Your thoughts

[blackstar]

These nightscape photos (from MacRumors forum) were all shot by the new iPhone 15 Pro/Max. Personally, I think they are at least comparable to DSLR or ML photos. What are your thoughts?

 

[Clovishound]

They are very good photos. It's impossible to compare them to a DSLR without looking at the full sized images.

 

[BF Hammer]

There is also post-processing with GIMP on the first 3 according to the Exif. What we do not know is how many images were stacked to make these.

They are good photos and likely comparable to what a real camera could have captured in the same night and conditions, I expect. Now would the individual photos from the iphone have more noise than a DSLR? I would bet yes. But stacking many images for astrophotography does take away noise among other things.

 

[blackstar]

There is also post-processing with GIMP on the first 3 according to the Exif. What we do not know is how many images were stacked to make these.

They are good photos and likely comparable to what a real camera could have captured in the same night and conditions, I expect. Now would the individual photos from the iphone have more noise than a DSLR? I would bet yes. But stacking many images for astrophotography does take away noise among other things.

As I read through the forum's thread, none seemed to have used stacking for their photos. They might process some denoise though. Although all Exif show Gimp as software, from their discussion, many did mention "Lightroom". But I feel even most of them are just the beginners of shooting night sky!

 

[BF Hammer]

Oh, there is stacking done alright. Done behind the scene inside the iphone on the first level.

The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max have more or less the same results as last year’s Pro lineup. One slight change is this year’s Pro models now utilize a complete 16-bit color space when compiling images together for a crispy night shot. This slightly improves color accuracy. (from 9to5Mac.com)

 

[blackstar]

Oh, there is stacking done alright. Done behind the scene inside the iphone on the first level.

I see...

 

[WaltE]

The images look fine to me but look like cell phone images. If I had taken them with my D850 and Prime 50mm lens I would be very disappointed. Having said all that, I wasn't there so I have no idea what the scenes looked like to the naked eye.

 

[BF Hammer]

The images look fine to me but look like cell phone images. If I had taken them with my D850 and Prime 50mm lens I would be very disappointed. Having said all that, I wasn't there so I have no idea what the scenes looked like to the naked eye.

Yeah, at 50mm it would be disappointing. Those kind of images are normally shot at 24mm or wider, and f/2.8 or wider if available.

But the secret is that you don't do it with a single exposure. Between the movement of the earth making the stars turn into trails and the need of long time exposure, you have to take dozens of photos and use software that will align the images with each other and combine the light in an additive way while averaging out the noise. At 20mm you are pretty much limited to 10-12 second exposures before you get motion blurring in the stars, at 50mm it is more like 4-5 seconds. That is from a tripod, if you use a star tracker on the tripod you can increase the times but get motion blurs in the foreground image.

And astrophotography is never about what the naked eye can see. It is always an exaggeration and enhancement of what is present but invisible. You can see a faint Milky Way in a dark sky, but it is never like the photos you see.

 

[blackstar]

...

And astrophotography is never about what the naked eye can see. It is always an exaggeration and enhancement of what is present but invisible. You can see a faint Milky Way in a dark sky, but it is never like the photos you see.

Good point, yet through some really dark sky, better luck in vision may be obtained. (like this one from BCG forum)