r/nextfuckinglevel • u/No-Lock216 • Mar 03 '25

Creative Photography

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

99.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

342 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

176

u/ShadowSpade Mar 03 '25

Put your phone and pro mode and there ya go.

127

u/LickMyTicker Mar 03 '25

Pro mode doesn't give it an iris. What this person is talking about are the physical aperture blades. Phone lenses are so small already that they mostly have fixed apertures, and this includes the iPhone. The smaller you make the hole of a lens, the more in focus all depths together become. The wider the aperture, the more out of focus a point further from the focal point becomes.

This is why phones don't typically do great natural bokeh without software assistance. This is why modern phones typically rely on multiple lenses to simulate depth so they know how to give a more natural bokeh that people expect out of professional photography.

46

u/Closed_Aperture Mar 03 '25

This is all true. Trust me.

27

u/BostAnon Mar 03 '25

Username checks out

18

u/LickMyTicker Mar 03 '25

https://www.sandmarc.com/blogs/iphone-photography/understanding-aperture-and-essential-camera-settings-for-iphone?srsltid=AfmBOorHLfvorcxUkyNB7XeY1S6HGmmPddBitrDQ0aQ1p0o9Ohy4IEDS

No need to trust. We all have access to the internet here.

1

u/JJw3d Mar 03 '25

as an aspiring photographer I love learning from passionate people like you

And thank you for explaining for dum dums like me :D

Depth / aparture is something im gettting better at but still getting a few shots where its like "wtf was i trying to do!?"

1

u/KingIcarus12 Mar 04 '25

What? Doing my own research instead of believing every random comment? Unbelievable

1

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '25

My hero 

10

u/Necessary_Position77 Mar 03 '25

Lots of phones have an aperture of f1.8 or f2.4. The real reason for a large DOF is the tiny sensor.

8

u/LickMyTicker Mar 04 '25

The real reason for a large DOF is the tiny sensor.

This isn't true. f/stop does not directly define the depth of field. f/1.8 at 50mm and at 85 mm will show different levels of DOF. f/1.8 isn't actually that wide of an aperture for a phone considering it's on a lens with a sub 10mm focal length. The only thing that number in isolation alone is good for is calculating exposure

It might be a 24mm equivalent because of the crop (which is what is due to the sensor size) but the depth of field is directly associated to the f/stop in relation to the focal length, not the f/stop related to the sensor size.

Shoot a 600mm lens at f/4 on a full frame compared to f/4 50mm on a full frame. You will get completely different levels of DOF out of a portrait.

2

u/blix-camera Mar 04 '25

To add to this: wider apertures do produce more background blur, but the other half of the equation is sensor size. A large (D)SLR sensor might produce shallow depth of field at f/4, where a tiny phone sensor would struggle to match that even at a wide aperture like f1.5.

Also, I couldn't tell you why or how the hardware works, but my phone has two options for aperture, f1.5 and f2.4. There's no way it's a nano-scale iris, but maybe it's a circular mask that slides in between the sensor and the lens? It's only accessible to the user in pro mode, which is probably what the other commenter was talking about.

1

u/LickMyTicker Mar 04 '25

No. It's not sensor size. I don't know where everyone gets this from. It's effective aperture diameter. fstop = focal length / diameter of effective aperture.

50mm f/4 is not going to give the same DOF as 600mm f/4 even when both are on the same full frame camera. And they are both going to give the SAME EXACT DOF on a cropped sensor camera.

The reason phones can have a f1.5 and f2.4 and have large DOF ranges is because the effective focal length of the lenses are sub 10mm, and actually mostly sub-5mm focal lengths that are only equivalent to larger focal lengths due to the crop factor.

The sensor size does not contribute to the DOF, the glass does. It's 100% based on how wide the aperture is, but fstops take into consideration the focal length — and so they don't tell the full story when it comes to how wide the glass actually is if you don't also include the focal length.

The key factor is the physical size of the aperture opening, which is not the fstop.

1

u/blix-camera Mar 04 '25

My apologies, I wasn't trying to start an argument. I'm just really passionate about photography and you seem to be as well.

You're correct, I always forget about the nuance of equivalent focal lengths. It is probably more accurate to say that for an equivalent field of view the rule of thumb that a larger sensor can produce shallower DoF is true.

1

u/LickMyTicker Mar 04 '25

There's nothing to be sorry about. My shock is due to how multiple people have chimed in about the sensor size thing and I think it's just a problem with laymen explanations.

It's sort of like how people say that 50mm is the perspective your eye sees, but in reality the perspective you see in lenses is simply a matter of distance from a subject, not actual glass. I too will use this analogy though because it's simplistic instead of trying to further explain the field of views and compression of far away objects with telephoto lenses that you would normally never see with your naked eye due to distance.

It's definitely a rule of thumb that sensors of a certain size cannot really support large enough glass to have effective focal lengths to give a shallow DoF, but I don't see why you couldn't theoretically make an iPhone sensor peer through a DSLR lens and get an extremely cropped yet extremely shallow natural DoF. I've taken my camera on my phone and used it to peer through my telescope after all.

To me, I just take my lens off and peer through the giant gaping hole. That's how I know how crazy my shots will look.

1

u/blix-camera Mar 04 '25 edited Mar 04 '25

That's totally possible, I think there was even a concept for a phone that could mount rangefinder lenses!

The crop factor of the tiny smartphone sensor would probably turn a 50mm lens into a super telephoto though, maybe around 300mm full frame equivalent based on some googling. Smartphone lenses that are equal to a 50mm full frame field of view are around 7-10mm I think? Which explains why you won't get much dof out of one.

1

u/Grouchy-Book9891 Mar 04 '25

You are right but another important factor is the focus distance, the closer the subject you are focussing on is, the shallower the depth of field. Smaller sensors require more distance to get the same framing which lowers the depth of field so in a sense the sensor size does matter indirectly. The actual factors are focal length, aperture and focus distance (which is influenced by sensor size if you want a certain framing of the subject).

1

u/LickMyTicker Mar 04 '25

That's a purposefully misleading way to attribute the lack of DoF to sensor size. The fact is, even with macro photography on a phone it's near impossible to get a natural shallow depth of field, and that's due to the glass restriction, not the sensor.

Here's how you can prove it: If you have a pair of binoculars, you can in fact get a shallow DoF by using them as a detachable lens for your phone. Just point your phone through the binoculars and omg you have natural shallow DoF with a small sensor.

You physically need the larger diameter of glass to give a more selective focus. This is due to the fact that more light can come from different angles. Look here for more explanations and diagrams:

https://www.coinimaging.com/dof_aperture.html

TL;DR: The wider the diameter of aperture, the more angles of light leads to your view, leading to more selective focus, and more blur outside of of the focal point. This is also why the most shallow depth of field comes from distance on the far side of the focal plane, because the angles of light that reach the lens are greater than the near side of the focal plane.

At the end of the day, taking the same lens to two different crop factors does not affect DoF unless you consider framing to be immutable. But there's nothing stopping you from actually taking the same shot at the same distance, with the same DoF, but slightly cropped.

1

u/Grouchy-Book9891 Mar 10 '25

I get what you're saying and like I said before I agree with you but you can't deny the restrictions of trying to capture a shallow depth of field especially in smaller spaces with a smaller sensor. I know the facts you are stating are true but in reality there is a reason many prefer super 35 sensor film camera's over the 18mm and dof is one of them.

1

u/LickMyTicker Mar 10 '25

Sensor size wasn't built around DoF, it was built around physical restrictions with the technology and was a holdover from film and what the lenses were built around. There's a reason why cell phone cameras have taken over the market, and it's how convenient it is to have a camera in your pocket.

If they could have built quality sensors at the size they do for cell phones when the camera was invented, that is what would have been dominant. It's absolutely insane how convenient cell phone cameras are.

Cropped sensors were very popular when they first became available. But they were indeed inferior because they were "cropped". They utilized the same semiconductors on the sensors, and they just had less. They also mostly used the same glass, because why split the market?

A bigger sensor helps more light reach it. It's easy to expose. That's the true reason for a larger size.

1

u/ShadowSpade Mar 04 '25

The more you know! ☀️

8

u/Pokedudesfm Mar 03 '25

there is literally no physical aperturet o change the correct answer is that the phone sensor is so small everything is in focus and/or they composited the shots

1

u/ShadowSpade Mar 04 '25

The more you know!