Apple's camera design choices from the iPhone 6S Plus to the 12 Pro Max [pdf]

https://www.systemplus.fr/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/SPR21553_Camera-Module-Comparison-Vol.-2-iPhone-Evolution_Sample.pdf

by giuliomagnifico • 5 years ago

226 119 5 years ago

systemplus.fr

SilverRed• 5 years ago

Kind of interesting but the good stuff is blurred out.

Makes me wish that these big tech companies would release the full uncensored data for their obsolete products. How nice would it be if Apple shared a huge archive of technical info on the original iphone. Surely there is nothing left on that device that is secret or of any use outside of curiosity.

aberatiu• 5 years ago

If you select the blurred section in a browser, then paste it somewhere, you can view the text/information. Worked for me in most of the sections, but not all.

unglaublich• 5 years ago

Ah, accessibility features! Classic example of why you need to check all meta-data from PDF documents before releasing.

londons_explore2• 5 years ago

You can remove the blur from the images by editing the source code of the pdf with a text editor...

Cipater• 5 years ago

How are you able to copy and paste the blurred sections? I can't even select them.

PragmaticPulp• 5 years ago

Would be nice, but it’s virtually impossible. Products like the iPhone are a combination of many different suppliers’ parts and many different vendors’ work, all with various contractual requirements.

There’s almost zero upside for companies to go through all of the effort of preparing and releasing that information, however trivial it may seem from the outside.

ethbr0• 5 years ago

This is why an EOL right to repair law covering devices would be progress. Alter the expectation from "Apple would have to ask" to "Apple expects their suppliers to comply with the law."

dehrmann• 5 years ago

All the rear cameras have been 12MP since the 6s?

BoorishBears4• 5 years ago

X Megapixels lost all meaning a while ago.

The size of the sensor and the smarts behind it matter a lot more

peanutz454• 5 years ago

Why don't manufacturers advertise that more clearly? I've never seen that information on the simple specs that most models list out.

coldtea2• 5 years ago

Well, not for video, where you need e.g. 12MP minimum to do 4K.

nicolas_t2• 5 years ago

Even during the megapixels wars, Fuji released some great point and shoot cameras that had less megapixels but better image quality due to having a bigger sensor.

For example, the f31d was great in its time and showed that megapixels weren't the only measure to look for.

jcun41284• 5 years ago

Don't forget the Lumia 1020 with its "41MP camera" back in 2010 ha

nucleardog3• 5 years ago

The size of the sensor and the smarts behind it matter a lot more

And the lenses.

My backup DSLR shooting at 6MP with $100 of glass on the front looks infinitely better than the photos out of my iPhone 12 Pro.

dzhiurgis3• 5 years ago

I'd suggest playing with such camera before commenting. Maybe it doesn't matter for day to day point and shoot, but you can capture insane pics with 100MP sensor.

yyy888sss• 5 years ago

Bear in mind the photos will usually be viewed on a 1080p phone screen which is ~2MP. Or a 4k display which is ~8MP. The sensor has been getting bigger since the 6s which means more light for each pixel.

karamanolev2• 5 years ago

Camera pixels are not like screen pixels, more like screen subpixels. Each one has a color filter in front in a Bayer pattern, meaning a 2MP screen more closely corresponds to a 6MP camera sensor than a 2MP sensor. Respectively a 4K display already goes to 24MP camera sensor equivalency, which is quite a lot - many of the modern full-frame cameras have 24MP and more than that is considered high-resolution.

JBiserkov• 5 years ago

But what about zooming in?

Faaak• 5 years ago

If you are interested in reverse engineering and cost analysis, Munro associates does the same for cars.

Their youtube chain is really interesting, you should check it out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCj--iMtToRO_cGG_fpmP5XQ

aspenmayer• 5 years ago

That’s a great channel, thanks for the recommendation. It speaks to their reputation that they got a one-on-one interview with Elon Musk.

JoBrad• 5 years ago

Watched the video about reducing the VW ID.4 battery tray yesterday; it was really interesting to hear how they collaborated with so many groups to redesign it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cjJUpqo1YDM

justapassenger• 5 years ago

It’s pretty good content, but you should know some history. He first trashed Tesla model 3, but after huge Internet outcry realized that there’s a lot of money in catering to fans. He’s now a proper Tesla fanboy, making money on Tesla stock and selling sticker to the fans. A lot of credibility is gone. But content is still pretty good to learn basics of stuff like that works, just keep in mind bias in it.

bsaul3• 5 years ago

has anyone else got the impression that default compression ruined the image quality on very recent devices ? i moved from iphone se2 to 12 pro and took pictures of trees and grass, and was wondering why all my pictures looked blurred.

Then i activated the uncompressed pro format and got much better results (with images weighting a ton more of course)

i still have to get back to the se2 and see if i have the same problems but it was the first time i was completely unimpressed by the camera when upgrading my phone.

nicolas_t2• 5 years ago

I've noticed the same, it's frustrating that the defaults would be this extreme especially given how much storage those phones have nowadays.

berkut2• 5 years ago

It has (or at least aggressive denoising) since the 6S I still have.

If you look at the images at 1:1, they sometimes look like watercolours with regards to edges.

pletnes• 5 years ago

This is very true in dim lighting. Take a photo in low light and any skin imperfections are washed away. Less true in daylight conditions, which is when mobile cameras shine, in my opinion.

signal11• 5 years ago

The iPhone 12 Pro models seems to have had a software issue[1] that resulted in poor focusing — this was fixed later. A workaround at the time was using a different camera app, eg the link recommends ProCam but I suspect any RAW capture app would do.

If it’s taking blurry photos still, it probably is defective and needs to be returned.

[1] https://piunikaweb.com/2020/12/09/iphone-12-pro-camera-focus...

bsaul3• 5 years ago

Thanks for the links. I looked at the video and in my case wasn't that blurry (and not particularely for close-ups). The problem is just that patches of grass were smeared when zooming in just a little (after taking the shot).

Moving to the pro format solved the issue, so my guess is that it's more a problem with the compression / post processing than with the auto-focusing part (although i must say i'm not really sure what constitutes post-processing anymore with modern camera)

gogopuppygogo• 5 years ago

To others who might be curious, the iPhone 12 now supports raw photo mode. Older models do not natively have this.

machello132• 5 years ago

Nope, previous iPhones also supported RAW photos (my iPhone Xs does).

HumblyTossed• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure the 6s was the first iPhone to support RAW.

foldr7• 5 years ago

The default processing is fairly aggressive about noise reduction, yes. Here's a comparison on the 12 Pro Max. You can see that e.g. the brickwork and the clock face are clearer in the raw file. Many photography nerds would probably be perfectly happy with the (low) level of noise in the unprocessed RAW shot, but perhaps regular people's preferences differ in this regard.

The original images:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-2NQ0meQ-PgNvgObWmPT...

A cropped comparison saved as a high quality JPEG, for easier viewing:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VEMVPGDE7ck-0du9QYxydM1a3P8...

I don't think the compression is the issue here, by the way. It's just that when you don't shoot RAW you are getting the default denoising+sharpening.

bsaul3• 5 years ago

Yeah, that's exactly the thing i've noticed.

But why ?? isn't a camera supposed to give you "crisp" pictures instead of artistic / smeared renditions of reality ?

I thought the blame could be put on AI-based post-processing going out of control, but your comment seems to imply it's made on purpose. I really don't get the point.

spockz• 5 years ago

I have issues since my iPhone 7 with pictures turning into watercolour renditions when zooming in any further than screen size. My wife’s iPhone 7 doesn’t have this issue. My 11 pro doesn’t have this issue as badly but grass seems like it is replaced by some texture instead of reality. Seems like overly aggressively compression in most cases.

shadilay• 5 years ago

So this is basically just an advertisement?

ChrisMarshallNY• 5 years ago

Pretty much, but that isn’t an instant disqualifier. Lots of “Show HN” links are basically ads.

If people think it’s interesting (ad, or not), it will be promoted. If not, it won’t live long.

giuliomagnifico• 5 years ago

Not quite because some useful infos can be viewed. Unfortunately the full pdf is available after payment. By the way I’m absolutely not involved in any way with the site/producer of the report!

kumarvvr• 5 years ago

I wonder if anyone can reverse blur images in the PDF.

bobiny4• 5 years ago

In my experience with dual camera it does portraits and HDR with sky good, but not so great with greenery. I’m enthusiastic about larger sensors like in Sharp Aquos R6 https://www.phonearena.com/news/sharp-aquos-r6-camera-sample...

kwanbix• 5 years ago

Very cool I hope it catches up. I prefer one excellent camera over 3 or 4 average ones.

bobiny4• 5 years ago

I think it’s similar to analogue vs digital filmmaking. Analogue is harder to do, but can be uniquely amazing.

rjzzleep• 5 years ago

I just can't understand why the Japanese companies manage to create these amazing devices with absolutely niche pricing and subpar software.

It seems like Chinese companies figured out a while back that they need to make their software at least seem good if they want to capture the global market. Obviously the price is an even bigger aspect of the equation.

bobiny4• 5 years ago

Maybe the are happy selling to Japanese market’s geeks exclusively. By geek I mean this kind of tech fans who don’t mind figuring out the interface. As for this particular device I think Japan is a perfect test market: they seem to love DSLRs and this phone is sort of a pure camera experience vs neural network enhanced multi-camera setup. I hope it catches on so more companies make such phones and drive prices down.

dzhiurgis3• 5 years ago

Wow @ how badly this site is broke with ad blocker and even more wow when you disable it.

bobiny4• 5 years ago

And pictures load so slowly. I found another site with R6 picture samples and they are compared with iPhone 12 pro (mostly), Galaxy s21 ultra and Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra https://www.xda-developers.com/sharp-aquos-r6-hands-on/

londons_explore2• 5 years ago

For a reverse engineering company... Applying the blur as a PDF postfilter that can easily be removed with a grep on the pdf source code seems not very smart...

nickparker• 5 years ago

Has anybody reverse engineered the interface for Apple's camera modules, particularly the front modules with LIDAR?

They can be had for $10 a pop on Alibaba now, and they're much nicer than similarly priced webcams let alone LIDARs.

Seems like a part that's ripe for a raspberry pi interface board.

IfOnlyYouKnew• 5 years ago

Are they available for $10 or is that the price some "iPhone Teardown!!" article wrote?

Because I tend to be sceptical of those articles. They start with the premise of "everything is worth as much as the sum of its component parts", which is already hit on their credibility (if they did the same, recursively, they'd notice that nothing is worth anything). Then, they guess some random values for Apple's purchasing costs.

rowanG077• 5 years ago

I'm not sure why you asking this. The poster quite obviously indicates you can trivially buy them on Aliexpress. You can verify this yourself in less time then it took to type this comment. And indeed the front-facing camera can be had for very cheap. The back module with Lidar is more expensive though.

starky• 5 years ago

I would be very surprised if the camera modules put out anything different than the standard image sensor interfaces such as SPI, MIPI, and SLVS. Anything else would require extra circuitry that is too big. Then it just becomes a case of figuring out the control for the lens module.

braincode• 5 years ago

I'm actually surprised that nobody tried to poke into those lines yet and built something similar to https://hackaday.com/2021/07/05/how-to-drive-smartphone-scre... but for the camera.

Actually, since that project above links to a iPhone 4 screen as an example, I'd perhaps err into probing for MIPI signals on an iPhone 6S camera first, perhaps using sth like https://hackaday.com/2018/11/29/mipi-csi-2-implementation-in...?

This post is fascinating, btw: https://www.circuitvalley.com/2020/01/spi-mipi-bridge-fpga-v...

bydo• 5 years ago

The front iPhone camera uses an infrared array of dots for FaceID, not LIDAR. It's basically a miniaturized version of the Kinect from the Xbox (Apple bought the company that created it).

tpmx2• 5 years ago

The Face ID/TrueDepth sensor is however made by Austrian 'ams AG', not Apple.

KMnO4• 5 years ago

I wonder what quality the “raw” camera has. My understanding is that the software has a bigger difference on the end result than the actual optics. So much so that Apple has a dedicated image processor as part of the Bionic chip.

Not to mention the “neural engine” that’s used for depth processing and segmentation.

cronix• 5 years ago

software has a bigger difference on the end result than the actual optics

Not everyone wants artificially manipulated photos that you can instantly upload to instagram without any post work. But, you do need good optics and sensor to capture good photos - the rest is post manipulation. Do you think RED or ARRI cameras cost $50k+ for their built in software? Nope, they don't actually have any of the "neural net" hype you've bought into from Apple's marketing. It's all done in post. Practically nothing you see in the movies or TV or Netflix or other professional broadcast is done on Apple toy cameras using their state of the art "neural engine" software. I haven't read about or seen any, but I reserve the right to be wrong so I said "practically."

Besides, you got to start somewhere and the camera interface would come before the splashy software built on top of it.

Just give me the RAW/flat log files (that contain the most information and dynamic range) and I will do the rest with a real editing program that cost almost as much as your phone itself, and look way better.

achow2• 5 years ago

Image from any digital camera (SLR or Phone) is result of computation, unlike that from film camera where image is result of chemical reactions.

Optics (glass) does not play much role in phone camera cost or product development; but the cost (effort) is a factor of sensor, CPUs, NPUs, DSPs (hardware) and then investment in writing image processing software.

achow2• 5 years ago

Full Report: Euro 6490 https://www.systemplus.fr/reverse-costing-reports/camera-mod...

Apple's camera design choices from the iPhone 6S Plus to the 12 Pro Max [pdf]

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