New Yorker: "With the iPhone 7, apple changed the camera industry forever"

[KM-25]

Far from the only one. I find it really hard to hold an iPhone to take a picture without knocking the mode to square (or worse), and using an on-screen button to shoot the picture somehow makes it worse. It's a slippery object with nothing to orient it in your hand. Things like iPhones are absolutely piss-poor designs where simple inhibits function. Plugging in iPhone lightning charger into a phone while you are driving is a prime example. Yes, it can be flipped, but the real issue is locating the hole.

These are not very impressive cameras in anything but bright light (there, they are competitive with almost anything). And fundamentally, a camera with a fixed aperture will never afford any real control, and physics constrain the s/n of a sensor that small. The new iPhone 7 camera is incremental.

And these phones are not cheap; a Sony A6000 with a lens is cheaper than an iPhone 7 and shoots rings around the Apple product. And these days, the cost of the phone doesn't just get rolled into your next phone plan renewal. My conclusion about the 7 is that it is a jump up from the holdouts from the 5s and people like me who emit a malfunction field that breaks phones.

Dante

Man, I could not dissagree more. Don't get me wrong, I love all my camera systems and enjoy them all as individual experiences but I feel the best digital camera I have ever used is the iPhone. I have shot a total of three magazine assignments with them since the iPhone 5, all really good output.

Not sure what people are doing wrong in handling but I always use the leather cases and can do the "right hand claw" and easily operate the phone with one hand by using my thumb for operations, pointer and pinky to clamp the phone against the rest of my three fingers along the back. I can easily control focus and exposure this way too.

You have so many people just blowing up the photo world with these phones, enthusiasts and pros alike and some folks just can not handle it, lol! The images print wonderfully as well, I have a 30x30 at the top of my stairs from the iPhone 4 for crying out loud and it looks great!

The twin camera iPhone 7+ is going to really turn this all up a notch. It's not my Leica M240, D810 or Hasselblad digital back, but it is equally as powerful as them in it's own right.

 

[BillBingham2]

Disruptive technology. I think you will see a growing number of DSLRs at goodwill or Craig's List from folks who by an iPhone 7.

I can see a 7 being my EDC camera now rather than saving up for a Fuji x70 or Ricoh GRD.

B2 (;->

 

[williaty]

You guys are all missing the point BIGTIME.

This is my opinion based off selling cameras to the public for a long time and from dealing with the kind of pictures they took and how they interacted with the photos after they took them. If I hadn't worked consumer retail as well as hobbyist/pro sales, I don't think I would have noticed this.

The opinions of every single person on this website about the iPhone's camera do not matter. We are not the target market for this device. In fact, by participating on a photography hobby forum, we prove that we are very much not a part of the market for camera phone cameras (though obviously many of us do use them). We are so weird as to be a rounding error when compared to "normal" people.

The vast, overwhelming majority of humanity doesn't give a crap about photography and doesn't care about cameras even though some of them happen to take a lot of photos. They only care about being able to share bits of their lives with the people around them. The easiest, least expensive, quickest thing that allows them to share experiences with other people will be the one they favor most. In the past, that meant a Brownie rather than a 8x10 plate camera. Then it meant a fixed-lens 35mm rangefinder rather than a Hasselblad. Then it mean a digital P&S rather than a DSLR. Now, it means a phone rather than any of those things. The only times where you had large numbers of people being upsold to a more technologically complex tier of camera was when the basic model of the day couldn't do something they needed to do. For example, there was a long period from about 2003-2014(ish) where an entry-level fixed-lens digital camera could do everything a normal person wanted except for shoot their kids playing sports and their infant by available light. Those were the ONLY reasons you could upsell a normal person to a ILC (which meant DSLR at that time). Only the DSLRs had telephoto lenses with large enough apertures to capture their kids playing football or soccer. Only the DSLRs had sufficient high-ISO performance and primes with large enough apertures available to take indoor pictures of the new baby without flash. To drive the point home even harder, most of my customers that did buy a DSLR in that time period used it for truly only that one purpose and kept a P&S around for all their other photos.

Somewhere in the 2013-ish timeframe, several smartphones got to the point where they could completely replace the P&S camera for a normal person. Some of the higher-end fixed lens cameras and the mirrorless-m4/3rds type cameras suddenly could do most of what people used to have to buy a DSLR to do. The bottom has fallen out of the digital camera market just like it did the film market because of this. Take a look at CIPA numbers over the last decade. You can see people bail first out of P&S (in favor of phones) and then out of ILCs (in favor of cheaper P&Ses). The big deal for the iPhone 7 is the second lens with the longer focal length. Continuing that trend, you're going to have a greater and greater portion of normal people who can get everything they'd ever want out of a camera from their phone because, again, they don't give a crap about cameras and photography, they just want to share bits of their lives with other people.

Within a very few years, I think we're going to see the camera market being ONLY pros and enthusiasts/hobbyists who are interested in photography for the sake of photography. In other words, in 5 years, I would be shocked if Nikon's line had more than cameras positioned equivalent to the D5, D500, and D810 left in the linup because everything below that would be served by smartphones. Same with Canon but I'm not up to date on their line enough to know the current model numbers. Leica will, of course, continue to release a never-ending stream of almost identical models because they haven't been about photography in several years now anyway. The real question is going to be whether the industry can survive being that small. It'll contract the same way film production did. Manufacturers who aren't positioned to be profitable at drastically reduced scales are going to go out of business. This has already started with some of the big consumer electronics players already pulling out of the camera market.

The iPhone7 didn't single-handedly kill the camera industry, but smarphones sure as heck have given it a mortal wound.

 

[KM-25]

Totally agree with the above. But I am excited to get this phone from the standpoint of being a photographer, I know I will make money with the darn thing, lol!

And about the above, it is 75% or better the reason why I have invested heavily in shooting and printing black and white film. I'm 100% certain that will pay off big time in the coming years.

 

[michaelwj]

I think the article is about 5 years too late. The iPhone 5 killed compact cameras for me. It's been my only digital camera for about 4 years.

It's not perfect but then what camera is? My Leica isn't.
What camera can I fit into ANY pair of pants, from cargo shorts to a tuxedo? My Leica can't.
And what other camera can I (more or less) instantly send my photo (or video) anywhere - even to my printer at home - form anywhere without chemicals or a computer? I have had photos waiting at home already printed out. My Leica can't.

The image quality from a phone reached a sufficiency in a quality vs convenience equation a long time ago. I had an old Sony-Erricson (non smartphone) that had a built in flash a long time ago (the K800 released in 2006). I still have prints from that phone which are fine 4x6's. That phone was the first that made me stop taking a compact camera with me.

But, I get great pleasure using my film camera, using it is a combination of the joy of using it and the image quality, but damn it is inconvenient to share images I take with it.

 

[Huss]

You guys are all missing the point BIGTIME....

The opinions of every single person on this website about the iPhone's camera do not matter. We are not the target market for this device.....

.... Leica will, of course, continue to release a never-ending stream of almost identical models because they haven't been about photography in several years now anyway.

I agree with all that you have to say apart from the Leica comment. I'm not a fan boi but handling a digital Leica is what got me into digital photography. Because all I ever wanted from a digital camera was for it to be as close to a simple film camera as possible. So that all it was about is the photography, not all the frills and different modes and various in camera effects etc.
Leica's M series - film and digital - prove that they are about photography by sticking to exactly that instead of chasing specs. But it will be interesting to see what they do with the future M.

I think long term the advancement of the iphone will be to the benefit of film photographers. There are those, and the numbers are growing (but still a drop in the bucket compared to smart phones) who have turned to film, or back to film because the artistic challenge has been lost in digital photography because the software has become so good.

 

[user237428934]

Whenever I use the camera of my smartphone I fear I might drop the device. Such a device might have the best image quality in the world but the handling makes it useless for me as a "real" camera. My Panasonic LX100 is the smallest camera I can handle comfortably.
The camera in my phone is sometimes quite useful. I use it for copying parts of interesting book articles I want to remember, copying notes from a whiteboard after a meeting, taking a photo of the parking slot at the airport, ...

I can't live without these features of smartphone anymore (most important features first): music player, gps navigator, internet device, mail-client, phone.

I don't care about new features in smartphones. They reached the peak maturity level for my need around 2 years ago.

 

[Fjäll]

The camera in the iPhone is like any other camera. You have to understand its weaknesses and avoid them, understand its strengths and take advantage of them. The iPhone is an extremely capable camera for the right things and terrible for the wrong ones.

No camera comes without its quirks, we all know that.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

I'll wait for the first class action lawsuit (correct term? - I'm not an US-citizen), when the customers realize, that this magic DOF-feature is a Software-only-feature, not some ability of the hardware, which will be delivered as a SW-update later. Also, that this SW is able to detect faces (by machine learning algorithms) and only simulates DOF (which will be okay for many fancy snapshots, although you can already see the limits of feature-separation of image content in Apples own examples, for example, where hair starts to be indistinguishable from the surroundings), but not for, say, a nice DOF-shot of landscape or still-image. I hear them: "The DOF in my camera is broken! Apple must replace it!" - All of these details and the technical/algorithmic reasons for them are not mentioned, in the article... So, I have a little doubt about the predictive power of that piece.

There won't be a lawsuit because nobody cares. BUT I was disappointed to hear that the portrait mode only really works on faces, and I have to wonder if this effect will eventually be extended, via software, to any object that you want to separate from the background.

I don't think it's entirely software, though—surely they're focusing the 56-equivalent, blurring the 28, and using their algorithms to fudge the transitions between the two?

And yes, I agree that the Shot on iPhone campaign gives us pictures that any competent camera could have shot, but I suspect that's half the point—if you have a decent camera with you at all times, you might capture something terrific.

Shooting pictures with a phone does remain a drag, ergonomically, though...

 

[raid]

I find my phone camera to be an important component of my photography equipment. I may carry with me a Leica M9 plus phone, or maybe I carry in one small bag two Olympus M 4/3 cameras and in my pocket my phone. I manage to take photos with the phone that would be much more difficult to capture with a separate camera/lens.When traveling to another country, I now take along one digital Leica camera, the wide angle MF SWC, and my phone. I keep things simple by not having any phone apps. I know what I can get this way.
I don't see any negative effects here.

Of course, it is possible to get many photos quickly with digital devices. I take more photos with my phone when :
1. weather is bad (raining)
2. within crowds of people
3. places where cameras are not welcomed

I checked my smugmug account a few minutes ago to see which "galleries" have been watched the most since January 1, 2016.



IPhone 6..... 58541
Germany 2016 iPhone 6.....27654
SWC 2016.....19500
Germany 2016 M9.....12222
Nikkor 35mm 1.8 M9.....8819
Leica M Cameras 2016.....6863
Europe 2015 M9.....6575
SWC 2015.....5052

If the phone images looked very bad, they would not get many views (in my opinion).

 

[Highway 61]

24x36 never killed MF and LF, and APS didn't kill 24x36. Digital cameras using a tiny sensor and simplified lenses won't kill cameras using a larger sensor and real lenses. All this software schmitz-schmutz can't annihilate physics and optics laws. A storm in a nutshell, and a topic which will make geeks talk for a short while.

 

[krötenblender]

There won't be a lawsuit because nobody cares.

That was meant as a joke. I should have marked it as such...

BUT I was disappointed to hear that the portrait mode only really works on faces, and I have to wonder if this effect will eventually be extended, via software, to any object that you want to separate from the background.

This is because its made by software, not by a real DOF of the camera module. The SW detects the face and takes that part of a composed image from one image, and the rest of the image from the defocused second image (this is why only the big iPhone with two camera-chips/lenses can do the trick). The function depends on the algorithms of object detection, so it will of course be possible to teach the SW to detect other types of objects. However, the effect is simulated by detecting objects and blending two images together. But "the real thing" has a focused plane of sharpness, and everything in that plane is sharp and everything in front or behind that will be more or less defocused and appear blurred, depending on the bokeh-quality of the lens.

The SW trick does not consider distance, this is why you have a sharp face in the example pictures and blurred background, but also blurred hair, although the hair has the same distance from the image plane as parts of the face. Once, if you noticed it, it is always eye-catching and you see, how unnatural it is. - At least for me, since I noticed it the first time.

 

[sevo]

I don't think it's entirely software, though—surely they're focusing the 56-equivalent, blurring the 28, and using their algorithms to fudge the transitions between the two?

That is the way past dual-camera phones from Huawei (P9) and LG (G5) implemented it - and Sony do the same thing in their recent phones with two takes from one camera. Which sounds as if it had been around often enough that it is past patent protection.

 

[neonart]

The Huawei p9 was released in April, in collaboration with Leica no less. Huawai has 8.5% of the global smartphone market share, where iPhones are less than 13%. In 2015, more than 81% of cell phones were running Android.

From the article: "But Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus is the first major phone to marry the dual-lens system to immense computing capabilities."

Navel gazing is all I can say.

Yes, but remember that Huawei has 8.5% of the global market selling millions and millions of lousy entry level phones that make up that 81% of the Android base which is made up of a slew of companies who also sell millions and millions of lousy entry level phones.

Apple has only 3 types of phones, SE, 6s, and 7. In a month they will sell more 7s Plus iPhones than Huawei dreams of ever making their dual camera phone. But that's just speculation base on previous iPhone sales.

Once Apple turns their attention to a technology, it has a solid chance of becoming mainstream and becoming hugely successful regardless of who was fist there. (i.e. MP3 players, smartphones, tablets, smart watches, etc.)

Like it or not, Apple shifts the needle.

 

[sara]

It's an iPhone 7, but it's not a Leica camera with a Summicron and f2.8, is it.

 

[SausalitoDog]

Apple changed photography forever with the very first iPhone. When I got a phone call from my wife 10 years ago asking if I saw her email - she pulled over to the side of the road and took an iPhone photo of her tire - and did she have a flat tire or not? I knew the world had changed.

This was coming from a woman who loved good photography and collected vintage BW prints . She had a great eye but seldom carried a camera and would never work in my darkroom. All of a sudden, making photos was a constant in her daily life.

Does this mean we should all junk our cameras? not by a long shot, but the fact is that so many more real photos are taken by real cameras in iPhones than in single function cameras that we are out numbered by magnitudes...and that some of the users are making some wonderful photos.

Personally I don't see how the smartphone can ever reach the quality of the dedicated camera/lens machine but I never dreamed there would be a computer editing images and printing them in a well lit office either.

I say, embrace them both!!!

 

[xayraa33]

In the near future we will see an iPhone in the satisfying shape of a Nikon SP .

 

[williaty]

You guys need to realize that the iPhone doesn't need to be as good as a "real" camera to work for more than 95% of the people on the planet. They don't care if their smartphone camera is as good as a DSLR or mirrorless. All they care about is whether it's good enough for them and we passed that point at least 5 years ago.

Smartphone cameras are already better than they need to be to make most people happy.

 

[Huss]

In the near future we will see an iPhone in the satisfying shape of a Nikon SP .

The future is here


http://www.zazzle.com/camera+electronics

 

[xayraa33]

The future is here


http://www.zazzle.com/camera+electronics

None of those are good enough as a facsimile of a real camera or a lovable pet animal. 😀