iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap

The funny thing is that for all the amazing technological improvements discussed, all the pictures in the article actually show that A. having a photographer who knows how to frame things, and sees the right moment to capture an image, and B. having a subject worthwhile photographing, are way more important than having a top tier quality camera.

I am still not understanding why my iPhone 13 landscape photos look as good as those from my $900 Nikkor Z 24mm f&#x2F;1.8 S prime lens with its superior optics on a $2k DSLR body.<p>If the reason is fancy post-processing, then why can&#x27;t Nikon have a tiny lens like the iPhone 13 and just add fancy post-processing to it?

&gt; “I think the 12 MP shooting default is a wise choice on Apple’s part, but it does mean that the giant leap in image quality on iPhone 14 Pro remains mostly hidden unless you choose to use a third party app to shoot 48 MP JPG &#x2F; HEIC images or shoot in ProRAW and edit your photos later.”<p>This, 100%.<p>The massive difference in image quality is when shooting in RAW. That’s when you actually get the 48MP &amp; the images are fantastic.<p>But that’s <i>not</i> the default. The default is 12MP.<p>That’s why reviewers are so torn on this camera system. If the default was a 48MP picture&#x2F;quality, everyone would be praising it. But when the default is 12MP, it’s par for the course.

The 48 MP bayer mode is indeed impressive, but it does not increase the spatial frequency response. I recently used it to document some color transition errors on LG OLED displays and even with the 48 MP &quot;RAW&quot; mode there are artifacts from the limited spatial resolution. One of the images properly captures the display sub-pixel layout, but that is taken closer to the display. Enabling&#x2F;disabling &quot;RAW&quot; did not change the spatial resolution of the photos.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;amP2lR4" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;gallery&#x2F;amP2lR4</a>

Coming from a iPhone 12 to the 14, the aggressive switching between lenses is pretty annoying in close and far shots. The lens shift screws up framing and hits at unpredictable times.

Lol, nothing is better about the dark skyline image. It&#x27;s a blurry noise canceled mess with bad white balance.

Unfortunately, it still takes crappy concert photos. The combination of low light, crazy lighting, etc., still wreak havoc on the images.<p>Fortunately, most of the venues I go to for shows generally have a &quot;No detachable lens cameras&quot; rule, which means my Fuji X100 is allowed. Unfortunately, security at the venues often ignores the policy and I don&#x27;t want to be That Guy holding up the line arguing with them about it.<p>(I&#x27;m also not one of those people that is taking pictures [and I never record video] the whole show, I just want a handful of high quality shots to help me remember the show)

Coming from a Pixel 5 to the iPhone 14 Pro, I gotta say I&#x27;m pretty disappointed. The pictures are mediocre at best, and just plain bad in dim light especially.<p>Google&#x27;s computational photography is years ahead. The latest Pixel has better sensors too.

Would be curious to see what they think of the Pixel 7 Pro camera. Video is still worse, but picture quality overall seems to be slightly (but noticeably) better than the iPhone 14 Pro.

i did a point and shoot picture of a cat while a group of friends and I were sitting on the floor of a halloween party bathroom<p>later, when sharing the photos, i realized we could distinctly see my partner and I in the reflection of the cat&#x27;s eye. the CSI enhance memes are real :-)

Well this detailed camera review conclusively proves that I am a mediocre photographer who doesn&#x27;t go anywhere interesting. Thanks a lot, lux.camera. Thanks a lot.

The iPhone 14 has a fantastic camera. It&#x27;s a noticeable improvement from previous models and takes fantastic photos that rival or surpass many SLR cameras on the market. If Apple had taken another leap and included usb-c port it would have been enough for me to upgrade. For now, I wait.

I upgraded from an Xs Max to a 14 partway through a road trip this year. The massive difference between these phones is in video (and particularly stabilisation) but I’ve also enjoyed the 0.5 and 2-3x options on the camera.<p>I haven’t had enough wifi to backup to iCloud and free up space to work in raw&#x2F;48MP, but you can see the sorts of shots here with the stock app and 12MP.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;instagram.com&#x2F;isaacforman&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;instagram.com&#x2F;isaacforman&#x2F;</a><p>I am carrying a GoPro, an Osmo Pocket, an Insta360 Go 2, two drones and the two phones - the 14 is the one I used as a priority because the quality and options were so good.

-- anyone else find it annoying how protruded the lens is? --

VERY disappointed there is no 48MP RAW available.<p>The iPhone cameras are superb I think, but the &quot;Apple Image Processing&quot; renders stock camera photos useless for me. The watercolor smear and color smoothness that the article talks about. I like noise, don&#x27;t smooth away the reality of life.<p>ProRAW is confusing because it is not RAW at all, instead it&#x27;s an uncompressed image that has had a milder &quot;Apple Image Processing&quot; applied.<p>I&#x27;ve tested the iPhone 14 Pro, and the ProRAW files are too processed for me. They are not &quot;reality&quot;. This is a philosophical concept. Do I want to capture what I see, or a smoothed watercolor ideal of what Apple think I should see?<p>I want a 48MP genuine RAW file that I can post-process in Lightroom or Photoshop. Here&#x27;s looking forward to the iPhone 15 Pro!

These relatively cheap tiny cameras would be so useful in so many other products, from medical to sports.<p>It is really a shame that most new consumer tech is locked behind the doors of large corporations these days, that will keep the tech from reaching its true potential in a myriad of products.

&gt; <i>And yes: 48 megapixel capture is slow. We’re talking up to 4 seconds of capture time slow</i><p>Pretty disappointing that a US$1000+ flagship device still can&#x27;t batch capture at high resolution. Even entry-level DSLRs&#x2F;mirrorless cameras can do 15+ fps in RAW mode.

I just can&#x27;t help but notice how soft so many of these shots look. The composition and lighting is beautiful, the immediate impact of the photo is great, but then if you start to really look for more than a few seconds on desktop, you see how smudgy so much of the detail is.<p>I recently gave up my mirrorless in favor of my iPhone because the latter was just so much more convenient and largely good enough. I wonder if it is physically possible, however, for these smaller lens and sensor packages to ever get to the point of eliminating that phone camera smudge?

A bit of knowledge of optics and photography is enough to know that little sensor with miniature glass cant compete with a dedicated camera. (Eg regardless of &#x27;equivalent&#x27; field of view via crop factor, a 50mm and 10mm are going to produce a very different depth of field.)<p>You can definitely take nice photos with it given the right variables and&#x2F;or some creativity (as you could with a point-and-shoot a decade ago)... but don&#x27;t be taken in by their marketing if photography is a goal for you.

The size of the sensor isn&#x27;t as important as people think it is. What really matters is the diameter of the aperture (the absolute diameter, not the f number). Consider a cone of light for a given angle of view hitting a small sensor close to the aperture and a large sensor further from the aperture:<p><pre><code> o &lt; aperture of a given diameter &#x2F;\ &#x2F; \ ---- &lt; small sensor (less area, more light per unit area) &#x2F; \ &#x2F; \ -------- &lt; large sensor (more area, less light per unit area) </code></pre> If you compare typical shooting apertures for DLSRs and camera phones, they&#x27;re not radically different. Say you are shooting a 50mm lens at f8 on a DSLR. That&#x27;s an aperture of 6.25mm. A typical smartphone camera will have an aperture of around 3-4mm. In this scenario, then, the DLSR is getting about 3 times more light (or ~1.5 stops).<p>Of course you <i>can</i> use much wider apertures on DSLRs, but their use is more limited given the shallow depth of field that results. If you&#x27;re shooting e.g. landscapes, then you&#x27;re probably not going to use apertures much wider than f8 anyway.

I guess the physics of the problem are really against these tiny cameras, but even so the bokeh on the caterpillar macro shot is surprisingly painful. Is there anything they can do about that, optically or computationally?

I still thinks Pixel camera is much better than iPhone . I guess this lux apps play a niche role in iOS as Android have many competitors

To me that&#x27;s a downgrade, it should be smaller, not bigger

The author clearly knows a lot about photography, so I don&#x27;t think this is a mistake in the article... When did &quot;depth of field&quot; begin meaning the opposite of what it traditionally meant in photography?<p>For example: <i>A nice side benefit of a larger sensor is a bit more depth of field. At a 13mm full-frame equivalent, you really can’t expect too much subject separation, but this shot shows some nice blurry figures in the background.</i><p>For as long as I can remember, depth of field referred to the range of distance that is in focus. So more depth of field would mean more things in focus and less subject separation. And &quot;distance to subject&quot; and &quot;field of view&quot; equal, a larger sensor results in less depth of field.<p>But in the article it is clearly the opposite. This isn&#x27;t the only place I&#x27;ve noticed the change in meaning either.

Why is &quot;huge&quot; not in the title ?<p>edit: it&#x27;s fixed now

These pictures are fantastic. For anyone but professionals the reasons to buy a DSLR or mirrorless are virtually gone.

Since my wife bought a Canon 90D for shots that matter I have since &quot;meh&quot;d about camera phones.<p>I wish I could just have a simple dumb phone with a calendar, GPS, and texting, and it doesn&#x27;t cost 1400 bucks.