Photo retrospective shows off Apple's iPhone camera quality evolution
The team behind a popular iOS camera app has put together a retrospective showing the dramatic improvement in image quality from Apple's first iPhone on through the iPhone 5.
The makers of Camera+ gathered all six versions of the iPhone â from the first-generation model on through the iPhone 5 â and took pictures in similar conditions with each. The resulting photographs (via TUAW) demonstrate the evolution of photo quality in Apple's bestselling handset.
The Camera+ crew shot three pictures with each phone: a well-lit macro, a skyline shot, and a candlelit low-light macro. The progression in image quality is immediately noticeable, with photos from the original iPhone very blurry and ill-defined in comparison to later models.
"It's clear from the detail shots," Lisa Bettany writes in the post, "that the iPhone 5 produces sharper photos with more accurate white balance, contrast, and saturation."
Possibly the biggest jump in quality is from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS. Despite the inclusion of a camera on the device, photography had to an extent been an afterthought on the iPhone. Apple hadn't seen fit to equip its first two models, the iPhone and iPhone 3G, with a flash, and the ability to send and receive photos as MMS messages was absent until a software update enabled the feature.
Apple has since considerably improved the iPhone's camera with nearly every new hardware iteration, adding features such as panorama mode and giving the lens a sapphire crystal surface. As the camera has improved, Apple has touted it more regularly, and now ads devoted to the camera are part of Apple's latest marketing campaign for the iPhone 5.
22 Comments
So no changes from 4 to 5. Only in hue or tone.
[quote name="Just_Me" url="/t/157494/photo-retrospective-shows-off-iphone-camera-quality-evolution#post_2325965"]So no changes from 4 to 5. Only in hue or tone. [/quote] Having upgraded from the 4 to 5, I noticed there is also a bump in both resolution and sensitivity in low light. Color balance is also different, yes, but it is not the only thing. The 5 has one of the best looking phone cameras out there.
Where is the reference photo?
Update: http://campl.us/posts/6iPhoneCameras
The primary reason I'm still using iPhone is the convenience and quality of the camera. I'd give something else a try but the most important thing to me is being able to capture the moments in my life. Surfing the web is the other major use case for me. Pretty much any phone out there I am interested in does that as well, if not better, for a number of reasons. So the camera has me locked in.
So no changes from 4 to 5. Only in hue or tone.
You're wrong. The front cameras on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s are the same but the rear camera is quite different indeed. On the other hand, the rear cameras on the iPhone 4s and the iPhone 5 are also the same but quite different from the rear camera on the iPhone 4.
Since the article focusses explicitly on the rear camera only, if you said ... "So no changes from the 4s to the 5" ... you'd be (sorta) correct.
Of course with 10 seconds worth of effort you could have discovered this for yourself. The fact that you didn't bother, speaks volumes about you, and about whether we should care about what you think or say about stuff. You basically just looked at the picture and spouted off some nonsense right?