iPhone New Camera Features

 

My personal project topic for last week was "images with paths".  As I walked home on Friday evening I saw this view which matched that brief and introduced an opportunity to test 2 of the latest new capabilities in the iPhone camera, High Dynamic Range and RAW.

You may not be aware that the camera on your phone is being updated each time the underlying operating system software is upgraded but, alongside the inevitable security enhancements, the changes to the camera app are a strong incentive to keep your phone software up to date with the latest version, subject to the limitations of your phone hardware.  Some of the new functions have to be turned on in the phone Settings App.

High Dynamic Range

I have talked about High Dynamic Range a lot in recent comments on our monthly assignments. The light levels in the above image range from very bright where the moon shines through the clouds and almost complete black in the foreground shadows.  This range is referred to as the Dynamic Range in the image and, in this case that Range is around 6 to 8 stops, i.e. it is High.  The human eye can cope with a very large dynamic range, adjusting as you focus on different parts of the view in front of us.  Camera sensors, particularly the small sensor in mobile phones, on the other hand are more limited and can only cope with 2 to 3 stops variation in the intensity of the light.  Anything outside the 2 stop range will be either over exposed (burned out to white) or underexposed (too dark).  

Photographers have learned to overcome this problem by exposure bracketing, taking 3 or more images with different exposure settings and then using software to combine them, retaining the best elements of each.

On later phones, like my iPhone 13 Pro, HDR is turned on by default and there is no way to switch it on or off.  The camera decides whether to use HDR ur not and the user has no control over the exposure levels set.  I am uncomfortable with this lack of control.

Earlier phones have the ability to turn automatic (smart) HDR on or off, either in settings or on the camera screen.

The moon in the above image is overexposed but had no no way of changing the range of exposure settings selected by the camera.

Opinion

The HDR capability is nice to have but the lack of control over when to use it and how to use it is frustrating.  It may help you create an acceptable image in trying circumstances when you would otherwise have failed but that image may still not be the one you were looking for,

RAW

When your camera saves an image as a jpeg file (or HEIC on iPhone) it makes a series of assumptions about the image such as colour temperature, average tonal range (18% grey) and dynamic range, and then processes the data coming from the sensor accordingly.  It compresses the resultant image to reduce the space it takes up on your storage device.  A lot of the original information is discarded as it is no longer needed.  But what if the camera's assumptions are wrong and you want to correct them in post production?  Your editing options are reduced as the original data is no longer there.

Some more complex cameras (or camera apps) give you a degree of control over the processing options at the time you take the photograph but, if you output to a jpg, you have few options left if you later change your mind.

An alternative approach is to save your file as a RAW file which retains all the data taken from the sensor together with an embedded jpeg preview version.  You can then use software in post processing to change the way the sensor data is interpreted.  The disadvantages of doing this are:

• The file size is greatly increased, you can quickly run out of storage space.
• There is no industry standard format for a RAW file.  Adobe attempted to create a Digital Negative (.dng) standard but it has not been adopted across the whole of the camera industry because new proprietary functions are being added all the time.  Canon, for example, has proprietary formats for its RAW files and they can vary between camera models.
• Specialist software is needed to edit the RAW files (some free software is available but not for all RAW formats)
• Editing the files takes time.

The advantage however is the increased ability to edit the file and to take control of how the data is interpreted.  You can make your sunsets look like sunsets and take photos of a white cat in snow or a black cat in the dark, these are al scenarios that standard processing would struggle with.

On the iPhone:

• You can set an option in the settings to make RAW available by setting a toggle on the camera screen.
• The image is saved in the .dng RAW format so can be read by a wide range of software products.

BUT

• The iPhone cannot view the resulting RAW file, it displays the embedded preview jpg which may not have been processed as you wish.
• Apple does not have a RAW file editor and few (perhaps only Adobe Lightroom) third party apps are available.

Opinion

RAW is a useful addition to the iPhone camera workflow for DSLR users who already have a capability to edit RAW files.  It is not yet a valuable function for those who only use mobile devices or who do not shoot RAW in traditional cameras.  But Apple are likely to improve the capability in later software upgrades.

Paths

My final project image for this week:

Paths