone photography. I would have guessed that such people probably use their smartphone cameras more often (and more deliberately) than other people use their smartphone cameras. Heck, I bet a lot of these people even use their smartphone cameras more often than they use their DSLRs.
I think the group of people who know about and use DSLRs is too small to be the target audience of any of Apple’s smartphones.
Other smartphone manufacturers might be willing to do a product for, at best, a few million users, but Apple thinks focusing on fewer products is the better choice (for them, and, possibly, for all users because Apple can spend more effort on each design)
I would guess Apple’s target audience is everybody who wants to make better photos, whether they know about DSLRs or not.
Yes, they have RAW support, but I think they find that a nice to have, not a must for their product.
In my younger days I used to rail against unusable, slow, bloated apps, but most non tech people around me shrugged it off with a "dunno, works for me". I realized many people are happy with 2-3 second response times in software, which are horrendously slow when you care about performance.
Most tech has limitations/flaws, and there is always a target audience that doesn't care about those limitations/flaws.
A 200$ used up Sony Nex-3 with a 200$ Mitakon macro will do a much better job. I agree the iPhone is still convenient, but if your goal is to save money, not upgrading and buying a cheap camera is still going to have better results at a lower price, at the expense of convenience.
It's the other way around. People with iPhones look at professional photography and will say "I want that too", and they're disappointed if their iPhone can't do it, so Apple makes sure it can.
No, laws of physics will not be changed just because customers want it. You want a more detailed photo - take a bigger sensor, better lenses. The software can improve something, but not create the details.
I have friends who have over $30k in glass from Canon and Nikon (some use both!). And they barely touch it anymore because the iPhones have gotten so damn good.
> if you know what a DSLR is, or the difference between DSLR and mirrorless bodies, you are not the target audience.
I disagree. I have both a dslr and mirrorless bodies and love that my 12pro also takes great pictures. Anyone who enjoys taking pictures should be excited about the cameras improving on an always with you device.
Honestly, as someone who is starting to go long-sighted, this is tempting me towards getting a 13 pro (or Pixel 6 i it is similarly good).
I frequently find myself using my phone camera to zoom in on ridiculously small text on things, but my phone has always struggled with it. Good phone macro will be a feature I would use all the time.
I've heard of people who are very near-sighted using their smartphones to help them find their glasses. Just hold the phone close to your face, so you can see it in focus, and open the camera app. Voila, you can see the whole room in focus!
I have a Moto Z2 Play and its camera is not great when close up, it stuggles to focus.
I suspect a lot of current phones would do a good job with this task, but I'm on the lookout for something that will last me 5 years or more so the 13 pro is in the short list.
The iPhones have a special magnifier feature specifically for this purpose. With one tap it opens the camera, focuses close and does a little digital enlargement on a live image. It will be interesting if they incorporate the Macro mode in that feature soon.
My problem with smartphone cameras(including iPhone) is that they completely misrepresent the scene. They try to make the colors of your photos as punchy as possible even when that's not actually what you're seeing. Older iphones used to capture accurate colors (which is why I preferred iphone cameras in the past) but now they produce the same over-saturated, over-sharpened images as every other phone these days.
If I want to make my photos punchy, I can do that in lightroom. For those who don't use lightroom, you can do that in the built-in photos app. My old iphone 6s produces much accurate colors than my iphone 11. On the iphone 11, colors are way off and images are so over-sharpened that I can see severe haloing around high-contrast areas.
And those awful noise-reduction watercolor textures... I wish they would just leave some noise as-is. Get rid of chroma noise (which is relatively easy), and leave some luminance noise around. I mean, luminance noise are actually quite nice as they are similar to film grain.
I can get pretty close to what I want with raw(not ProRaw), but you know, I can't even capture raw with their default camera app even when they are bloating it with useless(IMHO for a stock camera app) features like portrait mode, cinematic mode, photographic styles, filters etc.
I mean, I get why they are doing it; obviously because people like over-processed photos for their instagram. But it's my pet peeve...
Apple brought out a new feature in iOS 15 where you can modify the settings used in the initial pipeline. Currently you can adjust some basic settings like contrast, saturation, and color shift. Those settings are then applied to all photos as they are pulled off of the sensors.
This comes up every time a post makes it to Hacker News. I can only speak for the camera app, but I assume the language also refers to silver halide, a chemical used in film photography.
Apple's crop / digital zoom with the 1x camera vs using the telephoto camera has been pretty annoying with the new iPhone 13 pro. It fails in many cases it's not supposed to, like zooming in at 3x in a bright day trying to take a picture of a flying bird or similar in the sky.
The iPhone lens swap trick that it does can be triggered by holding your fingers over the lenses. You'll see that as your finger approaches the lens, it will get bigger until it suddenly disappears when it covers the lens! Very cool!
That's because the original micro lenses were commissioned to resolve images of microfilms iirc[1] (See under 1962), and doesn't really have anything to do with the macro/micro relationship.
The name Macro makes perfect sense. It doesn’t refer to the size of the subjects being shot, but rather to the magnification factor. Macro lenses are capable of preserving 1:1 scale between the subject and film/sensor
There is a well understood difference between macroscopy and microscopy. Naming macro lenses micro might be helpful to the layperson but not the subject expert.
That’s a neat idea for an accessory. I bet you could make a little stick-on or clip-on light pipe that redirects the built-in flash to a tiny ring diffuser around the macro lens.
Yes, though there may be some other adjustments it makes.
This is just a feature of their Halide app that gives an approximation of macro photos within the limits of the existing lenses. You would need to buy an iPhone 13 Pro to get the new lenses that can focus down to actual macro ranges. The app has lots of manual controls for taking photos that are not exposed on the default camera app.
I’d say, I almost got tempted to download the app to later realize that I have to commit a 7 day trial before even trying the app. Would be ideal to just buy the app for $$ price rather than upfront cost.
