As one of the few iPhone +Android dual-platform users in the company, my choice of mobile phone is actually very casual: the latest iPhone is paired with any interesting Android phone. Among them, iPhone can provide me with a hardware-level "refrigerator App", isolate the cancerous apps that have to be used in the Android platform in hardware, and provide a basic guaranteed experience for modern digital life .
As for taking photos? To be honest, except for the kind of casual shots used in life that are used for emergency response, such as taking the express delivery number or parking space number, in most cases, I don’t know how to take pictures with my iPhone. At most, it’s just a few photos on my phone when I go out and use my phone to post them on my Moments. For me at that time, "creating" with my mobile phone was actually a not practical idea.
Due to work reasons, I like to use telephoto macro lenses to "deconstruct" products when taking photos, and the performance of iPhone's telephoto and macro cameras has never been satisfied with me in the past. plus the overly stiff sharpening, grainy feeling and mirror reflection of the iPhone in the past few generations, I have always maintained a "dispensable" attitude towards shooting iPhones. I will take one by the way with my phone. If I don't bring it, I will forget it.
However, after experiencing iPhone 14 Pro for a few days, I had a new idea about the iPhone's camera: the iPhone 14 Pro's camera seems to have the ability to stand alone.
From wide-angle camera to main camera
First of all, this year's iPhone 14 Pro series has changed to a brand new camera module, among which the wide-angle camera has been upgraded from a 12-megapixel camera to a 48-megapixel (48MP) main camera with a four-in-one pixel 1/1.23-inch 48-megapixel (48MP) main camera. The aperture size has been reduced from the original equivalent f/1.5 to the equivalent f/1.78, and the light transmission volume on the book has decreased.
However, in normal shooting, the iPhone 14 Pro actually outputs a 12-megapixel (12MP) size picture. When taking 12MP photos, the camera combines photosensitive through four adjacent pixels into independent pixels to image. Therefore, although the equivalent aperture of the camera module has been reduced, the photosensitive ability behind the actual imaging actually increases instead of falling.
. From the actual imaging effect, no matter you shoot in 12MP or 48MP mode, the exposure orientation of the phone has no special changes, and the cropping points of the highlights and shadows are roughly the same. In bright scenes, whether to enable 48MP is the option to only depend on your actual screen size and storage space.
By the way, the size of a RAW image in 48MP mode is about 86MB. as a comparison, the Sony a7R3 camera with a 42.4 megapixel full-frame sensor has a RAW file size of about 85MB. From this perspective, the iPhone 14 Pro's camera does reach the "Pro" level.
Back to this 48MP pixel main camera. iPhone 14 Pro main camera The equivalent focal length of is 24mm. Due to the focal length, it will have a bit of barrel deformation during shooting, and the situation will be more obvious when shooting buildings. In the camera options Apple also provides algorithm compensation based on software cropping. However, just like software anti-shake, distortion compensation based on cropping cannot generate non-existent new pixels, and the edge picture may be cut. If you are taking multiple photos, it is recommended to leave enough crop space around the picture.
But from another perspective, the wider 24mm main camera actually gives iPhone 14 Pro a more flexible composition space. After turning off distortion compensation, iPhone 14 Pro may also bring a stronger central emphasis effect at some composition angles. For example, when taking a lot of black blank photos around, the iPhone 14 Pro performs very well.
The highlight processing and connection of the picture are very smooth, and it does not like some domestic brands to shoot nights into daylight.Since the aperture of is narrower than that of the previous generation, there is no obvious purple edge dispersion in the highlights, and there is no problem in magnifying . By the way, after switching to sapphire lenses in the previous two generations of iPhones, there was a serious ghosting (intra-mirror reflection). Unfortunately, this situation still exists in the iPhone 14 Pro, but compared with the previous two generations, the ghosting phenomenon of the iPhone 14 Pro has been significantly improved. If you want to take a ghost, of course there is a way to take it out, but even if I shoot directly at the street lights, there is no visible ghost in the picture.
In addition to the obvious improvement in highlights, the dark details and tolerance of the iPhone 14 Pro camera have brought me a lot of surprises: the sensitive gradient of the ground is natural and there is no obvious smear, and even the color of the fence in the distant background can be recognized. In addition, the stone brick lines on the distant ground were not lost due to smearing, and the details were preserved very intact, and only the edge image quality decreased due to wide-angle optical characteristics.
2×"new camera"
Since the main camera of 48MP was used instead, the main camera of iPhone 14 Pro also unlocks the lossless 2× zoom function of 12MP. Simply put, this lossless 2× zoom function is actually to cut out the 12MP part in the middle from a 48MP photo, which is the same as the lossless zoom of Nokia video or the full-frame camera that turned on APS-C cropping mode. Although in principle, the picture taken by 2× zoom is definitely not as good as the native telephoto camera . But after using it, I think this 2× camera is actually the most interesting part of the iPhone 14 Pro camera.
First of all, the × camera is cut out by the main camera, so the aperture is consistent with the main camera, which is equivalent to f/1.78, which is much larger than the original telephoto camera with equivalent f/2.8, and the light transmission is guaranteed. Secondly, the 2× camera cut off all the wide-angle lenses of with the most obvious distortion and image quality attenuation, and only retains the central area with the most stable imaging effect, and the image quality is more guaranteed. Moreover, in the iPhone 14 Pro, the main camera adopts sensor anti-shake and 7-piece lens design, which is better than the telephoto lens , which uses 6 traditional IS solutions.
For example, in night scene shooting, the equivalent imaging quality of 48mm is significantly higher than that of the equivalent telephoto camera of 77mm. Not only is the granularity effect lighter in the sky background, but the processing of highlights in the picture is also sharper.
But more importantly, the 2× camera and 24mm main camera use the same sensor, so the color consistency between the two is more guaranteed. In previous iPhones, even though the three cameras in the rear camera module used three different sensors, the color consistency of the three cameras under Apple's adjustment was still very good. But on the iPhone 14 Pro, there is a certain color gap between the main camera and the other two cameras.
As sure these gaps can be fixed through software updates, but as I said before the release of iPhone 14 Por, the color consistency of iPhone 2The core competitiveness of iPhone cameras in history, which allows photographers to have a fixed and referenceable understanding of the pictures taken.
and the equivalent 24mm and 48mm cut from the same sensor are naturally not to worry about this problem. Even if the picture may be far different from the picture, it is just that the average metering gives different exposure parameters and white balance data due to the different picture composition. After shooting, throw the RAW into Lightroom and you can unify the tone with one click.
Speaking of LR, I will mention it again: Adobe has not updated the lens configuration file of iPhone 14 Pro for LR, and the software cannot directly correct color and distortion based on the RAW configuration file. But considering the relationship between Adobe and Apple, I believe this problem will be solved soon.
Ultra-wide-angle camera
Next let’s take a look at the ultra-wide-angle camera.Judging from the data, the pixels of the ultra-wide-angle camera have not changed but the equivalent aperture is smaller, which should be a disadvantage. But considering the particularity of ultra-wide-angle cameras, I think it should be discussed in different situations.
We know that the ultra-wide camera of the iPhone 14 Pro is also a macro camera. The actual working scenarios can be divided into four working conditions: daytime ultra-wide angle, nighttime ultra-wide angle, daytime macro and nighttime macro. There is no doubt that the smaller aperture under other unchanged conditions will reduce the amount of light transmission, affecting the imaging quality of ultra-wide-angle cameras during night shooting. But when the light is sufficient, narrowing the aperture of ultra-wide-angle cameras is not entirely a bad thing.
First of all, due to optical design, the depth of field of ultra-wide-angle lenses is large, and simply put, the blur effect cannot be obvious; secondly, ultra-wide-angle lenses are more likely to experience sharp decline in edge image quality; finally, the best aperture of the camera is usually not the maximum aperture. When using SLR to shoot buildings or landscapes, we sometimes even actively narrow the aperture to f/11 for the sake of picture quality. From this perspective, I personally can actually accept the practice of adjusting the aperture of the ultra-wide-angle camera with the iPhone 14 Pro.
After all, in the actual sample, the image quality of the ultra-wide-angle camera on the edge of the iPhone 14 Pro is very good. Even the roof stone bricks at the edge of the picture do not have obvious dispersion, and they will not look at it. But it is undeniable that compared with the central image quality, the edge image quality is still slightly insufficient.
telephoto camera
Since the iPhone 14 Pro adds the 2× camera setting, I actually use the original 3× telephoto camera relatively little, and only use it when some of the needs to look at each other. may be the reason why the iPhone 14 Pro was just launched. This 77mm telephoto camera equivalent showed a relatively obvious polarization during shooting. Even if the shooting parameters of the two photos are exactly the same, the shooting time is only less than one second, but the noise control of the two pictures is completely different.
Under normal circumstances, although the camera is a little granular, the overall picture is still very clean, and there will be some abnormal textures in the sensitive and drastic changes. However, once an accident occurs, the noise control and dynamic range of the entire photo will be completely out of control. The entire photo looks like the news pictures that can never be seen clearly on the high school test paper, and are completely unavailable.
iPhone camera enhances the significance of mobile photography
But then again, although the camera of the iPhone 14 Pro is in a bad way, it is indeed the "camera" I have used the most time during this period. In order to extend the working time, my a7R3 has a battery handle for a long time, and the external monitor will almost never be removed, which directly led to my camera becoming, or "reduced" to the workpiece. Not to mention planning to take it out for photos on weekends, I don’t even want to take it home on weekends.
This situation is very common for those who need to use the camera for a long time at work. Even if the creative idea is strong, I don’t want to enter the work state. Most photos are not wanted to be taken with the camera. The iPhone 14 Pro gives me a chance to take photos without using a7R3.
In the past few days of using iPhone 14 Pro, I was like going back to the weekend when I just bought a camera 10 years ago. Wherever I went, I felt like I was taking out my phone to take a picture. For example, many of the samples in this test were casual photos when I rode a bike at night. It can be said that iPhone 14 Pro has regained the idea of taking a camera out.
and even more so on the photos of sunrise. For a "shutter migrant worker", taking a camera, a tripod and ND to the rooftop to take pictures of sunrise can be said to be an absolutely impossible thing. But iPhone 14 Pro is different. This model can shoot high-quality 48MP RAW files very professionally to provide operation space for the later stage, and can easily be put into the pocket. Even the shooting process is extremely simple.
It can be said that iPhone 14 Pro is a "professional point-and-shoot camera", and users can take the most professional photos in the most "fool-and-shoot" way. Just like the slogan when Apple WWDC, "Give users excellent tools to create more exciting works." The iPhone 14 Pro approach may be the core value of mobile photography.
