[Jonathan Cross Participant Posts: 50]

Mobile and Cell Phone Photography

on: September 14, 2023 at 5:03 am

So, the iPhone 15 has been announced and will ship shortly.  I cannot speak about Android as I have an iPhone, but competition being what it is, I am sure Samsung or other Android phones will match or outdo Apple.

The camera specs on the 15 are a definite improvement, particularly for the Pro Max.  48MP on the 24mm equivalent lens.  OK the others are 12MP, but with Adobe Super resolution that can be upscaled to 48MP.  Lenses that range from 13mm to 120mm equivalent.  Depth of field data that is stored so that it can be changed after capture.  All of this in a package that is smaller, lighter, and with a much bigger screen than most mirrorless cameras and could always be in the owner’s pocket.

Is this the future? Should I sell my lenses bar the 100-400 to use with my Fuji X-T4, sell my X-E4 (which I love) while there is still a market, and get a 15 Pro Max to replace my 12pro?  Apple could give me £375 trade in.  I am increasingly using my iPhone to shoot RAW and using super resolution if I need to crop or print bigger than A3 (16.5″ x 11.7″). LR processes my iPhone images to give me prints I enjoy.

Will the camera market shrink to the professional users and niche and medium format makers?

I await tests on the new models with interest.

Jonathan

 

 

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1295]

Re: The future

Reply #1 on: September 14, 2023 at 10:08 am

Yes, Yes, Maybe… I put my pre-order in for the new iPhone 15 Pro Max 1 TB phone. I am on the monthly rental plan and have been for years, and it allows me to get a new phone every year. It’s a must for the work I do. First, I’ll be doing an iPhone Chat today. I am getting this upgrade for the camera. I will then challenge myself to go out for a day just with the new iPhone camera and see what I can shoot. The RAW file format I have been using for almost everything I shoot. I export those into Lightroom and work on them there. The ability to adjust and fine-tune is lovely, and the images are surprisingly great. You can now use the iPhone 15 to shoot directly into Capture One (not that I am using it anymore), but I can see that as a big step. Imagine shooting a landscape or portrait and seeing it on an iPad.

The camera on the iPhone 15 can detect people and automatically go into portrait mode. Then, you can afterward change which subject is in focus and how much background focus there is.

Using third-party apps to take your images further is a big plus. You can do frame averaging with an app and do long exposures. And record it in RAW. All images get recorded into the photo app, which then goes to the cloud and is available on desktops and tablets for sharing and further edits. This is all kind of a dream come true.

And the new lens range on the camera means more and more people will be using the iPhone for regular pictures rather than a large, bulkier camera.

I have an upcoming trip to Antarctica this December. Having been there 25 times and shot just about everything there is, I think I’ll try to shoot a lot more with the iPhone.

No, I am not throwing away my camera system and huge lens collections for my own systems. But I will be taking a lot more photos due to having a full-fledged, RAW-capable camera in my pocket.

I am getting excited about taking pictures again. My cats and dog are looking at me, knowing they will be some of the first models I shoot with questioning eyes.

Think about where we might be with all this in a short 5 years.

I’ll be dedicating a lot to sharing what the new iPhone can do on this site, mainly because we all have them. It’s fun times.

Kevin Raber
Owner and Publisher of photoPXL

[Jonathan Cross Participant Posts: 50]

Re: The future

Reply #2 on: September 20, 2023 at 9:39 am

I am confused about the advertised 7 lenses on the iPhone 15 Pro Max.  These have been categorised as Macro, 0.5x (13mm), 1x (24mm), 1.2x (28mm), 1.5x (35mm), 2x (48mm), and 5x (120mm).  The main 1x lens is given as being 48MP, though 24MP is also quoted, and the 5x is given as 12MP.  I cannot find the MP of the other lenses, so I rang Apple support this morning.  I spoke to an advisor and he said he would find out.  After hanging on for 20 minutes, he came back to me and said that information was not available, but there would be an announcement in due course!

 

This matters to me as I print and would probably want to use all the lenses.  On my ILC camera, if I change the lens, the MP stays the same as it is dictated by the sensor.  I am not at all sure this is the case with the iPhone 15 pro max as the lenses are built in and the 5x is only 12MP.  There has been uncertainty in the press about Apple’s wording on whether the 1.2, 1.5 etc are crops or not. Whether they are crops or not, I would like to know the pixel dimensions for each.  I assume all the lenses produce 4×3 images. If they are crops, why bother when I could crop a 1x, 24mm 48MP to exactly what I want in LR.

 

It is all very puzzling to me.  Am I missing something?

 

Jonathan

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1295]

Re: The future

Reply #3 on: September 20, 2023 at 10:52 am

Jonathan Cross wrote:

I am confused about the advertised 7 lenses on the iPhone 15 Pro Max. These have been categorised as Macro, 0.5x (13mm), 1x (24mm), 1.2x (28mm), 1.5x (35mm), 2x (48mm), and 5x (120mm). The main 1x lens is given as being 48MP, though 24MP is also quoted, and the 5x is given as 12MP. I cannot find the MP of the other lenses, so I rang Apple support this morning. I spoke to an advisor and he said he would find out. After hanging on for 20 minutes, he came back to me and said that information was not available, but there would be an announcement in due course!

This matters to me as I print and would probably want to use all the lenses. On my ILC camera, if I change the lens, the MP stays the same as it is dictated by the sensor. I am not at all sure this is the case with the iPhone 15 pro max as the lenses are built in and the 5x is only 12MP. There has been uncertainty in the press about Apple’s wording on whether the 1.2, 1.5 etc are crops or not. Whether they are crops or not, I would like to know the pixel dimensions for each. I assume all the lenses produce 4×3 images. If they are crops, why bother when I could crop a 1x, 24mm 48MP to exactly what I want in LR.

It is all very puzzling to me. Am I missing something?

Jonathan

You bring up a good question.  I am putting up a video today on why I ordered the new iPhone 15 Pro Max.  I have also found some answers to what you mentioned in the YouTube video.  I suggest you Google iPhone 15 lenses to see if you can get answers.  I listened to Ted Forbes today, and his video is pretty good at explaining this.

When I get my iPhone (early October) I’ll certainly be running some tests and then looking at file sizes and printing from these files. I’ll hopefully be better at explaining this once I have tried it.  I also shoot most of the stuff I do in ProRAW exce;t for those family snapshot things.  The HEIC files without RAW are pretty darn good.

try watching this ….he was at the Apple event.   https://youtu.be/QW2w55S98j8?si=YbAjOOHqOi5JVQCW

Let’s see if anyone else can help here too.

Kevin Raber
Owner and Publisher of photoPXL

[Mike Broomfield Silver Member Posts: 82]

Re: The future

Reply #4 on: September 20, 2023 at 8:23 pm

I have not read details about the 15 but I imagine it’s similar to the 14.  Quad sensor for the main (12 or 48) and different sensors (12) for the other lens modules.

Good explanation here;

iPhone 14 pixels: Why the 48MP sensor is not the big camera news this year

 

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