Is using Apple ProRAW worth it? We test it on the iPhone 12 Pro Max
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- Anonymous
- pQr
- 20 Dec 2020
I see that Apple's dng files still suffer from watercolor noise reduction. That's a huge issue. In my opinion removing watercolor noise reduction would be the most important thing of a raw file besides adjusting the white balance. Google's Pixel phones don't suffer from watercolor noise reduction in the HDR+ dng files as far as I know.
- ?
- Anonymous
- pQr
- 20 Dec 2020
"but I've found that shooting RAW on a phone doesn't yield better results than the phone's excellent computational photography does."
That's not necessarily correct.
A problem is that most photographers simply don't know how to take the best photos.
One needs to expose for the highlights and brighten the shadows afterwards. This way it's of course possible to get less blown out highlights.
Also, one needs to choose the highest Iso without blowing out the highlights. Many photographers think that a high Iso at the same exposure time and f number leads to noisier images, but it is the opposite, a very common misunderstanding. A high gain leads to less noisy raw data.
Also, out of camera jpgs often don't have the correct white balance. Adjusting the white balance afterwards leads to more accurate colors.
Noise reduction is also too aggressive in out of camera jpgs.