DP review has tested the iPhone 5S’s camera and – surprise – it’s awesome. At ten long pages (all requiring a click to reach, as is DP Review’s annoying style) it’s an epic read that you’ll probably want to add to your Instapaper queue, but you can always skip to the conclusion and read the rather amusing list of “bad” points that the reviewers have come up with to make the article “balanced.”
The 8MP camera in the iPhone is, by all accounts, a triumph of hardware and software working together, which is exactly what Apple does best. Burst mode has existed since motor drives were strapped to 35mm film SLRs, and slow-motion video has been around since someone worked out how to hand-crank their movie camera a little faster than usual. But Apple made both not only easy but fun to use (and fun to manage!).
Here’s the money quote, for those of you who don’t want to read anything:
The 5s is a photographic lightning bolt, with a blazing-fast (and immediately accessible) 10-frames-per-second burst mode. There’s also virtually no shutter lag, and shot-to-shot times are essentially instantaneous.
The conclusion is actually pretty hilarious. “The Good” lists “Panorama mode better than most,” “Very responsive operation, negligible shutter lag,” and “Very fast shot-to-shot time, 10 fps continuous burst” as plus points, along with several more great points. And then it tries to “balance” this with crap like “No dedicated, two-stage shutter button,” and a moan that it has less resolution than a camera with a higher resolution (“Less detail in good light than some higher-res sensors”).
The overall score is the best part. I guess you could say that 8.1 (out of ten) is pretty good if this is being graded alongside things like the Fujifilm X100S and Canon 5D, but as it’s being compared to other smartphones it’s absurd. What the hell does it take to get a ten? This right here is a great example of why we don’t use percentages to grade our reviews here at Cult of Mac – they’re meaningless (and yes, DP Review looks like it’s marking out of ten, but the troublesome “point one” in 8.1 turns it into a percentage with a misplaced decimal point).
Anyhow, rant over. The iPhone 5S has an amazing camera, which you probably knew already.
Source DP Review
