Apple My scenic photos from the new iPhone 6s-Plus camera.

[dalethorn]

Some new landscapes with the iPhone 6s-plus: The first has the best detail, on the pier especially. The second has a good overall look, but since everything is far away, details are fuzzy. In most landscapes like the second, where a line of objects (houses, boats, etc.) stretches across the frame at a distance, the objects usually look thin to me because of the perspective. So I stretch them a little...

iPhone 6s-plus, handheld.

iPhone 6s-plus, handheld.

 

[dalethorn]

Here are a couple of product shots. The first is an example of where I've been using a 'Pinch' tool in post processing - it's still not enough, but any more pinch and it starts looking more distorted. The second was fun, and myself and my wife are each pictured 3 times from the bottom around to the right side. You can see I'm holding a white bag from a purchase at the Apple store.

iPhone6s-plus, daylight/sunlight.

iPhone6s-plus, through window glass.

 

[dalethorn]

Two more from the iPhone 6s plus: The first** required some perspective distortion correction, and I described elsewhere why a photo I posted previously had jagged vertical lines following my edits in Paint Shop Pro v6. This time I doubled the size of the image (2x horiz. and 2x vert.) first, did the perspective correction, then resized and had no jagged lines! For the second image, I used the "Camera+" app, which allowed a timer for the tripod, but the maximum allowed exposure time was 1/4 second. So the app recognized that ISO 2000 was mandated and overrode my setting. If I can find how to expose for a few seconds, I can use a lower ISO for less noise.

**The bridge support has been abandoned for years, but recently someone painted it.

iPhone6s-plus, daylight exposure, handheld.

iPhone6s-plus, night exposure, tripod, f2.2, 1/4 sec., ISO 2000.

 

[dalethorn]

Back to the bridge - attempt no. 2, using a new camera app ('Cortex'). This app blends a stream of images into one, with a handheld option that I set to Off. The final image is 6040x4536, or 27 mp, which I resized to 3200 wide and cropped top and bottom. I will be redoing this on day 3, because although there was a fog blowing above the bridge lights that made the image more interesting, the actual scene was much darker than usual, and so I think I'll get a less-noisy image next time. I used the Apple earbuds' volume-up control to set off the shutter, so I didn't have to touch the camera or set a timer.

iPhone 6s-plus, Cortex camera app, tripod.

 

[dalethorn]

My first real fish....

 

[dalethorn]

Fishing on the pier, Creature from the Dark Lagoon approaching....

iPhone 6s-plus, standard camera app, handheld.

 

[stratokaster]

I like the overall look of the images, but I think iPhone 6S uses a bit more heavy-handed processing than its immediate predecessors.

Also, @dalethorn, you have excellent taste in headphones

 

[dalethorn]

I like the overall look of the images, but I iPhone 6S uses a bit more heavy-handed processing than its immediate predecessors.

Also, @dalethorn, you have excellent taste in headphones

Thanks - some of the images utilized the Cortex camera app, which is very different from the built-in camera app. Using the standard app, there are times under ideal lighting conditions when it can fool my eye and make images that look like the big cameras. But in most cases I can see where the pixels don't represent 12 mp of detail as I would see with (for example) a Panasonic LX100, or even their small-sensor ZS50. I can say though that the lens is remarkable for its size, and I wonder if most Leica lenses have as much quality per square mm of glass. Years ago when Minox made the little cameras that took 9mm film in little cartridges, their lenses were considered just about the best, or the best, per unit of glass. Probably they had distortions we don't see in today's cameras after corrections, but they were amazing, and I get the idea that Apple is following on that idea, making simple but very high quality lenses for their phones.

 

[dalethorn]

A note about the iPhone 6 and 6s: When the 6 hit the stores in Sep. 2014, I made some photos side-by-side with the 5s and 6, and noted that the 6 did a lot more smearing of detail, contrary to what was being touted at the time (that the 6 images were better). As is usual with Apple products, nobody cared, or nobody cared that anyone else cared. But Apple was after their own version of the "Kodak look", and they did it well. Fast forward to Sep/Oct 2015, and that same smearing is still there along with excellent colors on average, but the 12 mp images do have better detail, i.e. the smearing seems less due to the increased resolution. Unfortunate, while the Cortex app improves image detail that has good lines, like buildings and windows, or trees with prominent bark, and greatly lowers noise, it fails on grass and foliage that isn't close by. Now if the app developers could hook into a mode that had much less of Apple's heavy-handed noise reduction, they could improve those other details too.

 

[pniev]

Impressive results from the iphone! Thanks for sharing your photos and findings. That is very helpful.

The grass/foliage might also be a LR issue. If you compare LR with other software, almost all oother software does better for those parts of an image. But LR has advantages over the others in other areas. I once compared Nikon and Fuji raw files of scenes with lots of foliage in LR, silkypix, captureOne, iridient, and some others. The photo looked terrible in LR when I zoomed in.

 

[dalethorn]

Impressive results from the iphone! Thanks for sharing your photos and findings. That is very helpful.

The grass/foliage might also be a LR issue. If you compare LR with other software, almost all oother software does better for those parts of an image. But LR has advantages over the others in other areas. I once compared Nikon and Fuji raw files of scenes with lots of foliage in LR, silkypix, captureOne, iridient, and some others. The photo looked terrible in LR when I zoomed in.

Ooh, if I could get a RAW from the phone, or from an app that can somehow extract the unprocessed (and unsmeared) image, then I could apply a better treatment. In the case of the Cortex app they're producing a really low-noise image from the burst they collect initially, but I can tell even from the stronger image features that they're not able to avoid the worst aspects of the Apple processing. So from what I see now, this is a classic case of Apple keeping their own software layers/barriers in place to prevent other parties from accessing the raw data and thus "misrepresenting" Apple's product to the masses. It might be possible at some point for a camera app to collect more images and somehow do a better interpolation of missing/smeared data than what Cortex does now, but knowing Apple, they'll never allow access to the raw data.

BTW, I wonder if LR's poor handling of foliage has to do with any of their lens corrections etc., that might corrupt small-scale randomness and bright edges like you get with foliage.

 

[dalethorn]

A couple of nighttime photos from the iPhone Cortex camera app. Both of these were cropped to about 2/3 the original size and then sized down from there.

iPhone 6s-plus, Cortex camera app, tripod.

iPhone 6s-plus, Cortex camera app, tripod.

 

[dalethorn]

Two 'lights' images from the local shopping complex. I didn't have a tripod and couldn't stand in the street for the best view (very busy with cars), and bracing the phone against a tree in the first image, I lost footing and the phone scattered across the pavement, fortunately with no harm to the phone.

iPhone 6s-plus, Cortex camera app, braced.

iPhone 6s-plus, Cortex camera app, braced.

 

[dalethorn]

I've shot this scene a few times, but not with the Cortex camera app until now. Using a Manfrotto table-top tripod, Square Jellyfish tripod mount (new metal thread version), and Apple earbuds as the cable release.

iPhone 6s-plus, Cortex camera app.

 

[dalethorn]

Recent photos with the iPhone 6s-plus -- daylight exposures. The first is the famous bridge and a luxury Coast Guard ship passing by. #2 and #3 were taken one day apart, and illustrate the changing weather in the late-Winter South. (Trout caught on 'Vudu' shrimp, and Sheepshead caught on fresh clam.)

 

[dalethorn]

Two images with iPhone 6s-plus and OlloClip wide-angle lens. I couldn't find a spec on the effective FL, but one site said it was approx. 14 mm. I cropped the coffee shop photo about 5 pct on the left and 10 pct on the right, and you can still see the loss of details there. The pier shot wasn't cropped on the left or right, and you can see where the edges have problems. Both images are cropped top and bottom, not because of quality problems, although some of what was cropped was low quality. I like the lens pretty well, but I'd prefer the new Zeiss lens when it becomes available.

iPhone 6s-plus, OlloClip Wide lens.

iPhone 6s-plus, OlloClip Wide lens, Cortex camera app.