One word - WOW!

One word - WOW!

All you need is lots of

All you need is lots of money.  Lets see, fixer upper house, two cars older than 12 years, need to finish a basement and build a layout and get a 24 year old independant.  $1099 for a new phone?  Not going to happen!

Hollywood Physics

Only Hollywood physics can take something that's fuzzy and sharpen it to ultimate condition after the fact.  Can't be done in reality if the information isn't there to begin with.  I suspect that this fancy phone is recording the information at multiple f stops, than adding or subtracting from that stash as you choose the exposure you like.  Probably either disposing of the other options after the choice is made or saving an extremely large file.

iPhone XR

The good news, though, is that the same editing effect is going to be available on the XR model, which is going to start at $750, meaning much cheaper monthly lease fees (since that seems to be the only way to get a phone other than lump sum up front these days).

The other thing is that this is only via the "portrait" mode, so the post-processing effect can't go all the way to 100% sharp all the way through depth of field. It's really only allowing to adjust the bokeh effect from vaguely fuzzy background all the way down to blurry splashes of color. 

Mike in CO

iPhone

Well living on a SS check, that will leave me with my iPhone SE. It still does ok.

RIch

..

Nothing Hollywood about taking a picture that takes more than one depth as it takes the exposure.

Instead of taking a still image, take 0.1 seconds of video where the f-Stop moves from minimum to maximum.

Then present the final video as a picture with the best focus from throughout the video.  That becomes the main image.  

Take the timer bar and the time numbers the f-Stop and remove autoplay so that the video does not play, but rather, you have to click to advance the video one f-stop frame at a time.

Finally, if you want the best overall picture, let software combine the best parts of each image into a single sharp image.

All software...

If you want the best depth of

If you want the best depth of field go to the largest f-stop. No need for experimenting. If you want even greater depth of field you need to change the focal plane and stack the pictures.
Regards, Volker

Same as HDR

This tech is the same thing as HDR images where multiple images are taken at different light levels and combined into a single image, nearly instantly. I am not an apple fan but I love this evolution of the idea that when you press the button you aren't just taking one image but an ultra rapid fire of multiple with different settings. Should make for some really great shots without the hassle of stacking.

 meaning much cheaper monthly

Maybe I'm old school but it seems a bit nutty to make monthly payments on a phone of all things.  Cars, homes?  Sure.  Apple has many people thinking these toys are must-have items and the company is now reportedly valued at a trillion.  The mind meld appears to be working very well!

Not just a phone

I don't really view mine (android and MUCH cheaper) as a just a phone. That is probably the least of what I use it for. It is a handheld portable computer with a 21mpx camera attached... To be fully upfront I paid $400 for mine and was able to customize it to my liking choosing from 25 colors of backing, leather and wood cases as well as several other options. Sadly this model is discontinued but if you look around you can find great phones for a good price.

That said this isn't some Apple tech that won't be copied by other makers...It isn't really much of  hocus pocus thing as much as a multi focus thing.  

Camera companies clueless

The iPhone (and Samsung) have taken $billions of Sales fromCanon and Nikon etc.

Canon STILL cannot do HDR or Panarama well.  Camera interfaces are clunky and slow.

Canon avoids 4K video like the plague.

Real cameras can take better pictures yes.

I own them and know.

Buy cameras are going to slowly continue to disappear due to their being clueless.

Even Athearn finally started to convert to LEDs.

...

It's not a phone anymore.

It's a fully functional micro computer with more power than my last desktop.

$750 buys a decent laptop these days.

I would agree that the new

I would agree that the new iPhone probably has an iris, and is simply bracketing the shot and merging the results together using software.  Because you can't extract detail that isn't there.

If the smart phone with its camera did anything, it was to hollow out the low end camera market.  People would rather use their smart phone for photography than buy a dedicated camera. Basically a Brownie in a smaller package. Now if we could only teach them to properly orient the smartphone when taking pictures...

...

DSLR market continues to be devastated by it.  I know I haven't dug mine out in five years, and I haven't used it in almost ten.

The camera does not adjust the f-stop (aperture) of the lens

johndrgw:

Michael Rozeboom:

This feature does not replicate what focus stacking software does.  Focus stacking takes multiple photos shot at different focus distances and merges the parts of each photo which is most in focus to create an image.

This feature does not take multiple photos and change the focus distance — nor does it change the aperture. It uses the CPU to adjust the bokeh* effect, a simulation of what is achieved by lenses which can actually vary the aperture.

So, unless you don't want the image with the largest depth of field, you're just going to be using the straight-out-of-the-camera-lens image which is already recorded by the camera with the most depth of field possible and not blurred by software.

* Bokeh: explanation at Wikipedia

Re: "iPhone XS camera gets new Smart HDR photos and adjustable bokeh" (cnet.com)
The new iPhone XS models also have a slider that lets you adjust how out of focus the background is behind a photos's subject -- a quality known in photography circles as bokeh. It's a significant advance over the previous depth effect, which was either on or off. Apple calls the feature depth control.
In a refinement to Apple's portrait mode, the iPhone XS, XS Max and XR come with a slider to adjust the amount of background blur, called bokeh.
The slider at the bottom of the photo frame shows lens apertures of f1.4 to f16, a simulation of the physical hardware in traditional lens cameras.

About this new feature

well

Well...that sucks. LOL!

Re: About this new feature

joef:

I disagree with that observation: based on what I've seen of the new camera specs, the lens is a fixed f/1.4 aperture and the images are shot at f/1.4 aperture (not shot at f/16, if that is what you are implying).

However, because of the short distance to the focal plane and the small sensor size in camera phones, iPhone photos at f/1.4 have a lot of depth of field... similar to what a DLSR and a full-size sensor would obtain with a lens set at f/16.

The sliders on the bokeh control simulate the effect you'd get on a DLSR going from f/16 to f/1.4 (we both agree), but those values have no actual correlation to the f/stop of the image taken by the cell phone camera. When the slider is set at "f/16" (indicating the most in-focus background), it renders the photo "as-taken" with the cell phone camera aperture actually at f/1.4.

When the slider is set to the opposite end (at what is indicated as "f/1.4") the camera attempts to recreate the image you'd get with a traditional full-size DLSR set at f/1.4.

The new iPhone lens is a fixed f/1.4 aperture, and all images are taken at that setting, not f/16.

Semantics