Do they look the same when zoomed in/at 100% zoom? Phone photos look great on small screens but show weaknesses on desktop.

Yep. Dslr and large sensors count when it comes to making every pixel count without introducing artifacts

It's rarely the case that you want to look at a camera or a phone photo at 100% zoom unless you're cropping a smaller image out of a larger one. Of course, sometimes it's useful for things like reading text, but that's limited by the lens and focus abilities as much as the sensor resolution.

You'd be surprised how little megapixels are just fine for putting up on a wall or billboard. It's all about how far away the viewer is.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the optics are superior. Smartphone lenses are pretty sophisticated. Also, their smaller size and far greater production numbers open up manufacturing techniques that wouldn't be practical for DSLR lenses.

I didn't downvote but I imagine at least someone did because the laws of physics dictate that smaller lenses/sensors can't capture as much light as bigger ones of similar quality. This is why cameras have started trending to be larger rather than smaller. Only so much you can do software-wise before you hit physical limitations.

>the laws of physics dictate that smaller lenses/sensors can't capture as much light as bigger ones of similar quality.

This is not really true to a very great extent once you take depth of field into account. At least, it would be helpful if you could indicate what it is exactly that you take the laws of physics to imply in this context. I made a comment here that's relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33426540

I took 'superior optics' to be a claim of greater sophistication or higher quality, but perhaps that is not what was meant, and the poster was merely referring to the difference in size.

If the size of the lens wasn't important, we wouldn't have built a 100" mirror on Mt. Wilson followed by a 200" mirror at Palomar Observatory.

A 14mm wide-angle lens with a primary opening of 2mm is never going to let in the same amount of light as a 14mm wide-angle with a 114mm primary opening will. Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens. There are some adapters that are known as speed boosters that reduce the exit pupil for full frame lenses that will actually add a stop to the lens.

>Ratio of the sensor size has nothing to do with the ability of the light entering the front lens.

I'm aware of that – that's the point I made in my post that I linked. But DoF considerations entail that you can't just keep arbitrarily increasing the size of the opening.

the size of the chips on mobile devices will always mean there is infinite depth of field without software effects. it's like 1990s news camera footage. everybody everywhere in the frame is in focus. boring boring boring.

You could disprove this with a few seconds of experimentation. Modern phone cameras have focusing mechanisms for a reason. Here is a shot taken with the main camera of the iPhone 12 Pro Max for illustration:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1akuK5v_PB8DwzDnJC1oJXOETr_S...

Without getting too much into subjective territory, I am personally tired of the bokeh obsession. There's nothing inherently interesting about photos with blurry backgrounds (see above for confirmation!) And if you want background blur, achieving it using software effects is perfectly legitimate.

> There’s nothing inherently interesting about photos with a blurry background

Congrats! You took a bad photo with a shallow depth of field! I guess the photographer does matter more than the equipment.

> Achieving it with software effects is perfectly legitimate

Sure you can. But if you think software bokeh can compete with any dedicated camera bokeh (even a vintage 35mm camera for that matter) than you need to try and use a dedicated camera with a good prime lens, ie 50mm f/2.

The biggest thing that a dedicated camera can get you is simply options. You can choose the depth of field of the shot. You can choose the shutter speed. You can choose the focal length. Sure you have some control over these things in some apps, but it’s not the same level of control.

I shot on my iPhone for years, but after I got my mirrorless camera I have taken so many pictures that never would have been possible on an iPhone.

I have used dedicated cameras with prime lenses. I quite enjoy using old film cameras as a hobby, including large format cameras which can create extremely shallow depth of field using movements. The only point of the linked photo was to show that current cell phone cameras clearly do not have 'infinite' depth of field (as the other poster claimed).

It is true that a dedicated camera gives you more options. (I did not deny this.)

>You can choose the shutter speed

Pedantic point: you can also choose the shutter speed on a cell phone camera if you use one of many apps that give manual control over shutter speed and ISO.

Just shoot your mirrorless in RAW and process them later. Lightroom gives great results, but you can also use Apple Photos to get similar color processing as your iPhone photos.

The mirrorless photos will look much better on a laptop or bigger screen but about the same on a phone.

Thanks for the tip on Apple Photos. Had not tried that.

My other favorite is the Really Nice Images plugin for Lightroom. Very pleasing results on my Nikon Z6 RAW files--better to me than Apple's iPhone processing--by essentially just clicking the filter you want and adjusting a strength slider.

For the same reason you can't upload to Instagram from your $2k camera - they know how to make hardware.

But the idea of enhancing filters or social media features is completely alien to them.

What settings are you shooting? How do you edit your images?

On my Z5 I can use the built-in Landscape mode, and on the Z6 I can use auto or manual.

Autocorrect RAW in Adobe Photoshop looks good. And certainly on a 4k monitor the DSLR images reveal more detail.

My post here has me realizing I need to take iPhone and DSLR shots side-by-side in the same place with the same lighting and begin to compare them in-camera and in post-processing.

"What aperture are you shooting at? You probably already know it, but for landscapes you'd be looking at f/5.6 or so unless you're hurting for light."

this is bad advice.... shoot on a tripod and set your f stop to get the DOF you need or do a focus stack, f/5.6 would work if your shooting a distant landscape but having anything in the foreground f5.6 would not be enough, i usually stay at around F10 any higher i don't like because diffraction starts to reduce image quality and if i need more DOF i just focus stack

for ISO set it to 100 or what ever your cameras base ISO is

then adjust your shutter speed until you get correct exposure

If you are using an APS-C camera or a FF above 30MP, at f/10 you are already suffering from diffraction. You really want to be between f/5.6 and f/8. Of course, composition is still the most important thing, so if you need the depth of field you need the depth field.

As for the exposure you can just use aperture priority with your ISO set to the base ISO. On a Nikon camera you'd actually want to be at 64. If the scene doesn't have challenging highlights then going under the base ISO or overexposing will provide even better results.

Actually if you shoot raw its not good to go below base iso. Recently i learned that when you go under base iso the camera just overexposes the image and pulls it down in software to give you longer exposure times. With raw you can just raise shadows in post, its easier than pulling lights down. Negative side effect is highlight blowing out easy when going below base iso. So if you shoot raw then just stay at base iso and raise shadows in post. And if you really need the longer exposure invest in a ND filter.

It depends on whether or not you have a lot of highlights. As you said it just overexposes the image, which you should do if you can get away with the highlights.

What aperture are you shooting at? You probably already know it, but for landscapes you'd be looking at f/5.6 or so unless you're hurting for light.

Popular notion is that at f/11 only will diffraction start to affect you, but with modern high resolution cameras diffraction starts to creep in as early as f/9, so f/5.6 is generally best unless you really need the deeper field. You're probably going to be fine at 24MP, though.

Good looking != captures reality.

iPhones apply filters to make the photos look more vivid and to make them "ready to share". If a professional camera would do that, it would not be professional.

It doesn’t do that unless you turn on vivid photographic styles. It’s tuned pretty much like a dedicated camera.

This does annoy many people who then switch to Snow/BeautyCam to actually take their pictures since they want to look prettier.

By default, the pictures they take have nothing to do with reality. You can check it yourself by comparing the picture on the screen with the scene you pictured. Try it with some clouds f.e. This was my experience.

I dn, all the pictures of my friends and family and dog look pretty close to reality. I'm not sure I care if a cloud is slightly different, to be honest.

I think there is some sky recoloring, but eh, that's how camera AWB always works. Dedicated cameras try to make everything noon daylight if you leave them in auto mode; there are manual mode phone apps for this just like there's manual controls on the camera.

There seems to be an assumption here that dedicated cameras* always shoot in raws you can spend your time editing later, but that's not the case. If I shoot a concert or wedding and want to return the photos the next day, and in-camera JPEG or HEIF looks good, I'm shooting that.

* you can't make me say "DSLR", they aren't all DSLRs

Every camera does that to a degree pretty much by definition. I don’t think iphones would fair worth to their adherence to reaity than a “proper” camera does on auto.

I doubt those iphone photos look the exact same as the nikon ones on a large display (i.e. anything bigger than an iphone...) It has not been the case for me.

Apple and photography processing at this point is like TSMC and chips. They probably have a great deal of algorithmic knowhow that is in house and they're doing things that no one else is quite getting close to at any of the big camera brands. Maybe just Pixel phones have some clue in's on some of the post processing hacks. I'd guess in the dark ex apple helped consult.

Targeted audience doesn't demand the feature.

If a users needs are being met by an iPhone then they shouldn't worry about dslrs.

If a users needs aren't being met by the dslr gotta wonder is it the technology or the skill of the user?

The best rule I've learned is that the best camera you have is the one you have with you right now. Doesn't matter if you have a $2k+ camera body with a $5k lens sitting at home while you look at the photo op in front of you so you've used your mobile device instead. You at least have the picture that unless you've really messed it up, is better than no picture.

Never got why camera manufactures never followed the phones. Like Live photo,and automatic hdr. Can we get rid of the shutter?

i am glad they don't but in any case what is live photo? automatic HDR? well shoot a bracket +- certain EV ? get rid of the shutter? would need a global shutter unless you like rolling shutter look, phone sensors are tiny they can have fast enough readout vs a 35mm or larger

> Can we get rid of the shutter?

That's a challenge, I think. Take an R5 (only because I'm most familiar with it).

47 megapixels, 12 bpp 211.5MB, maximum shutter speed of 1/8000. In other words, you need to be able to pull data off the sensor (and to be clear, there's parallelization available, I just don't know what) at a global rate of 1.6TB/s.

They have global shutter sensors around the 12 megapixel level. They could split the sensor up into different processing paths. Do these 200 megapixel phone camera sensors have really bad rolling sensor issues? They are using electronic rolling shutters like your R5 when in silent mode or whatever canon calls it now.

What 200 mp phone camera sensors? The iPhone 14 is closer to a 12MP digital camera (quad bayer 48 million sensors). And from what I recall, 8 or maybe 10 bit. So in comparison to the 211MB of sensor data coming off the R5, there's 36 to 45MB of data coming off the phone camera. And I believe the 14's max shutter speed is 1/1000, so there's up to 35 times less data needing to be read off the sensor (45GB/s versus 1.6TB/s)

And I'm sure there is multiple processing paths - I just don't know the fine details about how that raw data is slurped off the sensor.

The Z9 has an electronic shutter, and fast one at that. So prepare to see that tech to hit lower tier mirrorless cameras in the next years.

Not sure what I'd need frame rates above 100 for stills so, but that's just me, because it sure is cool.

My 2016 olympus pen-f, which wasn't exactly ground-breaking technology when it came out, already had an electronic shutter that worked with the full resolution of the sensor.

It's a 20 MP micro 4/3 sensor - so 1/4 the surface area of "full-frame".

Just realized, the Nikon 1 we got for Christmas for my daughter seems to have one as well... Need to test that! Still, we look at a 10 MP sensor smaller in size than a DX. Heck, the more I look at the Nikon 1 series, the more I realize to ehat extend it served as a mirrorless test bed for Nikon.

Do you expect the physical size of the sensor to have a bigger influence on this than the resolution?

Depends on the sensor, doesn't it? The more dynamic range, the more data a sensor is collecting.

Nikon Z9 eliminated it this past year, my understanding is that going shutterless is largely a function of having fast enough readout over a large sensor size to mitigate rolling shutter.

Mine don't (iPhone 13 Pro Max, Fuji XT-2 and various lenses). They do in daylight, sure, but things like sunrise/sunset or unusual colors throw them off like crazy.

Textures can also throw them off - "amplification" of the texture effect, almost.

They also suffer a bit zoomed in.

The post-processing fixes a lot of problems of older phone cameras but it has its limits.

On good camera hardware there's very little that all that post-processing would add outside of extreme-high-ISO-noise, IMO. Which - would it be nice? Sure. But you can find software and stack exposures manually and such for those situations too.

And a lot of the other smart stuff gets fooled too easily.

I hate when you get one of those amazing sunsets where the whole sky changes color, but the phone auto-correct removes/corrects the color tone.

You can shoot in raw on iphones now to prevent this or fix it later.

Thanks, but now doesn't do me any good then

The sun will come up tomorrow, there was a whole song about it.

Capturing raw on iPhone in a low-light situation shows you just how far the sensors have to come if you aren't throwing the whole bag of software magic at it, in my experience.

It's useful for cases of "you're noise reduction is fucking with my texture" in decent lighting or similar, but in lower light I haven't found it to be a worthwhile tradeoff.

On recent iPhones Apple has added "ProRAW" which retains a lot of the magic processing without losing the ability to make a lot of adjustments you'd do on RAW photos like white balance correction.

Turn off auto white balance and set it to "daylight", problem solved.

This is true. I should have added "in good light".

The DSLR images also retain much more detail in cropping.

And even moderate optical telephoto lenses are pretty powerful tools as well—especially in poorer light.

I used to use a phone as my backup camera when I was out doing bird photography. After a while I gave up. In variable light and high dynamic range conditions phones just don’t hold up (they do a better job with video). If you’re taking snapshots, nothing better than a phone.

I think Nikkor assumes that you would use software to do the post processing. It gives you something a lot closer to what's coming from the sensor, so you can choose which $XXX image editing suite you want to run it through. The iPhone knows the vast majority of people won't do that with their photos, so they can go all-out, but you're stuck with their specific result baked in to your photo.

Apple has always been about making the choice for it’s users. Jobs always thought giving users too many options was problematic.

While in training at my first restaurant job I asked a party where they would like to sit in the dining room. The owner pulled me aside and said to never give people a choice. They'll get confused and think that there's a "best" table and that their dinner could suffer if they feel like they didn't get it.

I don't know if it's "real" or not but between work and my personal life I've got decision fatigue. Help make decisions. Especially about non-important ones that feel important at the time.

Circuit City stores, back when they had entire walls of VCRs and tape decks and receivers, all of which were "on sale" (ahem), instructed their salespeople to always give customers definitive advice in their price range. "Oh, this Sony is the absolute best tape deck." Once people had reassurance that they were making the right choice, even from a total stranger, they'd open their wallets. But not before.

The current stereotype for this is the peppy young salesperson having "this exact model at home".

I wonder what kind of mansions they live in, because I've seen the same 20something dude have like 5 different washing machines and 7 different fridges at home =)

Fascinating.

It seems like some table choices are better for the customer, some are better for the server. As a customer I like to be away from the other tables and the server wants everyone together in a noisy clump.

I absolutely loathe those setups in some tiny restaurants where they line up 2 person tables in a row with 6-12" between tables so you can hear the stranger next to you talking more clearly than your partner across the table. Nothing else triggers my unbearable social anxiety like it. I've gotten seated at those when there's, like, an entire half of the restaurant empty.

I suspect the other option here is to just ask. “We’re getting to know each other. Do you think we could sit in the booth in the corner over there?”

Yes, I remember that campgrounds in the American Rockies let you choose your spot, while in the Canadian Rockies they assign you one. And I realized we were simply happier in Canada!

It's definitely real! At least as far as my N=1 dataset is concerned. I dislike having to pick a seat when they're all kind of the same. Just tell me where to go, I have to make enough decisions at other times in life.

In one of my best sales jobs, I got a full day training course on choice fatigue and how to guide customers to both maximize revenues and their happiness. The business I worked for had high rates of customer return, so the training was centered not around scalping the most money today but how to develop a lifetime relationship where we maximize LTV.

It was pretty fascinating. I ended up doing a fair bit of independent research on the topic to see if it was just same sales BS or a known psychological phenomenon, and it turns out it's a well-known branch of psychology/sociology. (Not necessarily related to the Decision Fatigue / Ego Depletion theory which has been tough to replicate, but is probably true in some respect).

Coincidentally enough, I took that education to my next job, which was waiting tables, and it held up there very well. The key, in my opinion, is actually being deeply knowledgeable about the product so your recommendations are authentic. Bonus points if you use the product.

There is obviously better tables. Near the windows. Away from busy traffic.

Ah, so applying the parenting strategy to adults.

“Allow the illusion of choice”.

I don't see how that's relevant. You can tap the RAW button in the iOS camera app to switch between the two choices, both of which looks great. Most DSLRs only have one option because the second one (in-camera JPEG) looks like crap. They can barely do auto focus/wb/iso/shutter/aperture let alone postprocessing.

Not just Jobs! There is no end[0] to research[1] showing that many options is terrible[2], and "too many options" is terrible by definition.

0. https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2018/07/31/br...

1. https://mediaroom.iese.edu/new-research-shows-why-the-human-...

2. https://bigthink.com/thinking/choice-analysis-paralysis/

That's a bit silly in this context. It's not like the person's intentions aren't fairly clear when they decided between buying an iPhone or buying a $3000 DSLR setup. Is it really so evil that Apple "decided" the person who bought the iPhone probably wanted the pictures to be heavily post processed instead of raw data from the sensor?

And honestly history has mostly vindicated him.

By the way I know this is not your point, but there are excellent editing options for zero dollars! Which, I suppose X=0 is valid for your comment.

https://www.rawtherapee.com/

Ehh...RawTherapee (and also Darktable) are certainly capable of editing, but I've found that in practice they require far more effort to get results comparable to Adobe or Capture One's RAW processing.

The workflow of Darktable gets me confused compared to Lightroom/Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw tool; there are so many options and features that it can be overwhelming. Capture ONE from my experience delivers superior RAW decoding vs. Adobe Camera Raw, but I still use ACR.

Oh absolutely -- I wanted to give Darktable a chance, and I really worked to figure out enough to actually do meaningful edits.

I think it's a great example of the phrase "took many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth". For any given editing task you want, there are like 5 different modules that all do basically different variations on the same thing, and each one has quirks that presumably only make sense to the original author of that module.

This makes sense. I run Linux and have no interest in adobe software. It does seem like sometimes it’s tricky to use RawTherapee, but so far I’ve been happy with the results. I got a used Canon Pro 100 photo printer and I’ve been printing 13x19” (A3+) photos edited with RawTherapee. I’m not using it professionally or anything, but I’ve been very happy with it for my use!

I switched to RT and I love it. Some techniques are outright impossible to achieve in LR or other raw interpretation software.

Sorry, I'm a photo-noob. What type of post-processing is the iPhone doing that professional would do themselves with RAW? Looking at RawTherapee, it looks like colour profiling. What other operations do people do?

The iPhone does a lot of stuff: - correcting for lens distortion - automatically setting white balance - optimizing color and contrast - blending multiple exposures when it's dark and has some advanced denoising tricks (which sometimes gives photo's a bit of an 'oil painting' look) - sharpening to get that 'crisp' look (even if your lens is not that sharp)

I think correcting for lens distortion is the main thing that wasn't already mentioned in the article. Regular cameras can't do that, but the iPhone knows exactly what lens is being used and can take advantage of that.

A lot of post processing that modern phones are doing isn't really practical though in post. For super low light shots for example, the iPhone will take hundreds of exposures and merge them. If you were going to save this all as RAW, it's multiple gigabytes of data per frame.

> For super low light shots for example, the iPhone will take hundreds of exposures and merge them. If you were going to save this all as RAW, it's multiple gigabytes of data per frame.

A bit of a digression but the reason why phones need so many exposures to get a decent low light image is due to their sensors/optics being relatively poor at low light. You would only need a small fraction of the exposures from a modern pro-grade camera to generate a comparable final image. This also lets you capture objects in motion in low light far, far better since you can get your required image data in a smaller temporal window.

"How would you do {night, portrait} mode on a real camera" has been brought up a few times in this post and the answer is: you don't, because it's not needed. I can prop an iPhone on the windowsill and let it do a 30 second night mode capture, and I can also prop my Nikon Z7 on the same windowsill and let it do a 2-5 second exposure. The latter is so much higher quality it's no comparison at all. (And 2s can be hand-held at 24 mm, unlike the 30s night mode)

Though of course deep sky photographers do actually just this - many exposures composited together - but then we are talking about subjects so dim you need effective exposures of 30 minutes or so.

It does not take hundreds of exposures. That is impractical and above all not a good idea. In low light the shutter speed is likely slow (1/10th of a second for a example). Even 16 frames is more than a seconds worth of frames. At that point the differences start to become too high for stacking to be worthwhile, especially because it is hand held. Secondly, the reduction of noise by merging is at best the sqrt (number of frames). Past even 12 frames the benefits start to be questionable.

> Secondly, the reduction of noise by merging is at best the sqrt (number of frames)

This assumes the (typically Gaussian) noise is applied to a static image. Arguably, one could exploit the slight shakiness in a handheld shot to create an image with even less noise.

As a thought experiment, consider thousands of shots of a perfectly static scene made with an idealized, noiseless camera that is moved a very tiny amount for each shot. You could continue improving the resolution of a generated, composite image quite a bit until warping due to camera displacement became noticeable.

Recent techniques like this are actually being used for cryo-electron microscopy to create extremely high-resolution imaging of proteins.

Yes what you are referring to is implemented already by Google and probably others. The Google camera uses it to skip demosaicking by shifting the image by a pixel using OIS. Still the original post was under the impression that hundreds of exposures are merged which is just not the case

Try photographing at night with short exposures.

I’ve never seen SLR’s do this very well either.

And yet they do it much better than phones.

The Nikon does minimal post processing. The iPhone throws a metric shit ton of algorithms at the image data to make it passable. For normal people the iPhone output is good enough - though it often looks very over-processed.

Nikon just expects you to handle that post processing part that your iPhone is doing for you. In exchange you get way more control over the final image.

Both devices are aimed at different people. I myself have an iPhone 13 pro and a Nikon Z6ii. I tend to take snapshots with my iPhone because getting out the Nikon + playing around with sliders in Capture One is just too much hassle for a snapshot. Now would I take the iPhone and do a landscape photo where I hiked 6 hours to the photo location at 3 a.m. in the morning? Probably not. ;)

I wouldn’t have gone on the hiking trip if I had to lug fullsize camera with me ;)

^ Obviously not Les Stroud

I think it's processing power and engineering effort. I got a Sony RX100M2 for my mom and it has the same computational photography techniques that Google released the following year (https://ai.googleblog.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dyn...). But Sony's image stacking is only in "Superior Auto" mode, and is only used when necessary. Google's implementation does a lot of advanced work, including selecting and blending parts of the photo depending on motion, that Sony doesn't do. I assume Sony's imaging engineers have less expertise in advanced processing, and didn't have the resources to implement the features that Google did. Sony also has to devote engineering resources to other features - a lot of their sales are to photographers that will edit in post (RAW), and later, videographers. So features that are only in "auto" mode may have limited budget.

The Nikon photos will be under sharpened because it's so easy to apply sharpening in post, and the amount of sharpening is very dependent on the size and format of your desired output. Also, in ideal conditions (medium sized, evenly and brightly lit, static subject a moderate distance away) practically all cameras will give good results: try comparing in less ideal circumstances like a darkish area indoors.

Try zooming in, even a little bit. You'll notice squiggly oversharpening artifacts pretty quickly. Yes they probably look fine on a phone screen, but blow them up at all and they start to show their weaknesses

The oversharpening on the iphone is so frustrating! I like the utility of the basic camera app, but the pictures look so weird. I guess I should explore alternative apps.

It really won't beat modern fast lenses. Try a lowlight situation. You will not be able to beat a larger aperture for light collection, it's simply how many photons you can catch.

A landscape photo is the easiest thing for any camera to capture. Focus is at infinity and no depth of field means the lens can be literally a greasy pinhole and still get sharp shots. You're probably taking photos in direct sunlight so again the camera has to do very little work and is flooded with light.

Try taking a portrait photo in iffy lighting, like at a concert, wedding, sporting event, etc. Something that really needs a fast and sharp lens.

Exactly, landscape photos on phones and pocket cameras ten years ago looked comparable to a DSLR. Just lower res.

iPhone 13 photos will look just as good as a Nikon photo on your iPhone. As soon as you view the iPhone photos on a monitor or print them out, everything falls apart.

iPhone photos are excellent as long as viewers are only seeing them on iPhones.

iPhone photos will look better than a Nikon photo on your phone, because nothing except iPhone can take HDR still photos that display in HDR. They can only do video.

"HDR stacking" apps are actually "SDR tone mapping" apps; they /start/ with an HDR result and make it not HDR anymore!

Because deep down, it's not what they do. They are optics and camera hardware companies. In the race between physics and software, they are on the physics side. This is evident in the entire user experience. They keep missing the boat with the way people actually use photography today, and don't even seem to care much. There's not much evidence they have the kind of research expertise that Apple, Google or Adobe built in signal processing and image processing, either.

See also https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201... and https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201...

The purpose is completely different. Camera makers put the processing power between the sensor and whatever RAW fioes their cameras create. For people that do their own post-processing.

Phone makers put the processng power at the post processing of photos, for people who never do their own post processing.

Both approaches are equally valid, they simply aim at different markets. And as far as softeare vs. physics goes, no amount of software and processing power can overcome the laws of optics.

Because Nikon's target audience (photographers) don't want that "fancy post-processing" done by their camera.

Do the jpegs (or hief?) look as good on a 27-inch monitor, or just on the phone screen?

Capturing non-raw in my experience (iPhone 6S, now have 13 mini) the jpegs are heavily de-noised, and really don't look that good 1:1 on a large monitor: on the iphone screen they look very good, as they're downsampled.

The article mentions the 'watercolor' effect since the iPhone 8, but I definitely had the issue with all the jpegs taken on my iPhone 6S since 2015...

DNGs however DO look very good, so clearly the sensor is capable of pretty nice images.

Obviously you don't look at close detail on computer, which is very strange for seemingly such a power photo user. Phones these days are good but not yet that good if you don't do some beginner mistakes with camera. Maybe Pixel 7 pro based on samples I saw, but definitely not ie iphone 13 pro max.

What people often mean by similar statements is they like default phone processing compared to 0 in the camera, and there is enough detail due to tons of light and due to landscapes being generally easiest scene to shoot.

As for why they are not comparable, also a very strange question from seemingly experienced photo shooter - compare software development department and budget in Apple vs Nikon, who is a tiny player we all love (have D750 since it came out and carried it everywhere up to 6000m), they use very specialized CPUs which are very good for 1 thing only (basic operations on raw sensor data and potential jpeg transformation), and various ML and stacking transformations aren't simply available there at performance required. The whole construction of camera and processing hardware isn't around snapping 30 pics and combining them together under 1s, pre-taking pictures before actually hitting shutter etc.

I've noticed it's getting easier and easier to take photos with the SUN in the frame than when digital sensors first came out.

Well, put bluntly, the reason is that you probably are not using the Nikon properly. So, your photos are not coming out that great or as you hoped. Don't take this personally, I also have my limitations using cameras properly. But I understand I'm an amateur when it comes to this and that I'm part of the problem. I try to learn to do better. I try, and sometimes it works out nicely and I get a really nice shot. Landscape photography is tough to get right. You really need to understand your camera and lenses to make that work.

The point of such a camera is not the in camera processing, which most pro users would not use on principle. Instead it's gaining a lot of control over setting up the shot properly with a lot of control over all the parameters that matter to achieve a look that matches what you want, intentionally. And then you finish the job in post processing. There's reason these things have so many buttons and dials: you need to use them to get the most out of the camera. And the point of owning such a camera is having that level of control. The flip side is that that makes you responsible for the intelligence. That kind of is the whole point. If that's not what you wanted, you bought the wrong camera.

The iphone has a very limited set of controls. You actually have very little control over it. Nice if that's what you want and the AI is awesome. But it's also a bit limiting if you want more. Of course it's very nice when that's the camera you have and you want to take a shot quickly by just pointing and clicking. Nothing wrong with that. I have a Pixel 6 and a Fuji X-T30. I use them both but not the same way.

> Well, put bluntly, the reason is that you probably are not using the Nikon properly.

Probably one of the biggest mistakes people make: not understanding at what aperture their lens is sharpest - typically stopping the lens down too much.

Other mistakes: not using a fast enough shutter speed to eliminate blurring from mirror slap (or using anti-mirror-slap features in their camera), not using a sufficiently sturdy tripod and mount, and so on.

Also, sometimes lenses just don't leave the factory in very good shape. If you struggle to get sharp results, it may be beneficial to send it in for service. The stuff sent around to reviewers has been obsessed over by the manufacturer, perfectly tweaked on a lens testing bench to get it as close to perfect as they can.

Nikon and Canon and all the other camera companies, Japanese, German, or otherwise, are not software companies and have a pretty awful track record for even the basic software in their camera interfaces. Post processing is something they could not or would not get involved in.

Apple ate their lunches and then some. While I'm an old-school photographer who thinks a great SLR camera is the photographic equivalent of driving a Porsche, I don't miss carrying pounds of gear around. (OTOH I HATE the Ux of iPhones for photography.) I digress. The camera biz is a classic biz school study in humans being human.

I guess if you like that look. I don't; not really. The photos from my phone are fine. If taken in really good light, they are actually pretty good. But they are always processed to within an inch of their lives.

Because landscape photos are easy. No bokeh, no depth of field (everything at infinity), good lighting, no need for fast shutter speed or a big sensor. Your images will be sharper I guess, but that's not worth $2k in most cases.

If you take a lot of landscapes I think that's actually when you do want the big sensor. Which, remember, is not a 35mm full-frame DSLR either! Instead it might be a 4x5 large format camera like Ansel Adams used.

(Which requires a lot of patience, but an old one would be cheaper than a new camera. Though renting is always an option.)

The ratio of sensor areas between full frame (864 mm²) and for example iphone 13 pro max "wide" (main) camera sensor (44 mm²) is actually larger than the ratio between a 4x5 large format film plate (12903 mm²) and a full frame sensor.

edit: changed "sensor sizes" to "sensor areas" for clarity.

Looks like you never took a lanscape photo where you had to use a (Gradiant) ND, Polarisation Filter, Multiple Exposures, Long Exposures for smooth Water or anything where you had to hink about how to take the perfect shot. So yes for a quick snapshot a phone is good enough. For a photograph a bigger camera is much more benefical than "just" for sharper images.

I have done all of those when I owned a DSLR. Phones have been able to do smooth water and multiple exposures for years though...

This is probably the wrong way to think of it. Especially at screen sizes, there are certain photos your iphone 13 can take that are comparable to what you would get with your nikon gear. However there are photos you can get with that 1.8 that won't work at all on your phone.

There is no way they do. First of all you don't have a DSLR, but a mirorrless (Nikon Z) series. But nevermind, that's just nitpicking.

Likely a Z6 from the price point you mentioned. It has 24 MP (instead of iPhone 13's 12MP) and a much much higher dynamic range (more than 11 steps vs an iPhone's about 8). So unless you don't know what you're doing the Nikon is a way better camera (as it should be. It ways 5x as much with lens)

Because landscapes are easy. The subject isn't moving, you aren't in a hurry and the phone has all the time in the world to gather enough data for a photo. Same goes for posed portraits, the phone has time to use it's processing power to make the image look amazing.

Now try to do sports photography with a mobile phone.

The first problem is lack of zoom compared to a 200mm lens. The second issue is trying to get the 1/8000 exposure you need on a rainy football field you need to stop the action for a good photo.