As groundbreaking as its capture experience (and mere existence!) was, the 2-megapixel cam in the original iPhone was, we can now admit, really godawful; hence the heavy, pancake-makeup approach of the image filters of the day. I remember training myself to compensate for the profound shutter lag as if I was Luke Skywalker donning a blast helmet. It wasn’t, “Hey kid, look at me [press shutter],” but rather, “Hey kid, [press shutter] look at me.”
But progress has been swift & amazing, and I can instantly visually carbon-date pics of my kids by the quality of the phone-captured shots. Now photographer Lisa Bettany has produced beautiful interactive side-by-side comparisons of every generation of iPhone camera. Talk about night-and-day differences (to say nothing of burst mode, HDR, going from zero video to optically stabilized 4k, and more).
As for the future, let’s hope that next year we’re raving about 3D depth sensing enabling SLR-like background separation. Staying tuned…
Let’s hope we have a great phone that focuses on better communication, sound quality, and coverage. The phone idea is nice, but that is all. A better Siri would be more important. Cellphone should be about communication, not photography. If someone thinks that the phone service is perfect and there is nothing to do but work on cameras, they better do more research.
I almost want to say it looks like the quality is starting to plateau, but I bet I’d be eating my words 5 years from now when the image quality is better than I could have ever imagined. Can’t wait to see what’s in store for us!