With the iPhone 7, Apple Changed the Camera Industry

http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/with-the-iphone-7-apple-changed-the-camera-industry-forever

by paulsutter • 10 years ago

117 202 10 years ago

foobarbecue3• 10 years ago

Ugh. Another article by someone with no background in the subject he's covering. 12-megapixel lenses eh? That's a lot of pixels for a lens. Professionals call "digital negatives" DNGs, do they? I wonder what professionals call raw... I love the social commentary and analysis in the New Yorker but they should probably steer clear of tech.

gok• 10 years ago

DNG is literally short for Digital Negative.

1_2__34• 10 years ago

Yes but Malik still sounds like an idiot. A DNG is a specific file format that happens to mean digital negative, but he means RAW. DNG is a proprietary raw format from Adobe. And no we don't call our RAW files "digital negatives".

foobarbecue3• 10 years ago

I know that, but it's just one particular brand of raw image format. arw, cr2, crw etc. are also raw formats. I don't hear photographers ever speak of "shooting digital negative" -- you say "shooting raw."

w1ntermute2• 10 years ago

The author, Om Malik[0], is a well-known technology blogger, not a social critic. He just happened to publish this piece in the New Yorker.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Om_Malik

TillE• 10 years ago

Yeah he's definitely not a social commentator, but there's still a big problem if you're writing about digital cameras and you don't know the difference between a lens and a sensor.

foobarbecue3• 10 years ago

Interesting. I overreacted. Still, there are some telling errors in this article. I admit I didn't read the whole thing, and my quick scan happened to hit the worst parts. Still, the article misses the main question -- are large sensors still required for high quality images?

ekianjo2• 10 years ago

Tech bloggers usually dont know all aspects of all techs well.

matwood2• 10 years ago

The article is liberal with its language, but makes good points backed up by facts. The point and shoot market was killed by the smart phone. The camera market has become the smart phone and the DSLR. DSLRs may be safe for awhile because they provide advanced features that are hard to match in a phone sized device, but as a non-professional photographer I find myself reaching for my phone more often than my DSLR.

I love using my DSLR, but I hate dealing with the workflow. If I take a picture with my DSLR I have to put the SD card in my computer, load up Lightroom, edit, export, and finally upload/share the picture.

paulddraper5• 10 years ago

Almost all DSLRs nowadays have wireless capabilities.

Transfer it to your phone and do whatever you would have done otherwise.

whyenot4• 10 years ago

Nikon and Canon have also been stuck in a rut in recent years. Sony is coming out with all these new ideas (TLRs, the A7 series), while Canon and Nikon keep on churning out pretty much the same stuff they always have. Not only are they facing competition from smart phones, but on the higher end, Ricoh/Pentax now offers a full frame DSLR at 1/2 the price of similar Canon/Nikon models. The Pentax has some warts, but still, that's got to hurt Canon and Nikon a little.

wlesieutre• 10 years ago

Don't forget about the Electronic Viewfinder Interchangable Lens cameras! Though "mirrorless" has caught on as a name more than EVILs.

I hear very good things about Sony's A6000 series and some Micro 4/3 cameras.

ksml2• 10 years ago

I agree that the smartphone killed the point and shoot industry, but I think it's pretty far overboard to say that Apple is revolutionizing the camera industry with the iPhone 7. They added another lens, which is certainly nice but not revolutionary, and they added some depth of field effects, which are nice but look pretty bad compared to actual shallow depth of field.

Edit: Also, you definitely don't need to fire up Lightroom to share photos from your DSLR; I think practically any DSLR can shoot JPG. Many DSLRs can also share photos to phones via wifi or Bluetooth these days. Mine didn't come with such a feature, but Nikon sells a $20-30 adapter that adds that capability.

solatic• 10 years ago

Agreed on the workflow problem. The pain of using a DSLR has less to do with the form factor (size and weight) and more to do with the fact that the post-shot work is stuck a decade in the past.

And I think that's true even if you're a professional - as a professional, your shots should use your phone's cellular connection to upload the shots to Adobe Creative Cloud (or competing cloud) as you take them, so that when you open your machine to do post-processing work, your shots are all already there. Why should anybody be bothering with CF or SD cards anymore? Just store everything on your smartphone (did you hear the iPhone 7 will now have a 256 GB option?), which in and of itself is a buffer for your work before it gets transferred to the cloud.

Modular backs a la Moto Z are interesting because there's a lot of potential now for making "big glass" relevant again for prosumers. Make a modular back with a large sensor and a Micro Four-Thirds or F mount. The only real problem is getting OEMs to agree on a common standard that they would stick to for years, because nobody wants to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a camera back they won't be able to use next year when they upgrade their phone, and yes that's actually a really big problem, but leadership from Google (in the Nexus/Pixel lines) can really help here.

1_2__34• 10 years ago

"Venture capitalist predicts death of companies that compete with companies in his portfolio" I suppose could also be the headline.

paulddraper5• 10 years ago

What about "someone puts their money where their mouth is"?

Joof• 10 years ago

Most people put their mouth where their money is in my experience.

toast0• 10 years ago

I hope they don't drop the 3.5mm jacks on DSLRs now too...

denzell• 10 years ago

It sounds like the dual lense plus is a game changer.

Is the single lense standard version significantly better than the previous model?

derogator• 10 years ago

lens.

nicky0• 10 years ago

It is an improvement. Notably it has optical image stabilisation now.

guelo• 10 years ago

I'll wait to see the reviews but I'm sure the 7+ camera will be more evolution than revolution. Premium phones have been taking good enough photos for at least a couple years now. This will be a continuation of existing trends.

gaius6• 10 years ago

I thought so too, but I felt the urge to get back into SLR photography recently so I picked up an old Nikon D3 on eBay and the difference between it and my iPhone SE is like night and day. No matter how you tweak them small-sensor photos just look flat and drab in comparison, or garishly oversaturated.

jacobolus• 10 years ago

Both flat/drab and garishly overcolored pictures can be easily fixed in Photoshop, except when noise or lack of dynamic range gets in the way (i.e. the detail never gets captured, or one or more color channels get clipped).

The problems with phone cameras (and small sensor cameras more generally) are (1) hitting the resolution limits of the optics, (2) noise, (3) lack of dynamic range, (4) lack of choices in quality lenses, (4) fixed aperture, which means no creative focus effects, and poor performance in low-light settings, (5) software based (and therefore slow and sometimes inaccurate) manual controls over shutter speed, focus, flash, etc., (and more generally, a much less efficient or adaptable physical user interface than a dedicated camera) (6) often limiting output formats, with lots of in-camera processing wiping out data from the raw image.

Any 6+ megapixel DSLR (e.g. the ones from the early 2000s) with a nice lens easily outclasses the iPhone or any other phone camera, in the hands of a photographer with basic competence.

On the other hand, phone cameras are amazing for their ridiculously tiny size, and their cost is obscenely low after the economies of scale kick in. They take much better pictures on average than the <$50 35mm film cameras from the 1990s, especially when the photographer is a complete beginner (those are the cameras I think of as their spiritual ancestors).

lips• 10 years ago

Thank you. Fast, cheap, good, pick two, today, tomorrow, and the next. While the definitions of the three terms will change over time, Apple has not slain the project triangle, but they continue to push the "good" part.

billions• 10 years ago

Apple realizes smartphone development has stagnated industry-wide. Rumors are that they have gone from a 2 year iPhone refresh to 3. I think it's obvious Apple has failed to innovate on 6s and 7 iPhones. This could be a downturn for the company, with a lack of product leadership. The only way this innovation gap could bounce back to growth is if product leadership has refocused to unannounced future products. Self driving cars and wearable technologies would be candidates for markets that could make meaningful impact on Apple's bottom line.

seanmcdirmid2• 10 years ago

Phone is mature now, no one can think of any huge advances to be made without any unforeseen disruption. New product categories represent the way forward, but Apple still has to keep milking the iPhone cash cow.

petre2• 10 years ago

This article misses the fact that aside from the small lens/small sensor issue, smartphones have shitty camera ergonomics. Yes, they're great people who want a point and shoot at all times with them, but I doubt they will replace cameras. Displace cameras and disrupt the camera market they will, as the have done with the PC market. Still, you need a PC, Mac or laptop to do real work (programing, office, photo and video editing etc.). Phones and tablets are more suited and used for proof reading. You still need a camera to do any sort of professional photography efficiently. Camera and photography enthusiasts will also continue to buy cameras. Yes, everyone will now be able to shoot and share professional looking photos with the new iPhone. Cool.

seanmcdirmid2• 10 years ago

This is much like post PC: PCs aren't dead, but many people don't bother having them anymore. Likewise, I used to buy a camera every few years, but I've completely stopped that now, since I'm not a professional.

So the camera and PCs markets that used to be growing as non professional consumers bought the new tech are now contracting! If you company makes cameras for consumers, that business is in trouble, and you can often only be so large with a more niche professional product.

threeseed4• 10 years ago

Quite a lot of people including myself are doing 99% of photo/video editing on iPads.

And most "real work" these days are actually happening inside browsers e.g. Salesforce, JIRA, Office 365 etc.

krzyk2• 10 years ago

I'm not sure how a phone with a 12MP can change an industry if flagships releases year ago had 21MP. Adding another lens is nice but if you are still 1/2 of the resolution of a DSLR or other phones it is quite funny to call it revolutionary.

johncolanduoni• 10 years ago

Not saying I agree with the revolutionary label, but if there's any example of a stat on a device turning into a semi-meaningless game of min/maxing, it's camera resolutions.

johnloeber• 10 years ago

MP resolution is not so important. What really matters is lens quality. You can get DSLRs with 12-18 MPs that take pretty nice pictures, though at a lower resolution. There were indeed 16+ MP snapshot cameras five years ago, but the pictures they took were generally rubbish, because of poor lens quality.

cptskippy2• 10 years ago

Lets not forget image sensor size. The smaller the sensor or the higher MP for the same dimensions means much more noise and lose of image fidelity.

LoSboccacc• 10 years ago

Eh. Sensor size increases low light performances a lot, and gives much better performances per increase that lens quality. Besides, lowest I saw a phone go is f2.4, it's going to take a while to reach dslr quality

gaius6• 10 years ago

Waaay back in the day, I worked for a famous news agency that you've all heard of. We had blown up on all the walls large prints of some award-winning images, 40"x60" or bigger that had come from cameras like the original game-changer for photojournalism, the Nikon D1 which were all of 2.7 megapixels. And these prints looked fantastic. Since then I have never cared about megapixel count, it's a relatively minor factor in the final quality of an image.

EugeneOZ2• 10 years ago

Much more people will decide to buy iPhone 7Plus instead of new DSLR when difference in photos is not so obvious for amateurs. Double-camera is a driver for this decision, not size of sensor.

Animats• 10 years ago

You can get unprocessed image files out of the Iphone 6.[1] There's an app for that.[2] Now Apple's own app does that, too.

[1] https://www.cinema5d.com/apple-ios-raw-photos-iphone-ipad-pr... [2] http://jag.gr/645pro/

Synaesthesia• 10 years ago

I believe RAW output only works on the iPhone 6S or newer.

chaostheory2• 10 years ago

It was iPhone 4 that changed the camera industry. The iPhone 7 is just continuing the trend. Sure there are still stand alone cameras with better quality than a smart phone... but who carries a camera who isn't a hobbyist photographer?

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

If anything, the Sony Ericsson t68i was the firing gun for convergence. I used to use it frequently - not just as a novelty. Would send them via mms where they'd then be published on my website - 140 chars, image, etc - my personal Twitter in 2002.

But either way, Apple didn't invent camera phones.

sbuk2• 10 years ago

No one said they did. The suggestion is that the iPhone 4 was a watershed in cameras on smartphones. For a while the iPhone was considered the benchmark, and still is in many ways. As ever, the bigger number of pixels that other devices have does not necessarily mean better cameras. Optics play a huge role. Other mobile devices have caught up and some have exceeded the quality of the iPhones camera, but that doesn't change the fact that the iPhone 4 was an important milestone for smartphone photography.

chaostheory2• 10 years ago

How? Did t68i even come with a camera?

MichaelMoser1232• 10 years ago

I recently bought a Huawei P9 for my daughter - it has a camera by Leica and that is also supposed to be a very high end camera, all for a fraction of the cost of a new iphone

egeozcan• 10 years ago

supposed to be a very high end camera

I'm curious, did it really turn out to be one?

gaius6• 10 years ago

The Nokia N95 was the first device that I remember that was more a camera with a phone than a phone with a camera

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N95

enqk• 10 years ago

And having owned both a n95 and an iphone4, the n95 had a superior one

dingo_bat• 10 years ago

I don't see anything that Apple has done with 7 and 7+ camera that is remotely new for a flagship smartphone.

paulrouget2• 10 years ago

It's the first time the bokeh effect is successfully implemented. AFAIK, competitors never managed to get it right (see HTC for example).

rado• 10 years ago

Did NYT have a look at the bokeh samples? They are not that good and in everyday use the flaws will show. Isn't 56mm portrait rather than telephoto?

ryanmaclean• 10 years ago

That's roughly "normal" or "short tele". Definitely not the best length for portrait, which starts around 70mm imho.

threeseed4• 10 years ago

56mm is neither portrait not telephoto.

50mm is the standard street shooter's focal length.

4ad6• 10 years ago

Yes, 50mm is a normal lens, but telephoto is a lens design. It doesn't have anything to do with focal length. Even some wide angle lenses have a telephoto design!

It is true that telephoto designs are usually used on long lenses, however, and for normal lenses on 35mm you don't usually employ telephoto designs.

ChristianGeek• 10 years ago

In addition, the bokeh feature only works on portraits.

BTW, since when is there such a thing as a "12 megapixel lens?"

joemi3• 10 years ago

In addition, the bokeh feature only works on portraits.

That's the first I've heard of that. Can you back that up? Seems like it'd be easy enough to get it working on any image with depth to it, so it seems odd that they'd limit it.

timthorn• 10 years ago

since when is there such a thing as a "12 megapixel lens?"

Lenses are not perfect and have limits on their resolution. You can often find charts showing the performance of a lens as part of a review.

http://www.whatdigitalcamera.com/x-archive/measuring-lens-re...

denzil_correa• 10 years ago

Did NYT have a look at the bokeh samples?

I believe the OP is "The New Yorker", not NYT.

Jack0003• 10 years ago

Given a perfect depth map there is no reason lens blur can't be replicated exactly. They probably just chose some bad photos for the demo, or possibly there's some placebo effect happening.

Any flaws aught to be in the depth map generation, so things being inappropriately blurred.

4ad6• 10 years ago

Isn't 56mm portrait rather than telephoto?

Telephoto is a lens design, not a characteristic of the focal length. Hell, some wide engle lenses have telephoto designs!

mtgx• 10 years ago

I assume Apple's camera app won't do this anytime soon, but couldn't a third-party developer enable it to shoot 3D videos?

Sanddancer2• 10 years ago

Not to a meaningful quality. The lenses are really close together, and they're of different focal lengths, so getting images from both sides to match up is gonna be a chore at best. Were the two lenses on opposite sides of the camera, it would become a lot more interesting, but as it stands, no.

kylehotchkiss• 10 years ago

Ehh. I like that people can take better pictures but the biggest thing i'd lose is the personality of my 35mm f1.4 - it has a character that makes my pictures feel more lively to me. But always nice to have a better camera for Instagram quick pics! If only the photos app wasn't an unorganized heap of pictures of travels, receipts, and other documents..

pavelatanassov• 10 years ago

So true, the Camera Roll gets quite a mess with time because all types of pics go to the same place. Fortunately, there's already a solution to that. With an additional, complementary photo library like the Utiful app one can cleanly divide the family and vacation photos from the receipts, screenshots, etc.

currywurst• 10 years ago

Dual-camera setups for phones are not new at all, yet only Apple gets the props for "changing the camera industry" .. For the other vendors it's a "gimmick" !

sharkjacobs• 10 years ago

Ford didn't change the transportation industry when he invented the Model T, he changed it when he put 15 million of them on the road

king_phil• 10 years ago

Wait, wait, wait. It's not about the photography industry (which would be the transportation industry) bit about the camera (automobile) industry.

WayneBro2• 10 years ago

When Microsoft was on top, Apple fans used to say "it's not about marketshare or profit" and then they would proceed to compare Microsoft to McDonald's.

So, it's hilarious to me that today the number one statistic quoted by Apple fans is about how much money Apple makes or how many units they've sold.

emilsedgh3• 10 years ago

I find the comparison to Ford stupid. When Ford cars came out, cars weren't easily accessible to public. Ford did that.

It also applied to original iphone.

But now, other phones are on par regarding quality and accessibility with iphone and they've had this feature for long. Your comparison simply doesn't apply.

Apple, at this point, is only a marketing gimmick.

Unfortunately after several years of using Android phones, I got an iphone (6s) this year. It's simply a bad phone. I'm getting a new Android device this week.

exadeci• 10 years ago

Nokia sold millions of camera phones that were the best of the market and the Iphone actually brought it down for a while:

"The launch of the initial iPhone may have harmed mobile camera tech development. There was a rush was to put touch screens on everything and cameras seemed to be less important all of a sudden when busting out a top-end spec list."

http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobil...

paulrouget2• 10 years ago

As usual, Apple was not the first to came up with the technology, but the first to make it work really well and put it in many hands.

Look at HTC. They tried and failed. Dual camera, but the Bokeh is actually a gimmick. It doesn't work.

pavlov• 10 years ago

It looks terrible on the iPhone 7+ as well. Look at the samples provided by Apple:

http://petapixel.com/2016/09/07/iphone-7-7-plus-announced-du... (Scroll about halfway down.)

The fake Bokeh from the dual cameras looks like flat circles with Gaussian blur applied. It's a useless gimmick, I can't imagine ruining real photos with this look.

JustSomeNobody2• 10 years ago

We're being a bit presumptuous as they haven't _actually_ put it in _many_ hands.

But, it is Apple, so I'm sure people will buy them. Missing 3.5mm jack and all...

emilsedgh3• 10 years ago

the first to make it work really well

It's not even out yet! How do you if its any better?

JustSomeNobody2• 10 years ago

Even in the article they author mentions they weren't the first, and yet, Apple changes the industry.

coldtea2• 10 years ago

Changing the industry requires having impact. Few people can even name those "Dual-camera setups" and even less bought them (HTC and so I presume).

l33tbro• 10 years ago

I've got big boy cameras and big boy lenses (not bragging, just saying), but I really do love having a current Iphone. I pull it out almost every day for really high quality reference stills. Even better, I can zoom in and do color work in phone while waiting for a coffee or between meetings.

I think the author here got a few things slightly wrong (he's a writer in a 2016 newsroom - give him a break), but he's right that Iphones have totally changed the camera industry. Sure, there's a small percentage of people like me who need gear that is higher calibre that give the extra 10 percent, but you can really get exceptional images with an Iphone. I really don't see why people would buy a consumer level camera anymore.

philtar• 10 years ago

The author is Om Malik. He should know better than this.

sbuk2• 10 years ago

And he's trying to use language that is more universal, less techie. It could always be editors changing the language of course...

ihuman• 10 years ago

How come? I have not read his previous work, so I don't know how he writes.

4ad6• 10 years ago

I too have real cameras and real lenses, and I love my iPhone camera. I love it so much I am considering buying the iPhone 7+, not for the awful bokeh, but for the versatility of the two lenses.

With my iPhone 6s I was slightly disappointed that the ultra aggressive noise reduction ruined some of my shots in very good lighting (other from the same series were fine, some were just totally destroyed though), but it seems the new support for raw images will solve that issue too.

It's a camera that is always with me, and considering the technological constraints and limitations, it works exceptionally well.

dbcurtis• 10 years ago

Indeed. "f/8 and be there." as they say.

The shot that you make with the camera that you have with you is always better than the photo you don't get with the camera that you left at home. Having paid my dues learning to operate a 4x5 view camera, I grok that fully.

As I once told a friend who was berating my closet full of Canon lenses because "everyone knows Leica makes the best lenses" I said: "Take a look at your last vacation photos. Now take a look at any randon issue of National Geographic. Ask yourself: Am I really being limited by the glass?"

Somebody that understands composition and light can make better photos with a phone than a hack with the best "big boy" camera.

mamp• 10 years ago

Same here. I have some lenses that create wonderful bokeh (e.g. 85mm f/1.2). The 7 Plus bokeh effect looks like a blur, but who knows they could train a conv net to make it more bokeh like.

The big advantage of the 7 Plus to me is that the 56mm lens is better for portraits so it's pretty exciting.

ohthehugemanate• 10 years ago

So... how much does a promo piece like this cost for Apple? And how do I get one for MY startup? (Only half joking)

matt-attack• 10 years ago

Hire a PR firm. Not sure of the cost...

raverbashing• 10 years ago

This is the correct answer.

Though getting a feature article like this is probably easier for Apple (also given their budget)

rimantas3• 10 years ago

add costs for the new camera R&D and there you have it. Or are you one of the "Apple is just marketing, no substance" guys?

3143• 10 years ago

Until the new iphone is actually iut in the wild, or Apple release sone real sample images - how could this speculation possibly be substance rather than marketing?

GrumpyYoungMan• 10 years ago

add costs for the new camera R&D and there you have it. Or are you one of the "Apple is just marketing, no substance" guys?

If people like you are praising the new iPhone 7+ camera _before it's even been released_ then it's pretty obviously the latter, isn't it?

rbanffy3• 10 years ago

If you build products people love, the PR is free.

BadassFractal• 10 years ago

The pro DSLR market has been pretty stagnant in the past few years in the traditional Nikon vs Canon space. Very marginal improvements from generation to generation, mostly small incremental iterations on already existing functionality. Sony is doing some interesting work with the mirrorless stuff, so maybe that will go somewhere.

Wonder why we're not seeing more competition in this space. Major players too entrenched already and not enough money for others to try to break in?

4ad6• 10 years ago

DSLRs are a very mature technology. Phone cameras, not so much. Hell, DSLRs were mature even when the first iPhone was released, almost a decade ago.

throw2016• 10 years ago

Like they say the best camera is the one you have with you.

Mobile cameras and social media have completely transformed consumer photography with selfies and spur of moment pictures taking over from an era of old style 'event' pictures that required intention.

You can't take selfies with your DSLR or even compacts, or lug them around for casual spur of moment shots.

Leaving aside this PR piece for iPhone 7 marketing the growing quality of mobile phone cameras have already long impacted the lower end camera market.

DSLRs are limited to pros and enthusiasts, with mirroless sharing some spoils in that market. The bulk of the market that would buy a lower to mid end camera now has little reason to.

Depth of field or 'bokeh' for those lovely isolation shots is not possible given physical sensor and lens constraints. Apple's dual camera approach with the iPhone 7 seeks to change it and the early shots do look interesting but also a bit artifical. Not the natural flowing isolation you would get from a full frame sensor for portaits at 80 or even 50mm.

oDot• 10 years ago

Is there anything to do about the tiny sensors in mobile phones?

rpeden• 10 years ago

The short, trite, unsatisfying answer: keep improving the quality of tiny sensors. Due to size constraints, we can't shove massive sensors into smartphones.

But we can keep improving what small sensors are capable of, and we can probably still make improvements to the software that processes the raw data the sensors capture.

We can also hope for innovation in the technology behind digital image sensors. We've seen lots of innovation, but the fundamentals behind the CMOS and CCD sensors we use now haven't changed in a long time. I'm not qualified to comment on the viability of it, but perhaps something like this will end up being useful: https://www.dpreview.com/articles/1365289912/invisage-brings...

foldr• 10 years ago

Due to size constraints, we can't shove massive sensors into smartphones.

Interestingly, though, it's not really the size of the sensor that's the issue but the focal length of the lens required to give a usably narrow field of view with a larger sensor. You could probably squeeze an APS-C sensor into a smartphone, but you couldn't use it with an 8mm focal length.

So there are two potential routes to go here. Progress in telephoto designs for very small lenses, and multi-lens cameras.

_wmd• 10 years ago

As foldr mentions they're a feature, the remainder of the optical system scales quite shockingly in proportion to the sensor.

I'm sure there are plenty of further incremental improvements to be made to small sensors, but there are real physical limits on how much charge a tiny cell can capture before becoming saturated. For that reason, even if advancements are made in small sensors, a physically larger sensor with access to the same tech will likely always have a dynamic range advantage

cabirum2• 10 years ago

How is it better than the 20MP Zeiss optically-stabilized DNG enabled camera in my Nokia 930? The article reads like a big and not very trustworthy advert.

morganvachon• 10 years ago

Objectively, it's apples and oranges (pardon the obvious pun); the sensors and lenses are completely different, as is the software on the phones. One is not 100% better or worse than the other, they each have strengths and weaknesses that more or less balance them out.

Subjectively, it's whatever you prefer. I'm with you; some of the Nokia Lumia cameras easily outperform the best Apple has ever offered, and I say that as someone who currently uses an iPhone 6. If I wasn't so concerned about the future of Windows Phone I'd still be on that platform, since the camera is the second most important part of a smartphone for me (the most being stability/reliability, which Windows Phone 8.1 had but Windows 10 does not, hence my switch to iPhone).

rangibaby• 10 years ago

2 years is a long time in mobile cameras at this point. The Nikon D700 from 2008 shoots at 12MP but still one of the most highly regarded DSLRs (used is still ~$800).

More important than MP is the quality of the sensor and lens, and I bet there is a lot of development and improvement in the "small" category.

Just because Zeiss made the lens doesn't mean it is better than anything else. Your only guarantee if you see the the word Zeiss is that it will be expensive ;-)

I'm not an Apple fanboy or anything and definitely prefer any SLR (digital or otherwise) to phone potatocams, but they are getting better so quickly.

cabirum2• 10 years ago

D700 being still relevant means sensor tech is moving slower than the rest of mobile industry.

I didn't mean to accentuate specifically on Zeiss brand. My point is there's nothing revolutionary in today's iPhone 7 compared to 2 year old Lumias. Some big things (optical stabilization) are even missing. And it's sensor+software seem good enough even today.

rocky1138• 10 years ago

Is this an article or an advertisement?

iammyIP• 10 years ago

It's pretty obvious that this is a down to earth critical analysis of the technical features of a new portable telephone, released by some company.

gniv• 10 years ago

So if two cameras are better than one, why not three, or four? I assume the hardware is not too expensive (compared to the cost of the phone), and then you can have really nice optical zoom capabilities.

dintech• 10 years ago

Ironic that for an article about cameras, it features a really badly took photograph.

acdha• 10 years ago

Do you have a script / ad-blocker? They seem to have a poor responsive image script which starts with a really low-red thumbnail and then loads the full version after the rest of the page has loaded.

brudgers• 10 years ago

New technology has radically altered the camera industry every ten years or so since the 1820's[1]. Just consider the givens of Apple's camera: solid state storage, CMOS image sensing, in camera image processing, live scene preview, auto-focus, auto-aperature, etc. Not to mention the radio transmitter infrastructure that makes instant image sharing possible and the electronics technologies that make always carrying the camera in one's purse a benefit rather than a burden.

The article also ignores the limitations that any small sensor camera has due to physics. Photons arrive within a poisson distribution. The Nyquist limit is hard. Magical designs can't change that.

None of which is to say that the new camera won't be good for some definition of 'good'. But the enabling technologies of snapshots are not changing. Neither is the pace of change in photography.

[1]: and image making since at not all too dissimilar intervals since the Reneissance e.g. printing press, oil paint, camera obscuras, optics, perspective].

SharonRose19• 10 years ago

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With the iPhone 7, Apple Changed the Camera Industry

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