I had a Pixel 6A and 7A in the last couple of years, mostly as an experiment. The computational photography side of it was a complete mess, mutilating many photos from crazy levels of over-sharpening through to turning things into weird oil paintings. Absolutely hated both of them. I do have photos of myself with a North Face hat taken on them though and they came out fine!
Crawled back to an iPhone and paid through the nose in the end.
Odd. My Pixel 6 is really quite a good camera. The stock app on GrapheneOS is great when you just want to take a quick photo, and OpenCamera is full featured and very useful when you want to tweak the settings and fiddle around with various options.
The iPhone always messed up the colors of the PNW for me. It was one of the reasons why I finally took the leap and got an SLR style body before I moved there.
I have no issue using e.g. AI-assisted patch and heal tools in Photoshop and Lightroom. I have control over the use of the statistical priors there. But I don’t want the camera taking the pictures for me.
The iPhone tends to have a weird appraisal of white balance I have found so that might be the issue. If you shoot ProRaw (need a Pro suffixed device) you get a better copy of what hit the sensor than HEIC/JPEG.
But yeah DSLR/mirrorless if you want something accurate. Then again everyone just mutilates the thing in their own special way later in Lightroom...
I’ve had the same experience. Switched to the pixel 6, had it for a year, bought the iPhone 15 Pro. I make a hell of a lot less than a lot of the commenters here, so the decision to do so was incredibly costly. I made it, in part, because I take a lot of photos.
At its best, the Pixel produces phenomenal photos. At its worst, they are horrendous. The iPhone consistently does well. With the Pixel I was getting disgusting over-sharpening, to the point I would screenshot photos as a few seconds after taking them. If I didn't screenshot, I would watch in dismay as the post-processing ruined it. The lens flare was frequently awful — lines that swept across the entire image. When I complained, the community said I should leverage this flaw in an artistic way. The video was awful, and the microphone was noisy. A few of my photos have had inexplicable black squares. Occasionally the camera lagged or crashed. My iPhone camera has messed up, but not like the pixel does.
I don’t know why everyone seems to think it’s better. Maybe somehow mine was defective, but I could find posts to corroborate every issue I had.
Much of the "smarts" is in the camera app itself, not in the OS support for the hardware, as far as I understand it, so no it shouldn't. That might be good or bad depending on your perspective.
Ok, so it seems one would not need to switch phones (or ecosystem) because of related issues, one could just switch apps and use OpenCamera or something like this instead.
Comments
I had a Pixel 6A and 7A in the last couple of years, mostly as an experiment. The computational photography side of it was a complete mess, mutilating many photos from crazy levels of over-sharpening through to turning things into weird oil paintings. Absolutely hated both of them. I do have photos of myself with a North Face hat taken on them though and they came out fine!
Crawled back to an iPhone and paid through the nose in the end.
Edit: crop from the 6a: https://imgur.com/a/RO0UYev
Odd. My Pixel 6 is really quite a good camera. The stock app on GrapheneOS is great when you just want to take a quick photo, and OpenCamera is full featured and very useful when you want to tweak the settings and fiddle around with various options.
I never have anything weird.
Mine was so bad I bought a Nikon mirrorless. That was the Google default app though rather than anything open source backed.
The iPhone always messed up the colors of the PNW for me. It was one of the reasons why I finally took the leap and got an SLR style body before I moved there.
I have no issue using e.g. AI-assisted patch and heal tools in Photoshop and Lightroom. I have control over the use of the statistical priors there. But I don’t want the camera taking the pictures for me.
The iPhone tends to have a weird appraisal of white balance I have found so that might be the issue. If you shoot ProRaw (need a Pro suffixed device) you get a better copy of what hit the sensor than HEIC/JPEG.
But yeah DSLR/mirrorless if you want something accurate. Then again everyone just mutilates the thing in their own special way later in Lightroom...
What is PNW?
Pacific North West region of North America
I’ve had the same experience. Switched to the pixel 6, had it for a year, bought the iPhone 15 Pro. I make a hell of a lot less than a lot of the commenters here, so the decision to do so was incredibly costly. I made it, in part, because I take a lot of photos.
At its best, the Pixel produces phenomenal photos. At its worst, they are horrendous. The iPhone consistently does well. With the Pixel I was getting disgusting over-sharpening, to the point I would screenshot photos as a few seconds after taking them. If I didn't screenshot, I would watch in dismay as the post-processing ruined it. The lens flare was frequently awful — lines that swept across the entire image. When I complained, the community said I should leverage this flaw in an artistic way. The video was awful, and the microphone was noisy. A few of my photos have had inexplicable black squares. Occasionally the camera lagged or crashed. My iPhone camera has messed up, but not like the pixel does.
I don’t know why everyone seems to think it’s better. Maybe somehow mine was defective, but I could find posts to corroborate every issue I had.
I just bought an iPhone 15 Pro this afternoon and my wallet is rolling around in agony so I sympathise.
Similar experiences across the board. I did a very special once in a lifetime trip and it sort of ruined the memories a little.
I think the people who think it's better haven't used a good phone or camera for a while.
Do those phones do this even on alternative photo apps?
Much of the "smarts" is in the camera app itself, not in the OS support for the hardware, as far as I understand it, so no it shouldn't. That might be good or bad depending on your perspective.
Ok, so it seems one would not need to switch phones (or ecosystem) because of related issues, one could just switch apps and use OpenCamera or something like this instead.
Weird, last 3-4 phones I owned were Pixels, never ever had a single issue.