Wesley's Tool-Box

Apple has constantly improved the iPhone camera's overall quality over the years, and this time is no different. It has touted iPhone 5S's larger sensor (1/3.0", compared to 1/3.2" in iPhone 5) that results in bigger pixels (1.5 microns instead of 1.4) and brighter lens (f/2.2 instead of f/2.4) that lets more light in. These are supposed to gather 33% more light, and low-light performance would be improved as such. One thing not mentioned is the focal length. Both devices are fixed to 4mm, but 35mm equivalent values are different - iPhone 5 is 33mm, while iPhone 5S is 30mm. This means the latter has a slightly wider field of view.

iPhone 5's camera already takes great outdoor shots, so I felt that improvements from these upgrades would be most noticeable in indoor shots. Therefore, I decided to use both iPhone 5 and 5S to take several comparison photos in the house, with iOS version both at 7.0.2. First one shown here is taken in a brightly lit room, and the low ISO value tells you that the sensors should be subject to minimal noise. This should be typical of the photos that were taken with good lighting. You can see that both phones perform similarly, but iPhone 5S does apply slightly more smoothing. This makes the 5S photos in good lighting conditions look a little too clean. Fortunately, the details are mostly there and the file size did get a bit smaller on average as a result. This seems to be more or less the difference in post-processing pattern than the sensor performance itself.


When the lighting is dramatically reduced, the difference in sensor performance becomes evident. The photos here were shot with identical ISO and shutter values, yet iPhone 5S's photo preserves the details of the objects and letters much more than iPhone 5's. You can make out the letters with 5S, while 5 gives you muddled goo. Both had noise reduction kicked in, but it iPhone 5 clearly had less detail to work with in the first place. Apple's efforts are paying off here.

Of course, camera module itself is only half the story. Let's take a look at a photo in even worse lighting and go from there.

One of the key improvements of iPhone 5S over previous generations would be the camera's performance. In this segment I'll look at the speed at which it can operate - namely, how fast the video and still photos are recorded.

1. Video

iPhone 5S introduces the "slo-mo" mode with 120fps capture at 720p (1280x720). What it actually does is that the phone records the video at 120fps fully. Then, when you view the video in the camera roll via the Camera or Photos app, a portion of the video is played in slow motion by reducing the playback speed to 30fps.


This results in playback at 1/4 the speed for the selected "zone". You can adjust where the slow motion starts and ends by moving the sliders just below the frame strip. One drawback is that you can't set two or more zones. You'll need a separate editor or app to achieve this.

Also, there are some interesting consequences when exporting the video clips.

Chuseok (Korean thanksgiving) holiday week is closing, but the weather cleared up and I had the opportunity to snap some photos of the full moon. The $40 toy telescope acting as a makeshift zoom lens for iPhone 4's camera worked okay and reveals lots of details. Enjoy!

While the overhead cloud hampered the observation of the solar eclipse at its peak (around 10:48 AM) and beyond, I was able to manage a few shots at the Sun as the eclipse progressed. Here's a ten-photo crop of the photos I took. There has been no retouching or resizing. Enjoy!

Too bad Korea didn't fall into the total solar eclipse zone (that prestige went to southern China and India), but this eclipse is the best one I've seen with my own (shielded) naked eyes yet. Good thing the office had spare floppy disks lying around. It's a very good filter.