Yeah I’m confused about what OP and others are saying here. If it’s not optical magnification at all, then why are there 3 different lenses? If it was all pure digital magnification, there would only be one lens. So obviously there is at least some optical magnification going on. Yes obviously there is cropping going on for the in between focal lengths (or whatever the term is)—I’m not at all a photographer and even I know that. Am I missing something else?
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Other The iPhone 15 2X telephoto scam
- Thread starter cicalinarrot
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I didn’t really understand the rest of your post, too technical for me, but I understand and agree with this part. A slight crop shouldn’t really count as a digital zoom as long as it doesn’t have a noticeable effect on quality.
But “don’t care” does mean it’s not a scam. A scam is something that sells you something by lying to you that it’s something you want. If you don’t care, you can’t be scammed. Your point about them lying is true but you’d need to take it up with their legal departments because I doubt they care about this thread
The S23 Ultra uses a 10MP, 1/3.52" sensor for its 10x periscope telephoto camera. Which gives it a focal length of 230mm in 35mm film equivalent.
It's not a progressive "zoom". But 10x is achieved optically.
As far as I understand Apple is doing the same, except it's 5x optical zoom. Equivalent of 120mm.
15 Pro Max has 3 cameras:
- Ultrawide, optical 13mm
- Wide, optical 24mm
- Telephoto (periscope), optical 120mm
Incorrect. Try researching the Sony 1 IV and V.
Sony Xperia 1 IV: the world’s first true optical zoom lens in a smartphone by Jose Antunes - ProVideo Coalition
The Sony Xperia 1 IV will be available on September 1, 2022, for approximately $1,600.00 USD, the price you must pay to have the smartphone with the world’s first true optical zoom lens. Other companies may have promised it, but what Sony delivers here is the world’s first true optical zoom lens...
www.google.co.uk
Incorrect. Try researching the Sony 1 IV and V.
Sony Xperia 1 IV: the world’s first true optical zoom lens in a smartphone by Jose Antunes - ProVideo Coalition
The Sony Xperia 1 IV will be available on September 1, 2022, for approximately $1,600.00 USD, the price you must pay to have the smartphone with the world’s first true optical zoom lens. Other companies may have promised it, but what Sony delivers here is the world’s first true optical zoom lens...
Funny thing is:
Even though this is a "true optical zoom", the reviews say that you actually loose quality when you zoom all the way. I'm sure this will improve over time, but currently it doesn't seem to be worth it.
So even though OP would consider this to not be "a scam", the end-result seems to be worse.
"
Here is the deal. It's great that Sony has developed the continuous zoom-capable lens, and we have our fingers crossed for those making an impact and being upgraded in the future. Stepless zoom is the way for sure. But the difference in the FoV between the 3.5x and the 5.2x zoom is small, and, in our opinion, it is not worth it shooting at 5.2x because of the worsened quality. You can do just fine with the default 3.5x 12MP photo and crop if needed. We don't want to diminish Sony's work here, it is commendable; it's just a bit pointless at these zoom levels for now. But we hope they make it better and offer us continuous zoom between 3x and 10x, for example.
"
"Even worse news comes from the 3.5-5.2x optical zoom lens, which is the same hardware as found in the 1 IV and despite claims that the software has been tweaked to improve performance is still disappointingly soft and smudgy. The 85mm end of the lens produces the best results, but the 125mm is best avoided unless you’re only using images at very small sizes and don’t intend to scrutinise them much, if at all."
Tech is not quite ready for primetime.
USA is known for multiple cases/lawsuits but has anyone heard about Apple being sued for misleading information/misinformation?
How did the OP not see this thread from last week, with 7 pages of comments, and even used similar language in the clickbait headline? Maybe the mods should combine the two threads so the people who don't really understand photography, or marketing, or both, can talk with each other.
The most crop on the iPhone 14 Pro and 15 series is 48mm, and at 48mm you still get 12MP of resolution. So at 12MP it doesn't impact quality, the downside is you can't get the 24MP/48MP mode. There is no digital zoom whatsoever at 48mm. Then there is a hole in the range and you get one more optical zoom level at 3x 77mm on the 15 Pro and 5x 120mm on the Pro Max through that third camera/lens.
This is about the main lens that covers a wider range of 24-48mm and how it's able to stay at 12MP throughout that range and the semantics of calling that optical zoom. Effectively it behaves like optical zoom since you can zoom in from 24mm all the way to 48mm and always remain at 12MP. But OP claims that Apple is deceiving customers because cropping isn't optical zoom. It's really semantics, because if you take a 12MP camera and zoom in and remain at 12MP without interpolation then you haven't used digital zoom, and there is only optical zoom left to describe it.
The customer needs to know what kind of quality they can expect and Apple truthfully tells them that it's optical zoom, the technical details aren't relevant to the average customer and if they want them they can watch Apple explain it in their 14 Pro launch event from last year. You could call it crop zoom, but then how would the average customer understand it and what would be the point?
Every customer has been told for over a decade digital zoom bad and optical zoom good, so unless Apple want to sell less of these they'll call it optical zoom. They'd be stupid to give customers even the hint of a doubt that their zoom is not 100% as good as traditional optical zoom. But within the 12MP specification it absolutely is.
The other two lenses are for ultrawide (13mm) and telephoto (120mm on the Pro Max). And when you switch to one of these it appears as if you are either zooming far out or far in, and each camera also has the full 12MP. Apple calls that optical zoom as well, and it behaves like one. In reality these 2 are entirely different cameras, not just extra lenses but each has its own sensor too. Thus Apple isn't deceiving anyone, but it seems OP expects to have a big lens attached to the back with a zoom ring and that's the only true optical zoom.
I just don't see the problem, by default your photos have 12MP and when you zoom in they stay at 12MP.
still debatable that the results will be the same.
in the context of image quality.
if taking a 48MP photo and resize it (pixel binning) to 12MP , the phone is using 100% of the sensor readout to extrapolate data and image quality.
in this case when shooting at 2x to produce 12MP, the iphone will only use (roughly) a quarter of the actual sensor readout to produce the image.
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if we're talking in professional photographers POV (as in ... DSLR, mirrorless cameras, full frame sensors).
and we apply the same semantics that apple did in their marketing, is like Sony saying their A7R-V camera (60 megapixels) with a 50mm prime lens attached can produce a 85mm at 30megapixels.
they will get tons of flak from their prosumers.
but this wordplay behaviour somehow is acceptable in smartphone photography community, first samsung ... now apple
as most of their customers are not savvy enough to understand the differences anyway,
which is fine.
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however i don't buy into this marketing b, hence i'm (15 pro) sticking to not use the "2x zoom" whenever possible,
and just stick with either .5x , 1x, and 3x
They won't always be, especially in low light the 12MP photo with the full sensor can have less noise. But this thread is about Apple supposedly scamming customers. They don't promise that binning for anything other than 24mm. The smaller area is still full 12MP worth of sensor and Apple does not claim any different.
Back when this was introduced with the 14 Pro photographers mentioned that the 48MP mode is incredible and apparently didn't notice a big improvement with the binned 12MP mode. So not being able to use the full sensor is definitely relevant for people shooting in RAW. But again, Apple isn't hiding that. It's not marketing bs, but it's not a simple topic for the average iPhone customer. How can Apple list the capabilities better? They clearly state 48MP main 24mm, and 12MP for all the other modes. It's very clear that you can't get a full 48MP sensor area if you zoom out or in from 24mm.
The other cameras also only offer 12MP, they never had a 48MP sensor to begin with or that same binning. By your logic you would only use the main mode because every single other mode is downgrading from the 48MP sensor to 12MP. The 3x actually catches less light so the 2x mode could be a bit better in low light situations. Out of the 3 cameras the main camera should deliver the best photos regardless of what mode it's in. In real life there won't be huge differences between the 3 and in low light conditions there is only so much any iPhone can do no matter the sensor.
if we based just purely compare between the 2x mode where it uses a quarter of 9.8x7.3mm main 48mp sensor.
you get only about 2.45x1.825mm of actual sensor surface being utilized.
while the telephoto (15 pro) sensor, even if its only 12MP ... have a larger sensor size at 4x3mm
and low light conditions require the sensor size to be larger in order to take in more light.
apple can't just bend the laws of physics as much as they want to.
megapixel count isn't just the metric to determine output quality, is the sensor size which matters more.
case on point, sony full frame a7 lineup have three distinct models (all with same sensor size)
- a7r (high megapixel count)
- a7 (basic) / a7c
- a7s (low megapixel count)
the a7s series are usually catered for low light situations which high ISO with low noise output is desired, despite their low megapixel count.
so the same argument can be too applied, doesn't mean if the megapixel count is lower immediately translates to lower image quality.
as long as the sensor is big, generally it will result in higher quality image (before apple's AI-post-processing mumbo-jumbo)
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the iphone 15 generation is the first time where it is possible to prove whether there is a degradation of quality between similar "zoom" levels, which i'm confident that there will be.
one can shoot at 3x using the telephone sensor of iphone 15 pro, and compare it to 15 pro max cropped 3x using the main 48mp sensor.
i'm currently looking forward to dpreview writing detailed comparison between these two phones.
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The pixel size of the big sensor is 1.22µm (no binning) whereas on the 15 Pro tele it's 1.0µm. So at 48mm the pixels are larger than on the tele. The tele does F2.2 whereas the main camera does F1.78. So it's really the other way around. You might be thinking of the Pro Max tele with 1.12µm though it does F2.8 probably due to the tetraprism. But that one has the 3d stabilization which is a pretty big deal and will likely make up for that.
I read your and others' arguments.
In fact, Apple never claimed that their iPhone 15 had 2x optical zoom.
I carefully read the specifications on the official website, and Apple has been playing word games.
About zoom, what iphone15 say is “Optical zoom options” or “Optical quality zoom", never directly say "Optical zoom".
In addition, almost all mobile phone cameras do not have real zoom. They just simulate multiple fixed-focus cameras into one zoom camera.
For some reason, image attachments don’t seem to work from my phone. Anyway, as I said in my first post, Apple says it’s “optical quality” (fishy) so you may go to specifications to try to understand what the hell it means and find “2x optical zoom in”, which is just completely false. Check it out.
About “most phones don’t have real zoom”, most phones don’t cost >1000€. And when a very expensive phone claims to have an optical zoom, I expect it to be true.