It can be said that the iPhone camera has a lot of problems…
Apple uses small sensors; it doesn’t give you a pro mode for better control over your images; The iPhone can sometimes make people look orange (or blue); ultrawide cameras and zoom cameras are not as good as the main and so on and so on…
However, all of that aside, the beef I have with the iPhone camera is a bit more specific or rather “technical” but at the same time just related to “how good a photo looks” if I may say …
The way I see it is that what’s wrong with the iPhone camera goes all the way back to why you decide to take a photo. Then it ends with, well… the end result, which more often than not doesn’t match the original image of what you’re looking at / the very reason you decide it’s a moment worth capturing, preserving and celebrating.
If none of this makes sense now, I’ll be (much) more specific when we look at the sample photos I took (and then edited)! So what are the “real” iPhone camera problems, and how can you fix them in seconds by hitting the edit button in your Photos app?
Here is my opinion…
The real issues with the iPhone 13, iPhone 14 camera have to do with Apple’s overall photography philosophy
As I hinted at, the real problem with the iPhone camera (at least in my opinion) is ultimately the fact that Apple doesn’t allow us to take more control over our photos (before we take them)! Instead, as an iPhone 13 mini and iPhone 14 Pro user (all the photos you’ll see were taken with the iPhone 13 mini, which I prefer to carry with me), I get everything that comes with Apple’s understanding of a “good photo” and I have to…deal with it.
The phone’s lack of detailed camera control isn’t just an Apple problem, as Google, for example, is also forcing users to stick to its photography philosophy by omitting a pro mode from the Pixel camera (the new Pixels don’t even let you take a full -res photos). On the other hand, good examples are Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, OnePlus, Oppo, Huawei (and others), thanks to their expert professional modes/settings and special alternative automatic shooting modes, like Leica Authentic on Xiaomi phones, which comes from Xiaomi a multi-million dollar partnership with… Leica.
- iPhone photos are often too bright, resulting in a washed-out look and therefore a false rendering of the scene – this is by no means exclusive to night shots (in fact, quite the opposite), but it’s much easier to notice when shooting of images in night mode
- Aggressive HDR can make iPhone photos look extremely flat and lifeless, without any of the “drama” that “real” cameras often give us; technically, this is because the iPhone wants to bring highlights (the light parts of the image) and shadows (the darker parts of the photo) closer together, rather than trying to separate them in an authentic way
- Related to the last point, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, iPhone HDR often fails to line up images correctly, which can result in exaggerated highlights that are nearly impossible to recover from
- Oversharpening – perhaps the easiest iPhone camera problem to understand has been around for 2-3 generations; unless you’re shooting in RAW/48MP (if you have that luxury), trees, branches and buildings (or anything with a well-defined texture) are bound to look much sharper than expected
Take “real” photos with your iPhone 12, iPhone 13, iPhone 14! It takes 30 seconds to edit; I took hundreds of pictures to make sure
How to take DSLR-like photos with your iPhone? This is easy! Take the photo and try playing with the settings after hitting the edit button in the Photos app. What usually makes my photos look much more realistic and “real” is:
- Dial back Brilliance by about 30-60% (highly recommended)
- Reduce the brightness by about 20-40% (highly recommended)
- Reduce noise by about 15-25% (recommended for photos with lots of textures that might look too sharp)
- Add a vignette for a stylistic look (recommended for a more authentic ‘camera’ look and where you need to bring ‘drama’ back into the scene)
I took hundreds of photos and edited them to make them look… better and more authentic (original photos on the left, edited on the right)
Apple, please give us a more authentic shooting mode; let’s turn off HDR and maybe change lens supplier for iPhone 15
As you can see, the iPhone’s photo performance is as promised – high brightness, added sharpness and inconsistent HDR. And as we mentioned at the beginning, this usually results in “lifeless” photos that not only look different from reality, but often look… worse.
Like the editing suggestions I gave at the beginning, I very rarely needed to add vibrancy to iPhone photos. 95% of the time I just reduced the brightness and shine of the photos, which automatically helped restore some of the colors in the photos. Interestingly, there’s actually a smartphone on the market right now that takes photos pretty much the way I like them, or the way I think an iPhone should, and that phone is the Xiaomi 13 Pro (also, the Xiaomi 12S Ultra, which offers identical experience). This isn’t a Xiaomi 13 Pro story, so I won’t talk too much about it, but the Leica Authentic Mode in the camera app on this device is what sets it apart from the rest of the pack (Pixel 7, Galaxy S22, iPhone 14) .
What Xiaomi is doing right now is exactly what I imagine the future of the smartphone camera will be – give users several options for photo styles – which are very different from filters because they’re not placed over your photo. a are a picture you take.
New iPhone 15 camera rumors and photography styles – the right direction
But wait, doesn’t the iPhone have… Photo Styles?
Yes, it is, and yes, they help! However, they are far from making the photos look natural. For example, Photo Styles don’t let you adjust highlights and shadows individually or reduce artificial sharpening in photos.
Anyway, iPhone 15 rumors say that Apple is about to switch to using newer/better Sony sensors that allow for improved HDR – something that current iPhones can often get wrong…
Better hardware and photography styles are certainly the right direction, but I think Apple needs to double down and make photography styles the focus of the next-gen iPhone camera, similar to what Xiaomi, OnePlus, Oppo and Vivo are doing with its Leica, Zeiss, and Hasselblad partnerships.
Enabling people to take vivid or more natural/authentic photos can take the iPhone camera from really good to great… for more people. Do you agree? And will you be using some of the editing tricks I’ve shown here for your own photos? Tell me!
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