Some of the depth blur fakery occasionally fails so badly I get dizzy when looking at it because my brain is wired for shooting and editing DSLR images that have been shot in RAW mode. Since I've short DSLRs for almost 20 years now, my workflow is wired to work with the technology and its limitations. And DSLRs have some significant limitations.
Let's forget about the limitations of small sensors and tiny optics for a bit. It's a phone and not a DSLR or a medium format camera with glass that costs more than your car. It can only do so much..
When I shoot I aim for data capture and not how the image looks as shot. How it looks comes later. Which, in overly simplified terms, means: don't blow out the highlights ever and try to keep the noise level in the shadows as low as possible. Or in other words: try to get as much as possible within the dynamic range of the sensor at the lowest possible sensitivity (amplification?) setting of the sensor. (I'm not fond of large grain - artificial or otherwise).
The post processing is essentially about taking more data that your output medium can reasonably render and then offset, squeeze and stretch parts of the dynamic range until you get the tonality you want from the data you have.
Even the iPhone 6 did an amazing job at automating this. But I can't help but feel that with each generation, iPhones get a little bit worse. It tries to do more, which means that when it gets things wrong, the results can get really horrible. And I'm not fond of images that have had heavy alterations of pixels.
Sure, most people aren't going to see this when the image is rendered on a surface that isn't that much bigger than a baseball card. And sure, for most pictures it probably isn't going to be as noticable for the 2 seconds they spend looking at it.
And as someone else pointed out, if you are going to fake focus blur, you're going to have to do a hell of a lot more complex stuff than just smearing pixels with gaussian blur or any other blurring method that doesn't model how lenses actually work.
If you want a really stark example, take a 85mm Petzval lens, or some other "bokeh monster", shoot it wide open with a foreground subject that is 2m away against a background that is 4-5 meters away that contains lots of small highlights. Then repeat the same with various iPhones.
No the iPhone doesn't have a Petzval lens or any other (relatively) large lens. So why try to fake that you do? If you want the visual effects of large glass then shoot with large glass.
As a hobbyist photographer I find it easier when a camera doesn't try to be clever. When it just does what it does. To me a mobile phone camera is more of a "documentation camera" - it should try to capture what you are interested in. It doesn't always have to be pretty. It just needs to be reasonably accurate. Subtly applied HDR tricks are okay since it helps you capture what you are looking at, but when you start to alter pixels, it becomes less useful as a tool.
> So why try to fake that you do? If you want the visual effects of large glass then shoot with large glass.
Apple is trying to carve a chunk out of the market of people who would have bought a real 35mm full-frame system camera - if a phone can "look like it" for the photos of the latest vacation I send to Grandma or post on Instagram, why invest the thousands of euros that a good kit costs?
Most people aren't gonna shoot pictures at night/lowlight scenarios or with extreme zoom... I do though, so I chonked out some money and got a Sony A7S2. Now, if only Sony's software quality was better... sigh.
Let's forget about the limitations of small sensors and tiny optics for a bit. It's a phone and not a DSLR or a medium format camera with glass that costs more than your car. It can only do so much..
When I shoot I aim for data capture and not how the image looks as shot. How it looks comes later. Which, in overly simplified terms, means: don't blow out the highlights ever and try to keep the noise level in the shadows as low as possible. Or in other words: try to get as much as possible within the dynamic range of the sensor at the lowest possible sensitivity (amplification?) setting of the sensor. (I'm not fond of large grain - artificial or otherwise).
The post processing is essentially about taking more data that your output medium can reasonably render and then offset, squeeze and stretch parts of the dynamic range until you get the tonality you want from the data you have.
Even the iPhone 6 did an amazing job at automating this. But I can't help but feel that with each generation, iPhones get a little bit worse. It tries to do more, which means that when it gets things wrong, the results can get really horrible. And I'm not fond of images that have had heavy alterations of pixels.
Sure, most people aren't going to see this when the image is rendered on a surface that isn't that much bigger than a baseball card. And sure, for most pictures it probably isn't going to be as noticable for the 2 seconds they spend looking at it.
And as someone else pointed out, if you are going to fake focus blur, you're going to have to do a hell of a lot more complex stuff than just smearing pixels with gaussian blur or any other blurring method that doesn't model how lenses actually work.
If you want a really stark example, take a 85mm Petzval lens, or some other "bokeh monster", shoot it wide open with a foreground subject that is 2m away against a background that is 4-5 meters away that contains lots of small highlights. Then repeat the same with various iPhones.
No the iPhone doesn't have a Petzval lens or any other (relatively) large lens. So why try to fake that you do? If you want the visual effects of large glass then shoot with large glass.
As a hobbyist photographer I find it easier when a camera doesn't try to be clever. When it just does what it does. To me a mobile phone camera is more of a "documentation camera" - it should try to capture what you are interested in. It doesn't always have to be pretty. It just needs to be reasonably accurate. Subtly applied HDR tricks are okay since it helps you capture what you are looking at, but when you start to alter pixels, it becomes less useful as a tool.