As a professional photographer, comparisons like this drive me absolutely insane, especially when they are called "incredible".
Look, the iPhone 4s processes images with in-camera software and does it aggressively so images look pretty to the average user. They are over-saturated and over-sharpened. And the lack of detail captured by the small sensor all but negates the possibility of any REAL post processing.
I get it. The consumer doesn't care. They just know the pictures look pretty. The practicing photographer knows better.
The video comparisons are even more futile. The depth of field, flexibility, and low light performance of the 5D Mark II is so far beyond the iPhone 4s it makes my head spin.
We are headed into exciting times when a device smaller than a deck of cards will replace a device the size of a toaster. I know. But we aren't there yet. Really, we aren't even close.
I, for one, don't carry my DSLR with me everywhere, but I almost always have my phone. I'd like to know that I'll be able to get something when that one-in-a-million shot presents itself.
For me, I take my DSLR out when it's my intent to do photography. When I'm doing something where I think something might present itself (e.g., on my bike), I carry a compact camera if I've got room and won't endanger the camera too much. But I'll almost always have a phone with me.
I understand this and I agree with you. I don't even deny that the 4s has a great camera. It does! But to compare it to an S95 and a 5D Mark II isn't a story that's ready to be told. I wouldn't have said a peep if they just showed the iPhone 1-4s comparisons. That's the story - Small sensor technology is rapidly advancing and it's great! BUT it's not a replacement for the niche the s95 fills. The image presented here of the city is the most striking example of that.
I thought they just brought the 5D Mark II to show how much the iPhone has caught up to photos taken with a camera. And not to say "hey! we're there now, the iPhone can replace a really good DSLR"
Actually as a former professional photographer myself I know that you are absolutely right about the still image, but actually a bit wrong when it comes to the video.
So while the still images of the 5D are several orders of magnitude better than a 5D at resolution, I'd guess the true 1080p resolution of the iPhone 4S is probably slightly better than the 5D -- baring control of DOF.
on the other hand everyone will tell you "its a phone not a DSLR its normal that it auto processes"
then tell you "look its as good as the DSLR!"
annoying ain't it :-)
But most importantly, this comparison is just bad. The key picture is taken differently with different light and different settings even on the camera
they're doing their best to hide the reality: a DSLR, even on all auto is far better than the 4S or any other phone, and its easy to see, on "regular" pictures, even for novices, the difference is huge.
May I ask you, as a professional photographer, what do you think about the eruption of strong effects in photos shared with instagram. I fell like it is something fake, that it will look weird or stupid in a few months.
I think it's unfortunate but I can understand it's appeal and why people like it. Anyone can turn a crap photo into an appealing image with the application of a filter. Who wouldn't love that? It's like MSG for photography.
It doesn't bother me nearly as much as poorly done High Dynamic Range images. . .
Well, a maybe better comparison would be some sound effects heavily used in the eighties. I don't know nothing about photo, that's why I ask, but about sound I know a bit more, and there you have two kinds of effects:
1- The normal enhancements you are not supposed to hear. Maybe a bit of reverb or compression. For these effects, in my experience, the proper way to tune it is to turn the knob until you hear it, and then turn it back half ways.
2- The exceptional strong effect that is part of the sound. Here, you should turn knobs to their max, it will make a different sound.
The "instagram" plague looks to me like if everyone in every music would suddenly add 150% of one type of reverb, and everyone would blindly think it is great, and in two years none of these will be heard (seen) without laughing.
Butting in where I wasn't asked -- I think it's stupid, I don't use these in my Android.
Artistic interpretation of images is great. But the display of a phone (especially a smaller display as on an iPhone) just doesn't let you do it effectively. Between the low resolution, and the fact that you're probably in an environment that makes it all but impossible to accurately judge contrast, sharpness, and color, the results are pretty much guaranteed to be garbage.
If you want to do this kind of thing, go ahead. But to do so, put it on a real monitor so you can see what you're doing.
The huge leap forward between 3G and 3Gs is mostly the addition of focus. Before 3GS, the iPhone camera was fixed focus.
Taking a photo of something close up looked terrible, like the key does in the photo. I'm guessing they optimized the fixed focus to an object much further away from the camera.
Yet they used an apature of f/2.8. Most phones have a high apature, so they focus on everything badly (landscape mode). The original iPhone has a lazer-sharp focus on everything a certain fixed distance away, and blurs everything else, but you can't actually set that distance.
So you can get a few great shots (good for ads / PR), but most will be pretty crummy unless you get used to picking the right distance.
I'm guessing they took this in low light, so the phone opened up the aperture to compensate. (This also explains why one of the camera shots had ridiculous ISO.) I don't actually know for sure if the iPhone has an asjustable aperture, but I would assume so.
Aperture has nothing to do with the sensor. It's strictly a lens measurement. Sensor size affects the cost to build a lens with a given aperture (cheaper for smaller sensors, though that tends to balance out due to the difference in enlargement), but the sensor doesn't affect the actual aperture.
Actually yes it does. the Aperture size is relative to the spread of light that falls on the sensor/film/recording space. As the F number is the focal legnth, it matters how big the sensor is to define that focal legnth.
Actually no, it doesn't. You can have a 50/2.8 on a crop frame camera or on a full frame or a medium format. The different sensor size may dictate different lens construction due to the larger image circle, but it does not dictate the focal length, the aperture, or the ratio between the two.
And the F-number is not the focal length. It's the ratio of focal length to absolute effective aperture size.
This is a brilliant way to promote their app (cam plus) - a great blog post that adds value, and indirectly is used to promote their app while drawing traffic to their site.
I see a lot of differences in hue/saturation between the S95/5D and the iPhone 4/4S. Reds are redder, blues are bluer. Over saturated images can definitely be pleasing, but typically are not natural.
If the S95 was set to "Vivid" in the color settings, I think the result would be very similar to the iPhone 4/4S.
The other interesting thing...
According to the EXIF, the iPhone was shot with an ISO of 60. The S95 EXIF reports 20,480. That sounds strange to me... And possibly purposefully misleading.
Not so shocking, actually. The 5D is a pro camera, and you're expected to pull the RAW data into Lightroom and manually tweak and tune the final product. Its output is optimized for this workflow: minimum processing in-camera, maximum options later.
The iPhone's software, on the other hand, is doing some auto-adjustment before the file hits the SD card. It's optimized for a decent photo without any manual steps.
Also, notice the distortion in the iPhone photo: the buildings "lean" towards each other. The Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 is a _nice_ piece of glass, and is worth every penny of its $1500 asking price.
tl;dr: Take the 5D shot (in RAW, hopefully) and let a pro have a shot at it in Lightroom. That's a fair comparison.
The 5DII would have also been more accurately compared with the Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L II lens (according to the Exif data the sample photo was shot at 24mm).
The iPhone 4S's camera is a fixed focal length while the Canon lens they used is a zoom lens. Zoom lenses trade certain attributes for the flexibility of being able to zoom, one of which is corner softness at wide open apertures. The 24-70 is a decent all-around lens, and I have used it extensively, but I have never encountered a zoom lens that reaches the same image quality as a fixed lens for the same focal length.
With those little bitty scaled-down snaps, there ought to be no discernible corner softness with a big 2.8 pro zoom (and IMHO there isn't); we're mostly eyeballing center sharpness, white balance, and range of contrast. Of course there'd be less barrel distortion with a prime... but it doesn't stand out either way with these scenes.
You can see there's a little less blowout on the shiny roof with the 5D, and quite a bit more detail in the shadowed city streets. Certainly a higher color temperature, probably more accurate. But the 4S is quite impressive nevertheless. No apparent vignette issues.
These photos are not useful for assessing high ISO noise/grain...
Or blow up a small area (within the focus plane), and see which is sharper. Or better still, take a photo of a moving target at night.
One advantage of a DSLR is that you can get a sharper photo with less light and a shorter exposure time. On web-sized photo, taken on a sunny day, you just can't see the difference. If you take a photo at night even a complete amateur like me can tell the difference.
A DSLR isn't like a Ferrari, which blows the competition away in favorable conditions. It's like a Four wheel drive that can be used anywhere.
There is. As there is with most of the "4S vs 5DMkII" comparisons.
For example, the 4S photos are highly saturated (known to be a trait of the iPhone) and sharpened (whereas the S95 and 5D shots do not appear to have had any sharpening). In the first set of photos, the iPhone shots have a completely different DOF to that of the two cameras (and not even shot from the same position).
The "4S versus 5DMkII" video comparison going around conveniently ignores the little footnote in the accompanying description where the tester states that he "adjusted the 5D settings down to match the 4S options available", i.e. "4S video matches highly handicapped 5D video"...
No doubt, the 4S has impressive still and video functionality, but you're looking at a couple of lenspieces smaller than a penny versus 12+ pieces of glass in an L lens...
Aside from the points mentioned by others, the 5DMKII captures far greater dynamic range; look at the detail in the shadows. The 4S produces dark buildings with no definition.
The iPhone-processed result is warmer and more saturated, but it is technically less accurate, and contains quite a bit less dynamic range; you could get better with a JPEG out of the 5D and Picasa in a few seconds.
It feels so weird to defend Canon... I'm a Nikon man all the way.
It feels so weird to defend Canon... I'm a Nikon man all the way.
Does it matter these days? My impression for the last couple years has been that more or less any dSLR will work very well for the vast majority of what most people do. When people ask me about photography, I by and large say, "Get whatever your friends are using and/or whatever is cheap."
That is fantastic advice for any beginner up to someone relatively advanced. At the professional end it does make a difference, recent high-end Nikons have been truly excellent cameras and have had much better noise reduction and autofocus than the Canons. It still makes much less difference than the skill of the photographer, though. It's like Windows/Mac, Emacs/Vim etc etc - they each have their advantages that will probably only matter to a very small percentage of users.
It does matter in a way that by purchasing the camera and a few lenses (which are most of the time more expensive then the camera body) you are locking yourself with that vendor for the future - lenses are not interchangeable between Nikon and Canon to the best of my knowledge. This lock-in is why you must be careful what you pick.
I own a Pentax, but would never choose this company (not hardware) if I was any serious about photography.
(FWIW, I chose Pentax because of on-board image stabilization. That should allow me to save money by not paying for it in every lens (as Canon and Nikon do). However, it seems to turn out that the big names get enough economy of scale that the lens price isn't better for Pentax anyway.)
Yeah, got sold on that one too. It was also a very good deal at that time in that price range (k200d), 11 focus points and water proof body with upper lcd.
A shame the selection of lenses seem to be that limited, many times with one type of make/model for given parameters only.
What do you mean, "better"? To my eyes the 4S comes nowhere near beating the sharpness and clarity of the 5D. The colors are stronger in the 4S's photo, but do we know that to match reality?
The 5D uses a very large aperture f 2.8 which you'd normally never use for a landscape shot in daylight. This leads to a very shallow depth of field and much less detail.
That's not a particularly demanding setting, so the differences aren't so clear. However, clearly iPhone colors are overly saturated and detail is lost on darker areas.
Of course, this comparison is bullshit. They downsampled the 5D shot, no sharpening, they used f2.8 to shoot a landscape (not that it would matter much in this comparison).
I was genuinely expecting a detailed breakdown of the lenses and hardware. Instead what we got was a comparison of images from each camera. And an ad for a camera app.
But really, there is no lens cover, and these things are shoved into a pocket with keys and coins and lint. How is it any phone can take good pictures (as to win contests, and our imaginations.)
Why do so many (most) high end smartphones have no lens covers? It's the first think I would add to a smartphone I design, and yet, I am obviously completely wrong.
You have to really damage the front of a lens to start noticeably degrading image quality. The nice thing about a lens is that for points in focus, light rays coming from the same direction hit the same spot on the sensor, regardless of which part of the front of the lens they pass through.
Connect with the subject (not necessarily emotionally) and portray things as you see them. Ie. it's not the tool that matters that much, it's the result/the content and how it speaks to us.
I'd really like to see a comparison/analysis between iOS 4.3 and iOS 5. I noticed an immediate, dramatic improvement in subjective quality and focus speed on my iPhone 4. I initially thought that this came down to some kind of auto-sharpening but Lori Grunin, one of the more discriminating camera critics, seems to pin a lot of the iPhone's quality on the AF - http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20122150-1/the-iphone-4s....
Looks like unsharp mask filter is automatically applied to 4s.. which is fine for happy snaps, but if DSLR cameras applied such sharpening automatically without the option to turn it off, just watch photographers around the world take to the streets in protest! So many images on the web are so over-sharpened by people who don't know how to sharpen properly or just use the default settings.
This is pretty incredible, didn't realise how big of a jump there was. You can see that the 4 has a highly capable camera but the 4S is even better.
I'm a 4S owner and can definitely see that it's better. Obviously you could say Camera+ want the iPhone camera to get better as their photos will be better and they'll sell more apps but at the same time it's impressive.
An absurd comparison. The first series is comparing out of focus shots from older iPhones to in focus shots from newer iPhones. The last shot comparing the 5DMII makes the iPhone look better but this is because we are looking at small size photos that the iPhone by default sharpened and increased contrast and saturation on.
Not necessarily absurd. As mentioned in other comments here, the original iPhone had no focus. Objects close to the camera were naturally out of focus.
I do not know whether it is your sarcasm, your lack of sarcasm or, indeed, the lack of clarity with regards to any sarcasm that has offended people, but—I suspect that you would not have been down voted if you had used the word "Incredible".
I did not find this article hard to believe; nor was it so-extraordinary-as-to-seem-impossible. While both reactions might have been experienced first-hand had it been shown to a pre-iPhone self, I have experienced this gradual revolution first hand—over a period of four years.
These photographs were interesting and informative. The progression of camera quality and the extrapolation of future camera quality (that I found hard not to make) was Illuminating.
I could not have drawn these conclusions had the site and the photographs not been totally credible.
2) A lot of people still aren't buying smart phones because they're really expensive. It looks like U.S. smartphone penetration in general is around 50%: http://www.google.com/search?q=smart+phone+penetration+unite... , and most of them don't have cameras nearly this good and won't for a while. People who can afford a $50 – $200 pocket camera might not want to pay more than $100 a month for a smartphone data plan.
3) That being said, the smart money is definitely on the low-end pocket camera going away over time.
4) High-end cameras, even pocket ones (think the Canon S95 or S100 class) are going to be around for a long time. Ditto dSLRs. Until the laws of physics get violated, dSLRs are going to take vastly better pictures than camera phones. Which doesn't matter to most people but does to a substantial minority.
Look, the iPhone 4s processes images with in-camera software and does it aggressively so images look pretty to the average user. They are over-saturated and over-sharpened. And the lack of detail captured by the small sensor all but negates the possibility of any REAL post processing.
I get it. The consumer doesn't care. They just know the pictures look pretty. The practicing photographer knows better.
The video comparisons are even more futile. The depth of field, flexibility, and low light performance of the 5D Mark II is so far beyond the iPhone 4s it makes my head spin.
We are headed into exciting times when a device smaller than a deck of cards will replace a device the size of a toaster. I know. But we aren't there yet. Really, we aren't even close.