Sebastiaan de With on the iPhone 13 Pro Camera System

Sebastiaan de With, writing for Lux’s Halide blog:

This year’s deep dive into Apple’s latest and greatest — the iPhone 13 Pro — took extra time. I had to research a particular set of quirks.

“Quirk”? This might be a bit of a startling thing to read, coming from many reviews. Most smartphone reviews and technology websites list the new iPhone 13 Pro’s camera system as being up there with the best on the market right now.

I don’t disagree.

But I must admit I don’t take photos like most people. An average iPhone user snaps a picture in Apple’s Camera app, and … I work on my own camera app. I take photos in both Apple’s app and our own — and that lets me do something that Apple’s can’t: take native RAW photos. These shots let me poke and prod at the unprocessed photo that comes straight out of the hardware. Looking at the raw data, I’ve concluded that while Apple has taken more than one leap forward in hardware, they’re in a tricky position in software.

I missed this last month when it appeared. Well-illustrated, well-explained look at the state-of-the-art in mobile phone photography.

★ Tuesday, 22 March 2022