Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

I came back from an Alaskan cruise recently and took pictures of the glaciers. I edited them using mostly Luminar for my camera pictures and Snapseed for my iPhone pictures.

Attached are two pictures of the Marjorie glacier. First picture was taken with my Fuji X-T2 24mp APS-C camera (using Luminar and then PSE to resize down to 14mb), and the second picture was taken with my iPhone 12 Pro Max 12mp camera (using Snapseed and then Luminar to adjust color temperature). Similar editing is obviously not exact, but I don't see much difference between the two.

Comments and feedback are welcome. To those of you who say iPhone cameras are not really cameras, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks.

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Its an easy scene where a phone can do verrrrry well. When the going gets tough is when a camera earns its keep. Surely you were carrying both for a real reason.

raypep

Exactly the same ! That’s the reason my Nikon 7100 sits in a box and my Iphone 13 is always by my side

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

Agreed. iPhone cameras do have its limitations for sports, nature, zooming capabilities, etc. I'm just amazed sometimes at how far smartphone cameras have come in recent years.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

The first shot seems warmer, but that can probably be altered in an editor.
I'll take either.

wdross Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado

This is not a surprise. With more work, my bet is that both could be made close to the same. Very nice shot by the way - no matter which one was used to capture it. It really is more about the photograph than how it was captured.

wdross Loc: Castle Rock, Colorado

Ysarex Loc: St. Louis

I see an obvious and substantial difference in the rendition of fine detail. Did you process the Fuji JPEG or the Fuji RAF file?

MrMophoto Loc: Rhode Island "The biggest little"

To me it looks like the iPhone is slightly more contrasty in the highlights, compare the face of the glacier. With that said, which do you prefer and which do YOU think did a better job? The artist always has the last say.
I will continue to maintain that smartphone cameras are very capable of creating amazing images in certain situations, it's when you have to push the settings, shutter, aperture, ISO that a full DSLR (or mirrorless) camera will outperform. I will say that will not always be the case. I consider smartphone photography akin to the kodak brownie, it lets everyone take good photos in average settings. And just as the Brownie advanced the technology so will smartphones. Newer smartphones now allow you to adjust the aperture in portrait mode, but unless you understand what that setting is really doing, most people will just use it to blur the background. The camera itself is a fairly simple mechanism and hasn't changed much in the last 150 years, it's still controlled by those three settings. What has changed dramatically is the process we use to record those images - the digital format.

Just Fred Loc: Darwin's Waiting Room

Earlier this year, during a trip to the Palace of Knossos in Greece, I came across a scene that, due to its interior setting, the crowds peering in the portal (no foot traffic allowed inside) I struggled with my D7500 to get the right exposure. Since I couldn't spend all day blocking traffic, I decided to whip out my iPhone 12 mini, composed the shot and clicked. Presto! Good color rendering, excellent lighting, and very little post-processing needed. I had several other experiences like this. I'll say this: For me, the iPhone takes some pretty darn good photos, especially when a grab shot is all you can get.

Apple has also now made the iPhone capable of taking HEIF (or HEIC) -- High Efficiency Image Format -- a technology developed by the MPEG group that basically delivers advanced JPEG imagery at about half the file size. The quality of images produced by phones these days is quite remarkable!

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

The Fuji RAF file.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

I prefer the Fuji one.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

Landscape and portrait photography are strengths of the newer iPhone cameras. I’ve made beautiful 17” x 22” prints from an iphone 13 pro on a Canon pro-1000. The detail is surprisingly good. It comes out to about 180 pixels / inch. I’ve pre-ordered an iphone 14 pro max under the philosophy that the best camera is the one you have with you.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The Fuji could look a whole lot better. Why did you shoot this landscape at f/4 and 1/1600 sec? The phone has more details where the camera should / could have blown the phone out of the discussion with a better selection of exposure parameters.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area