>Surprisingly, picture quality was on par. Low-light, stabilization, everything.
Almost certainly this is not true. It seems far more likely to me that perceived image quality after in device post processing was similar.
A lot of the quality of smartphone cameras comes from their software, which does a really good job at using the sensor data to create good images.
Cameras sold to photographers do not do that, or not as much. This is by design, if you are a photographer (someone who is interested in the process of photography) these corrections are something you really do not want, as they remove your ability to manually control these corrections later.
You are actually comparing two different types of images and it is quite unsurprising that the DSLR did not "win".
That's actually problem with DSLRs. Phone use the tiny sensor they have to its fullest, DSLRs mostly treat it as it was a film, and not try to reap all the benefits of digital processing and ability to shoot a bunch of images in quick succession.
Instead of shooting at 1/8 or 1/15 in low light it could "just" shoot images at 1/125 or even 1/1000 then compensate for minute movements of the camera to get perfect sharpness, and then merge them to denoise it, and boom, near-noise-free, near blur free (just the blur from target movement, not the photographer) image in low-light.
This is absolutely not a problem with DSLRs or large format cameras.
>Instead of shooting at 1/8 or 1/15 in low light it could "just" shoot images at 1/125 or even 1/1000 then compensate for minute movements of the camera to get perfect sharpness, and then merge them to denoise it, and boom, near-noise-free, near blur free (just the blur from target movement, not the photographer) image in low-light.
There is absolutely nothing stopping a DSLR or large format camera user from doing exactly that. This is also a very common procedure in astro photography where dozens of such photos are stacked to capture objects in the sky.
This doesn't happen on the camera of course, but a photographer wouldn't want it to happen anyways.
I think you entirely missed the point of a digital large format camera. The user does not want the camera doing post processing. The user wants the camera to capture technically excellent images and process them manually.
The difference between a phone and a large format camera in this case is that the photographer can choose to take such a photo and he can process it on a high performance machine with manual intervention. This is absolutely not a problem with the camera.
The intersection of people who want to spend a significant of money on something they already have (a camera) to get a version which allows them fine grained control and technically excellent results, but then don't care how the results are processed after they pressed the shutter is almost zero.
A modern large format camera is for people interested in photography. If you do not care about photography, but care about getting decent enough pictures with each press on the capture button, those cameras are not for you.
I care about photography, I care about good results, I care about using my camera to get those results, I do not care about spending hours in front of a computer screen.
So you invest time, money and effort into an expensive machine, which needs fine tuning, knowledge, experience and time to get the best results. But then you want to feed those results into a machine to do whatever it finds best, instead of manually controlling how your output looks?
I won't tell you what to do or don't but that market segment is probably not very large...
By design and necessity - I suspect people would not be happy if they saw what actually came off the sensor (or had to carry around a better sized sensor).
For some cameras "beauty filters" are even a selling point. For a professional photoprapher that would be a nightmare. But most people aren't photographers and only care about getting a good looking image after pointing and shooting. And there is nothing wrong with that, but it makes for bad comparisons.
> What can lightroom not control manually what Google does automatically.
The camera itself. Smartphones shoot several frames with different settings at different times, they may have a time of flight sensor to estimate distance, plenoptic features, etc... These can be fed into algorithms specifically trained on that camera and that can take advantage of all these extra data.
DSLRs can do things like bracketing, but external software doesn't have nearly as much control.
Camera industry is dying. I don't see Nikon or Olympus being around in the consumer camera market much longer. Its just going to be Sony and Canon.
People just want pictures that look good. I don't want to shoot bracketed shots then combine them together in photoshop so I can get the same dynamic range as my phone. I don't want to take 20 pictures at a time of my kids hoping to get that one moment where they looked at the camera when my Iphone has live photo mode.
All r&d is being developed for the small sensor sizes. New stacked CMOS sensors will come to phones first because that is where the money is at. Phone cameras next year may surpass capabilities of mirrorless/dslr cameras in terms of dynamic range with a single picture.
I really don't understand why camera manufactures aren't investing in software. What they are doing now isn't working. I am planning to go on vacation for the winter holiday and this may be first year in a long time that i don't bring my dedicated camera(right now a Sony A7III) because my IPhone 14 just takes good pictures.
> I really don't understand why camera manufactures aren't investing in software.
Some of them are. Olympus (now OM System) in particular has been emphasizing in-camera stacking features that take advantage of the fast sensor readout and very effective image stabilization they can achieve with a smaller sensor than most.
Those features aren't like the smartphone magic "make my picture look good" though. They're more manual and creative than that, like "let me take long exposures in bright light without filters" or "I want to paint light onto this dark scene with a flashlight". They produce a sort of raw file (it's obviously not simple raw sensor data at this point) suitable for further manual processing if desired. People not taking photography seriously as a job or an art form won't get much out of that, and most everyone else prefers the convenience of a phone.
> It seems far more likely to me that perceived image quality after in device post processing was similar.
That’s just what they said. The purpose of cameras is to produce images we find pleasing, for a few different values of “pleasing” (recording memories, aesthetics, etc).
Nobody cares about the “how”. Whether it’s a photographer with an MFA doing pixel-by-pixel adjustments on a RAW image or an algorithm in an ISP, nobody cares.
Ok, not nobody, but no casual user, which is 99.99% of the market. For most of us, we take a picture and look at the picture. Insisting that one technology is better even though it produces no user benefit is missing the point.
>Ok, not nobody, but no casual user, which is 99.99% of the market.
That's kind of my point. If you just care about getting a good enough result you do not want a camera which is producing images which are good on a technical level. And comparing technically good images to post processed images is essentially pointless.
I am not sure about the 0.01% every person who ever used lightroom or similar software has wanted something from a picture their camera did not give them. And even if the number is correct, there still are people who see photography as a creative endeavour and who want images which are easy to edit and not heavily preprocessed. If you aren't one of them your phone is likely more than good enough already and there is nothing wrong with that.
When my mother uses both in auto mode, the pictures turn out the same quality.
This article is about the general public, not us, the HN crowd which love to push hardware to the limit. Which is the historical definition of hacking btw :)
Almost certainly this is not true. It seems far more likely to me that perceived image quality after in device post processing was similar.
A lot of the quality of smartphone cameras comes from their software, which does a really good job at using the sensor data to create good images. Cameras sold to photographers do not do that, or not as much. This is by design, if you are a photographer (someone who is interested in the process of photography) these corrections are something you really do not want, as they remove your ability to manually control these corrections later.
You are actually comparing two different types of images and it is quite unsurprising that the DSLR did not "win".