The camera of the iPhone XS is magical in all these ways – Quartz

The camera of the first iPhone in 2007 was nothing revolutionary, even for the moment. It was 2 megapixels. You could not zoom in on photos, not even digitally. There was no flash. There was no editing of photos. And there was only one camera at the back – there was no front camera for selfies, which had not been invented yet. Well, not really (paywall).

11 years later, the iPhone XS has three cameras: two 12-megapixel rear and one 7-megapixel front. Where there was no flash, the flash is now equipped with four LEDs. More impressive is what these cameras can do and what is their reach compared to traditional photography and DSLR digital cameras.

Glass

The new iPhone XS and XS Max are equipped with dual lens systems: a wide angle and a telephoto lens. The wide angle lens of the iPhone XS has an equivalent focal length of 26 mm, while the telephoto lens has the equivalent of a 52 mm lens. We say "equivalent of" because, in real cameras, the focal length is a measure of the convergence of light rays to form an image on a standard 35mm film frame or on the sensor of a full digital SLR screen.

But as smartphones are much smaller, the actual focal length of the iPhone's wide-angle lens is 4.25 mm. The telephoto is 6mm. Apple is able to make photos that look like normal-sized cameras can create through an improved combination of lenses and a better combination of hardware and software.

In his review of the new iPhone, John Gruber, a blogger from Apple, pointed out that the focal length of the iPhone XS had been updated from the previous model and that it was equivalent to 26 mm and not 28 mm. (The wide-angle focal length of the iPhone X was 4mm, the focal length of the telephoto lens remained the same as that of the iPhone X 2017.) He noticed that the images with his new XS appeared wider than with the X, showed a longer focal length.

He contacted Apple and confirmed that the focal length was longer, but that the camera was taking larger pictures, which suggested a much larger sensor. "It seemed too good to be true," wrote Gruber. "But I checked and Apple confirmed that the wide angle sensor of the iPhone XS was actually 32% larger. This is also what allows this sensor to collect 50% more light.

The increased sensor size means that even though the photos are still 12 megapixels (six times the original), the larger the megapixels, the more information there is. And yet, these sensors are far from the size of what is in a full digital SLR.

This hump

Since the release of the iPhone 6 in 2014, the iPhone has suffered a "bump" in the back where the camera exceeds rather than with previous generations of the phone, allowing the lens to s' away from the sensor and you get higher quality images similar to what you get in an appropriate camera. Apple's chief designer, Jonny Ive, has already described this phenomenon (paywall) through what looks like crowded teeth as "a really very pragmatic optimization".

Gruber notes that the last bump of the iPhone XS has the same size as the X, despite the larger sensor and a longer wide-angle lens, which meant re-architecting the bowels of the phone. "Apple not only managed to place a 32% larger sensor in the iPhone XS, but also moved the sensor deeper into the body of the phone, further away from the lens," he said. (Perhaps this was achieved by shrinking the battery.)

From the longer focal length to the larger sensor, to the maintenance of the same size body, all these improvements were made in a year and are produced on a large scale in the hundreds of millions.

The code

The most impressive jumps of the iPhone do not go through the glass on the front, but via the software inside.

Professional photography is often distinguished by depth of field, usually with a sharp focus and a blurred background. This fuzzy background is often called bokeh, but it's not correct; It is the visual quality blur known as bokeh. Apple is much focused on making a good bokeh that is pleasing to the eye, although its leaders sometimes have trouble pronouncing it.

Wide-angle lenses tend to focus everything. The dual-lens system of the iPhone XS, marketed by Apple since the launch of the largest iPhone 7 Plus in 2016, combines images taken by both lenses and uses software to create the usual depth of field of these cameras more old. To do this, the iPhone uses its A12 chip and its "neural engine" to perform 1,000 billion operations per photo, such as auto exposure, focus, noise reduction , face detection, etc.

Since last year, the iPhone automatically uses software to adjust lighting photos taken afterwards in Portrait mode, mimicking the type of stylized lighting you see on magazine covers. … and in museums. "If you look at the Dutch Masters and compare them to the Asian paintings, they are stylistically different," said Johnnie Manzari, designer of the Man Interface Team at Apple, last year. "Some engineers were trying to understand the contours of a face and how we could illuminate them with the help of a software program. Other silicon engineers were simply working to speed up the process. We really worked a lot.

There is also Smart HDR, which captures three images at different exposures and combines them. And Apple's new depth control feature allows users to dynamically adjust the depth of field, in real time in the preview and even after taking the photo, allowing you to manipulate the bokeh. You can also adjust the depth of field on the camera facing forward, to take the ultimate selfie.

How good is the iPhone in creating beautiful photos via software? So good that many of these features, like Portrait Mode and Depth Control, arrive at a cheaper XR model, even though the XR only has one wide-angle camera, like the iPhone. d & # 39; origin. Which means that Apple has been able to imitate some of the qualities of a dual-purpose system and bring them to a single-purpose camera for the first time only using software. Which is something.

And we did not even talk about the moving camera.