Last week I took some basic pictures of: white, black and half white half black at 3 zoom intervals to obtain a basic idea of how the pictures' properties change and what to expect.
Here's a quick review:
- Pictures of whites have a bigger file size than of blacks.
- Pictures of whites have a very small ISO speed whereas blacks have a very high ISO speed.
- The further you zoom the more granulated the picture becomes and file size decreases.
Predictions? Of course. I think I will see exactly what I saw last week. Bright, well lit pictures will have a small ISO speed and a relatively big file size. Darker pictures will have a smaller file size than of bright ones and their ISO speed will be higher. I think this goes without saying, but at each zoom interval the pictures' quality will worsen and it's file size will decrease.
I am curious if I will be able to see any correlation and to draw a conclusion on differences in shutter speeds. Last week the pictures were so plain that the shutter speed pretty much stayed the same for each type of picture and I wasn't able to learn anything useful because of that.
Well, let's take some pictures!
(I apologize for the small size of these images but Blogger's editor is horrible and I was unable to format them properly. I spent couple hours trying to line them up but I was unable to, I ended up having to do it with a program and was able to upload the one long, (and small) picture you see below. You can see my attempt at formatting in the blog post below... Last week it was not a problem because the pictures were vertical, whereas this week they are horizontal and did not fit side by side really well.)
Findings: First and foremost, I was shocked how poorly the iPhone 4 handles lighting. In the bright outdoor picture the colors are very washed out and and the contrast is very high. On the flip side, in the dark room, you can barely see anything. The iPhone 5 does not have this problem. The outdoor picture is clear and sharp and the colors are right on spot and in the dark room the camera adjusts itself very well. Looking at the dim room pictures side by side it's literary almost night and day difference, the iPhone 5 gets big points here! I was also surprised with both of the outdoor pictures because the pictures that are fully zoomed are much brighter; I wonder why that is?
The ISO speed and the file size changed accordingly, just as I predicted based on what we saw last week. The brighter pictures have a larger file size than darker ones and their ISO speed is much lower.
As for the shutter speed, I think this is were it gets somewhat interesting. Last week the shutter speed was at either 1/15 or 1/20 for all of the pictures. The only small conclusion I could have drawn was that white has a slightly slower shutter speed. This week shutter speeds differed, A LOT! For the dim outdoor picture and both indoor pictures the shutter speed varied anywhere from 1/60 to 1/15. This already has a bigger difference than last week but it's still not that much. What surprised me the most was that the bright outdoor picture shutter speeds were into the thousands of a second on the iPhone5; that's fast! The more I zoomed in, the faster the shutter became. Many bright colors must result in a quicker shutter speed. On the iPhone 5 it reached a 1/2358 and iPhone 4 only reached 1/862. What's interesting is that the fastest speed was on the first picture with no zoom; it didn't grow faster as I zoomed in, as it did with the iPhone 5.
If we had a 3rd blog post it would be about the shutter speed. It got me intrigued, I want to research and do some more tests. In fact, I might even do them regardless, I want to know! Hope you guys enjoyed my little venture into smartphone photography. If you have any questions feel free to comment below or email me at mjastrzebski15@jcu.edu
Very good follow up post, but I have a just one qualm:
ReplyDeleteI know you acknowledged that the organization of the photos was bad because of blogger's editor, but it was very hard to see the differences between the photos. In the future, I would recommend possibly linking to an entirely separate page outside of blogger or putting up a pdf or word document containing the pictures in a table so that the organization is better and precisely the way you want it.
This post had good organization, you set up what you wanted to do, and then showed us the data, and then made conclusions on the data; I wouldn't have done it any differently myself. I liked your "literally night and day" comparison. I was also shocked at how poorly the iPhone 4 handled lighting, because I always remembered how great of a camera the iPhone 4 had when it came out compared to other camera phones. I remember comparing photos from my old Motorola Droid to my friend's iPhone 4 and his iPhone 4 was always better.
Overall, great job. If there was a third post, I would read that.
As someone who knows very little about shutter speed or digital photography in general, I have found both of your posts to be very well written and easy to follow. The post made me feel like I was doing the experiment right along with you- which helped to keep me interested and intrigued about the results.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I applaud your decision to choose the two phones that you did-as
I feel like you might attract many readers whoa re sking themselves whetehr or not they should spend their money to upgrade from the Iphone 4 to the Iphone 5.
The only criticism I have is shared with Eric- the pictures are difficult to see. I would highly recommend experimenting with your display options next time, that way readers can get the most out of what you have to say.