Wow! Is Tony Northrup right about Quad Bayer phone cameras?

[@Wairoakid]

Love your calm and logical approach. Have learnt a lot from your videos.

[@cwaynefox]

I appreciate that!

[@justingilbert4026]

Photography doesn't have to deal with this as much, but there are entire categories of video codecs that are differentiated by just how much they are downsampling the color information while retaining the full resolution luminance information in order to reduce file size via compression. This seems like a clever way for these manufacturers to take something they have decided they will be doing already in software, and build the hardware to capture it natively and save all of the processing power that would have been dedicated to achieving that same result. I think it's brilliant. This is a legitimate halfway point in quality and cost between standard bayered 12MP and 48MP.

[@mikethespike056]

just stumbled across your channel researching quad bayer cameras. great video and btw your camera looks fantastic. while that guy you talked about definitely didn't understand quad bayer sensors, it's still funny how apple claims to have 7 lenses when no other phone manufacturer says that. samsung with their 200 MP tetra²pixel camera could claim they have like a dozen lenses but they don't do it. it's literally digital zoom. does it get more detail? yes, but it's still digital zoom. anyway i hope you're still reading because im curious about how exactly the interpolation is done here, and how the aperture affects how much detail can physically be captured.

[@robertnystrom289]

Well done!

[@cwaynefox]

Thx.

[@ryanclouse299]

Not a fan of Tony. He says a lot of things that are sort of unintelligible. 48 mp is 48mp and it is taking in more information, but the color arrangement is not a good as a standard bayer arrangement but is better than 12mp. It is true that they are indeed cropping, which i think is mostly the point. the quad bayer does seem like an advantage specifically for 12 mp binning and video.

[@bunkermagnus]

This is a great video. Great logic approach. The modern iphones can't compete with regular camera in the "physical" realm, like sensor size and lens characteristics. What the phones have in abundance is computational power so all this makes sense, they want more data to process and they can do more in a shorter period of time. I always felt that Tony goes a little too hyperbolic about the iphones and suspected there are more to it. Thanks for clearing that up.

[@cwaynefox]

Good comment. I had a section talking about the amazing computational power of these latest phones, including a quote from Marques Brownlee stating the 28, 35 and 48mm presets have special computational efforts behind them to maximize the quality , but the video got too long so I decided to focus on just the resolving ability of the quad bayer sensors and how many including myself underestimated they’re ability to resolve detail. thanks for watching.

[@bruce-le-smith]

makes sense, thanks!

[@thelocalappleman]

Great video thanks

[@noneother7549]

i think while the 12 mp image clearly wasn't able to store all of the available information, the 48 mp image also has some pretty clear distortions from their post processing algorithm where the raw information is just not there. a true 48 mp image would look totally different (and much better). their claims about cropping are, well... maybe you get around 6 mp fidelity from the 48 mm crop. not the 3 mp he is claiming but also not 12 mp. it's enough to post on instagram. i think the more interesting question is does this sensor make images look "weird" or over sharpened. there were a lot of complaints when it first released. but this can obviously also be changed in software to some degree.

[@cwaynefox]

Some good comments. I think there is some distortions, but I think they are far less than if you uprez the 12mp sensor files.But as you mentioned, no issues for instagram. Not many large prints from these cameras, although 11x14’s can look pretty nice. As I mentioned in the video, this is mainly about digital zoom for video, and there’s enough distortion and artifacts going on with digital compression and other things with video that we don’t mind (because we really don’t notice the micro detail in a video), so adding some because of the sensor technology probably isn’t much of In issue. after some research, the weirdness is introduced somewhat because of the algorithm . After taking a shot in 48mp, from what I read, the pixels are “re-arranged” into a normal bayer pattern, the image is processed much like a normal bayer sensor, then arranged back into their original location. Works ok, but as you mentioned not nearly as accurate as a true 48mp sensor. There’s probably a lot of other behind the scenes stuff going on to reduce the oddities that process would cause.

[@noneother7549]

@@cwaynefoxpersonally i have started to just take raw (not even proraw, just literal raw with 3rd paty app) pictures with the iphone. after a lot of experimentation, the apple denoiser and i just can't be friends. when the conditions are right (and they tend to be right a lot indoors), the denoiser is just deleting so much texture it's incredible. it even gave me a shave on the non-lit side of my face a few times. very strange how over-tuned it is. raw mode can only use the sensor in 12 mp mode, but the pictures honestly look great. importing and editing them in lightroom, it's a night and day difference to apple's post processing. almost feels like a 1" sensor from an actual camera. i feel like the hardware has outgrown the post-processing pipeline to the point where it just makes it worse. apparently sony is even using the same quad-bayer sensors in their real cameras, but only ever in combined pixel mode. you do lose apple's hdr though, which as far as hdr goes is really amazing. but personally i don't particularly like the hdr look anyway so it's not a big loss to me.

[@putubing]

Wayne why dont you make utube videos in 4K, This video would have been helped by an increase in resolution

[@cwaynefox]

Your right. Very few of my videos would benefit from 4k but this one would have. Should have thought of it.

[@Dan_Maas]

1:00 gotta stop right there. You see, there is no such thing as "professional" for most photographers out there. I have never ever earned or took a cent for shots I made. I made them just for myself, thats my hobby. iPhone is a great modern replacement to disposable film cameras. You know, these old cheap shooters with plastic lens and no screens. And obviously as we are now in the age when processors are everywhere, we demand better camera quality, better features. iPhone is small and pocketable. None of those professional cameras are capable to fit in my pocket, except maybe GoPro (which isn't professional either, sensor-wise at least). You can take it everywhere and anywhere and not get a look "oh look, a photographer!". Thats without saying there are some places in the world where taking photos is frowned upon, i.e. you cannot take your 2000$ worth camera without fear that someone will grab it and steal at the same moment. I don't get what is the reason of defending Quad Bayer's fake 48 megapixels. Those are FAKE. You cannot fool physics, if you increase megapixels without significant increase in sensor size you get NOISE, lots of it. And well, if one likes modern denoised shots it is nice, but I myself not a fan of artificial watercolor-like photos

[@cwaynefox]

Well, while I might agree that “most” photographers out there are not “professional” the fact is many are, and in fact Tony Northrup definitely does many shoots for pay and makes a fair amount of income from actually taking pictures. So while you may fit into the majority of those that are strictly hobbyist, there are several hundred thousand photographers that derive some to all of their income from photography. And those that are just hobbyists can certainly benefit from the knowledge of those that have been at this for many decades. I myself have been a professional photographer since 1976, with no other jobs or source of income. As far as me defending it, it was more about the fact that I felt Tony was attempting to exaggerate his claims and that his video was more about getting hits and views than it was about a realistic approach. And as far as the pixels being “fake”, well that’s just totally false and I have no clue where you would even come up with that or where you can get any evidence to support such a claim. Each sensel in that 48 mp sensor can record distinct and individual light density, so even if 4 pixels have the same color filter in front, the density information is more important in reconstructing data. I hope you didn’t just stop at the one minute point and respond, and actually watched the video. However it would surprise me if you did, because I clearly show in 48mp mode the sensor is capable or capturing and revealing more data and detail. Yes there are some compromises over a traditional bayer sensor, but it’s pretty clear Tony is wrong in his assessment that the 48mp sensor is just marketing hype. I also made it very clear that these 48mp sensors are focused on video capture, not still photography, as a way to provide more robust and accurate digital zoom when recording 2k and 4k video. That’s principally all the phone makers are focused on, since even a 6mp camera can capture enough detail for instagram posts.

[@tommyharris5817]

Tony Northup is right; I have the 15 Pro Max, which is no better than my older 13 Pro Max. Also, it is useless in low light. In fact, my 13 PM was better in many cases!

[@cwaynefox]

His video was only about resolution and nothing about low light abilities, and that’s all I was addressing. I’m curious if your really watched the video, or you just arent’ happy with your iPhone camera for some reason; I would suspect you maybe didn’t actually watch the video through. Tony Northrup’s entire video and conclusions right down to his ridiculous conspiracy theory that apple did it to sell more iCloud storage are based on one assumption he makes, that current phone 48mp sensors are bogus and don't offer anything over a 12mp sensor. His statement that cutting the pixel into 4ths with the same filter doesn’t offer anything shows he doesn’t understand the importance of the ability of each of those sub pixels to record the luminance value. This is as important, and probably more important than the color and indeed is the reason the sensor is effective.. My video clearly shows the 48mp sensor delivers much more detail than a 12mp equivalent, and the difference isn’t small or subtle. I thought I did a pretty good explanation of why his conclusion seems “logical”, but in fact is incorrect (and in fact was the same mistaken logic I had when I first heard about these quad bayer sensors.) I also thought I did a pretty good job explaining that none of this is about photography, and the phone makers aren’t doing these high megapixel sensors for the same reason as the camera makers have been doing for the past 20 years. This is al about getting decent quality digital zoom, not high resolution single shots to print large.

[@tommyharris5817]

@@cwaynefox If you compared the 15 PM with 13 PM in low light, you would find that one is not better than the other; both are useless.

[@cwaynefox]

@@tommyharris5817 you might be right, wouldn’t know since I only use the phone for snapshots and documenting some things as well as quick videos. But you said Tony Northrup was right and you seem to basing that conclusion on something that has no relevance to his video or mine. In regards to resolution of a quad bayer 48mp sensor, which is all my video is about, he isn’t right.