{"id":9053,"date":"2019-07-25T09:41:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-25T08:41:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=9053"},"modified":"2026-03-26T17:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T21:02:24","slug":"iphone-raw-photography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2019\/07\/25\/iphone-raw-photography\/","title":{"rendered":"iPhone RAW photography"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I did some comparative analysis of the image quality from three cameras and wrote about it here. These results were interesting and have affected my way forward with photography. While I had a suitable subject set up, I thought that I would carry out another comparison with the camera that is just about always<\/em> to hand: my iPhone \u2026<\/p>\n

What I was not trying to do was compare the iPhone with \u201creal\u201d cameras [though it would not do too badly in that comparison!]. What I was interested in was evaluating how I use the iPhone to take photos. Most iPhone photographers use the standard built-in app and this can produce great results. As mine is an iPhone 7 PLUS, which has two cameras, the app can perform some very clever tricks. However, the app can only capture JPEG [or HEIC] which is rather processed\/compressed. I would rather shoot RAW.<\/p>\n

As Apple used to say [and maybe still do], \u201cthere\u2019s an app for that\u201d and, indeed, there are a number of apps that capture RAW format images [DNG to be precise] and, thus, give the photographer more control and latitude. Over the last couple of years, I have tried a number of apps for this job – 4 in total, which is by no means exhaustive. The ones I tried were: ProCamera, Obscura, Halide and Lightroom Mobile. All of them produced what seemed to be acceptable results. In fact, I rather assumed that a RAW image was a RAW image and did not think about it too much. I concentrated on the operation and facilities of the apps and eventually settled on Lightroom Mobile as the synchronization with the desktop software was a breeze. I heard some rumors that different apps produced different results and this is what I set out to assess.<\/p>\n

Once again, I took the same picture, using the same settings, with each app. As the aperture is fixed [I used the \u201cwide angle\u201d camera], the only variable was ISO, so I chose 200. Then I inspected the results, mainly being concerned with image detail\/quality. Here are abstracts:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
LightRoom Mobile<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Obscura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
Halide<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"<\/a>
ProCamera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The bottom line is that the images do<\/em> vary. I have no understanding of why this is the case and will need to do some more research. My feeling is that Lightroom Mobile does worst and ProCamera may be best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I did some comparative analysis of the image quality from three cameras and wrote about it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[397,302],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-9053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-iphone","tag-off-topic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9707,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9053\/revisions\/9707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9053"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=9053"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=9053"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=9053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}