Jason Hiner/ZDNET
Apple put loads of its give attention to the skilled digicam options within the new iPhone 15 Professional and Professional Max throughout this week’s launch occasion.
In reality, Apple dropped so many ideas, phrases, and acronyms in such a brief area of time that it might need left your head spinning.
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Worry not, as now we’ve got time to breathe, we will return over these options and clarify their significance.
Let’s begin with the knowledge dump on this one slide:
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Focal size is a shorthand for explaining how large a picture the digicam lens will seize. The smaller the quantity, the broader the seize.
Technically right here, the lens is not a 24 millimeter lens, however a 24 millimeter-equivalent lens, however we are going to overlook that.
2.44 µm (micron) is the dimensions of the pixels capturing the sunshine within the sensor, and quad-pixel refers to how 4 pixels are grouped to behave as a bigger 2.44 micron pixel.
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Every 2×2 grouping of pixels is assigned a single shade, and 4 of those pixel bundles are then grouped collectively in two inexperienced bundles and one blue and pink bundle. Inexperienced will get extra pixels as a result of the human eye is probably the most delicate to that shade.
100% focus pixels means all of the pixels are used for the needs of focusing the picture. Previously, solely a few of the pixels have been used, however utilizing all of the pixels is now frequent in high-end sensors.
Aperture refers to how a lot mild is let onto the sensor by the lens, and is measured in f-stop numbers. The decrease this quantity, the extra mild the lens permits.
OIS stands for Optical Picture Stabilization, which is a method the place the lens or sensor is shifted with the intention to compensate for the motion of the digicam whereas the shot is being taken.
Different phrases dropped in the course of the occasion have been RAW and ProRAW.
RAW may be regarded as a digital damaging (bear in mind movie negatives?), which is a file format that saves the uncooked information captured by the sensor with out processing it or changing it right into a file, reminiscent of a JPG. RAW recordsdata are larger and include extra element, however require enhancing earlier than being printed or posted on social media.
ProRAW is an Apple file format that makes use of the trade normal digital damaging (DNG) file format to permit the file to be edited in high-end enhancing instruments, reminiscent of Adobe Lightroom.
Additionally: What’s ProRes and why does Apple hold mentioning it?
One other closely used time period was optical zoom, which is a method the place the picture is magnified by the lens itself, versus digital zoom, which merely crops in on the picture, and because of this loses element.
There’s additionally HDR, which stands for Excessive Dynamic Vary images. This can be a method that mixes a number of photographs right into a single picture to get extra element within the highlights (vivid areas) and shadows (darkish areas).
Macro images is the place you get in near the topic — reminiscent of flowers or bugs — to take close-up photographs.
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Now, let’s transfer onto video — and the very first thing I want to clarify is ProRes.
Apple talks so much about ProRes as a result of it is a video codec (brief for encoder/decoder, or generally compressor/decompressor) developed by Apple. ProRes, which dates again to 2007, is particular as a result of, whereas it compresses the video — and this compression will invariably consequence within the lack of some picture element (that is also known as “lossy”) — this misplaced picture element shouldn’t be visually noticeable.
To place that one other approach, ProRes is a visually lossless, lossy video compression format.
The draw back of ProRes is that file sizes are enormous, nevertheless it does make enhancing a lot simpler and higher.
To mitigate the large storage wants that ProRes places on videographers, the iPhone 15 Professional helps recording to exterior drives — such because the Samsung T7 SSD — which signifies that you are not restricted to the space for storing you’ve gotten out there on the iPhone.
Two different bits of jargon sprinkled into the protection of the digicam have been Log encoding and LUTs.
Log encoding is a profile that information video with a flat, muted shade profile to seize and preserve extra particulars in highlights and shadows. The iPhone 15 Professional is the primary smartphone to assist ACES, the Academy Coloration Encoding System.
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The draw back is that this format must be edited earlier than use, and one of many enhancing steps it to use a LUT, or Look Up Desk, which is a file that incorporates data to remap and remodel the flat footage into video that has shade and distinction, which may then be additional edited to match no matter type is desired.
Enhancing video that is formatted in Log — and dealing with LUTs — requires skilled instruments, reminiscent of Adobe Premier Professional.
I hope this rundown helps these of you who have been confused by a few of the terminology used, and maybe it is even inspired you to be a little bit extra inventive — or technical — in your images or videography.