Apple's newly released flagship iPhone 7 Plus features the best camera ever in any company's mobile phone.
iPhone 7 Plus camera
CNET reports that with the release of its flagship iPhone 7 Plus Apple has introduced the first truly major update to its iPhone camera. This aims to provide a significant improvement in photo quality since the original model, beyond the usual incremental annual changes such as image stabilization or flash.
According to BGR, the iPhone 7 Plus phablet features a DSLR camera with very interesting capabilities. From the two 12-megapixel cameras present in the iPhone 7 Plus, one is a wide-angle camera exactly similar to the iPhone 7's. The second 12-megapixel telephoto lens brings over optical zoom to the iPhone and comes with f/2.8 aperture.
The telephoto lenses are also able to add a depth-of-field effect to images that can be activated via a software update scheduled for release in the coming weeks. The depth-of-field feature will provide a new portrait mode. The image signal processing (ISP) engine is blurring the background to make the subject look sharp. This is a common feature found in DSLR cameras.
Thanks to the dual-lens cameras and the ISP engine, the iPhone 7 Plus also offers 2x optical zoom. The digital zoom can go up to 6x for videos and 10x for photos. The dual camera systems also allow popular multi-shot capabilities like auto HDR.
The two-camera-module implementations in the new iPhone 7 Plus are a form of computational photography, according to tech experts. This consists in using in-device algorithms to perform the functions that are prevented from being done with camera systems based on single sensor and lens, due to cost and size constraints.
When elements of the scene don't share the same focal plane as the subject, then optical defocus occurs. This causes computational depth of field to provide images that look different than that produced optically.
By using computational depth of field, the results can sometimes look better. Apple's initial implementation of this technology is based on the company's face- and body-detection algorithms and relies on a specific portrait mode in order to produce the effect only in scenes with people.
