Overview of the iPhone 7 Plus Camera

With over 1 billion sold, the world’s most popular camera is the iPhone.1 The best iPhone for photography is now the iPhone 7 Plus. For those that don’t have the luxury of dedicated, high end cameras, the 7 Plus has more than enough resolution and features for most people’s needs. It may even be more intuitive for them to use, both for picture taking and applying effects.

Personally, I love using my Nikon D7100 dSLR and Fujifilm X100T mirrorless cameras but I take the vast majority of my photos on my iPhone. Both the Nikon and the Fuji are high end cameras that excel for particular types of photography. The Nikon is ideal for sports and wildlife photography. The Fuji captures incredible portraits and performs extremely well in low light conditions. But because I always carry my iPhone, it is the best camera for spontaneous shots like capturing a candid moment with our toddler.

Features

Sensor and Lens

The improvements to the Apple iPhone 7 Plus camera make it a considerable upgrade over its predecessors. These include enhancements to its aperture, lenses, color accuracy, low light performance, image stabilization, and optical zoom.23

The form factor of the iPhone 7 Plus is very similar to the iPhone 6 and 6S Plus. You could probably reuse an older case for your 7 Plus but for the changes in the camera lenses. On the back now are two six-element lenses: a wide angle and a telephoto lens. Each rear lens is paired with 12MP sensor. The wide angle lens has a 28mm equivalent focal length lens. It has an ƒ/1.8 aperture with optical image stabilization. The telephoto lens has a 56mm equivalent lens. It has a ƒ/2.8 aperture but lacks image stabilization.4

Compared to earlier iPhone models, the 7 Plus is much better suited to low light situations. The 7 Plus’ ƒ/1.8 aperture lens lets in 50% more light than the iPhone 5 or 6, which used a ƒ/2.2 aperture. I have found that my 7 Plus performs much better without a flash both indoors and outdoors in the evening.

In addition to the telephoto lens’ 2x optical zoom, the 7 Plus now has 5x digital zoom, for a combined 10x digital zoom. I prefer to use solely the 2x optical zoom and then crop the photo in my photo editor. Because the telephoto lens lacks image stabilization, beware that the iPhone may instead resort to using digital zoom on the wide angle lens in low light situations.

Other improvements include:

• a Quad-LED True Tone flash,
• improvements in noise reduction, image stacking, exposure control, and body- and face-detection. and
• a 7MP front-facing camera.

Portrait Mode

With iOS 10.1, Apple released a beta version of Portrait Mode. This mode uses both rear cameras to simulate bokeh–a blurry background–under certain conditions: the right lighting and the right distance from the camera, and right distance between the subject and the background. The 7 Plus uses image data from the two lenses to build a 3D map and to apply a gaussian blur to the background.5 I love photos with true bokeh, like those created on my Fuji X100T. So, it is good to see Apple delivering professional effects for the average user.

The 7 Plus beats other mobile phones’ bokeh simulations but it can’t compare to the depth of field and image quality of dSLRs. This is due to simple physics: a dSLR captures many times more light. I expect Apple to continue to refine Portrait Mode. Additionally, there’s the possibility that third party applications may be able to use the two cameras for after-the-fact refocusing, perspective shifts, and virtual reality capture similar to the Lytro camera.

4K Video Capture

The iPhone 7 Plus is a far better camcorder than my Nikon D7100, my Fuji X100T, or my Canon Vixia. It can record video at 4K resolution at 30fps. Additionally, it can record 1080p HD video at 30 or 60 fps. The 7 Plus supports slo‑mo video capture for 1080p at 120 fps and 720p at 240 fps. It supports optical image stabilization and optical zoom at 2x and 6x digital zoom. It has continuous autofocus with body and face detection.

RAW Format

For the first time, the iPhone permits photographers to capture images in RAW (DNG) format, not just JPEG. I prefer to shoot in RAW because it preserves additional range and tonal detail, albeit at the expense of higher chroma noise. JPEG is a lossy format that is best only when you need to immediately render an image or where you have limited storage.

There are two downsides to the iPhone’s RAW support:

• you need a third party app such as Lightroom or 500px Raw to capture in RAW format or for manual control over shutter speed, and
• as a result, you can’t automatically store the RAW images in iCloud. Instead you must use a third party cloud service.

HDR Mode

Like previous iPhone models, 7 Plus supports high dynamic range image capture. This can be enabled by default or applied automatically, as needed. I find the results mixed, particularly when used with the telephoto lens. On the wide angle lens, most images look reasonably natural though not necessarily better than conventional imaging. On the telephoto lens, images may have more artifacts and blurring.

Weather Sealed

The iPhone’s IP67 certification means that you can use it in dusty and wet conditions. The iPhone is water-resistant but not water proof. In theory, you can immerse your iPhone in up to a meter of water for up to 30 minutes though I wouldn’t test its limits.

Comparison to Google Pixel XL

In October, Google launched its latest reference smart phone, the Pixel XL. Given Samsung’s issues with its flagship Note 7, it is worth instead comparing Google’s Pixel to the IPhone 7 Plus. The Pixel’s hardware is unremarkable; the magic is in Google’s software. Independent reviews suggest that the Pixel’s image quality is slightly better than the 7 Plus.6 The Pixel shines under low light situations, with low noise and good detail . “Pixel Smartphone Camera Review: At the Top.” DxOMark, www.dxomark.com/Mobiles/Pixel-smartphone-camera-review-At-the-top[/footnote]

Unlike the iPhone, the Pixel includes a single 12MP camera on the rear. At 8MP, the Pixel has a slightly higher pixel count, front facing camera. The Pixel only has a IP53 rating, which means that you can’t get it wet, much less immerse it for an extended period like the iPhone.

DPreview notes that the Pixel has “a new gyroscope-based video stabilization system that reads gyro data 200 times per second for smoother panning and shake-free handheld video recording.” HDR+ is enabled by default and is highly rated. Finally, Google offers free uploads of all your images at full-resolution and 4K video to Google Photos. Apple charges up to $19.95/mo  for iCloud storage and limits iCloud storage to 2TB.

Room for Improvement

• Clearly, Apple will continue to enhance the resolution and image quality in future iPhones. I would expect Apple to follow advancements in Sony’s sensors.
• Even Apple labels the Portrait Mode as beta, recognizing that the photography process and the effect are a work-in-progress
• The possibility of using the 3D map data for refocusing, perspective shifts, and virtual reality capture is particularly intriguing to me. Expect Apple and potentially third parties to evolve how we think about capturing the moment, similar to Live Photos
• The Photos app still doesn’t apply face detection across iOS/Mac devices or permit collaborative tagging in a shared folder
• Shared Folders in the Photos app needs significant redesign: it is a fixed copy, not a logical group of original images. Ideally, you could create a smart, shared album.

 

Updated on April 28th, 2017