[iLoveOncall]

Quite impressive when they shot at 48MP, but the pictures taken at 12MP just look like your bad, few generations old, non-pro iPhone photo.

As a very amateur photograph that doesn't want to carry his DSLR all the time I considered getting it for the 48MP but after reading the review and seeing what would be most of the pictures I would take (the 12MP ones), it's a hard pass.

[ahepp]

I'm upgrading my iPhone 13 mini because having switched from a Pixel 4a, the camera performance is just unacceptably bad. It's a testament to how much I like the rest of the iPhone that I didn't just go back to the pixel. I briefly considered carrying the Pixel around just to take pictures.

[gnicholas]

Huh wow, I have a 13 mini and love the camera. It’s a bit better than my 11 Pro, especially in low light, and I had no complaints about that camera when it was my main phone.

What’s not to like about the camera on the 13?

[ahepp]

I said I'd try getting my Pixel 4a running again to do a comparison, but I'm feeling lazy and found this video comparing the 5a and the iPhone 13. So it's not exactly the comparison I had been making in my comment, but I think the video demonstrates a lot of the issues I saw between the 4a and iPhone 13.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi1Pu9ez8sI

Some of these photos are just completely damning for the iPhone.

https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=79

https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=135

https://youtu.be/qi1Pu9ez8sI?t=330

[foldr]

These things are largely a matter of taste. The iPhone photos look nicer to me, overall. There are a few cases of closeups shot with the iPhone where the photos are relatively soft, but I suspect that's just bad focus, camera shake, or subject movement. Also seems that the Pixel ramps up the contrast more than the iPhone, which will tend to make things look a little sharper.

[ahepp]

The pictures just look bad compared to old ones from my pixel 4a. I'm not sure if it's a signal processing thing or what. I will try booting that up and posting a side by side in a bit.

[naet]

I loved my Pixel 4a. Price point seemed reasonable, battery and camera were both very decent, and I preferred using Android to iOS.

The one downfall was that when I broke my screen this year, the replacement was so costly that I ended up switching to a friend's unused older model iPhone for now. I may still repair it at the end of the year...

[saurik]

Yeah... I love my iPhone XS Max, partly because it has 2x telephoto--not 2.5x, not 3x or 4x of all the ridiculous things: just a good 2x--and I essentially use that 2x telephoto lens every chance I can. They finally have come up with an iPhone that has brought back 2x telephoto... but as a digital simulation from 1x and thereby only at 12MP, and so it isn't fundamentally different than my existing phone :/. (I do appreciate that the low light abilities are probably better, and maybe that should be worth it to quickly upgrade before they screw up 2x again.)

[brokencode]

The sensor in 2x camera on the older phones was never as nice as the main camera sensor either. It’d be interesting to see a comparison of the optical vs crop cameras for 2x to see if they were able to improve those 12MP at all.

[gst]

> but as a digital simulation from 1x and thereby only at 12MP, and so it isn't fundamentally different than my existing phone

My understanding is that it's even worse than that, as the 48MP sensor isn't a regular sensor but a Quad Bayer sensor. While there are some benefits over a 12MP sensor, based on what I've read it seems that the image quality is more comparable to a 12MP sensor than to a 48MP sensor. So cropping to 2x would match a 3MP sensor.

That's currently the main reason why I'm planing to keep my 12 Pro a little bit longer. A 2x lens seems more useful than 3x to me and if the assumption above is correct the 2x quality on the 12 Pro should be better than on the 14 Pro. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a lot of discussions regarding this topic, but there's a YouTube video that comes to a similar conclusion: https://youtu.be/u9sJb_E6h5E?t=588.

[californical]

That’s how MP are always defined, as far as I know.

If you buy a DSLR/Mirrorless camera with a 24MP sensor, there aren’t 24 million R,G,B pixels, but closer to 6 million Red, 12 million Green, and 6 million Blue.

So if that’s how the iPhone is doing their 48MP sensor, then that’s just standard

[gst]

It's different on the 48MP Quad Bayer iPhone sensor:

Instead of something like RGBRGBRGB for the subpixels the subpixels are layed out as RRGGBBRRGGBB (in both dimensions). So while those additional subpixels provide some additional information (either brightness information or a different exposure time for HDR) in terms of color information the sensor would still be pretty much limited to 12MP. Based on the reviews that I read in the past Quad Bayer sensors seem marginally better than comparable regular sensors (48MP Quad Bayer vs 12MP regular), but nowhere near as good as the MP number makes them look like.

[MBCook]

But the sensor the 2x crop is taken from is better than the old real 2x camera. So it should still be better.

[ideamotor]

For real. Hardware 2x is instant buy.

[dividedbyzero]

What's wrong with the 3x ones on the 13 and 14 Pros?

[tern]

It's an 85mm equivalent focal length, which is comparatively niche (to 50mm, aka "standard" focal length)

85mm is great for head shots, detail shots, video b-roll, etc. and limiting for general use, unless your style is all about subject isolation, telephoto, compression, etc.

Photographers often fall into categories of focal length usage. Some prefer the 24-35mm/85mm pair and skip "normal". Some shoot mainly 50mm. Landscape photographers often shoot 16-35mm and then 70mm+.

My sweet spot is 50-100mm, which was well served by the dedicated 2x camera (I'm often fine with digital zoom—the artifacts are part of the style).

So, they've made a reasonable choice, but 50mm lovers are left out.

[MBCook]

It’s often “too much”. You wish it was zoomed out just a bit more, but if you do that it’s a digital zoom on the 1x lens so you lose quality.

[parkingrift]

That’s an odd takeaway from the article. You can trivially switch between 12MP and 48MP. Why not just… switch to 48MP when you want the extra resolution, and otherwise stick to 12MP. Perhaps switch to 48MP when you would otherwise use your DSLR…?

[iLoveOncall]

Because looking at the 12MP pictures I would NEVER want it, and I don't want to sacrifice the battery / storage with 48MP pictures the time. I expected the lower resolutions to be a leap compared to the current gen (I have a 13 non-pro) but there's basically no difference.

[astrange]

Those 12MP photos aren't representative because he's using a third party camera app that hasn't been tuned for this phone yet and for some reason is using this as a review of the official camera.

They look fine to me though. If you're worried about beating "a DSLR", a medium format film camera from 1920 beats it in every aspect anyway. Read your Ken Rockwell!

[emkoemko]

if you want image quality you will not find it in phones... this is a limitation of psychics

[avrionov]

That's not how I understood it. 48MP are available only in ProRaw format.

[emkoemko]

get a mirrorless... DSLR are old, can't even compare these 48mp images to say a Sony at 48mp well i guess if your not that into printing large and only viewing your images on facebook i guess its fine.

[iLoveOncall]

DSLRs are not old, new ones come out every year, and they have advantages over most if not all mirrorless, such as the battery life or the size of the sensor.

[hacym]

What? Mirrorless cameras use both full frame sensors and crop sensors based on price and line, the exact sizes you would get in DSLRs. While battery life is generally better on a DSLR you should also consider the feature set you’re getting with that reduced battery life. Further, I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the last of Canon and Nikon prosumer and pro level DSLRs: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/07/nikon-will-reportedl...

So yes, they are old and are being phased out in favor of the superior in nearly every way technology of mirrorless.