Former Google SVP prefers iPhone over Android for mobile photography

Who is this guy and why should I care?

Reality is:

When I look at my photos on the phone (7plus) I have to really pay atention if the photo was shot using iphone in portrait mode or with my Fuji Xpro.

Thats it guys.

" If you truly care about great photography, you own an iPhone" ?????????

If you truly care about photography you buy a porper camera.

Just my opinion.

This is the Mac vs PC argument again. A PC can consist of trillions of different components, and you can run multiple OS on it. For a mac there are 5 different hardware options available, all made by Apple. And there is one OS (ignoring stuff made by hackers).

Therefor Mac is a more orderly environment. Yes, that is very obvious.

And now this guy (that earlier worked with Android) have detected that. What fantastic news! Or ... rather ... how nice for him. Or ... whatever.

BTW ... if you want a really fast machine with wooping graphics for a reasonable price, it is not a Mac. The same goes for IPhone. Those iPhones are not cheap.

the hype is started because another iphone is coming for the fanboys.........
so don' t look elsewhere what' s available.......

nice Ad, iphone photos are crap

"If you truly care about great photography, you own an iPhone. If you don't mind being a few years behind, buy an Android."

Ridiculous remark. If you truly care about photography you don't use a mobile phone - you use a proper camera.

No wonder the guy was fired by Google. He has been overcome by the apple reality distortion field. The fact is Samsung's cameras are better. My note 4 had a better camera than my friends Iphone 6S. I now have a Galaxy S8+ which has an unbelievable camera but I still us my Nikon D750 as well.

People seems to misunderstood Vic's post.

An iPhone to a DSLR is akin to a car to a truck. Yes, photographers will still use DSLR. Nobody said a professional photographers must use an iPhone. But majority of lay users will find their smartphones to be just fine as a photo taking tool. Just because you can use a DSLR, doesn't mean your non-techie friends must do the same.

And Vic's point is actually about how Apple can push things quicker on their platform than Android, simply because Apple makes both the software and hardware. On Android, Google has to juggle their software innovation with the hardware by third parties, plus even if they pushed new APIs, majority of Android users won't see/get it. And if Samsung or the OEMs have an innovation, it will take time to sync back to Google. Just read about how the next version of Android will finally have official APIs for battery levels for bluetooth devices.
That's Vic's underlying point.

Samsung all the way.....

I love the Apple interface and love my 7 Plus Portrait Mode, but I think some Samsung cameras have better OOC shots (a bit more punch and color without going overboard) and the Google Pixel looks superior to all of them while peeping. So it's hard for me to take sides at this. I've seen stunning smart phone photos on all platforms and devices and am happy so many people are getting so good at shooting.

I don't care about the Apple vs. Android argument. I'm annoyed about two things:

- As a software dev & photographer his arguments are nonsensical. So, either his technical understanding is on a level that lead to him being let off from Google or he's thinking "I'll just write some techno mumbo jumbo, I'll sound smart and people wouldn't understand anyway". What he wrote is either cringe-worthy or insulting or maybe both.

- DPR posting a click-bait article (again) which is pretty much devoid of any good information. I see it as falling down to the level of many other sites that only care about the number of clicks and screen time. Shame on you.

I know nobody cares but you have earned a place on my blocked sites list. I'll see myself out.

To be honest more and more Instagram shots are iPhone 7+ instead of FF 50mm 1.8. It does not work in every context but with a little effort your iPhone is just faster. I have plenty of examples.

Jeezzz!
The photographer behind "Behind the scenes: Shooting a $2.5 million car with a $50,000 camera" should of use iPhine 7+!
Those nice blurred backgrounds iPhone 7+ can do could not be replicated by his medium format 100Mp "useless" camera!
Get an iPhone man!
:)

Well my brother's best friend's sister prefers to use a polaroid...
thus, please abandon everything else.

and please spare me the "virtues" of computational photography

I think that most would agree on the following "facts":
- Take a photo with a modern, top of the line smartphone be this a google Pixel, the iPhone, Samsung S8, or whatever else that is "up to date and top specced" and the results will, decent light given, all be rather good these days IF the OPERATOR knows what he or she is doing (just as with every other camera).

- take the same picture in bad light, and your 1"+ sensor compact camera, APS-C + larger DSLR / MILC will blow the smartphone out of the water for plain IQ.

- a DSLR /MILC or even every compact with a real zoom lens, is more FLEXIBLE / ADAPTABLE compared to those smartphones.... at the price of portability.

- Try playing with aperture on a smartphone... if such stuff is what is of interest to your photography, well the smartphone will fall short.

Used iPhone since 2010. Now I have an LG V20 because of the dual lens. One lens is WIDEANGLE.
Awesome.
Bokeh control? I do it with software, then I have full control.

And now the more I use Android the more I like it. No longer use the iPad Mini, now I have an LG V496 Tablet. Bought for $77.

Just wow,
His bigest argument is that the android has too many choices and options. Thus Apple is better, because you are limited and stuck with one option.
Sorry even that is garbage as there are other camera options on iphone.
If you truely care about photography, you learn how to take photos, the tool you use if irrelevant.
This post makes me feel that Apple has finnaly lost control and is grasping to get market share. I will not be surprised now if lots of movie stars and athletes start saying how good Apple is. To me its a sign of the end.

And this is a news-worthy article? I mean, I'm sure somewhere someone working at a Ford dealership drives a Chevy or a Honda.... And I know there has to be some Mac heads working at Microsoft since they develop Office 365 for the Mac.... see where I'm going with this.... So what if the "former" Google worker likes the iPhone?

that this nonsense is a paid apple initiative designed to remove the last barriers to i phone domination as a camera ... this cretin needs to come clean about how many pieces of apple silver he put in his pocket to debase himself, and lie for the fortunes of apple ...the greatest threat to real photography and real cameras in the world today

" If you truly care about great photography, you own an iPhone"

HaHaHa. If you really care about photography you own a real camera. If all you want to do is take snapshots you own an iPhone. The iPhone works for most people but most people aren't serious enough to "truly care about photography".

Why is his OPINION relevant ?
Troll News ?

If someone says that background blurring means the end of DSLR (even if just "for most people"), I'd say their opinions on photography can be safely ignored.

As for the "for most people" part, that has been true for some time already. Those photographers that stay with dedicated cameras are exactly those who don't get swayed by phone tricks.

As much as I love my iPhone 7 Plus with its two lenses, the "portrait mode" with its background blurring just doesn't look right in most situations. It's a gimmick, a trickery. It's different from a DSLR camera with a portrait lens. In many situations it's like a cheap Photoshop creation where a person is cut from one image and pasted into another one. When both lenses are used separately in good light, the iPhone 7 Plus is a rather good camera however, especially when used in RAW mode.

While Gundotra made some valid criticisms of the Android platform, he lost all credibility by closing with the comment that anyone settling for an Android phone will be years behind iPhone owners in photography. The reality is that competing flagship smartphones from Samsung and others have offered superior cameras for at least a the last year or two, particularly in terms of low light autofocus performance, dynamic rage, and image quality.

I have no interest in owning an Android phone, but idiotic statements lie this need to be called out.

He spends great length describing the conditions that should make Apple the better platform, then fails to identify those distinguishing features (other than Apple portrait mode) that have arisen from that. If anything, he defeats his own argument by failing to list more than one distinguishing feature of the IPhone that matters for photography.

My experience: both Android and IPhone have fantastic imaging capabilities. I've shot both the Samsung S7 and IPhone 7 and I chose the former.

"the end of the DSLR for most people" - D*ckhead comment.

Not an apple fan and refuse to use their products for myself but what he says is not without merit. If you've ever tried using the Android API you'll quickly discover what a mess it is. There is unexplained behavior all over the place and hardware compatibility is a nightmare. Almost every 3rd party app has people complaining it won't work on their device. Want to access a new feature, forget about it, you'll have to wait till the next API update and then you'll only be able to use it on devices that run the next version of Android (and very few devices update, usually only flagships). I really wish Microsoft had been more sucessful in the phone space as they know how to maintain an operating system.

Sounds like sour grapes to me... What if you care more about dynamic range or low light performance than a fake DoF effect? Google is still "crushing it" with their latest implementation of HDR+ on the Pixel line... They arguably took the software based computational approach farther than anyone has.

Talking about all of the Android market like it's one homogenous soup is kinda pointless, if you're gonna make a comparison you need to get down to specific phone models. I'm pretty impressed with what Google has done on their own/latest phones and I didn't even buy it for the camera, there just aren't a lot of great choices <5.5"...

If OnePlus made a smaller phone I'd probably buy that instead (or maybe not, proprietary fast charging is one of the few turnoffs on the otherwise excellent OP line, USB PD is the future). Still, the quick multi frame grab and processing Google has managed is quite effective, to a much higher degree than any similar implementation.

Most people don't have DSLR's, or other ILC's. They used to have $100 to $200 compact cameras, but now they have cell phones cameras. Most people just want cameras that make people and places look nice. As a lot of the discussion shows, cell phone cameras are getting better and better at dumbing down real life to make pictures look like some may want them to look. But I want to see the lines in grandpa's face...they tell a story... You can't program to reproduce the real uniqueness that exists in real life. And for me, thank goodness.

That's rich. People bragging about iPhone bokeh, when they're just badly done gaussian blur effects. I'd rather take a cellphone shot with no background blurring than obviously fake bokeh. Try shooting with a light source in the frame and you'll start seeing just how awful and tacky it looks. Worse still when people take an obviously wide shot and blur everything else out but themselves.

At least the Huawei P9/P10's dual cameras uses one camera to take an in-focus shot, and the other way out of focus to composite them together to generate real background blur.

How come Sony's phones take horrible photos (most of their models) unlike their brilliant mirrorless line up?

I prefer Prego spaghetti sauce to Ragu, but I'm not stupid enough to think that Italian restaurants have anything to worry about.

I'm an iOS user, but even I have to admit that the Pixel is the camera to beat right now. The new iPhone coming out may just do that but not right now.

Cheap sensationalism. "The end of DSLR for most people...". Is that what it takes to get people to read your blabber? Just come out and say it, mobile phone cameras are getting better, there are people who prefer it for variety of reasons. But hey, truth does not sell. On the other hand, if you say, "The end of the world is near", then people will read on. "The new processor in iPhone renders iPad obsolete". "The iPad Pro kills MacBook line". "36MP camera from Nikon obliterates 100M PhaseOne in controlled high temperature tests".

Viewing the prints under a microscope the iPhone clearly produces less detail than Ilford Delta Pro 100 Fine Grain Medium Speed, Black and White Film, ISO 100 shot through an Arca-Swiss F-Classic 8x10 View Camera.
It is, however, somewhat easier to post the iPhone shots to Facebook.