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Why Aren’t My Mobile Pictures as Good as the IPhone Ads?

Posted on: July 2, 2017 at 8:12 am

The Apple IPhone’s ad campaigns have shown us stunning images in the recent past. If you are one of those disappointed users who cant believe that your mobile images could ever be printed to that scale, and never have that quality, read on…theres always the fine print, as usual.

The Gear – In the video above, Marques Brownlee takes a look at the behind the scenes of some of those stunning IPhone shoots. Yes, the images and videos are all shot on smart phones. However, theres a lot of additional equipment used. Thats what makes the world of difference most of the time. If you take a close look at the “Shot on an iPhone” commercials, you will notice “Additional equipment and software used” in fine print at the bottom of the video!

Smart phones have more or less killed the ‘compact camera’ segment which were popular in the 90s. Today, your mobile phone can give you pretty decent images for most everyday situations. And then, you can get a range of lenses for your phone, from fisheye to tele adapters that can transform your images to professional quality.

The Resolution – Using additional gear still doesn’t tell us how those IPhone images are printed so large, does it? The answer is quite simple. The resolution of an image, or your perception of it is directly proportional to viewing distance. The larger the print, the further away do you view it from, thereby not noticing the decrease in resolution. Many users on ‘Quora’ answer this on their forum. User Kaustav Saikia says –

I have been printing Billboards from the 6 MP Nikon D70s days, and now with a Canon 5ds Mk3. There is absolutely no visible difference!
I have infact printed A3 size Art print from my iphone6 (8 MP), and you cannot figure out if it was a cell camera or a high end DSLR!
Camera and Printing technology has improved so much that its now impossible t0 take (or print) a technically bad picture.

So, is it possible to take stunning images with your smart phone? Yes! Provided you use the right additional gear sometimes…