The resolution of the 8-megapixel camera in the iPhone 4S is rather astonishingly good for such a small lens and sensor. Here are a couple photos I took today of a similar subject. One photo was taken with my iPhone 4S, the other with a Canon 5D Mark II equipped with a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 zoom. The Canon is a 21-megapixel pro-level camera. Neither photo has been altered in post-processing except to shrink both images to 36 inches in width and then cropping the Canon image down to 24 inches in height to match the iPhone image’s dimensions. For that I used Pixelmator, a low-cost but reasonably good alternative to Photoshop for Mac computers.
The Canon 5D Mark II image started at 78 inches wide, the iPhone 4S image at 45.33 inches wide. You would think the iPhone image would suffer from being expanded to 78 inches wide – however, when I did that, it still looked incredibly sharp. You’ll have to trust me on that since I only uploaded the 36×24 images here.
The iPhone camera is too limited to replace a DSLR, but it can produce high-quality images.
Click each image to enlarge. Can you tell, without looking at the exif, which of these was shot with the iPhone and which was shot with the Canon?
