Looking back on iPhone 4S: The devices that finally convinced that photography world that smartphones were “real cameras”
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Until the iPhone 4’s iOS 4.1 update, Apple played fair when competing against traditional dedicated cameras. In their normal shooting modes, iPhones captured a single image every time the user pushed the button. With that update, however, Apple introduced its HDR mode. It was clunky and you had to turn it on manually, but it was the iPhone’s first wiggle out of the primordial mud of traditional image capture and into our current era of computational photography.
When we tested the iPhone 4S in the Popular Photography lab, it went through a battery of tests that we had honed across decades. The process required neurotically detailed test charts, cinema-grade, flicker-free lights, and a $1 million table that floated on a bed of air to mitigate tiny vibrations that could sully results. At the time, the 8-megapixel iPhone camera lost handily to our favorite dedicated compact camera (the iconic Canon S95) in just about every regard.
The built-in HDR feature had debuted in a software update before the 4S’s release and didn’t even get a mention in the test. The new mode shot three images at three different exposure levels (photographers call this bracketing) and used information from all of them to create something beyond the capabilities of a single exposure. We had plenty of tutorials on the PopPhoto site explaining how to do the process manually through Photoshop and other editing programs, and they typically ranked among our highest-trafficked stories.
By the time the iPhone 8 debuted in 2017, Auto HDR had taken over as the default setting for iPhone photography—you had to go find the settings and turn it off if you didn’t want it. As I recall, lots of Popular Photography readers did that work to turn it off. Purists (or nerds, depending on your outlook) were appalled at the idea of all that computing power affecting their image before they even got to see it.
Looking back on that time, more than anything, I remember debates about whether or not the iPhone was a “real” camera. The iPhone 4 was already the most popular camera on Flickr at the time (which was an important indicator in the photography world back then). But, purists hated the idea of the camera as a line item on a spec sheet for a multipurpose device—it was the imaging equivalent to telling an audiophile that you use the headphones that came in the box with your smartphone at the time. They really hated the idea of a computer doing all that processing to combine multiple images right out of the gate. Even in my iPhone 4S announcement post, I wrote, “But, whether you love it or hate it, you can’t deny that it just got a lot better.” I was talking about the backside-illuminated sensor back then (now common in digital cameras and the initial reason we ran the 4S through the test lab), but that fledgling HDR tech was waiting in the wings.
Of course, the battle of cell phone cameras vs. compact certainly doesn’t stop at these numbers. When you consider sheer convenience and connectivity, the iPhone dominates. If you’re more concerned with image quality and control — as we assume most of you reading this are — a dedicated camera still offers some noticeable advantages. But, in the end, it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have both handy. —The conclusion of the PopPhoto iPhone 4S test
The PopPhoto lab is long gone, ironically disassembled just as the iPhone 8 debuted back in 2017. Now, only the most curmudgeonly purist would even think of arguing against the iPhone as a “real camera.” Looking back on those original iPhone 4S sample images (shot by PopSci’s then-digital director John Mahoney), it makes me slightly nostalgic for the days of grainy iPhone photos with imperfect white balance. The modern iPhone handles all of that. It’s a nice little reminder that I still have a little bit of that purist (or yes, nerd) left in me.
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