I tell folk that my photographic philosophy these days is to capture shots that the folk with camera phones can't. Over the last few years I've seen the gap narrow considerably. With the new gen (iphone 11 ProMax and now the 12's), I was wondering how us "old skoolers" would fare...Ken Rockwell's site answered some of my questions in part. I scanned through his 11 ProMax images, and at first glance they look great. But viewing at full resolution shows the one of the most common shortcomings; resolution of full sized images. Grain and splotches abound!
Some things that the iphone does exceptionally well is capture a high amount of dynamic range. That shot with the candles on the sidewalk is great (until you view at full res - see comment above, and did you see the ghost foot in there?). I'm fairly certain it's Apples amazing processing engine doing HDR and not the optics that do this...no other way with that microscopic sensor.
One of the other areas that Apple has encroached on DSLR's is simulating a shallow depth of field. I stumbled onto the "Portrait Mode" on my 11 and was marveling at the bokeh in that image trying to figure out how I did that. It was Apples processing that mimicked the bokeh of a wide open lens. There's even an app that takes bokeh a step further.
Replace a DSLR as Rockwell and a few other pro's have opined? For me not yet. Sports and action remain the domain of the DSLR for me (more relevant question is when will mirrorless replace DSLR's there). In spite of what Rockwell claims...lowlight remains the domain of DSLR's if you care about image quality in an image larger than phone size.
Last edited by ChrisF; 10/25/20.
