iPhone cameras are good

Summary

Ever wonder why you never see a smartphone photo printed and framed on the wall? I'll explain exactly why. The photos above look similar at a glance, but there are some key differences that seem small but are actually very sensitive to our perception of humans: The fish eye iPhone lens creates distortion, look at the feet of the pink player. There's also distortion of the players on the edges who appear to be leaning toward the center in the iPhone photo. Compare the jawlines (important!) of the players. The iPhone photo is much less flattering. Real cameras capture shadow more accurately. An iPhone does lots of computation to try to make everything well-lit, but it ruins important facial features in the process. The blurred background of the right photo makes the players "pop". This is called bokeh. The landscape is also much more accurate to human perception, again due to fish-eye distortion of the iPhone camera. Let's take a look at an individual player: More things to notice: in the iPhone photo, the player is "leaning". His (long) feet are on the left and his head is on the right of the image. In the right image, the image accurately portays his balanced and confident stance. The players body is much more flattering in the right image. His chest and shoulders look larger compared to the "stumpy" appearance on the left. The jawline is much more flattering in the right image. The iPhone image almost entirely deletes the jawline on the shaded side of his face. The iPhone has a "hotdog" skin complexion. Off with their heads! The above photo is from a professional camera. Let's compare iPhone with its mighty 48 MP to a 2004 Sony Digicam with a paltry 5.1 MP on auto mode: I am sure there are many more differences that I am not able to see. All these details might seem minor, but the human eye is incredibly sensitive when perceiving other humans. So this is why you don't see iPhone photos framed on walls. It's also why top brands like The Masters never post iPhone pho...