John Paczkowski, Managing Editor, BuzzFeed:
This year the company is particularly proud of these, which boast a marquee “Portrait Lighting” feature that brings a range of professional-looking effects to the already great photos the dual camera system on the iPhone 7 Plus is capable of taking.
This year’s leap, however, feels particularly meaningful.
And:
The camera’s effects don’t rely on filters. They’re the result of Apple’s new dual camera system working in concert with machine learning to sense a scene, map it for depth, and then change lighting contours over the subject. It’s all done in real time, and you can even preview the results thanks to the company’s enormously powerful new A11 Bionic chip. The result, when applied to Apple scale, has the power to be transformative for modern photography, with millions of amateur shots suddenly professionalized. In many ways it’s the fullest realization of the democratization of high-quality imagery that the company has been working toward since the iPhone 4.
i couldn’t agree more. Apple is changing the conversation. It’s no longer a simple focus on the reduction of low-light image graininess, megapixel count, or CCD capacitor thresholds. Apple is creating tools that help people take amazing pictures.
Love this review.
Camera doesn’t make the photographer. Camera solves technical problems.
Stupidest headline of the month. If Paczkowski actually believed it, he’s an idiot.
I do wonder when the camera will reach a point where it can’t be improved all that much more. What Apple does each year is really impressive but at the end of the day it’s a fixed focus, rather small lens/sensor camera.
I read Austin Mann’s review (http://austinmann.com/trek/iphone-8-camera-review-india) and though everyone is really impressed by the lighting filters, I don’t see that much difference. Yes, I DO see the difference but it feels very minor to me (see the comparison of the man in a turban about 25% in).
Don’t get me wrong – I like the camera improvements. But it worries me that each year they seem to become a bigger and more central reason to get an iPhone when most of us are not serious photographers and the quality since about the 6 or 6S has been fine for the majority of shots.
Oh please, the iPhone’s new features don’t make anybody a pro photographer any more than a paint-by-numbers kit makes one Leonardo Da Vinci.