advertisement


Smartphone camera AI

Tony L

Administrator

This is fascinating. Both from the technical and a reality-distortion perspective. Some features being on by default without the user even realising. Astonishing technology, but leading to a world of pictures of things that never actually happened!

PS The Huawei moon pics are just crazy!
 
This makes me slightly queasy - especially the stuff that goes on out of your control / knowledge. I guess we'll all get used to it or will there be a 'revival' movement of 'real' photos?
 
An iPhone has been my main camera for years now (previously a 6S, now a 13) and I don’t notice anything beyond the auto-focus and auto-exposure. I tend not to take pictures of people though so I guess I get to see far less of the AI type stuff. 95% of what I take is hi-fi or records for this site!

It astonishes me just how good smartphone cameras are these days. I’ve got a Fuji XPro 1 and a couple of lenses but I haven’t touched it for about 5 years now as the phone does everything I need! I’ve always been happy with a medium-wide lens though, I could live perfectly contentedly with nothing more than a 35mm on an old film SLR, and the standard iPhone lens isn’t vastly different to that.
 
A lot of this is just automation and is inevitable. 100% of my pictures are processed, including any pictures that I take with a phone. If you see a people picture from me then it will have had skin retouched and possibly face or body correction. Landscapes will have had things removed and corrected.
 
Fascinating. Most of that was new (news) to me.
Photos of events that did not actually quite occur....scary stuff.




(Which reminds me...anyone think we might see some Xmas party photos soon?!)
 
given the shape of the lenses and limited protuberance, the software in a smartphone camera has to do of work to get a semi decent image.
 
I know pretty much nothing about cameras, or computers, but this just reminds me of all the ways that Windows 10 (for example) wants to make everything "easier" for the user. And I don't like that!
 
given the shape of the lenses and limited protuberance, the software in a smartphone camera has to do of work to get a semi decent image.
Software correction is important of course but I’d surmise that all decent phone cameras will have lens designs to correct the worst distortions. They’re all likely to be moulded aspherical plastic lenses, very cheap & easy to produce given fixed focal lengths & tiny sizes.
 
Fortunately my phone has no AI enhancements, this is selfie a i took the other day when i was changing the tyres on my Transit...

2020_NYR_19581_0186_000(herb_ritts_fred_with_tires_hollywood_1984035837).jpg
 
I recently purchased Camera 2+ for my iPhone 12. It gives you more manual control over the camera - e.g. select iso, exposure time and aperture. Also a better phone clamp and table top tripod. Hopefully I will get some time to take more considered photos - whether they will be any better is an open question.
 
It astonishes me just how good smartphone cameras are these days. I’ve got a Fuji XPro 1 and a couple of lenses but I haven’t touched it for about 5 years now as the phone does everything I need! I’ve always been happy with a medium-wide lens though, I could live perfectly contentedly with nothing more than a 35mm on an old film SLR, and the standard iPhone lens isn’t vastly different to that.
The camera on my iPhone XR is poor compared to the 8 Plus I had before. I should not have assumed a later iPhone is always better.

The only time I use my D-SLR is to take a macro shot.
 
The camera on my iPhone XR is poor compared to the 8 Plus I had before. I should not have assumed a later iPhone is always better.

That’s certainly the assumption. The camera is a major selling point and they always devote about a third of the annual launch brainwashing conference to it. I tend to make far bigger jumps, e.g. I recently went from a 6S to a 13, and the latter is definitely better as one would hope! 6S was perfectly good though, most of my audio kit pics etc here were taken with it.
 


advertisement


Back
Top