[chongli]

The problem with computational photography is that it uses software to make photos "look good" for everyday users. That may be an advantage for those users but it is basically a non-starter for a photographer because it makes it a crapshoot to take photos which predictably and faithfully render the scene.

[askbjoernhansen]

Lots of apps gives you other options for how to process the image data.

I've had a bunch of "high-end" digital SLRs and they (and the software processing the raw files) do plenty computational processing as well.

I completely agree that all else being equal it's possible to get photos with better technical quality from a big sensor, big lens, big raw file; but this article is more an example of "if you take sloppy photos with your phone camera you get sloppy photos".

[dkga]

This made me ask, is there a (perhaps Swift) API to get the raw pixels coming in from the camera, if there is such a thing? I mean, before any processing, etc.

[Narew]

There is. If you use lightroom app for example you can have access to raw pixel. But I'm not sure there is a way to get all the images the camera app from the iphone take. Phone don't take one shot to create the final image. they take hundred of shot and combine them.

[ChrisGreenHeur]

Your brain also uses software to make what you see look good