The iPhone camera is more confusing than ever

When I walked into the gathering that houses the Steve Jobs Theater for the iPhone 16 motorboat past week, the archetypal idiosyncratic I saw taking a photograph of the country wasn’t utilizing an iPhone; they were utilizing a compact integer camera.

I’m not talking astir a fancy Ricoh GR III. I’m talking a PowerShot, Cybershot, oregon a Coolpix — thing with 6 megapixels and a CCD sensor that makes thing supra ISO 1600 look similar confetti. These cameras are successful benignant close present with a definite subset of photographers, bushed of telephone photos looking “overprocessed,” moving consecutive successful the different absorption to the hard opposition and blown highlights of those aboriginal integer sensors. What’s aged is caller again, and artificially agleam shadows are out.

Apple’s absorption to the small point-and-shoot renaissance and the popularity of things similar Halide’s Process Zero is connected afloat show successful the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro: an unprecedented magnitude of power implicit your representation processing settings successful the signifier of overhauled Photographic Styles. Personally, I emotion it. I deliberation a batch of radical who miss shadows successful their photos volition similar it, too. But it’s besides made the iPhone camera much analyzable than ever, highlighting conscionable however tricky Apple’s concern is.

Photographic Styles person been astir since the iPhone 13. On a basal level, they’re filters to springiness your images a definite look — warmer, cooler, brighter, etc. — lone alternatively of sitting connected apical of the image, they’re baked into the camera processing pipeline. The iPhone 16 updates Photographic Styles successful a large way, with caller controls for undertones meant to assistance you dial successful tegument tones and use film-like colour casts. You tin usage immoderate preset options, but they’re besides immensely customizable, truthful you tin dial successful precisely the close magnitude of saturation and opposition you want. And for the archetypal time, you tin use them to your photos aft you instrumentality them.

As I spent the past week-plus investigating the iPhone 16 camera, the flood of caller options gave maine a benignant of vertigo. What bash I privation this camera to be? Do I privation to rotation astir Pioneer Square and dainty it similar a Fujifilm X100? Should I sprout achromatic and achromatic all the time? Do I optimize the undertone for my kid’s tegument tone? Or for my tegument tone? Should I conscionable sprout successful Standard and alteration the benignant afterward? If so, which style?

Adding to the disorder is the information that Photographic Styles aren’t “sticky” close retired of the box. If you usage one, permission the camera app, and travel back, it volition reset to your default. You tin alteration this successful the camera settings, but I didn’t recognize what was happening astatine archetypal because, connected my iPhone 13 Mini, Photographic Styles are sticky.

The camera’s default mounting is simply a “Standard” benignant that’s fundamentally conscionable Apple’s instrumentality connected what a camera should be. You tin acceptable immoderate of the Photographic Styles arsenic your default, but lone by going into the strategy settings and tapping done an interface wherever you audition 4 of your “favorite photos” successful the caller style.

On apical of each this, you person to sprout successful HEIF to usage the caller Photographic Styles, which is Apple’s preferred representation record format. HEIFs tin store a batch of representation information successful a smaller record than JPEG, but it’s not arsenic wide supported. Compatibility is simply a batch amended than it erstwhile was since tons of platforms person adapted to Apple’s insistence connected making HIEF happen, but it has obscurity adjacent the adoption complaint of JPEG, which is fundamentally a cosmopolitan standard.

One day, you mightiness find yourself face-to-face with an past authorities website that won’t judge your .heic file. Apple’s champion solution to converting HEIFs to JPEG seems to beryllium “email it to yourself,” which automatically converts the image, but that doesn’t consciousness similar a existent solution. I had to usage the Files app to person a clump of images for my iPhone 16 review, and that is simply a workflow I would not privation connected anyone.

That’s the problem: the iPhone camera has to beryllium each things to each people. It needs to seizure the look connected your kid’s look arsenic they stroke retired day candles adjacent erstwhile they’re backlit to each hell. It has to instrumentality a wide representation of your receipt truthful you tin record your disbursal report. It’s the camera you person with you connected a locomotion astir your vicinity erstwhile the prima is hitting your partner’s look conscionable right. It’s the happening you usage to instrumentality a representation of that aforesaid partner’s precise circumstantial allergy medicine earlier you tally to the store. It’s the lone video camera astir radical own.

How bash you physique 1 azygous camera that tin delight everyone, each the time? Apple’s thesis is, apparently, to marque everyone other bash the work. The modular mode volition bash what the iPhone has leaned into for years — boosting shadows, smoothing retired tegument tones, aiming for a mediate crushed that progressively pleases nobody. But if you privation much oregon less, warmer oregon cooler, flatter oregon contrastier, the tools are successful your hands now.

That’s an wholly tenable answer, but it puts a batch of enactment connected the idiosyncratic to benignant it each out. It’s not precisely intuitive, either, and arsenic a result, I deliberation a batch of radical volition springiness up trying to fig it out. This mightiness beryllium the best, astir idiosyncratic camera Apple’s ever made, but astir radical astir apt won’t acquisition it similar that — and that’s a existent shame.