Log is the "Pro" in iPhone 15 Pro

by robenkleene • 3 years ago

1163 408 3 years ago

HALtheWise• 3 years ago

It's always surprised me that there's not more interest in log-scale/floating-point ADCs built directly into camera sensors. Both humans and algorithms care a lot more about a couple-bit difference in dark areas than light, and we happily use floating point numbers to represent high-range values elsewhere in CS.

morcheeba• 3 years ago

There was a company that did this circa 2003 - SMaL. Their "autobrite" sensor is built to capture log-scale natively. They've switched owners twice since then, but it seems like they're getting more traction in car vision systems than in professional video.

https://www.vision-systems.com/cameras-accessories/article/1...

jeffreygoesto• 3 years ago

Blast from the past. You could do things like that [0] in 2005... Autobrite was the first thing to go out the window, once we knew how the chip worked we did or own exposure control...

[0] https://youtu.be/0UaTYX-ygG8?feature=shared

verall• 3 years ago

A lot of the processing steps expect linearity and would have to be reworked for floating point or log scale data. Most HDR sensors are using some kind of logarithmic compression for sensor readout, but I've never really heard of a floating point adc. Google seems to suggest tbey're not readily available.

raverbashing• 3 years ago

Yeah there isn't, it's not that simple, even at sensor level to have that much dynamic range

A linear ADC with enough range is usually fine, you can do the math later. But maybe for this case it needs a non-linear element before the ADC? (no idea how log recording needs anything at the HW level)

fiedzia• 3 years ago

Most recently microphones/recorders started using it for recording sound

_kb2• 3 years ago

From my understanding, the ADC's are still fixed point and linear. Two (or more) then run in parallel over different signal levels to produce the 32-bit float output.

Encoding audio with different log-scale companding has been around for some time too (since the 1970's) with A-law and mu-law in G.711.

nvy• 3 years ago

I feel like professional/prosumer photogs, aka the kind of people who buy fancy SLR cameras and serious business lenses, probably already know this stuff. I also suspect that the vast, vast majority of phone users just want subjectively good-looking photos.

dclowd99012• 3 years ago

Yeah, 100%. About 99% of the customer base just wants to take a good photo with the smallest effort possible. Which makes it even more remarkable the company cares enough to include this kind of functionality in a consumer product.

kqr3• 3 years ago

Is the quantisation error on a modern 14-something bit sensor really that big of a problem compared to something like the inherent shot noise of dark areas?

numpad04• 3 years ago

There is no floating point ADC, just a stereo assigned to two volume levels to be stuffed into a float.

hardware accelerated HDR on cameras are commonplace these days, especially in dashcams and CCTV cameras.

amaterasu2• 3 years ago

Some sensors do this internally, unusual though. The rest of the high-end ones apply curves manually in software directly at the egress of the sensor. The reason they don't in all cases is that it complicates black level correction, gamut transforms and demosaic operations (without some assumptions).

audunw• 3 years ago

From an analog design perspective, I don't think that makes sense. Not that I'm an analog designer, but I worked closely with them as a digital designer on CMOS camera sensors.

You're already extracting as much information you can from the analog signal on the least significant bits. It's not like designing a log-scale ADC lets you pull more information from the least significant bits. So you don't really have anything to gain. Why make a more complicated analog circuit to extract less information? It's generally better to let the digital side decide what to keep, how to compress the signal, etc.

And I should mention that CMOS camera sensors can often do a lot of digital processing right there on the chip. So you can do log-scale conversion or whatever you want before you send the data out of the CMOS camera chip.

It might be possible that you could reduce the power consumption of a SAR (successive approximation) ADC by skipping AD conversion of less significant bits if you have signal on the more significant bits. But I doubt the power savings would be very significant.

adql3• 3 years ago

See but you don't necessarily want full range logarithmic.

If your darkest pixel is halfway down the ADC range, on linear you're throwing away one bit, on logarithmic you're throwing out way more bits. Just using higher bit linear ADC then converting it to logarithmic in post-processing seems more sensible. Hell you could even go signal magic and merge few photos with different shutter speed together to get most detail.

Also proper log-to-in converter like AD8307 costs like $20 so I'd assume doing that woudl bring the sensor price way up if you needed to have a bunch of them.

ta8645• 3 years ago

I've never owned an Apple device. I don't take photographs or video with my phone very often. But this video presentation was captivating. It was clear, concise, without any nonsense, and thoroughly interesting.

dclowd99012• 3 years ago

I don’t know if it’s the same thing, but capture on my Nikon D7100 always felt more “manipulable” than capture on an iPhone or the like, I suspected as a downstream effect of using RAW format with a larger image sensor. Interpreting log through this understanding, it felt pretty intuitive reading through this post. I don’t know if it’s accurate, but it feels accurate…

matsemann3• 3 years ago

One reason is also that phone cameras have many limitations, so to get good images they have to "cheat" to work around those limitations. Additionally they often apply filters to the images so it looks good "out of the box", like contrast, smoothing, sharpening. Those choices done for you mean you lose information to do better yourself.

chefandy• 3 years ago

It's not my primary job, but I do some pro and fine art captures as well as video compositing and photo editing– the pro phones definitely have their uses just as my little micro 4/3 and full frame DSLR do, both with still and video work.

With glass and a sensor that small they aren't for everything, but the days of mandatory compression, limited color depth, mandatory "enhancements" and all of that stuff are over. If I'm shooting a handheld gimbal video, of something like a person talking outdoors not in direct sunlight, I'm grabbing that iPhone Pro without thinking twice.

BlueTemplar7• 3 years ago

Well, except that log (as well as almost every other format : "gamma" refers to the exponent of a power function !) is the opposite of raw : raw is focused on fidelity to the number of photons, log and others on fidelity to how the (human) eye reacts to these photons :

https://prolost.com/blog/rawvslog/

jsjohnst• 3 years ago

This is almost entirely due to sensor size. The sensor on the iPhone is smaller than your pinky nail with pixels between 1µm and 2µm in size (depending on which camera is used), the Nikon on the other hand has pixels over twice the largest size on an iPhone.

pen2l• 3 years ago

The guy in the video is Stu, not only does he have an impressive resume (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0556179/ known for originality, e.g. he did Sin City's look), he is also the original author of MagicBullet, which is one of the most used software by people in the industry to do easy color work. If there's one person who knows about color work, LUTs in creative work, color encoding systems, etc., it's him so naturally he knows how to present relevant subject matter without nonsense.

toofy2• 3 years ago

oh thx for sharing his background. this highlights something that i repeatedly find so frustrating.

this guy knows what he’s talking about. he has authority in his field. he has proven both theoretically and materially that his wisdom is high quality.

yet, videos from people with far less expertise on the subject matter will likely drown his out. over and over again i’ve seen the top videos on so many subjects repeating just plain wrong information but the “creator” says it with confidence so people just eat it up. even worse, so many times i’ve seen people in the comments try to nicely point out where the “creator” went wrong, and people go after the commenter for daring to imply this person on the magic screen might be misinformed.

it’s such a shame that being higher in the search says almost nothing about your knowledge on a subject and only means you’re better at manipulating the algorithm rather than having actual higher quality information.

i really wish that our searches would prioritize quality of information. at this point, years later, i think it’s pretty clear that the “wisdom of the crowd will shoot the highest quality to the top” has been proven to not be the case.

also, i don’t want to imply that amateurs can’t have valid and interesting perspectives, sometimes they might, just that being higher in search means quite literally nothing on wisdom of a subject—especially if a grifter can monetize off a trendy nuanced subject.

anyway, this video was incredible information. thx for sharing his background.

sbarre2• 3 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out, I probably would never have dug further into his blog otherwise, and there's a ton of other fascinating posts.

mananaysiempre2• 3 years ago

If there's one person who knows about [thing] it's him so naturally he knows how to present relevant subject matter

One lesson (no pun intended) of the academic environment is that no, it doesn’t work that way. Some people are subject-matter experts, some are brilliant expositors, but while you can’t be a good expositor without a decent knowledge of the subject matter, you absolutely can be a world-leading scientist and at the same time completely rubbish at explaining your ideas. (Some areas are better at making use of such people than others.)

Good exposition deserves additional credit on top of subject expertise, is what I’m trying to say.

jprete• 3 years ago

I'm glad to know that the person behind this post have real expertise, because at first glance the headline is a bit clickbait-like. (The content, though, makes excellent points.)

riley_dog• 3 years ago

Fun Sin City story...

https://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/301497...

I'm the (formerly) young guy who rented the 550 to the production team for a few days. Pretty fun story to be tied to the movie.

dagmx• 3 years ago

Also the author of the excellent DV Rebel’s Guide book which was an indie film makers bible for a long time. Obviously the title gives away its age though.

pivo• 3 years ago

Well, there was one bit of nonsense and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm referring to the Ren & Stimpy "Log Song" sound track to the video of the woman walking up the stairs:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=ren+and+stimpy+log+song&atb...

Graziano_M• 3 years ago

This video is excellent. About halfway through I was thinking, "Oh so this is like RAW for video" and then seconds later he gets to explaining how it's not exactly RAW.

yieldcrv• 3 years ago

Is this essentially RAW at 24-60fps?

pixelbath• 3 years ago

It is less processed, but TFA points out that it is definitely not RAW, particularly in the section titled "Log is Half Baked."

mavidser• 3 years ago

That'd be 'ProRes RAW', which I don't think an iPhone can shoot in. Log is still processed video, just graded in a flatter profile so you can do more degrees of adjustments in different dimensions like color and exposure.

RAW footage, can barely be called video. Those files don't even have any White Balance and ISO data baked in, just raw data from the sensor, providing even more amount of control in post production, at the expense of working with extremely large files.

isomorphic• 3 years ago

Also, just to muddy these waters, Apple has the ProRAW format--which isn't a video format at all, it's a still-picture format.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211965

perbu• 3 years ago

The video is still compressed, but the colors are RAW. Sort of.

mikae12• 3 years ago

No, it's demosaiced[1]. Not raw data.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demosaicing

WithinReason• 3 years ago

So then why not just use the raw data? Demosaicing triples the number of pixels, so expands the data by 3x.

macintux2• 3 years ago

Comparison of RAW and LOG on the same site: https://prolost.com/blog/rawvslog

tehsauce• 3 years ago

Apple shocked us all by addressing this head-on: The iPhone 15 line charges via USB-C instead of Lightning, and this standard USB port can do a lot

Insanity• 3 years ago

Even more so than their revolutionary new design?

3x35r22m4u• 3 years ago

Could someone please confirm or deny Samsung has it better because they included 10 times larger sensors, 20x better zoom, titanium since 2017 and hired BTS for their ads?

Reference: https://youtu.be/dLHJl7mwY7M?si=e0Cm2q4bnn_u14Qf

DiggyJohnson• 3 years ago

How could that possibly be confirmed or denied? If you’re not asking a question don’t use a question mark: just make your point.

bux93• 3 years ago

Since Apple sources their camera chips from Sony, the more relevant question is how Sony's flagship (the Xperia 5 V?) stacks up with its Sony IMX888 vs the Sony IMX803 in the apple. It used to be that Sony's flagship had a slightly better imaging sensor than the Apple flagship, but I don't think that's the case any more. At any rate, Android doesn't seem to provide an API that exposes log/raw-ish sensor data for video (although for stills, it's been there since 2015).

internetter4• 3 years ago

hired BTS for their ads

Hardly a selling point.

titanium since 2017

Source?

10 times larger sensors

4 times (48mp vs 200mp), and zooming into the highest quality images produced by both cameras yields little difference.

This comment feels like grasping at straws. The iPhone and Samsung both have excellent cameras, and excel in different places. Camera comparisons by professional photographers show that much. In my non-professional opinion, samsung wins in some edge cases, but the iphone generally has a better colour profile and undeniably better video capabilities, but debating about minute differences in camera processing in a text only forum feels counter productive, especially when plenty of professional comparisons exist.

piperswe• 3 years ago

I didn't know it could record straight to USB-C storage! That gets rid of a major reason to spend crazy money on a 1TB phone, and it's definitely a game changer for anyone shooting 4K ProRes.

radicality2• 3 years ago

Afaik it’s actually not even possible to record that directly to the phone, it has to be into an external usbc drive. If I had to guess it’s probably because of overheating concerns with the high write rate.

skunkworker2• 3 years ago

That requirement is for 4k60 Log only. 4k30 log will write to disk but takes up around 100mb/sec. From some videos I shot last weekend.

quitit3• 3 years ago

The article is slightly misleading here.

The 4k60 ProRes mode is not available for shooting on the 128gb model until an external drive is added, but for any larger capacity iPhone Pro, the mode is available for shooting without the external drive. This doesn't affect the Pro Max as that isn't available in a 128gb configuration.

Notably, a similar limitation existed with the iPhone 14 Pro using 4k30FPS, at the time the reasoning was that it simply fills the device too quickly to be useful.

foobarian3• 3 years ago

OMG I never knew this was even a thing. You all just made my life better

keyle• 3 years ago

Great video btw. Well explained and as succinct as possible.

sudosysgen7• 3 years ago

It's a bit of a gimmick. These phones just don't have the noise performance to make log video work outside if very very specific conditions. I had it also on my old LG V30 and it only was remotely useful in full sunlight (and since we're talking about very low processing, not much changed since then).

This is inevitable because the noise floor is just too high to have a large usable dynamic range unless illumination is high.

Combined with video compression it's just not great. It's not really even unique to smartphones, many DSLRs/MILCs when they first started supporting log video had similar issues, but obviously it's going to be much worse for a smartphone.

dharma14• 3 years ago

The sensor size is the limiting factor here re: noise performance and dynamic range, but the iPhone does better than most with some ML and other “computational photography” tricks for denoising that other small sensor cameras don’t have. And ProRes is a great codec that doesn’t really have compression artifacts at high bitrates.

It’s not going to replace your Alexa or even full frame dSLR but can be useful and is a welcome evolution.

sudosysgen7• 3 years ago

ProRes is actually worse at the same bitrate when compared to H.265 or AV1, and sometimes even worse than H.264. The advantage is that it's easier to edit because it's all intraframe, not that it has higher quality - it's worse. Even intraframe HEVC is going to be better than ProRes. H.265 really is going to give you consistently better pSNR and SSMI than ProRes, and that shouldn't be surprising - interframe compression is better for quality.

The only advantage here is slightly better denoising, yes. But denoising doesn't change the dynamic range limit, it just hides the noise visually. The SNR is actually going to be lower.

mirsadm6• 3 years ago

This is not true. We've compared RAW video from smartphone cameras to a couple of professional cameras and the difference is not as much as you might think.

internetter4• 3 years ago

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUn68iFMNXY. Remarkably similar. Big difference seems to be unavoidable differences arising from a small sensor like bokeh and DOF, and especially the consistency of colour from the ARRI which makes grading a breeze. But the fact that iPhone footage can be intermingled with 100$k camera footage (after grade) without being noticeable is shocking

sudosysgen7• 3 years ago

I don't understand what you're trying to say. Yes, in absolutely perfect light, if it has the focal length you need, it's going to be good. But that's a very particular situation, we both know that as soon as the ISO comes up it's not even close, and soon enough shooting in log then becomes a gimmick.

HumblyTossed• 3 years ago

Okay. Well, um, I guess we should all just pack up and go home. We're done.

dannyw• 3 years ago

Does this also disable the excessive sharpening of iPhone's video processing?

Even 'ProRAW' photos are sharpened and aggressively denoised, which ruins detail.

dharma14• 3 years ago

It’s mentioned in the article - turns sharpening way down. The footage still goes through iPhones ISP - with denoising etc - just with less processing and log profile

foldr5• 3 years ago

The sharpening is just the default display setting for ProRAW files in many apps. If I edit a ProRAW file in Lightroom and turn down the sharpening and denoising then it looks roughly as you’d expect (though there is some denoising inherent to multi-shot blending). It’s a tricky one, because when you’re aligning and stacking multiple captures, you definitely do want some sharpening (as the result is significantly softer than a single capture would be). But the default is maybe a little aggressive.

kqr3• 3 years ago

Almost all the benefits mentioned in the video are (a) lack of post-processing and (b) high dynamic range. Is that what "log" means in videography?

rebuilder• 3 years ago

No, ”log” just means some form of logarithmic response curve when encoding color data. You don’t necessarily get better dynamic range per se, but you get a more useful distribution of the light samples your sensor is taking.

jorlow2• 3 years ago

Log is lower contrast so it's less likely to clip (be a fully saturated color or pure white or black). And clipping inherently limits your max dynamic range.

Log also means a "look" is not baked into the image so, since you're starting from scratch, it's 1) easier to tweak the images so you can cut between two cameras from different manufacturers without distracting differences and 2) you can give the image more of your personality.

As a general note, I've found that in the world of "cinematography", tech terms aren't used very rigorously and there's a lot of cargo cult which comes from the benefit of one tech being conflated as a benefit of something else. It's often hard to sift through the noise when learning.

shrx• 3 years ago

But clipping occurs before the log transformation. The sensor's ADC is still linear and has a fixed dynamic range regardless of the output encoding format.

jillesvangurp• 3 years ago

A little bit. The log format is non linear. This means there are more details in the shadows relative to the really bright areas. This mimics the human eye and brain which also do not have a linear range of sensitivity.

Basically, the common unit of light in cameras (a stop) is one click on the aperture wheel. E.g. going from 1/11 to 1/16 halves the amount of light. Some cameras of course have a few settings in between. It looks linear to us but it is effectively logarithmic. The dynamic range of the human eye is much larger than the typical camera, screen, or print medium. The human eye has a range of about 20-22 stops (between black and white). A good camera might get between 12 and 14 stops. A decent screen might get to something like 8-10 and print medium is more like 5-7. Taking photos and shooting videos involves a lot of creative choices about what looks natural to us. HDR is basically taking and combining multiple exposures in a way that still looks natural to us on a medium that has less dynamic range than our eyes (-ish, a lot of HDR photography looks a bit unnatural for this reason).

Digital photo processing is about compressing and moving light around to make the most of the much more limited dynamic range of the screen or print medium you are targeting relative to the camera that you used to capture that.

When you do that, most of the interesting information is going to be captured in the darker portions of the image. You typically expose for neutral grey values which is only about 18% of the light. That means half of the darker information (shadows) is in that 18% range of values. And the other half is in the brighter part. Except our eyes are much more perceptive of the darker bits. So, a linear format is not ideal to store that. A log format allocates more bits to the dark half and less to the other 82%. That's a good thing because that allows you to do things like brighten shadows and pull out detail there.

The log format does this by applying a log function to the raw sensor readings. That's why the format looks so flat because all the values end up being relatively close to the 18% mark (neutral). You "undo" this by applying a suitable lut that multiplies the values suitably. You deepen the shadows to near black and brighten the bright stuff to near white. The difference is that you now have full control over this process; can move the white, grey, and black points around. And you can apply color math to the log values before you apply the lut. This is not that different from how you'd process a linear format except now your starting point is better as you are using more bits for the darker parts of the image than for the lighter parts. This gives you more of the captured dynamic range to play with in post processing.

The weakness of the iphone is that while it stores log format, it's not really capable of switching between LUTs on camera or while you are shooting. I'm guessing this just takes too much CPU/battery. So, you have to wait until post processing to see what the end result is going to look like. Some high end cameras have a lot of in camera processing that you can tweak in post processing.

jlouis5• 3 years ago

In videography the term "log" is heavily overloaded and you'd want to ask for more detail in order to figure out exactly what is meant.

A pixel value, be it integer or floating point, means little on its own. There's a context for that value which is a color space. In the typical process, you have several color spaces in play: the camera has one for capture. There's one for color processing (the "working" space). And there's one for the display. When a pixel goes through the pipeline, it's processed via color space transformations.

In the "classic" color spaces, the pixel values have a linear relationship, and all of them carry the same amount of information. The "log" color spaces all have a non-linear (gamma) curve: they retain less information at very low and very high pixel values, but subsequently retain more information in the middle. It's a form of compression.

The human eye doesn't respond equally to all levels of brightness, so throwing away detail at the ends for more detail in the middle is usually a great choice. We retain information in the signal at the brightness level where the eye is able to perceive small details and texture, while throwing away information in the signal where it isn't.

We can now map more dynamic range into the same amount of bits, due to our non-linear compression. How large a dynamic range is given by underlying color space we are operating in.

If you go up in camera quality, you will typically see pixels use 10bits or more for their values. Combined with a log-curve, this leads to more information density, which allows capture of an even higher dynamic range. In turn, post-processing can now fix e.g. exposure to a much larger extent.

Finally, a LUT is linear approximation. "Real" color space transformation will use the underlying mathematical curves for much greater precision.

krackers4• 3 years ago

In the "classic" color spaces, the pixel values have a linear relationship

Almost all color spaces (e.g. srgb or in the video world bt.1886) use a non-linear transfer function? I believe the difference is that gamma and log are different types of nonlinearities, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37843965 and see https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Linear-response-dashed-v... for an image comparing the two with "linear"

What's confusing is that many people will justify gamma encoding with the claim that visual perception is "logarithmic". I think this is misleading, because the perceptual justification is actually a power-law (Steven's Power Law) as contrasted by the opposing view that perception is logartihmic (Webner-Fechner law, see https://www.appstate.edu/~steelekm/classes/psy3203/Psychophy...). In practice I believe the actual justification for it was that it happened to match the transfer function of CRTs, and these days it's mostly kept around for compatibility, and as an optimization to avoid wasting bits (whether or not it truly fits the human model of perception).

As mentioned by https://computergraphics.stackexchange.com/questions/10315/t..., the real reason why log encoding is nice is because each stop of light gets roughly the same amount of bits. (Log encoding probably also isn't too bad a fit in terms of perception. In an alternate world where we weren't burdened by CRT baggage it'd be a replacement for the now-standard 2.2-esque power gamma).

Also the only reason why log encoded video "looks flat" is because traditional video workflows are not ICC color managed. If you properly applied the inverse transfer function (as any color managed system would automatically do) to display it on an e.g. sRGB screen, the video would appear close to what it did in real-life.

alexashka• 3 years ago

Is that what "log" means in videography?
a) Lack of post processing

No. Absence of processing (modifications to make it look 'better') is the default for all non-consumer devices.

b) high dynamic range

Yes. In practice log is about choosing which bits of color information to retain and which to throw out, to optimize for space.

Log optimizes for retaining detail in very dark and very bright areas by sacrificing detail in the midtones.

Non-log optimizes for midtones. That's all it is.

So if you have a high contrast scene (bright blue sky, someone sitting in the shade), you'll want to use log. In an average/regular contrast scene, you use non-log, that way you get more detail in the midtones.

In photography, there is no need to optimize for space (video is at least 24 frames/sec, photography is a few frames/sec at most, usually), so log is not a thing - we just capture all the things, all of the time.

kqr3• 3 years ago

Thanks for contributing this comment. It's what finally made it click for me, and how logarithms might come into the picture. Especially the difference between video and still photography was helpful to me as a still photographer!

So basically, when you can't afford the space/bandwidth requirements of "raw" data for video, you need to convert the sensor readings to an actual video format right away (the equivalent of "shooting jpeg" on a still camera.)

If you do that conversion using a monotonic concave function (e.g. log) you do get an actual video, but it looks crappy because the tones are not what we would expect. However, it also retains more of the low-end distinctions of the raw data so it's more flexible in processing.

Hypothetically, I could do the same with still photography, by taking the raw data and converting it to a crappy-looking jpeg and distribute that to someone else, who would then have more freedom in processing than with a regular jpeg, but less than the raw data. I think I got it!

justsomehnguy2• 3 years ago

The video is so good I watched it to the end despite not even having iPhone nor having any plans to have it or shoot videos. Packed and succinct.

But makes me wonder how soon we would see an... SSD iPhone cases? Because you can always duct tape the external drive to the phone but it would block the screen. *grin* Sure, you can use double sided tape, but... And slightly tangential - how short and compact USB-C cable can be? Sure there are tons of the angled on the market, but I assume they aren't guaranteed to give you full 10gbps Gen2 speeds.

walteweiss• 3 years ago

I think that would be not a short cable, but more like Mophie juice pack (it’s a case with external battery). Also, back in the days I bought a card reader for an iPad 3, for 30 pins connector. Could be something similar, as SD-cards are quite big these days as well.

Cockbrand• 3 years ago

I’d assume that SD cards don’t provide the required write speed, limited by their flash memory or even the interface specs.

justsomehnguy2• 3 years ago

more like Mophie juice pack (it’s a case with external battery).
> SSD iPhone cases

But yeah, this is what I vaguely had in mind though I did forgot those rigid cases even existed, because my phones lasts at least two days on their own finger guns.

Considering the case would be quite fat and rigid for the SSD alone, it would make sense to skip cable shenanigans and just use a 'dock style' connector.

robertlagrant3• 3 years ago

I'm thinking a hand-held mini Steadicam with a hard disk as the counterweight.

dist-epoch4• 3 years ago

Sure, you can use double sided tape, but...

You got it wrong. Camera people LOVE the tapes, look at any picture of a movie shooting behind the scenes and you'll see every camera has 4-5 pink/yellow/green sticky notes on it.

So taping an SSD to your iPhone while shooting a movie it's actually a cool thing. Makes you look authentic "don't give a shit" kind of thing.

amaterasu2• 3 years ago

If I was a prosumer/hobbyist video equipment company, I'd be terrified about what Apple does next. They already have significant penetration into the editing market (both with Final Cut, and codec design), they control a number of the common codecs, and they have _millions_ of devices in the field along with substantial manufacturing capability. The cinema end aren't in trouble yet IMO, but the rest should be concerned...

mrtksn• 3 years ago

Well, Apple seems very cozy with blackmagic design but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to be sherlocked. Apple already has offerings in all these categories, it’s just that the markets are different and will stay different some time more because of workflows and laws of nature but the laws of nature don’t seem as safe anymore.

Currently, the best editing software for social media appears to be CapCut as its ease of use for the power it provides is miles ahead of anything else.

novok• 3 years ago

The market for 'actual' pro & prosumer cameras and such is pretty tiny. I think they'll be pretty safe for quite a long time.

But they have pro video editing features! Yes, but it's a subfeature of their general platform, so they can 'count that low' for a hardware feature like that, that will also be useful for their entire userbase since everyone takes videos with their hardware and watches video on their devices anyway.

sbierwagen• 3 years ago

Cell phones already killed standalone cameras: https://d3.harvard.edu/platform-digit/wp-content/uploads/sit...

This is just the mop-up operation. The only products left are going to be super-telephotos for live sports (sales: a hundred a year, if that?) and 4K+ IMAX digital cine cameras.

quenix• 3 years ago

Looks like they killed cameras with built-in lenses. Cameras with interchangeable lesnes, which would've been used by the pros, have kept their market share identical if not grown a bit.

ClikeX2• 3 years ago

They killed consumer point and shoots, not professional interchangeable lens cameras.

MarkMarine• 3 years ago

For taking photos and sharing them in the digital only space, sure I’ll buy that for the regular consumer. Making prints will expose all the small sensor flaws that exist quite quickly. I know it gets better every year but I used my phone camera (14 pro) to capture a few important shots that I would do anything to go back and had on a full frame sensor or film for.

canbus2• 3 years ago

maybe for the average consumer. but how many professional photographers do you see using an iPhone?

sensor size matters for low-light stuff too. sure, an iPhone can do a pretty good job at taking several pictures over say a 2s. exposure, but there _will_ be artifacts in the shot as there isn't physically enough light to form a legible image regardless of post-processing.

this is just one of many reasons why digital cameras are NOT at the brink of collapse yet.

vGPU4• 3 years ago

Not even close. The pocketable point and shoot cameras? Sure. DSLR’s? Not a chance. I’ve gone the upgrade path from a canon 6D to 5D4 to R6. The R6 especially is phenomenal and there isn’t a single phone that can even try to come close to what it can accomplish even in “auto” mode.

haswell2• 3 years ago

Smartphones changed the market such that people who just want to shoot good photos of their family don’t need to buy expensive cameras anymore.

But photography with dedicated cameras is alive and well, and won’t go anywhere anytime soon even as these phones get better and better.

The super telephoto market is alive and well, and Wildlife photography in particular is a big contributor to this. When Olympus released their 150-400mm (300-800mm full frame equivalent) super telephoto aimed at wildlife shooters, it was sold out for almost a year.

For me, the new iPhone means I can shoot B-roll footage that looks great, but this will not replace my main camera anytime soon. It’s currently far more viable for high quality video than it is for high quality photographs.

drra• 3 years ago

Cinema is safe from the optics point of view as achieving some of the effects of large sensor + large lens is impossible with a phone size camera. But Apple has it cracked and they could easily crush that market. They have a great sensor with enough resolution per inch, great dynamic range, ability to produce lenses with super low defects and have enough processing power. Sensor wise ~100 megapixels should be enough to replicate fine grain of a good movie film and iPhone 15 sensor's dynamic range of 12-14 stops is on par with film already.

kuschku• 3 years ago

Apple doesn't build sensors. Sony builds the sensors for Apple. https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1602516736145858561

And it turns out, Sony already has significantly better sensors in their cinema cameras than what they sell to Apple, which is why almost half of Oscar and Emmy nominations are filmed on Sony Venice. Even the low end of their camera line is extremely capable, e.g. the FX3 which shot The Creator.

Apple is far away from actually competing in that market.

BlueTemplar7• 3 years ago

You're contradicting yourself : can they compete with large sensors + big lenses or not ?

m463• 3 years ago

I think what is terrifying is that they're better enough to kill the details.

Sort of a contrived example... you're a pro and let's say you NEED a headphone jack, but apple just killed headphone jacks.

But more indirectly, they killed the lower volume, higher margin folks with alternatives that offer a headphone jack, and maybe even XLR headphones and microphones.

An analogy might be tesla giving you a 90% better car experience, except they have killed off the dashboard. (now they've killed control stalks like PRND and turn signals)

pitkali2• 3 years ago

I don't know. If I were a pro like that, I would just have a dongle for that headphone jack. It would probably also have a better DAC than iPhones ever had.

dist-epoch4• 3 years ago

A big factor in buying a "pro" camera is controls. It's really difficult changing the focus in a controlled way while shooting with a phone. While in theory you can imagine Apple giving you API control for that and hooking it with an external focus pulling device, it's still a sub-optimal solution.

crazygringo4• 3 years ago

Cell phones already killed compact point-and-shoots with their small lenses.

But DSLR's with their large lenses aren't going anywhere, because physics. If you want to capture high-quality footage under low light conditions, or work with a variety of lenses, the tiny aperture on a phone is never going to be enough.

positus• 3 years ago

The RICOH GRIII/GRIIIx is still alive and kickin'. Really nice sensor, super sharp lens, and small enough to fit into a pocket. I don't really use my iPhone camera anymore.

tambourine_man2• 3 years ago

They owned the editing market with Final Cut and completely dropped the ball with Final Cut X. To the point they had to start selling the old version back. Then Premiere came back from the ashes and took the throne.

One of the most glaring mistakes Apple did to its Pro market. And they did quite a few.

steve1977• 3 years ago

I think FCP is still quite popular in the „YouTuber“ market and it seems Apple also targets their marketing a bit more towards it.

btown• 3 years ago

Setting aside the existing pro video pipeline... it's for this reason that if I were Meta, I'd be terrified about what Apple does next, from the perspective of photorealistic capture for VR/AR applications.

Even if the next-gen Oculus had parity with Apple Vision Pro in how vividly they could display VR/AR content - and I doubt this is the case - only Apple (perhaps among any company in the world) can mirror that with a battle-tested supply pipeline for creating pro-level video capture equipment and for integrating those sensors into consumer devices at scale.

While I'd leave the branding to better minds than my own, I'm bullish about Apple's ability to make an "iPad Vision Pro" that has two cameras at eye distance apart as well as laser rangefinding. That would allow for binocular Apple Log capture, and with the advent of Gaussian splatting for point cloud rendering, and increasingly better generative AI for inferring colors/textures of occluded points in the point cloud, you could have professionally color-graded interactive scenes. All that's missing is better ergonomics for this workflow in DaVinci Resolve etc., and one imagines Apple's war chest could go a long way towards incentivizing this.

Apple products will be where high-quality VR content is created, proofed, and consumed. They're not rushing because nobody else has a hope of being close.

smoldesu• 3 years ago

Apple products will be where high-quality VR content is created, proofed, and consumed

Eh... I think this is a bit like claiming "Apple hardware will be where high-quality video games are created, proofed and consumed" in the 90s. You'd be right given the circumstantial evidence, but the industry doesn't really want to play ball. Besides AppleTV and Apple Arcade, I don't think Apple has a huge constituent of VR developers the same way they did for Apps. Simply building the infrastructure won't be enough.

And plus, I don't think your argument rules out a world where Vision Pro is used for recording and Quests are used for content consumption. Unless Apple intends to reinvent the wheel again for 3D video, nothing should stop it from being playable (or at least portable) on other platforms. For most people, the $3,000 price difference will probably not be worth the recording capabilities (especially if they already own an iPhone).

Anything could happen, I guess. Even if you're entirely right though, I don't think Content Creation will be the killer app you think it is. Games and video moves millions of units; productivity and capture are both unproven features poised to reprise Hololens' failure.

starky• 3 years ago

I don't see this as a high risk. Rather adding log just increases the choices for different types of filmmaking and adding it to the professional workflow. The iPhone hasn't killed the professional stills camera market, instead many photographers have implemented it as a supplemental tool into their work where a larger camera is not suitable.

At the end of the day, a professional camera with good glass and a larger sensor gives you much more control of an artistic vision, and better performance in challenging imaging conditions. I've never seen a cellphone camera that gets anywhere near the image quality I can get from my mirrorless camera in still images. This is likely to be even more apparent in video production due to how the cameras are used.

t0bia_s4• 3 years ago

Who is a target audience? Most Apple users wont spent time in postproduction and colour grade their footages. Pros will stay with dedicated technology made for cinematography.

te_chris• 3 years ago

“Pros” is a wide space these days. Hell, my mate has a film released on hbo max which was entirely shot in 4K on iPhones probably 6 years ago now.

Think of the sheer amount of ‘content’ (used pejoratively) these days. That is not being made by traditional cinematographers. It’s videographers, maybe with a pro camera, but maybe with an iPhone, or maybe one pro camera and an iPhone or two for backup. Think of weddings or similar as well, massive demand. Apparently everything needs to be video so why not this. As an aside, aforementioned director shot our wedding as a favour to us (in 2019) on a 4K lumix and an iPhone.

It’s the camera you have on you, innit.

scottapotamas• 3 years ago

People vlogging would probably prefer the ergonomics and weight of a phone over something more serious, so I wouldn't be surprised if this competes with the GoPro on functionality and image for 'walk and talk' people?

Guerrilla film-makers will probably love it - iPhones aren't really noticed and are allowed in plenty of places where serious cameras aren't.

I can also see it being useful for some specific commercial ad work, I've seen people specifically shoot on phones to get the relatable phone 'look' for specific shots.

indeyets• 3 years ago

“Enthusiasts”, YouTubers, …

t0bia_s4• 3 years ago

Why? Whats the benefit of having slightly more options on postproduction when you put output to compressed, 8bit, low bitrate platform that most people consume on their tiny mobile screens with blue light filter?

dathinab• 3 years ago

first some people use it as a status symbol, naturally they will buy the pro no matter if useful or not

then there are tons of semi-professional (semi wrt. photo/video capture, not wrt their job) people on platforms like YT, TickTock and similar which do only use their phone for capturing, they probably love this

lets also not forget the people which aspire success on YT, TickTock and others

similar a lot of hobby photographers don't bother with dedicated technology anymore so they might like that, too

and the people which don't carry around a laptop (e.g. on holiday trips or even business trips) but might want to send slightly improved photos from there isn't small either

anyway I guess the main selling point is like "not locking poor" for thos with confidence issues or more likely bad luck to live in less healthy social circles

sbuk• 3 years ago

Steven Soderbergh an awful lot on an iPhone. He's made at least two movies with them. I'd argue that he is a 'pro'.

https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/steven-soderbergh...

dist-epoch4• 3 years ago

Most iPhone users probably use 20% of phone capabilities (each probably a different 20%).

It's about being perceived as the best phone.

Most Lamborghini buyers don't drive it at top speed either.

crazygringo4• 3 years ago

Student filmmakers and the like -- ultra-low budget independent films, comedy webisodes on YouTube, and so forth.

Basically everyone who wants to make films but doesn't have money for a real pro camera.

pxmpxm• 3 years ago

That was my intuition as well - even starving film students will rent an arri or a red with whatever lenses for student projects, and everyone else just doesn't care.

newaccount74• 3 years ago

Slightly off-topic, but is there a way to disable some of the photo processing on iPhones?

For example, iPhones automatically brighten people once they detect a face, which is especially noticeable when taking photos against the light. It ruins the contrast and makes the photo look really bad.

Is there a way to turn that stuff off?

dijit2• 3 years ago

I think blackmagics iPhone App disables a lot of automatic processing; however I haven't tested post-processing behaviour myself.

Given that it gives such fine-grained control of the sensor, it wouldn't surprise me though.

omnimus• 3 years ago

Blackmagic Camera app doesnt take pictures. Its for video.

kouru225• 3 years ago

I think you gotta buy a more professional camera app to fix stuff like that, and even that doesn’t work for some things.

I’m always pissed about bad the iPhone is at taking photos of rainy days.

quitit3• 3 years ago

The purists answer is to shoot RAW, but many just want a solution that doesn't require any post-effort off the device, for that the answer is "sort of":

1. Taking Live photos can be a good work around, since this mostly maintains the individuals frames which are used to build the full image. Use the built in photo editor to go to a different frame in the live photo and set this as the Key Photo - this dodges a lot of the HDR/image adjustment process.

2. Using the AE/AF lock can prevent a fair bit of the automated adjustments from taking place. (Tapping the screen on dark areas or hot points will adjust the exposure, holding your finger for a moment will turn on the AE/AF lock keeping it there as you move the phone around.)

3. If it's not just for one shot, but all shots you take. Go to the Camera settings and turn on preserve "Exposure Adjustment", in the settings which starts each camera session with the exposure settings preserved from earlier - and simply keep this on 0.0. This can also make it more straight forward (one tap) to undo much of the automatic levelling without locking AE. Similarly you may want to also disable night shooting for darker scenes, by preserving that setting too.

4. On older iPhones, disable the HDR mode.

liminalsunset3• 3 years ago

Adding on to this, newer iPhones have a ProRAW feature. Various tech youtubers have documented ways to create a shortcut in the Shortcuts app to automatically convert them to HEIF or JPEG, which might impose slightly less processing.

Similarly, ProRAW photos imported to Apple Photos on Mac can be reduced in processing by clicking Edit Photo, and then hitting Save Changes without necessarily changing any settings (or just changing something inconsequential would work too). Doing editing forces the Photos app to discard the preprocessed image embedded in the ProRAW and replaces it with a software processed version which I find slightly more natural. However, ProRAW is still processed by the phone, so you need to download a third party app and shoot classic non pro RAW (then use the same conversion shortcut maybe) on top of it.

olliej• 3 years ago

It might be worth trying halide? I know they used to have "we make photography better" with a pro-photographer angle, but I guess to an extent it depends on what the camera is providing, but I recall halide kind of implied they got raw data?

liminalsunset3• 3 years ago

Halide has several modes, one of which is giving you the full unadulterated RAW, and optionally doing in-app jpeg conversion with less offensive processing. These photos have more noise due to the limitations of the sensor.

Halide, like the official camera app, can also shoot ProRAW but ProRAW is not totally RAW, it has been processed with the frame stacking to reduce noise, but introduces sharpening artifacts.

ayoisaiah3• 3 years ago

Best thing is to shoot in Raw or ProRraw and post-process yourself

Edit: Fix typo

liminalsunset3• 3 years ago

This is a slightly off topic response as well, but some Android phones are currently capable of shooting RAW video in 12MP, sometimes at 60fps (more than 4K 8.3MP). Google shot a music video [1] (unfortunately only available in 1080p) on the Pixel 7 Pro using a third party app called MotionCam Pro. The app shoots RAW video which can be imported into DaVinci Resolve or similar, or rendered to a mp4 in-app with any log profile you prefer optionally, and has no processing applied.

According to the developer of something called AMVR [2], the quality obtainable is much higher than that of even the aforementioned log files from iOS.

I asked whether it would be feasible to shoot DNG on iOS as video and was told that iOS lacks a camera API that is performant enough, resulting in several fps only. I haven't personally tested it though, so maybe this could be a fun project.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyeS_xYxCLI&pp=ygUfYW15IHNoY...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xra4ATrWZ4

mirsadm6• 3 years ago

I'm the developer of MotionCam Pro. I have no affiliation with AMVR, it bothers me that they present themselves as somehow associated with me.

As a side note, whenever Apple takes steps to release a feature aimed at professionals there is a significant uptick in users trying out MotionCam. I think there is a small but very vocal group of users that have wanted something like this for years but have not been catered to.

emsixteen• 3 years ago

Great video - Concise and informative, without any guff.

adityapurwa• 3 years ago

I always wondered why some of the raw vs edited video on social media shows the raw one as a very washed and unsaturated picture. I even thought they made the raw looks so bad, so that the edited one looks great.

I never owned a pro-camera, only a smartphone. So, reading this article now I learned that it was washed and unsaturated for a good reason. Is this Log thing 15 pro specific or its software so that we can use it on an older iPhone?

stephen_g2• 3 years ago

This was a huge problem even for professionals at one point - there was a time starting a bit before 2010 where more cameras started to switch from doing all the process in camera to raw and log recording, and people didn't understand how to work with it, properly expose it, etc.

I remember for example with RED's first cinema camera, seeing people do shootouts (camera comparisons) where they'd record and compare the low-quality, partially decoded monitor output that didn't have a proper LUT applied, to HD cameras that did all in-camera processing. Later cameras could do all the 4K processing and apply proper LUTs in the hardware in real-time, but earlier ones didn't have the processing power, you had to do it all in post. People just didn't get it, and it worried people when things come out all washed out before applying any kind of LUT.

Crazy some of this is trickling down into phones.

ricardobayes• 3 years ago

I don't like this new modern color keying in videography, to me everything looks yellow and washed out.

What's wrong with contrast?

chrismorgan• 3 years ago

Look at the picture of the dog: some of its fur is overexposed, and you can’t get the values back. A logarithmic scale means you lose less detail at the extremes (bright and dark), so the log picture isn’t overexposed.

wazoox• 3 years ago

I think the question was more about the general tendency to make movies with that teal/orange look, that's still going on strong after 12 years.

stephen_g2• 3 years ago

What screen are you looking at it on? There are all sorts of colour grading styles, often it does go through trends but punchy images are still very common, and I’m not sure what you’re talking about with yellow ones…

OJFord2• 3 years ago

Standard iPhone video is designed to look good. A very specific kind of good that comes from lots of contrast, punchy, saturated colors, and ample detail in both highlights and shadows.

I remarked to my wife showing me a video recently that you could tell it was taken on an iPhone, I don't think it's just the 'punchiness', for me the main thing is the way it seems to attempt to smooth out motion - the 'in' thing seems to be to sort of spin around showing what's around you while selfie-vlogging and tik-tokking and what-notting, and iPhones make it look like you did it with a steadicam rig that's not quite keeping up.

basisword• 3 years ago

That’s a specific camera mode (action mode I think). Does the standard video mode also do heavy stabilisation?

OJFord2• 3 years ago

Does it perhaps auto-enable when it deems it appropriate?

I don't have an iPhone, I've just noticed this (perhaps it's more obvious to me because I don't have one) in others' videos.

twobitshifter• 3 years ago

The stabilization is partially physical driven on phones this is called OIS. https://www.androidauthority.com/image-stabilization-1087083...

EIS is not usually needed for video but maybe in some cases it’s used?

mattigames• 3 years ago

Someone used an iphone to record their desktop screen playing call of duty and the top comment on Reddit was how it made the game look Disneyesque, a spot-on assessment.

jaipilot747• 3 years ago

Do you have the link by any chance?

throw0101a• 3 years ago

I remarked to my wife showing me a video recently that you could tell it was taken on an iPhone

It's also relatively understood that certain camera companies (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Fuji) have a certain 'look' to them in how they process the raw image sensor data to generate a JPEG (there's a differences in the final colours).

leokennis• 3 years ago

To add, a few generations ago hand held video shot on iPhones was not (or hardly effectively) stabilized. But now iPhone have good stabilization. I think the tradeoff (the too-smooth motion thing) is worth it.

pnpnp2• 3 years ago

Another thing they've done more recently is HDR video (to my cave man brain, this means brighter brights).

They've paired this with much higher brightness on the screens, which makes the videos look much more realistic. I first noticed this on my M1 Pro screen, which absolutely blew me away (1600 nits peak brightness).

That's the biggest telltale "filmed on iPhone" trait I'm noticing right now. Yes, you can create HDR videos in other ways, and I'm sure it will be more popular on other platforms soon.

qingcharles• 3 years ago

And 1600 seemed crazy. And now Google's Pixel 8 Pro has 2400 nits?!

DrawTR• 3 years ago

I know exactly what you mean by this! I can always tell if it was taken on an iPhone -- not that it looks bad, or anything, but there's always a few little cues that make it obvious. As you mentioned, I think the motion is a large part of it.

ayoisaiah3• 3 years ago

Log seems like a strong reason to finally switch from Android to iPhone if you're a photography/filmmaking enthusiast like myself. The ecosystem is so much more mature and the gap seems to be growing not shrinking.

Android has Raw Video with MotionCam which also produces insanely good results¹ (even better than iPhone's ProRes video), but everything else just sucks.

[1] https://youtu.be/O5fnGDR4i9w?feature=shared

dharma14• 3 years ago

MotionCam is great! They’ve been flying under the radar of RED lawyers (patent for compressed raw video) - long may it continue

mirsadm6• 3 years ago

I'm the dev of MotionCam. AFAIK the app is not infringing on that patent because I use my own form of lossless compression.

wraptile• 3 years ago

a strong reason to finally switch from Android to iPhone if you're a photography/filmmaking enthusiast

Correct me if I'm wrong but there's nothing stopping Android of supporting Log (or similar). I'm not a video engineer but it really doesn't seem that magic that it couldn't be supported outside of iphone 15, right? My guess that if this gains any real traction it'll show up in the next Android flagship.

adql3• 3 years ago

I think you're spot on, there just needs to be enough demand for manufacturers to compete on it.

But the fragmentation does work against it. If some company does it it would be limited to their camera app and their format.

Would be interesting if some company just decided to put c-mount on their phone so you could use actual proper lens...

lern_too_spel2• 3 years ago

There are several apps on Android that do this already. Since 2021 at least. https://youtu.be/UEedYitrSiw?si=Ufj0HXW_07PfXIxg

maksim-m• 3 years ago

Log seems like a strong reason to finally switch from Android to iPhone if you're a photography/filmmaking enthusiast like myself

On Android you have mcpro24fps app that supports multiple log profiles, shooting 10 bit video and more.

ayoisaiah3• 3 years ago

I've been a long-term mcpro24fps and a user of Filmic pro before that. It's a great app, no doubt about it. The issue is not the app, but the OEMs who makes things difficult, artificially limiting the capabilities of the devices and even removing features in updates. Nothing is consistent and each device works differently from the next one, even from the same manufacturer. A long running joke in the McPro24fps Telegram chat is to never upgrade!

xchip2• 3 years ago

LUTs are a pretty basic stuff and videogames have been using them for ages, plus HDR, tone mapping and color grading. Old stuff.

xchip2• 3 years ago

I have implemented all these algorithms myself, but thanks for the down votes :D

wruza• 3 years ago

I’m very far from photography. Can someone explain why this is revolutional or something? I thought that for “pro” photos you just get the original pixel values from the sensor and work from there. X, Y and some color format of a specific bit depth (is that RAW?). What does “Log” do basically? Save space? Limit the exposition? Or is it just a format that existed for decades and iphone decided to support it? Or is the industry in such state that integrations like this are huge? It’s not clear from the video. Thanks!

danw1979• 3 years ago

The article does a pretty good job of explaining it. I went from complete ignorance to layman’s understanding in the 10 minutes it took me to read it.

crazygringo4• 3 years ago

It actually doesn't, it doesn't explain it at all.

Because camera data is already encoded logarithmically in common image and video formats.

The article didn't explain what its "log" is at all. Is it the same as gamma? The same as HDR? Something professional? Or something new?

If you don't know anything about photography, it seems like they're explaining something new. If you do know things about photography, you realize the article is full of buzzwords that aren't actually explaining anything at all.

bujak300• 3 years ago

As far as I naively understand, the number of distinct colors in a digital image is limited, so the "log" mode is using the available color space in such way that there are more details preserved in highlights and shadows. but then "color grading" or "color look up table" needs to be applied, to recover the original colors, because the "log" video looks greyish and washed out.

expertentipp• 3 years ago

Speaking of their raw formats. What's up with the iphone HEIC photo format? I only convert all HEIC to JPEG on Macbook and have no idea what advantage this format can offer me.

zik• 3 years ago

Yeah, what the heic?

pitkali2• 3 years ago

I use it on my Android phone to use less storage space. From what I remember of initial testing, the pictures were half the size.

SSLy• 3 years ago

HEIC isn't anything close to RAW. It's "normal" processed photos but with different encoding format.

canbus2• 3 years ago

the way i see it is it's the video equivalent of a RAW file for a still picture.

macintux2• 3 years ago

The article links to another article comparing them.

https://prolost.com/blog/rawvslog

thrdbndndn4• 3 years ago

The concept of Log seems needlessly confusing from (still) digital image processing perspective, which I have some experience.

Firstly the name is called "Log" (for logarithmic) but isn't that what gamma does in color spaces like sRGB since forever? "Normal" video standards like BT.709 also have non-linear transfer functions. I don't get why "log" is stressed here. Maybe it just means a different/higher gamma coefficient (the author didn't talk much about the "log" part in the article).

And the main feature of it, at least according to this article, is that it clips the black and white level less, so leaves more headrooms for post-processing.

This is definitely very useful (and is the norm if you want to do something like, say, high quality scanning), but I failed to see how it warrants a new "format". You should be able to do that with any existing video format (given you have enough bit depth, of course).

dist-epoch4• 3 years ago

but I failed to see how it warrants a new "format". You should be able to do that with any existing video format

It's about support.

The .zip format supports LZMA/ZStandard compression and files larger than 4 GB. But if you use that, a lot of software with .zip support will fail to decompress them.

The same way with log. While in theory you could probably make .mp4 or .mkv files with H264 encoded in log, I bet a lot of apps will not display that correctly if at all.

jlouis5• 3 years ago

The transfer functions in your (rec.709) color space is non-linear indeed. However, the pixel values you store are in a linear relationship with each other. The difference between values 20 and 21 are the same as the difference between values 120 and 121, assuming an 8bit signal. I.e., the information is the same for all pixels. Further down the chain, these values are then mapped onto a gamma curve, which is non-linear.

What the "log"-spaces are doing is to use a non-linear relationship for the pixel values, as a form of lossy compression. If the signal has to factor through 8bit values, using a compression scheme before it hits the (final) gamma curve is a smart move. If we retain less precision around the low and high pixel values and more precision in the middle, we can get more information from the camera sensor in a certain region. Furthermore, we can map a higher dynamic range. It often looks more pleasing to the eye, because we can tune the setup such that it delivers a lot of precision and detail where our perception works the best.

In short: we are storing (8bit/10bit) pixel values. The interpretation of these values are done in the context of a given color space. In classic (rec.709) color spaces, the storage is linear and then mapped onto a non-linear transfer function. In the "log" spaces, the storage is non-linear and is then mapped onto a non-linear transfer function. In essence we perform lossy compression when we store the pixel in the camera.

thrdbndndn4• 3 years ago

Thanks for the technical details.

I think I get what you mean (in term of implementation), but can't we just alter the transfer function further so there are more values used for the mid-range colors?

The two-step process you said (the storage is non-linear and is then mapped onto a non-linear) is basically equivalent to a singular transfer function which is the combination of two curves, since the sampling process itself is lossy.

weebull2• 3 years ago

The transfer functions in your (rec.709) color space is non-linear indeed. However, the pixel values you store are in a linear relationship with each other. The difference between values 20 and 21 are the same as the difference between values 120 and 121, assuming an 8bit signal. I.e., the information is the same for all pixels.

Difference on what scale? ... because (hint hint) it's not number of photons that hit the sensor. Nor is it photons emitted from the display.

The truth is, it's a linear measure of the voltage which drives the electron beam of a CRT. Not a very useful measure anymore, but we've encoded this response curve into all of our images and, now, this is proving to be a mistake.

Working with images would be so much easier if we stored values that represent linear light (i.e. proportional to photons entering/leaving a device) with no device curves baked in. Log formats do this, but because the order of magnitude of light is more important than the absolute value, it takes the log of the value. It's a more efficient use of bits in the storage / transmission.

kllrnohj2• 3 years ago

No, gamma2.2/sRGB is how the pixels are stored on disk, not linear values. Linear is almost never used except as an intermediate for processing where you can throw lots of bits at it (eg, fp16/32 on a GPU when applying effects or whatever)

The difference is how the curves prioritize what bits to keep. Rec709 sacrifices the bright end to keep more detail in the darks, whereas log is more like linear perceptual brightness. So it'll have less low light detail but more bright detail by comparison

jlouis5• 3 years ago

This is definitely very useful (and is the norm if you want to do something like, say, high quality scanning), but I failed to see how it warrants a new "format".

This warrants a separate answer. Cameras are getting to the point where they can capture far more information than we can display. Hence, we need a lot of bit depth to accurately store this added precision. But adding bits to the data signal requires a lot of extra bandwidth.

In principle, we should just store all of this as 16/32bit FP, and many modern NLEs use such a pipeline, internally. But by creating a non-linear curve on integer data, we can compress the signal and fine-tune it to our liking. Hence we can get away with using the 8-12bit range, which helps a lot in storage. With log-curves, 12bit is probably overkill given the current sensor capabilities.

There's a plethora of log-formats out there, typically one for each camera brand/sensor. They aren't meant for delivery, but for capture. If you want to deliver, you'd typically transform to a color space such as rec.709 (assuming standard SDR, HDR is a different beast). The log-formats give you a lot of post-processing headroom while doing your color grading work.

BlueTemplar7• 3 years ago

Why would you still assume SDR, aren't we talking about amateur photography here ?

But yeah, I've been wondering why nonlinear formats would use integer values for a while now ?!?

BeFlatXIII2• 3 years ago

Cameras are getting to the point where they can capture far more information than we can display.

Haven't professional-grade microphones been in a similar situation for decades now, or is it the magic of remastering that keeps recordings from the 50s sounding so good on modern speaker systems?

kllrnohj2• 3 years ago

For some reason you're getting a lot of wrong or just bad replies. But the answer to your question is yes both sRGB/gamma2.2 & log are non-linear, but almost in the opposite direction. gamma2.2 is exponential not logarithmic. As in, it's spending all its bits on the lower half of the brightness range, whereas log is actually spending more bits in the highlights.

It actually looks more like HLG in this way.

https://www.artstation.com/blogs/tiberius-viris/3ZBO/color-s... has some plots of the curves to compare visually

bscphil2• 3 years ago

almost in the opposite direction

I think you're mixing up OOTFs and EOTFs here. sRGB or HLG can refer to either the stored gamma, but more often means the EOTF "reversed" gamma that is used to display an image. When we refer to "log", this is almost always means a camera gamma - an OOTF. So the reason it's "in the opposite direction" is that it's designed to efficiently utilize bits for storing image data, whereas the EOTF is designed to reverse this storage gamma for display purposes.

As you can see from the graph in [1], Sony's S-Log does indeed allocate more bits to dark areas than bright areas. (Though the shape of the curve becomes more complicated if you take into account the non-linear behavior of light in human vision.)

[1] https://www.enriquepacheco.com/blog/s-log-tutorial

thrdbndndn4• 3 years ago

I've seen that "S-curve" in multiple places, but I don't get it still: how is that a logarithmic curve/graph?

ben77993• 3 years ago

RAW formats on digital cameras are also storing data in a log format. RAW conversion process is normally converting that to a color space along with (for most cameras) doing the De-Bayer algorithm.

The built in converter that produces JPG files in the camera does this too.

Our eyes perceive light as linear when it's really logarithmic.

There is really no difference between video and still here, it's just that it's more normalized at the consumer level to deal with RAW formats at this point for stills.

Manouchehri• 3 years ago

There is really no difference between video and still here, it's just that it's more normalized at the consumer level to deal with RAW formats at this point for stills.

Fun trick: convert ProRes RAW to cDNG. You now have 59.94 raw DNGs per second to choose a photo from.

alok-g• 3 years ago

From the article:

> ... in DaVinci Resolve ... choose Apple Log for the Input Gamma ...

Indeed, it just sounds to be a different choice of the curve, perhaps more suited for the HDR capabilities available today.

PS: I did not read the article in detail. My first reaction was to just search there for 'gamma' in the article to see how 'log' is being compared to it.

switch0073• 3 years ago

Can title be “Logarithmic encoding is the …”? Pretty confusing as “Log is the…”

turnsout2• 3 years ago

"Log" is the term in video. You wouldn't spell out "Solid State Drive," would you?

switch0073• 3 years ago

There are about 20 other uses in TFA which don’t use it as an acronym

kepler13• 3 years ago

Constant puzzle to me:

Video is just made up of single sequential still images. Why are the color issues / tuning of videos like 100x more complicated and involve so many more tools than those of still images?

elAhmo2• 3 years ago

Video is just made up of single sequential still images. It might seem like this, but modern video codecs are very advanced and video files produced by modern cameras cannot really be described as sequential still images.

Codecs such as HEVC used many techniques to reduce the file size while preserving the image quality, like various frame prediction techniques and encodings. This makes workflows completely different.

Images produced by smartphone cameras use different software and hardware features to produce the best possible image, and many of those cannot be equally applied to video.

elAhmo2• 3 years ago

I am by no means someone who shoots a lot of videos, but I have been playing a lot in the past few days with the camera app mentioned in this article, Blackmagic Camera, and I am super excited to do some shots that might seem a bit more professional.

video-log-comp2• 3 years ago

A question to the experts here: What happens if we take the "log" video and compress it using current compression algorithms and ship the LUT with it?

If I understand this correctly, the quality of dark scenes should then improve.

Would that then also allow users to edit the LUT or supply their own to get a better picture on their respective monitors?

wayfinder2• 3 years ago

Storing data on a logarithmic scale requires a higher bitrate otherwise it will actually look worse.

So for a finished product, the way it is now is better.

Plus storing extra data in the dark areas for display is pointless. You only do it because you want to manipulate the data and maybe bring something out of the dark area, but in the final product, dark is dark.

If you, for whatever reason, wanted to give the user more data, then you would provide a 10-bit or 12-bit linear file.

video-log-comp2• 3 years ago

Thank you for your explanation.

Do I understand correctly, that this idea wouldnt work because you either end up with the same quality, but bigger files or with the same file size, but worse quality?

I had this idea that you could increase the amount of black colors a monitor could display if you combine 4 pixels. Having 3 black, and one of them "one bit" less black. This way you could have a more fine grained black-white transition.

I thought a "log" video might be able to contain the information to allow this without to much overhead.

fallingmeat• 3 years ago

I don't know anything about photography, but curious to know what the cheapest "pro" alternative is. The phone is now $1200! This feature is cool, but if you wanted that feature, is it cheaper in a purpose-built device?

yabones• 3 years ago

The original Blackmagic Pocket Cinema was about $500 on sale, but only shot in 1080p. The new generation is about $1300. And then you have to buy lenses :)

So, overall it's not bad value. It's not going to replace pro gear any time soon, but it's great that it can do stuff like this now.

marosgrego• 3 years ago

Canon EOS M can be bought for around $100 used and shoot 1440p raw with Magic Lantern. Also it can use cheap old 16mm film lenses with crop mode.

lern_too_spel2• 3 years ago

You can buy a two year old Android phone to do the same thing, which is very inexpensive. Just disable every app except the camera app.

sandworm1013• 3 years ago

I am not an influencer. I am not a fashion model. I am not an interior designer. I don't use my cellphone camera to generate "content". I use it to document things. I need it to take clear pictures that accurately represent things that I see. We are now moving away from auto-focus and auto shutter speeds toward on-the-fly retouching, editing, of material by the camera. This is dangerous. Pictures taken buy such cameras can no longer be considered accurate representations. Correction of shadows, the replacement of dull color with vibrant, the smoothing of textures ... every photo is now a crafted work of art by the machine. They are a distorted representation. This will come back to haunt us.

Think of this: a cop body camera that auto-adjusts faces to display them more clearly at night. Sounds like a good idea. Then something happens. The cop says "I couldn't see the guy's face" but the body camera shows the face clear as day. Yes, the camera did take a more clear and useful photo, but it is not a proper depiction of the reality experienced by the officer.

lang_agnostic2• 3 years ago

We are now moving away from auto-focus and auto shutter speeds toward on-the-fly retouching, editing, of material by the camera

This is a great point but it's not what the article is about. This is about bringing existing features of digital cinema cameras to a portable phone.

sandworm1013• 3 years ago

Yup. And the move from a camera to a cinema camera incorporating cinematography trickery represents a marked change in what a personal camera is and does.

willio58• 3 years ago

every photo is now a crafted work of art by the machine.

This was always the case. Unless you have a very specific camera setup where you're trying to avoid this, there have always been certain characteristics that come through in photos from cameras. In fact, it's the main selling point of some cameras. Hasselblad, polaroid, cannon, sony all have their own 'looks' when it comes to output.

The cop says "I couldn't see the guy's face" but the body camera shows the face clear as day.

I'll use a similar but opposite argument here. Ever since iPhones came out they could never really capture dark-skinned people as we see them through our eyes. Unless you had perfect lighting, you could clearly see issues with the sensor catching the contrast in their face. With all the retouching you speak of, iPhones have gotten much better at showing some people more closely to how we see them in reality. So when that cop claims "I couldn't see the guy's face, the damn camera is too good!", I'd be very hesitant to believe him.

cptskippy2• 3 years ago

I need it to take clear pictures that accurately represent things that I see. We are now moving away from auto-focus and auto shutter speeds toward on-the-fly retouching, editing, of material by the camera. This is dangerous.

You could argue that up until now you were not able to take photos or video that accurately represented the world you see but instead only using the rose color lenses of the device manufacturer. The photos and videos that you take today with your phones or cameras have distortions applied automatically based on presets provided by the software used to capture the media. Sometimes you get options like Vibrant, Indoor, Portrait, and Landscape mode to choose how the images or video are manipulated. You don't get to see what the camera actually saw, only what the device manufacturer wants you to see.

Log video is like Raw photos. As this capability becomes more prevalent, I could see it becoming a requirement for criminal investigators and other to capture evidence using a Log or Raw mode.

What I would argue is that, if it's not there already, we need signatures and metadata stored in the EXIF of photos and video captured that tells how the image was capture. With that you could determine to what extent the media has been manipulated.

sandworm1013• 3 years ago

Rose colored filtering across an image is one thing, something we all understand. Nobody would say that a black-and-white photo is an accurate depiction but we all understand what a black-and-white photo is. Alterations to specific aspects of a scene, per-pixel changes that are not used across the image, are something else. A camera that detects and alters images where people close their eyes or fail to smile, that will not be recognized. A camera that corrects a scene to make it look as if it were in daylight rather than interior office lights, that too will not be recognized by the vast majority of viewers.

agar• 3 years ago

This has famously already been raised in court during the Rittenhouse trial:

https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/stlr/blog/vi...

And discussed on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29187820

blurri3• 3 years ago

Your camera (including film cameras) never could take a fully accurate picture to represent what you see. Digital sensors and film don't perceive what our eyes do. It's always been up to you the photographer to ensure that. If you choose to shoot on auto, that's your choice to let the camera guess at the accuracy. Most people don't like what is actual reality so they under, over, long and short expose to choose what reality they represent. They light things artificially and they put make up on. The might even create stage scenes. Even in pure film days, humans have been altering the output. Whether it be for realism or artistic purposes, dodging/burning were effectively retouching practices in film.

Yes smart phone cameras are using computation to get a more "correct" output, unless it's being marked as a feature to alter the image such as face smoothing. Camera makers are always trying to make their camera sensors (or film makers) better perceive the range our human eyes can or at least give use the choice through data to make the decision on realism or art.

Your bit about the police officer is 100% irrelevant to your main point.

igornadj• 3 years ago

If your need to document the world accurately is important to you, you should be using a dedicated device for that purpose.

zerd• 3 years ago

I was trying to take a passport photo, and one of the requirements is "has not been touched up". But when I took the photo with my phone, I noticed that it had been very helpful in touching up my face by removing almost all of my wrinkles and made my skin nice and soft. Even with all "enhancements" off. This was on an Samsung S10, I tried with an iPhone SE, it was slightly less visibly touched up, so I used that, but still definitely had a "beauty" filter built in. It's probably implemented in ASIC so you basically can't turn it fully off.

pyrophane• 3 years ago

With its high bit depth and dynamic range, log footage has many of the benefits of raw. But Apple Log is not raw, and not even “straight off the sensor.” It’s still heavily processed — denoised, tone-mapped, and color adjusted.

I wonder if this is because, at the end of the day, it is still a tiny little camera with a small sensor and small lens, and so with none of the processing magic the image would look pretty terrible under most circumstancdes.

stu2b50• 3 years ago

RAW video isn’t like RAW photography. The sheer size of raw footage is insane - it’s normal for cameras to be unable to record RAW footage natively without an external recorder.

Thats not to say processing isn’t part of it, but even $2k mirrorless cameras don’t record RAW video internally.

Night_Thastus• 3 years ago

This is how all phone cameras work now.

The sensors and lenses are small, and now processors are very fast. And as it turns out, the vast majority of people do not want photos or videos that are "accurate" or "real". They want ones that look good.

So, processing has been the name of the game. It's all about making an image people will like to look at, regardless of how different it is from reality.

twoWhlsGud• 3 years ago

Probably true, and I enjoy using my phone for social snapshots. But the way in which everything ends up looking "iphony" annoys me for anything where I care about the image, and so I'm shooting more with my dumber digital cameras that are about documenting what was actually in front of me rather than spinning up a "good looking" image. I like being able to remember what a scene actually looked like, rather than what the AI in my phone thought it should look like ; )

rperez333• 3 years ago

Even high-end cameras that can shoot in Log, like the Sony A7 series, apply some noise reduction on their end. This is important for most compressed formats.

However, most people would be horrified to see how noisy and unsharp the images from top cinema cameras are when most post-processing is disabled.

ChuckMcM• 3 years ago

This was a great read, clear, concise, and entertaining. It also struck me how "over powered" phones are these days. I get that the latest chip with the latest GPUs/APUs/IPUs/whatever are really capable, but the weird "I don't need a cinema capable device in my phone" feeling starts to get overwhelming. If nothing else I feel like we're going to force Apple (and others) to go back to easily replaceable battery technology because a "phone" will meet its user's needs for a decade or more and the parts that wear out will need to be replaced several times.

markstos• 3 years ago

Yes, it’s almost like a post to explain why you wouldn’t be getting the most out of this model phone if are you aren’t doing high end photography.

ip26• 3 years ago

That’s a feature in the prosumer market, not a bug

hatsune• 3 years ago

Log does not work great in heavy computational video right now. It was the case with RAW on phones till manufacturers find ways to bake computated (i.e. stacked, stablised, etc.) data into RAW, like xiaomi, huawei, pixel, and apple.

That's a weakest point of phones as by exposing to log curve, you exactly showcase the poor latitude of phone sensor. With the price and additional rigging required (and cooling), just save and get a bmpcc.

The argument of getting out a phone and handheld for night photography (first saw in Huawei P30) or slow-motion and get really great image is valid.

The argument of randomly getting out a phone with cases, cooling, external SSD, mounted battery, matte boxes (especially for strong glaring on iPhone), and a camera stabliser (because a phone stabliser is not tailored for this weight), will be over 1.5kg. That does not sound like valid.

Log is quite useless other than controlled or professional shooting as exposure matters a lot more, and lack of IRE exposure (false color i.e.) makes it not feasible.

tlhunter• 3 years ago

Here's a great list of free LUTs. I use them with darktable when editing raw photograph files:

https://github.com/cedeber/hald-clut

system2• 3 years ago

I am betting in 5 years apple will come up with a 1" or 3/4" sensor for their phones. iPhone 20 maybe.

Log is the "Pro" in iPhone 15 Pro

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