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nerdy | 5 years ago

Bokeh is aperture and distance to subject, yes... but also sensor size. Phones have smaller sensors than even crop cameras.

Some phones actually have quite fast lenses. The iPhone 11 pro wide lens is f/1.8.

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lostapathy|5 years ago

f/1.8 on an iphone and f/1.8 on a full frame camera might be the same number, but they are totally different animals.

The amount of bokeh you get between the two sensor sizes, even with the same f/1.8, exposure, and ISO, is going to be vastly different.

dr_zoidberg|5 years ago

And the amount of light that enters the sensor through the lens is insanely different. A couple of years ago I moved from a Canon G16 with a f/1.8-2.8 6.1-30.5mm (28-140mm FF eq) lens to a Olympus OM-D EM-10 with its pancake f/3.5-5.6 14-42mm (28-84mm FF eq) lens.

Long story short, the pancake gets almost 3 times as much light as the canon integrated lens, despite the higher f number, because of the areas and sizes involved on both. And if I had gone for an APS-C for FF camera, we'd be talking in the order of 5 to 10x more light (hence, better low light images, or the ability to use shorter exposures for the same results).

Phones f/1.8 cameras are great -- comparing to other phones. If you compare them to a camera (almost any camera), they're in trouble.

calaphos|5 years ago

The factor is not directly sensor size but rather focal length of the lens. But with smaller sensors comes a smaller field of view on the same focal length, such that you need to reduce focal length to keep it the same. I think for phone cameras the factor is ~10x compared to 35mm sensors.