Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem
Real cameras also ‘highly process’ the images they capture.
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Not really. That is an inaccurate statement. Cameras do in-camera processing to JPEGs. However, they don’t do in-camera processing to RAW files. If one sets the camera to save in RAW format then they have an image that contains all the raw data recorded by the camera WITHOUT modification. If one sets the camera to save in JPEG format, then they will get an image that was processed in-camera. If one sets the camera to save in both JPEG and RAW, then they get a processed JPEG and an unprocessed RAW image. Camera manufacturers are afraid that if they don’t process the JPEGs in-camera, the average user will get frustrated with the terrible photos they take and quit buying their cameras. When most people who don’t understand that RAW images are actually unprocessed “raw” data compare the RAW images to the JPEGs, they think the JPEGs are better. But they are not. The RAW images contain 14-bits of color data or more whereas the JPEGs contain only 8-bits, plus white balance in JPEGs cannot be properly edited in post processing but can be in RAW images.
As far as smartphones having good dark scene capability, they really don’t. The camera artificially adjusts the brightness at the cost of image quality. RAW images can be adjusted way more than JPEGs.
Also consider how much light gets into a FF (full frame) camera compared to a smartphone camera. A FF lens with an 120° field of view would mean it was about 12mm in focal length based on its sensor size which is approximately 43mm along the diagonal. The sensors used in many smartphones have a much smaller diagonal measurement of around 7mm. So when a smartphone manufacturer says it has a 12mm focal length lens, they mean it is proportional to a 12mm lens on a FF camera. With the smaller sensor, the smartphones lens is more like 1.9mm in actual focal length. We use a formula to determine the f number of the lens. We take the focal length and divide it by the true diameter of the aperture opening to find the f number. We can thus rework the formula to give us the aperture true diameter by changing the formula to focal length divided by the f number. If we then calculate the area of the physical apertures, we have a good idea of how much light can actually make it through the lens to the sensor. Comparison of a FF camera 12mm f/1.8 lens to a smartphone 12mm f/1.8 equivalent lens (actually only 1.9mm) shows us that the physical aperture area on the FF camera lens is 34.9mm whereas the one on the smartphone lens is about 0.9mm. So the FF camera’s 12mm f/1.8 lens has about 39x more light capability as the tiny smartphone camera’s 1.9mm f/1.8 lens. That smartphone camera is going to be nearly blind in darker environments.
The physics of photography shows how lackluster these tiny cameras are. They are okay for some photos, but they are not going to be very useful in low light despite the marketing BS.