[HN Gopher] iPhone 12 Pro Max Camera Review Zion - Austin Mann
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iPhone 12 Pro Max Camera Review Zion - Austin Mann
Author : tambourine_man
Score : 26 points
Date : 2020-12-15 21:15 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (austinmann.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (austinmann.com)
| sneak wrote:
| I say this as a photographer who has already purchased an iPhone
| 12 Pro Max:
|
| If you're taking a tripod and an iPhone tripod camera mount with
| you... why not just take a camera camera (struck: "real camera")
| without a space-constrained sensor/lens?
|
| This test suite seems a little... silly to me.
| 01100011 wrote:
| I've been considering getting my first Apple phone and this will
| probably seal the deal. I wish there was an alternative to Apple
| & Android which provided a cutting edge camera with good
| performance but sadly that doesn't seem to be the case.
| obarthelemy wrote:
| There are phones with similar pic quality. See
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcJs_KrPh8A
| simonh wrote:
| A big issue nowadays is that computational photography is now
| about as important as the camera itself, so the software and
| computational hardware including ML accelerators are a big
| competitive edge that's really only available to the big
| hitters.
| abc_lisper wrote:
| sony makes some serious camera phones.
| obarthelemy wrote:
| Another "review" that's iphone vs nothing else, or new iphone vs
| old iphone. Reviews are informative only when they provide actual
| context, ie comparison to the competition, otherwise it's just
| pretty pictures. Most comparisons rate the iphone as great not
| exceptional, there are other phones out there, some significantly
| cheaper, that produce equivalent or even better pics. See
| Techtablets on Youtube.
| codemac wrote:
| Beautiful photos, but the decision tree can be shortened
| immensely to: Do you like big phones?
| -> Yes: iPhone 12 Pro Max -> No: Do you often run out of
| battery? -> Yes: iPhone 12 Pro ->
| No: iPhone 12 mini
|
| It's kind of ironic that all the questions about photography
| don't change what phone you end up with in their decision tree.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I wonder if the SE is eating into iPhone mini sales. I've been
| waiting for iPhone mini since the 5S, but I got an SE earlier
| in the year and now I don't need mini for a few years.
| tristor wrote:
| I imagine it must be. I needed to replace my iPhone 8 and
| bought an SE2 instead of the Mini because they still haven't
| brought back TouchID. I was really expecting TouchID to come
| back in the 12 line-up, especially after the iPad refresh
| brought it back, but I think COVID messed up their plans and
| it got cut. We'll see what next year brings, all I know is no
| TouchID and I'm not buying it, and I'm not the only person I
| know who feels this way.
| jnwatson wrote:
| I recently upgraded from an iPhone 8 to a 12 Pro. TouchID
| is the biggest thing I miss. It is particularly an issue
| with Apple Pay, since when I'm using it, I invariably have
| my mask on.
|
| There are hacks to get FaceID to recognize a mask, but I
| haven't got them to work.
| 1-6 wrote:
| I'm THAT customer. I purchased the iPhone 12 mini with high
| hopes but for the price, I didn't feel like I was getting
| enough. I only had 2 out of 3 rear cameras (of the pro) and I
| would have preferred telephoto instead of wide. The battery
| life wasn't quite there either. The only improvement was 5G
| but coverage is still spotty anyway. I exchanged my purchase
| for the SE and I'm pretty happy. I still get the smaller easy
| to reach screen size and the fingerprint sensor is a welcome
| from the past. I think TouchID > FaceID. I was an iPhone X
| owner for a number of years until the screen randomly died.
| amluto wrote:
| I definitely consider Touch ID to be far superior to Face
| ID, especially is a world full of masks.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Pressing one home button is way easier than doing swipe
| gestures especially when the phone is in one hand. Muscle
| memory takes over and it's a joy. It's kinda like having
| a Blackberry side scroll wheel all over again.
| beached_whale wrote:
| I can explicitly have my phone ready and as I am removing
| it from my pocket with touchid. Even with the newer
| faster faceid, I have remove it first and look at it. The
| explicitness of touchid is preferable to me too.
| leetcrew wrote:
| not that there's any reason you should trust my opinion, but
| I would doubt it. the mini is much nicer than the SE in
| pretty much every way. the bezels on the SE belong in 2017.
| the 12 mini has a much larger screen and a smaller chassis.
| if I were willing to spend $750 on a phone, there's no way I
| would cross-shop the two.
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| Besides Touch ID being more useful than Face ID during a
| pandemic, I'm also not a fan of the PWM flicker across
| iPhone 12 models. Depending on how paranoid you are about
| your eyes, this could be a deal-breaker.
| 1-6 wrote:
| I had the mini for a week and returned it for an SE2. The
| screen is slightly smaller on the SE2 but in a good way
| because your thumbs can reach better. It also lacks the
| cutout at the top. I have average size hands but my thumb
| can really roam around everywhere on the SE2/iPhone 8
| screen size. I just wish the SE2 had OLED and a bigger
| battery. That would have made it a tank of a phone. I
| really have to agree again with Steve Job's old reasoning
| for small phones. It really changes how you interact with
| the phone. I'm happy to be able to pulling up the control
| center from the bottom again rather than from the top right
| corner. Source: I'm an iPhone X convert.
| robertoandred wrote:
| The non-Max iPhone 12 Pro is still a big phone...
| kemayo wrote:
| I do find the years where the big-phone has a notable camera
| improvement frustrating. Because I _like_ the fancy camera, but
| am at best ambivalent about the really big phones. So I 'm
| tempted, but really just wish I could know I was getting "the
| best possible phone-camera" by buying the middle model.
|
| Even though "it's huge so we could fit better optics and
| sensors in" is a _completely_ reasonable position for a device
| manufacturer to take...
| ghaff wrote:
| Reading the review says to me that, given that I have never
| been able to sell myself on the plus-sized models, the
| regular Pro model is almost as good for most purposes. So if
| I buy one of this year's family, that's probably what it will
| be. Of course, I have plenty of other cameras so this is a
| supplement in any case.
| hkolk wrote:
| You missed the "Do you take a lot of pictures with your phone?"
| If the answer is yes, you won't get to the mini.
| altarius wrote:
| I don't know, Austin Mann took some amazing photos in his
| previous camera reviews, but this time I'm not so impressed. The
| saturation in the fall tree and water shots is just somehow
| weirdly off the charts and the night photos look almost like
| impressionist paintings (nonetheless a great achievement with
| such a small sensor).
|
| His photos from Rwanda with the iPhone 7 just looked so much more
| natural and "real" [1].
|
| [1] http://austinmann.com/trek/iphone-7-camera-review-rwanda
| 1-6 wrote:
| A good camera goes a long way in the hands of a skilled
| photographer. I could use the best camera and still my photos
| would look like it came from a potato.
| x3iv130f wrote:
| Good photographers spend a lot of time editing and curating
| their photos.
|
| Everyone takes potato quality photos from time to time.
| ghaff wrote:
| Good photographers may have better eyes/skills/technique.
| They also put the time and effort to be in the right place
| and the right time. And, as you say, you see a tiny fraction
| of what they shoot--after it's all been edited.
|
| I'm not remotely in the class of top photographers but my
| Flickr feed is a _very_ curated version of the pictures I
| take. (How curated being somewhat a function of why I 'm
| uploading.)
| wyldfire wrote:
| Mann refers to an app called "Halide mk 2" [1]. That's an
| interesting choice of brand name. It matches the language used by
| some camera processing software [2]. Of course, it's not limited
| to image processing, just happens to be used there. As best I can
| tell this is just a funny coincidence.
|
| [1] https://halide.cam/
|
| [2] https://halide-lang.org/
| sneak wrote:
| Silver halides were (are?) light-sensitive chemicals used in
| photographic film and photographic paper.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_halide
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Two issues - the page is not ssl. My router flags a javascript
| loaded on the page as malware. The js is
| xxxx.cloudfront.net/tracker.js
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