The camera on the 4s

jwsnj3rd

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I love the camera. I have HDR on and flash off (I have glasses so I usually keep the flash off so as to avoid the glare) and most of the pictures turn out nice. I find I take better pictures than if I give it to someone else to take pictures of a group and they aren't familiar with how to work the camera.

What is HDR ?
 

rich67

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For a phone camera, it's one of the best out there. Try taking some pics during the day, using HDR. Even inside with substantial lighting. If you need to use a flash, then it's too dark. The added lenses to this camera made it much sharper and crisper, and allow more light in for brighter daytime shots. The flash on it is pathetic- as is the same with most phone cameras. I think you're just expecting way too much out of it. Compared to my Droid X camera, this thing is awesome.
 
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rich67

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What is HDR ?

High Dynamic Range. It brightens up the picture and adds saturation to it, much like HDR functions when you shoot in RAW mode on a digital SLR and post-produce in Photoshop or Lightroom.
Listen, if you're going to gripe about the camera and you don't even know what functions are on it, then you probably need to read up before you say it isn't that good. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but it's hard to slam on something when you haven't really studied it and explored all the possibilities and understand the limitations.
When you open up your camera, you'll see some options up top. Click on "Options" and flip the HDR switch to "on". Set your flash to OFF unless you WANT red-eye in all your pictures and you want a blued-out look on all your pics. Like I said, if you need to use the flash, then it's too dark! If you can't adjust ISO (which you can't with the iP), then it's gonna be grainy. End of story. The camera will save a regular image file and an HDR file, so you can look at both and determine which is the best for you. The HDR might be too bright in some situations, but it makes the colors really pop in others.
 

cardfan

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I think the camera is solid especially if you use HDR, have decent lighting and a steady hand. Not to go off topic, but referring to or qualifying the iphone as "just a phone" devalues it IMO. This is a 700 dollar or so mini ipad basically. Many would say it's better than an ipad because it does so much more in a smaller size with great PPI.
 

anon(4698833)

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lol @ anyone that thinks the iPhone 4S's camera is anything but spectacular...especially for a "phone camera", this thing runs circles around most point and shoots as well.
 

w00dy

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I am loving the 4s camera. That is the only reason why im using my 'jailed' 4s over my jb iphone 4. I take a ton of pictures and couldn't go back to using the i4 camera on a daily basis.
 

StormJH1

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lol @ anyone that thinks the iPhone 4S's camera is anything but spectacular...especially for a "phone camera", this thing runs circles around most point and shoots as well.

This is what I keep hearing, and it's part of the reason I'm excited to get my 4s next week. If you look at the inherent differences between the different point-and-shoots and DSLR cameras, there's obvious hardware restraints that will limit what an iPhone sized camera could do. Heck, if they had put out just a point and shoot camera a few years ago that did as well as the 4s does with low light situations and HD video, people would have been blown away. The 4s does that...AND it's a top-end smartphone that makes calls, uses the internet, and allows you to store and upload those pictures wirelessly.

As one poster said above, I'm coming from a BlackBerry (9700), so I'm not likely to complain about the 4s camera :)
 

hellomiggy

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My 2 cents, would be not to use the volume button, YES it is helpful, but it does blurry your pictures. Just do it the old fashioned way, with the screen.
 

Adawg1203

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High Dynamic Range. It brightens up the picture and adds saturation to it, much like HDR functions when you shoot in RAW mode on a digital SLR and post-produce in Photoshop or Lightroom.
Listen, if you're going to gripe about the camera and you don't even know what functions are on it, then you probably need to read up before you say it isn't that good. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but it's hard to slam on something when you haven't really studied it and explored all the possibilities and understand the limitations.
When you open up your camera, you'll see some options up top. Click on "Options" and flip the HDR switch to "on". Set your flash to OFF unless you WANT red-eye in all your pictures and you want a blued-out look on all your pics. Like I said, if you need to use the flash, then it's too dark! If you can't adjust ISO (which you can't with the iP), then it's gonna be grainy. End of story. The camera will save a regular image file and an HDR file, so you can look at both and determine which is the best for you. The HDR might be too bright in some situations, but it makes the colors really pop in others.

Just want to clear up the flash comment. Flash is not just for dark scenarios, in fact, it should be used when outdoors in daylight. This is especially important when subjects are in shaded areas. As for HDR, I hate that feature .
 

redbeard

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Just make sure that when you do shoot in HDR mode that you keep the phone as steady as possible, you can even use a stationary object to steady the phone on if possible, this makes a huge difference.
 
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Dark_Blu

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What I've noticed is that, with Flash on, it seems that the Flash is often overpowering in low light conditions. Too bright. With auto, sometimes it's great and sometimes overly bright. I think I may be doing something wrong, but not sure exactly what. This happens whether I use the built in Camera App or Camera +.

Any ideas?
 

Fast Car Zone

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I'm really happy with it, it seems a bit quicker to take the shots too! Although there are some lighting situations it seems to have some problems with. Mainly when the sun is low and beaming at the camera, lots of fade.
 

sofryj

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It's still a phone

I'm not going to disagree with you. For all the big talk, it's still a cell phone with a camera, not a camera with a cell phone. As far as a camera phone goes, it is the best one I have ever had, by a large margin. The picture quality is very decent. That said, the pictures are a bit noisy and not very adaptive to a variety of lighting scenarios. Thing is, it is unreasonable to expect more....it's a cell phone. For a cell phone camera it is excellent....maybe not the best ever made, but very good. As a dedicated camera, it's OK at best. To expect more out of that tiny little lens, lit by a single LED on the back of your phone is perhaps a bit unrealistic. :cool: