Accidental Tech Podcast656: A Long T-Shirt
https://atp.fm/656
The iPhone event! Reactions and analysis of the iPhone 17, 17 Pro, and Air; the Apple Watch Series 11, SE 3, and Ultra 3; and the AirPods Pro 3.
Sean Harding@atpfm I think you guys are too easy on Apple with respect to how they talk about the cameras. "Optical quality" and using the term "lens" for digital zoom ratios is veering *very* close to deceptive, IMHO. As nerds we can read between the lines, but normal people won't.
emi_dubyu@sharding @atpfm I’m a bit torn on this. If a device has a separate 12mp 2× and 48mp 1× camera, then even if the sensors were technically identical (same pixel pitch), it definitely has two cameras.
I think where they are misleading is they do not emphasise the *sensor size* differences for each “lens”.
Andy Norman@emi_dubyu @sharding @atpfm it is right there on screen when they announced it, it isn’t like they were hiding the 12MP crop. In fact they list it before the zoom level
@andynormancx @sharding @atpfm Where does that note the physical equivalent sensor size? It’s alluded to with the pixel pitch, but not clearly stated.
@emi_dubyu @sharding @atpfm I read it that your complaint was they weren't calling out that the second “lens” was only 12mp, you'd said that if a phone had two sensors at the pixel pitch they’d still be sensors. And the two modes of the telephoto are at the same pitch.
I'm also not sure how I feel about them leaning on them being different cameras/lenses. Although to normal people I expect they'll perform as if you had two different lenses/sensors (unless there are actual lens limitations)
@andynormancx @sharding @atpfm
I wish the standard was to list sensor sizes with metric dimensions. Or at least a metric diagonal. As a European I hate the fractional inches.
In the case of the iPhone, that would make the 4× sensor something like 10 by 7.5mm and the 8× would be a equivalent to a quarter of that area, 5 by 3.75mm.