Nice comparison video, it's pretty impressive how far cell phone cameras have come. The sensor dimension calculation is not quite right though a typical 1" sensor is *not* a 1" diagonal (Marques Brownlee did a video on this a couple years ago) the dimensions for a 1" sensor are 13.2mm X 8.8mm (for a 3:2 aspect sensor) The sensor dimensions for the 1/1.12" sensor are 11.4mm X 8.6mm and that's slightly larger than the iPhone 16 1/1.14" sensor. It's quite a bit smaller than your calculations (16mm X 12mm) but still has increased in size considerably over the years. Marques video: ruclips.net/video/mNqwY_1Xcy4/видео.html&ab_channel=MKBHDShorts Watching that video even Marques makes a mistake, says 13.8mm X 8.8mm rather than 13.2 X 8.8mm.
Ooooh that’s interesting! It was hard to find any info on the sensor (I couldn’t even find it on the Sony semiconductor website) so all I could do is guess. The 3:4 ratio came from looking at the image size dimensions in pixels Plus when I put my crude cutout up to my phone lens it was small enough to fit so I figured it was close enough 😂 I’ll check out Marques’ video, thanks for sharing it!
The focal length of the camera is 7mm with a full frame equivalent of 24mm. The crop factor is 24/7=3.43. A MFT sensor (crop 2.0) with same 4:3 aspect ratio is 17.3mm x 13mm. Hence, the iPhone sensor should be (17.3mm x 2/3.43)*(13mm x 2/3.43)=10.1mm x 7.6mm. That's less than half the area calculated in the video!
And you are also wrong) In the video we are talking about the iPhone 16 pro, the sensor diagonal of which is 1/1.28", and not 1/1.14", i.e. even smaller
Glad you noticed the iphone is stacking the pictures. My friend got a iphone 16 pro and when we took 30s pictures, when you look at image info it tells you 10s. Would be cool to move the actual cameras down to 10s and compare then. Edit: Also stack the real cameras 3x for true comparison.
@@ianlauerastro It will stack them in both HEIF and ProRAW. The metadata will show 30s on the HEIF, but you will see it as 10s on ProRAW. The stacking got much better at the point of iPhone15.
@@ShayneMostyn good to know! Literally just watched your iPhone astrophotography video this morning, awesome job. Thanks for inspiring folks to get out under the night sky 🫡
With the Google Pixel, it will typically run for 4 minutes and stack. You can also just stop it after 16 seconds and grab that image. It pretty much looks the same.
I live in Switzerland near Lake Constance, not too bad for light pollution, but not perfect. And when I tried stacking 10 of these „30 second“ Milky Way shots it turned out awful 😩🫣! BUT a few nights ago I did something different: I simply put on the 10-second-timer and put it flat on the floor. 10 seconds is obviously enough to make change to the 30 seconds mode. And boy was I impressed!! Cygnus beautifully above me, the different Milky Way areas well distinguishable. And when I stacked 10 of THESE pictures it got even better 🤩! Thx for the video 👍
Why is no body talking about the blue patches in the low light photos? Apparently there’s a manufacturer problem. If you get a 30 sec picture of your phone just sitting in a table you will see the blue patches in the dark background. It’s happening on the IPhone 16 pro models. Awesome tutorial really informative.
Yea, it also is on some 15 and even some 14 models and some have red instead of blue, some have more some less, i can only see the blue beams a little in his photo if you start in the bottom right corner and look it’s there in blue , when taking an actual night mode photo of the sky it’s not as noticeable though, and most people won’t even notice it because most people aren’t taking photos on nearly pitch black environments so they will never be effected by it anyway. I seen a guy comment said he’s had his iPhone 15 for a year and did the test and seen the blue but never even realized it on his own until he was shown and did the test. So for many they will never even know cause they don’t use it like that.
What do you mean? I mention it. Im hoping a replacement will be here shortly for mine. A heap of my audience have returned phones for it already. I cant believe nobody tested this before launch. Its really sad that such an issue exists these days.
@@ShayneMostyn not you Shayne lol, your the reason I’m driving an hour and a half away to exchange my iPhone 16 pro and hoping to get a good exchange without the blues like some of your other Facebook and RUclips folk have, I spoke to 2 I think that had good results on exchange . But yea sorry I was talking about the guy In This video, can see some of the blue beams in his photo and it seems like he would have seen it too as it is noticeable but he doesn’t say anything about it, was hoping maybe he did and maybe had a solution outside of exchange or return. Sorry for the misunderstandings, thanks for getting the facts out so we can get a fix I appreciate you! Called apple and that’s my only solution, or just deal with it. I honestly, like many others untill now, don’t know if this has been on any other phone as I’ve never with a previous one tried to check and only took casual night photos rare sky photos and those people that use the camera that way will never even know the issue exists. The main camera for me still works great w no issues and video is good as well. But once ya know it’s there ya can’t unsee it, and even if I rarely use it I want it to work well when I do lol, since I spent so much on it i want to at least know it works properly across the board, right on!
There's an app called ProCam that lets you set your photos to either use Apple's standard post-processing, Apple Smart HDR/Deep Fusion, or... Direct sensor capture. I wonder if that might get you more control and perhaps even better photos?
Wonderful video Ian! I'm a few versions back with the iPhone (13 pro), but also found the 30s trick by chance and was amazed at what it could do from a dark sky.
Thanks Nico! I’m so happy that modern phone cameras can capture the Milky Way. What a great entry point to get folks interested in astronomy and astrophotography.
Thank you very much for this awesome RUclips, you show me a lot about how high tech will ease the cost of such great hobby and how there is a hope in people like you guys to make the earth a better place to live. Well done job
I'm assuming you have a main sensor manufacture defect. Blue dots, lines or streaks aren't suppose to be there upon a 30sec exposure being done. You can confirm this by doing a 30 sec exposure on a table making sure no light enters the lens. If its pitch black congratulations your sensor is fine, but if theres blue lines, streaks, or blue pixels everywhere go get it replaced ASAP. It's starting to become a real problem that I gotta unfortunately get a replacement for my 16 pro max.
I had no idea! I just did the 30 sec test and yep, I see a strong blue color. I'll have to see what others are doing about it, and get in touch with Apple.
@@ianlauerastro get a replacement by them before the 14 day warranty runs out, because if you don’t they’ll charge you extra for that, just gotta pray that the next replacement doesn’t do the same.
@@Docsthetics they should, everyone that has this problem has successfully gotten another replacement as its starting to become a wider problem I can update you to see what they will do with mine's this saturday.
Basically all phones that have an astro mode do internal stacking. The Pixel series for example, does a 4 minute exposure in which I believe is a stack of 16 shots.
That's so awesome, I didn't know that! I knew some phones had an astro mode, but never looked into how they worked. I've not kept up with the latest phone tech so it's great to hear they're adding astrophotography modes.
Indeed. My samsung does 10 minute "exposures" but I'm not sure how it would compare to the Apple since I got pretty good results from a Bortle 4.. but the Apple could still look just as nice without that protected dark site available.
7:50 Wrong lenses were labeled here! Caption saying 1x is pointing at 5x, caption 5x at 1x, but the ultrawide caption is correct. Fantastic video! Loved it.
yo bro this video is fire, thank you so much for this helpful video! I am a photographer myself and I really like to take street photography, but sometimes I take stars and space and sky photos, and since soon I am getting the new Iphone 16 pro max myself, I am really excited that I will be able to expand my opportunities. Thank you again for this review❤!
Amazing work! Im really suprising how powerful the iPhone’s sensor is. Which app do you use for long exposures on the iPhone? I only can reach 1 sec exposure using some third party apps
It's just night mode in the default iPhone camera, though it's capped at 30s max when you set it to 10s max. Then just let it stabilize on a tripod or placing it face down on an edge of something so the back cameras face straight up into the sky, but leaving the bottom of your camera visible at the edge so you can hit the shutter.
Agreed - though there are 3rd party apps that give you more control over the camera. Would love to see those built in under an "advanced mode" or something like that
@@Burak2421 it's in the EXPERT RAW add on to regular camera. You will find it in Galaxy Store. After starting Expert Raw mode look at the top right corner, the Astro icon will be there :)
3:10 on 27 Oct I tried to capture the c/2023 a3 (tsuchinshan-atlas) with iPhone 16 pro Max 1x and 5x Lens, I even Got the shot but iPhone's post processing even on RAW Images ruined my photos Specifically the noise reduction and Image stacking 😔
The Sony IMX903 in the iPhone 16 pro is just under half the size of a Micro Four Thirds sensor, and a little over a quarter the size of the Fuji APS-C sensor. The bit of paper for "iPhone 16" shown at 7:25 should be about half the size. IMX903 total area - approx 104mm2 Micro Four Thirds total area - 221mm2 Fuji APSC total area - 366mm2 Full Frame total area - 860mm2
Hello, the iPhone takes several photos and then stacks them. This was demonstrated when using it in Lightpainting. You can see that it cuts the light in several exposures to then put them together and reduce noise and improve the image. The Samsung acts like a normal camera when you take long exposures and the more you expose, the more light enters the sensor and you must adjust the time so as not to burn or underexpose the photo. For this reason, the iPhone does this. It can be an advantage or a disadvantage since if you take light trails they come out cut off. Greetings from Spain, tested with the Samsung S24 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Great video! iPhone photography has come long way! I also didin’t know that Fujifilm X-T4 was such a capable camera when it comes to astrophotography even with the kit 18-55mm lens. Personally, I prefer the look of X-T4 over Sony A-7S3.
I personality have S24 Ultra and the first time i tried astrophotography with it i didn't expect much but the result after the first picture was more than mouth opening. The phone was taking pictures like a dslr which was completely unexpected. The phone also stacks the photos for you and gives you raw stacked image which is really impressive. It also stacks the photos in a way thay makes the stars dots instead of lines for longer exposures. The thing that completely blew my mind off was that the phone was able to capture the northern lights when i couldn't even see them with my own eyes. I though this was disturbance, noise or just light that was picked up but then i read that there was actually a very strong solar storm and the lights were reaching my country so then i made the connection. The fact that the S24 Ultra can make those kind of things just destroys Apple completely in my opinion. There are also a couple of videos in RUclips where people try astrophotography with the S24 Ultra and one of those people managed to capture the Andromeda galaxy and the Pleiades with only a tripod and the phone and the pictures were really impressive for a phone. I also managed to capture the andromeda galaxy without zooming at it as i was jist trying to take a picture of the milky way with 8 min exposure and the milky way can be seen very well as well as the Andromeda galaxy.
@@ianlauerastro some 3rd party apps will let you manually select. Also if you use portrait mode on the native app it will actually use the lens you selected..
@@deavo74 I've looked at some of the 3rd party apps in the app store for astro, which are quite amazing. For this video I wanted to see what the results would look like if I just used what was readily available, knowing a majority of folks might not want to fuss with additional apps and such. I would highly recommend one of these apps to anyone wanting to dive deeper into mobile phone astrophotography - the results I've seen from other folks are awesome.
Is it really true that the 5x will default to the main 1x camera in lowlight and when using nightmode and then do a digital zoom to get to 5x ? That doesnt sound good.
It’s also worth mentioning the perspective of viewing these images on a phone. That’s a mistake I make all the time. I just recently took a star photograph with my canon r6mk2 and on my 33” computer monitor I was blown away By how many stars you can see. But once I exported the same exact photo to my phone (which isn’t a 4k screen) I was actually disappointed by how much details was lost in the image.
Would be great to see this comparison in the southern hemisphere. The Milky Way is mostly in the southern sky which means in places like Australia, the photos are directly up rather than towards the horizon. And because the horizon isn’t in the way you can see the whole of the Milky Way.
this is a really nice video, very helpful and good to know that the iphone takes 3 10 second exposure pictures instead of one 30s one, i just want to point out that the 5x zoom lens is actually really really bad in low light and what you see is unfortunately just a cropped in image from the main sensor, you can see that clearly in daylight there is a clear jump between 4.9 zoom and 5x which is just not there when night mode is required, nonetheless keep up the good work :)
Ian, I can't believe you missed it - it's the same issue Shayne Mostyn shows in his iPhone 16 Pro Milky Way shots. The images have blue lines/dots all over them. Check the phone lying flat on the table in a dark environment and take the 30 sec shot. You'll see the issue
Great Video! Please reply with the stacking s/w you featured. My 1st out of box with iPhone 16 Pro Max showed NO Blue streaks. However, did experience a number of totally blank exposures. Users Note: Even on tripod, highly recommend using timer feature of iPhone as the mere touching of the camera will instantly shift the exposure from 30 sec back to 10 sec.
If camera companies embraced computational photography, we’d see even more impressive and practical results across all types of cameras. But of course, some people still argue that "cameras don't need that." Imagine the potential on an APS-C camera, like instead of waiting for a 30-second exposure, you could reduce it to around 7-8 seconds, avoid star trails, and even brighten the valley using smart HDR. All of this could be done in under 10 seconds, and with something as simple as a kit lens! Computational photography has the potential to truly revolutionize the way we approach photography by making advanced techniques more accessible, faster, and easier to achieve. It’s not about replacing traditional methods; it’s about enhancing them to unlock new creative possibilities. Hopefully, we’ll see camera manufacturers catch on and embrace these advancements instead of sticking to old methods. The future could be incredibly exciting!
Awesome video. Really searching for a new iphone and want to see its capability to take a shoot of the stars. Is the star trials that you mentioned and showed on the minute 5:24 shooting star?
hey man! there's a big hardware problem right now that affects about half of all 16 pro and pro max models including yours, it would be nice for it to have more reach! It's this problem where astrophotography pictures get these blue lines across the screen. the darker the environment, the worse it is. If you put your phone down on a desk, cameras facing down, and take a 30 second picture you should see the photo comes out almost entirely blue. A youtuber called shayne mostyn has talked about this in more detail. It would be awesome if you could talk about this as well! Currently, not enough people are complaining for apple to do anything about it, sadly...
I use halide and slow shutter camera apps on my iPhone 14 to do cool stuff like that. I like how slow shutter has a “bulb mode” so I can just let the sensor cook in the starlight for a while and get some star trails.
Stairs in aircraft stripes are due to the physical movement of the sensor or the lens element. Perhaps the iPhone senses the subject (stars) and automatically corrects Earth movement. Pentax DSLRs actually do something similar. Your theory of multiple exposures isn’t entirely correct; there would be gaps between individual sections, not stairs.
loved the vid ! Also I have a 15pm and I don't understand the use of the Pro RAW and Pro RES formats, can you explain it and show its utility in another video ?
great comparison, i love the video, very informative. In addition to that, I would also love to see the comparison between an iPhone and an Android phone, example Samsung S24 Ultra on Milky Way Photography. Cheers !!
idk if it's youtube but the iphone picture looks a lot more compressed, with the artifacts that you mentioned and general noise pattern in the sky. good tutorial, even if a bit stretched to the 10min mark imho.
some people are complaining about how many of the iphone 16 pro max models have a hardware fault where when you take pictures in extreme low light some blue lines would form in the background. Did you notice them in some of your pictures?
I think this would’ve been great to test with a more entry level apsc camera like a Sony a6400 or a canon t7i type thing if we wanted to get really cheap. I still think one of those cameras with a 16mm lens would blow the iPhone out of the water if you don’t do the 30 second exposures and go for something shorter but really take advantage of the better glass selection and manual controls. I remember getting pretty useable Astro shots as a teen on my d5200 I just didn’t have a wide lens so it didn’t look all that grand. I have some really beautiful shots done on my A7iii and I have yet to do any Astro on my A1
Awesome photo. But looking at those results, iPhone still cannot beat Galaxy S24 ultra with astromode. It can makes awesome photos with wide lens without iPhone NR artifacts, and does great job with zooms too.
@@ianlauerastro Yes, that would be awesome. Sadly, I do not get proper dark sky anywhere near me. But, few weeks back, we had super clear skies. I went out to wonder early morning stars, with supermoon and whole first view on winter constellation (orion, syrius, procyon). Sky was bright from supermoon, starting twilight, and ground lights, and yet still my S24ultra managed to snap with 5x zoom M24 purple hue in Orion's sword. But photo took 7 minutes. I am pretty sure i did multiple shots and did automatic stacking, but no idea how it works in detail.
Btw it is not how you calculate the size of the sensor. For example a one inch sensor is not one inch diagonally. The imaginary circle circumscribed about a rectangle is one inch so the actual size is different and depending on also on the aspect ratio(2:3) most of the time. I think veritasium have a video about it
7:21 Based on those cutouts*, Fuji has double the sensor size. Checked in photoshop, can stack two iphone sensors side by size for perfect fit on Fuji sensor. And then on next comparison, new iphone sensor is 4x the size of the old iphone 11 sensor shown. *Also, noticed down below someone calculated actual sensor sizes so my observation is based purely on cutouts in video. Area can be deceitful when looking at it like that. Reminds me of that math question with pizzas - whether you want 2 small ones or one larger. Where that one larger turns out to be more area than the 2 small ones combined, but visually it's easy to be fooled. Either way, good informative video, hopefully my comment didn't sound to snarky :D
No worries, glad you enjoyed the video :) It's tough because I couldn't find exact specifications on the sensor being used, only speculation that the iPhone is possibly using the Sony IMX903 sensor. Someone else commented that it's not using that sensor, though I can't find any confirmation anywhere on the what actually in the phone, just articles that guess.
The lines pointing to which camera is which is wrong, if you hold the phone in portrait the bottom camera is the 1x, top is 0.5, and the left one is the 5x
I captured the Andromeda using the 10X Telephoto lens on my s23 ultra last year. It came out amazing for a phone camera. It's a shame samsung discontinued the 10x camera and replaced it with a 5x in the 24 ultra.
7:50 - the position of the cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro is wrong. the 5x telephoto pentaprism is between the LiDAR & flash, while the 48MP Fusion Camera is on the top left.
@@iLuseMy1v1s from what I’m seeing others comment, sounds like the iPhone is at the bottom for astrophotography. But ~55% of people in the US own an iPhone, so my hope is by showing people the iPhone can take good Milky Way photos, it will get more people out under the night sky giving it a try!
Very cool video ! I have a 15 Pro and I was wondering if you knew how to lock the focus at infinity? For the life of me I cannot find a setting for that 😞
@@gooddad11 Thanks. I thought so as well but for some reason my focus hunts on bright objects like Jupiter or Venus or the recent Aurora and usually ends up not at infinity.
Buddy that iphone 16 is doing good but a Vivo x 100 pro or Xiaomi's flagship series phone with a 1 inch type sensor and Vivo also allows you to capture astro mode which opens the shutter for arround 2.5 min and also it stacks them together too I've used a half inch sensor with that perticular mode and it is impressive (I was shooting in a city lights) can say a brottle class 7 or 6 try to make a video on that 👍🏻👍🏻
Did you try shooting in ProRAW format ? You say it's an advantage of the professionnal cameras to shoot in RAW, but iPhones have a comparable format since a few years. By default it still processes the image, but you can revert it afterwards and basically start your editing from zero like with a RAW. You can probably get even better Milky Way pictures this way !
Nice comparison video, it's pretty impressive how far cell phone cameras have come.
The sensor dimension calculation is not quite right though a typical 1" sensor is *not* a 1" diagonal (Marques Brownlee did a video on this a couple years ago) the dimensions for a 1" sensor are 13.2mm X 8.8mm (for a 3:2 aspect sensor) The sensor dimensions for the 1/1.12" sensor are 11.4mm X 8.6mm and that's slightly larger than the iPhone 16 1/1.14" sensor. It's quite a bit smaller than your calculations (16mm X 12mm) but still has increased in size considerably over the years.
Marques video:
ruclips.net/video/mNqwY_1Xcy4/видео.html&ab_channel=MKBHDShorts
Watching that video even Marques makes a mistake, says 13.8mm X 8.8mm rather than 13.2 X 8.8mm.
Ooooh that’s interesting! It was hard to find any info on the sensor (I couldn’t even find it on the Sony semiconductor website) so all I could do is guess.
The 3:4 ratio came from looking at the image size dimensions in pixels
Plus when I put my crude cutout up to my phone lens it was small enough to fit so I figured it was close enough 😂
I’ll check out Marques’ video, thanks for sharing it!
Yep. 1 inch "type" sensor is what sony calls it. In RX100 1" type sensor is 13.2 by 8.8 mm.
The focal length of the camera is 7mm with a full frame equivalent of 24mm. The crop factor is 24/7=3.43. A MFT sensor (crop 2.0) with same 4:3 aspect ratio is 17.3mm x 13mm. Hence, the iPhone sensor should be (17.3mm x 2/3.43)*(13mm x 2/3.43)=10.1mm x 7.6mm. That's less than half the area calculated in the video!
And you are also wrong) In the video we are talking about the iPhone 16 pro, the sensor diagonal of which is 1/1.28", and not 1/1.14", i.e. even smaller
Glad you noticed the iphone is stacking the pictures. My friend got a iphone 16 pro and when we took 30s pictures, when you look at image info it tells you 10s. Would be cool to move the actual cameras down to 10s and compare then. Edit: Also stack the real cameras 3x for true comparison.
That's good to know - I got the phone 1 day before taking these images so I'm still learning the ins and outs of it
@@ianlauerastro It will stack them in both HEIF and ProRAW. The metadata will show 30s on the HEIF, but you will see it as 10s on ProRAW. The stacking got much better at the point of iPhone15.
@@ShayneMostyn good to know! Literally just watched your iPhone astrophotography video this morning, awesome job. Thanks for inspiring folks to get out under the night sky 🫡
Apple mentions that they stack photos tho.
With the Google Pixel, it will typically run for 4 minutes and stack. You can also just stop it after 16 seconds and grab that image. It pretty much looks the same.
Loved the last 2 seconds where the sky is still but the earth is moving
Glad you noticed! It's such a cool way to get perspective on the sky's rotation.
How did you do that?? I know the sky rotates but how did you make the Earth move in that clip??@@ianlauerastro
@@ianlauerastroFlat Earther’s: The Earth is still flat, its just the sky that rotates 🤓
The still image at 9:00 is phenomenal man! 🏆
I live in Switzerland near Lake Constance, not too bad for light pollution, but not perfect. And when I tried stacking 10 of these „30 second“ Milky Way shots it turned out awful 😩🫣! BUT a few nights ago I did something different: I simply put on the 10-second-timer and put it flat on the floor. 10 seconds is obviously enough to make change to the 30 seconds mode. And boy was I impressed!! Cygnus beautifully above me, the different Milky Way areas well distinguishable. And when I stacked 10 of THESE pictures it got even better 🤩! Thx for the video 👍
Fantastic! Love to hear it!
Congratulations on living in Switzerland
Why is no body talking about the blue patches in the low light photos? Apparently there’s a manufacturer problem. If you get a 30 sec picture of your phone just sitting in a table you will see the blue patches in the dark background. It’s happening on the IPhone 16 pro models. Awesome tutorial really informative.
Yea, it also is on some 15 and even some 14 models and some have red instead of blue, some have more some less, i can only see the blue beams a little in his photo if you start in the bottom right corner and look it’s there in blue , when taking an actual night mode photo of the sky it’s not as noticeable though, and most people won’t even notice it because most people aren’t taking photos on nearly pitch black environments so they will never be effected by it anyway. I seen a guy comment said he’s had his iPhone 15 for a year and did the test and seen the blue but never even realized it on his own until he was shown and did the test. So for many they will never even know cause they don’t use it like that.
I was hoping he would mention it as well but nope lol and I could see it in his photo a little he had to notice it idk lol
What do you mean? I mention it. Im hoping a replacement will be here shortly for mine. A heap of my audience have returned phones for it already. I cant believe nobody tested this before launch. Its really sad that such an issue exists these days.
@@ShayneMostyn not you Shayne lol, your the reason I’m driving an hour and a half away to exchange my iPhone 16 pro and hoping to get a good exchange without the blues like some of your other Facebook and RUclips folk have, I spoke to 2 I think that had good results on exchange . But yea sorry I was talking about the guy In This video, can see some of the blue beams in his photo and it seems like he would have seen it too as it is noticeable but he doesn’t say anything about it, was hoping maybe he did and maybe had a solution outside of exchange or return. Sorry for the misunderstandings, thanks for getting the facts out so we can get a fix I appreciate you! Called apple and that’s my only solution, or just deal with it. I honestly, like many others untill now, don’t know if this has been on any other phone as I’ve never with a previous one tried to check and only took casual night photos rare sky photos and those people that use the camera that way will never even know the issue exists. The main camera for me still works great w no issues and video is good as well. But once ya know it’s there ya can’t unsee it, and even if I rarely use it I want it to work well when I do lol, since I spent so much on it i want to at least know it works properly across the board, right on!
Well spotted!
There's an app called ProCam that lets you set your photos to either use Apple's standard post-processing, Apple Smart HDR/Deep Fusion, or... Direct sensor capture. I wonder if that might get you more control and perhaps even better photos?
Wonderful video Ian! I'm a few versions back with the iPhone (13 pro), but also found the 30s trick by chance and was amazed at what it could do from a dark sky.
Thanks Nico! I’m so happy that modern phone cameras can capture the Milky Way. What a great entry point to get folks interested in astronomy and astrophotography.
Awesome video, Ian! Thanks for posting, I learned a lot. Clear skies!
So glad to hear it - cheers!
I do hope that in the future apple will introduce actual astro mode that is fully tuned for it.
loved your video, I have been doing astrophotography using an iphone for almost 4 years now, its so great to see how far we’ve come
Thank you very much for this awesome RUclips, you show me a lot about how high tech will ease the cost of such great hobby and how there is a hope in people like you guys to make the earth a better place to live. Well done job
I'm assuming you have a main sensor manufacture defect. Blue dots, lines or streaks aren't suppose to be there upon a 30sec exposure being done. You can confirm this by doing a 30 sec exposure on a table making sure no light enters the lens. If its pitch black congratulations your sensor is fine, but if theres blue lines, streaks, or blue pixels everywhere go get it replaced ASAP. It's starting to become a real problem that I gotta unfortunately get a replacement for my 16 pro max.
I had no idea! I just did the 30 sec test and yep, I see a strong blue color. I'll have to see what others are doing about it, and get in touch with Apple.
@@ianlauerastro get a replacement by them before the 14 day warranty runs out, because if you don’t they’ll charge you extra for that, just gotta pray that the next replacement doesn’t do the same.
@@ianlauerastro please tell us did they replace your phone
?
@@Docsthetics they should, everyone that has this problem has successfully gotten another replacement as its starting to become a wider problem I can update you to see what they will do with mine's this saturday.
@@Docsthetics I had mines get replaced took about an hour and a half for total set up, (includes update, iCloud to backup.)
Basically all phones that have an astro mode do internal stacking. The Pixel series for example, does a 4 minute exposure in which I believe is a stack of 16 shots.
That's so awesome, I didn't know that! I knew some phones had an astro mode, but never looked into how they worked. I've not kept up with the latest phone tech so it's great to hear they're adding astrophotography modes.
Indeed. My samsung does 10 minute "exposures" but I'm not sure how it would compare to the Apple since I got pretty good results from a Bortle 4.. but the Apple could still look just as nice without that protected dark site available.
7:50
Wrong lenses were labeled here! Caption saying 1x is pointing at 5x, caption 5x at 1x, but the ultrawide caption is correct.
Fantastic video! Loved it.
Whoops! Thanks for the correction :)
@@ianlauerastro thanks for making the video :D
Didn’t come in to stay but I’m glad I did. This deserves more views, not just 70k!?
I learned so much so thank you so much
yo bro this video is fire, thank you so much for this helpful video! I am a photographer myself and I really like to take street photography, but sometimes I take stars and space and sky photos, and since soon I am getting the new Iphone 16 pro max myself, I am really excited that I will be able to expand my opportunities. Thank you again for this review❤!
Thanks for the kind words - happy stargazing!
Amazing work! Im really suprising how powerful the iPhone’s sensor is. Which app do you use for long exposures on the iPhone? I only can reach 1 sec exposure using some third party apps
It's just night mode in the default iPhone camera, though it's capped at 30s max when you set it to 10s max. Then just let it stabilize on a tripod or placing it face down on an edge of something so the back cameras face straight up into the sky, but leaving the bottom of your camera visible at the edge so you can hit the shutter.
Excellent video. Amazing what the iPhone 16 Pro can capture. I thought the Fujifilm photo looked the best.
That dog 🐩 😂😂😂😂❤
glad to see the iphones coming a bit closer to samsung in terms of astrophotoraphy, although it would've been better if iphone users got pro controls
Agreed - though there are 3rd party apps that give you more control over the camera. Would love to see those built in under an "advanced mode" or something like that
Hi man, what binoculars for stargazing do you recommend? Budget 400$ - 600$ thanks in advance
Really cool to capture these amazing Star photos with just a phone from this good God green flat earth..
I ve taken some photos with my 15 pro max and I couldn’t believe my eyes that i could see the andromeda galaxy captured with the iphone camera
The 16 Pro has a 1/1.28 sized sensor with dimensions of 9.8x7.3 mm.
Good to know! Where did you find this info? When I made this video I couldn’t find the sensor information anywhere
@ianlauerastro It's in the phone specs page at GSMarena. Also, it's the same sensor as it is in the 15 Pro.
great video, very professional. Love the footage of the fellow astrophotographers in fast motion. Overall, very cool!
U should try S24 Ultra. It even has special mode only for this 🥰
Whats the mode called
@@Burak2421ai generated moon fill
@@Burak2421 it's in the EXPERT RAW add on to regular camera. You will find it in Galaxy Store. After starting Expert Raw mode look at the top right corner, the Astro icon will be there :)
Great comparisons thanks. Now if only I could see the Milky Way without having to drive for kilometers out of the city.
3:10 on 27 Oct I tried to capture the c/2023 a3 (tsuchinshan-atlas) with iPhone 16 pro Max 1x and 5x Lens, I even Got the shot but iPhone's post processing even on RAW Images ruined my photos Specifically the noise reduction and Image stacking 😔
The Sony IMX903 in the iPhone 16 pro is just under half the size of a Micro Four Thirds sensor, and a little over a quarter the size of the Fuji APS-C sensor. The bit of paper for "iPhone 16" shown at 7:25 should be about half the size.
IMX903 total area - approx 104mm2
Micro Four Thirds total area - 221mm2
Fuji APSC total area - 366mm2
Full Frame total area - 860mm2
Great video! What phone clamp were you using? It looks better than the one I use!
I’d love to see what this looks like with Halide’s Process Zero. Fantastic video!
Hello, the iPhone takes several photos and then stacks them. This was demonstrated when using it in Lightpainting. You can see that it cuts the light in several exposures to then put them together and reduce noise and improve the image. The Samsung acts like a normal camera when you take long exposures and the more you expose, the more light enters the sensor and you must adjust the time so as not to burn or underexpose the photo. For this reason, the iPhone does this. It can be an advantage or a disadvantage since if you take light trails they come out cut off.
Greetings from Spain, tested with the Samsung S24 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Great video! iPhone photography has come long way! I also didin’t know that Fujifilm X-T4 was such a capable camera when it comes to astrophotography even with the kit 18-55mm lens. Personally, I prefer the look of X-T4 over Sony A-7S3.
Outstanding review. Lots to think about here. Thx
Saw the video. Great information. What mount did you use for the phone?
Appreciate this video!!! Thank you for sharing!
Very cool. Interested in what photo stacking software tool you were using here. Keep up the good work!
I personality have S24 Ultra and the first time i tried astrophotography with it i didn't expect much but the result after the first picture was more than mouth opening. The phone was taking pictures like a dslr which was completely unexpected. The phone also stacks the photos for you and gives you raw stacked image which is really impressive. It also stacks the photos in a way thay makes the stars dots instead of lines for longer exposures. The thing that completely blew my mind off was that the phone was able to capture the northern lights when i couldn't even see them with my own eyes. I though this was disturbance, noise or just light that was picked up but then i read that there was actually a very strong solar storm and the lights were reaching my country so then i made the connection. The fact that the S24 Ultra can make those kind of things just destroys Apple completely in my opinion. There are also a couple of videos in RUclips where people try astrophotography with the S24 Ultra and one of those people managed to capture the Andromeda galaxy and the Pleiades with only a tripod and the phone and the pictures were really impressive for a phone. I also managed to capture the andromeda galaxy without zooming at it as i was jist trying to take a picture of the milky way with 8 min exposure and the milky way can be seen very well as well as the Andromeda galaxy.
this was the most interesting video of the week for me
amazing vid! crazy what the iPhone can do
Thank you, I've not done much with phone cameras for astro so it's cool to see how far it's come
another awesome video. never knew iphone can give such details.
So cool Videos you cut in , awesome photography.
Pretty cool results but what's with the white headlamps at night? Doesn't that ruin your night vision?
man! this got me even more excited to upgrade my phone! I'm on the xs still 🙃
Problem with the 5x is it will default to the main camera in low light and do a digital zoom. Good work though 🫡
Did not know that! I would love to know why they would do that.
@@ianlauerastro some 3rd party apps will let you manually select. Also if you use portrait mode on the native app it will actually use the lens you selected..
@@deavo74 I've looked at some of the 3rd party apps in the app store for astro, which are quite amazing. For this video I wanted to see what the results would look like if I just used what was readily available, knowing a majority of folks might not want to fuss with additional apps and such. I would highly recommend one of these apps to anyone wanting to dive deeper into mobile phone astrophotography - the results I've seen from other folks are awesome.
@@ianlauerastroplease share the list of apps
Is it really true that the 5x will default to the main 1x camera in lowlight and when using nightmode and then do a digital zoom to get to 5x ? That doesnt sound good.
It’s also worth mentioning the perspective of viewing these images on a phone. That’s a mistake I make all the time. I just recently took a star photograph with my canon r6mk2 and on my 33” computer monitor I was blown away
By how many stars you can see. But once I exported the same exact photo to my phone (which isn’t a 4k screen) I was actually disappointed by how much details was lost in the image.
Todo un maestro para la fotografia.
I'm already damn happy with the iPhone 15 pro max but didn't know 16 is so great
Would be great to see this comparison in the southern hemisphere. The Milky Way is mostly in the southern sky which means in places like Australia, the photos are directly up rather than towards the horizon. And because the horizon isn’t in the way you can see the whole of the Milky Way.
this is a really nice video, very helpful and good to know that the iphone takes 3 10 second exposure pictures instead of one 30s one, i just want to point out that the 5x zoom lens is actually really really bad in low light and what you see is unfortunately just a cropped in image from the main sensor, you can see that clearly in daylight there is a clear jump between 4.9 zoom and 5x which is just not there when night mode is required, nonetheless keep up the good work :)
Ian, I can't believe you missed it - it's the same issue Shayne Mostyn shows in his iPhone 16 Pro Milky Way shots. The images have blue lines/dots all over them. Check the phone lying flat on the table in a dark environment and take the 30 sec shot. You'll see the issue
Google Pixel does this already for 4 minutes. you can also choose between star trail or fixed stars
I would love to try one out in a dark skies!
@@ianlauerastro Please reupload the video with these dslr and iphone and google and Samsung and vivo please
When you zoom in in that level of darkness, iphone actually uses its main sensor, not the 5×
That's just a crop
Great Video! Please reply with the stacking s/w you featured. My 1st out of box with iPhone 16 Pro Max showed NO Blue streaks. However, did experience a number of totally blank exposures. Users Note: Even on tripod, highly recommend using timer feature of iPhone as the mere touching of the camera will instantly shift the exposure from 30 sec back to 10 sec.
If camera companies embraced computational photography, we’d see even more impressive and practical results across all types of cameras. But of course, some people still argue that "cameras don't need that." Imagine the potential on an APS-C camera, like instead of waiting for a 30-second exposure, you could reduce it to around 7-8 seconds, avoid star trails, and even brighten the valley using smart HDR. All of this could be done in under 10 seconds, and with something as simple as a kit lens!
Computational photography has the potential to truly revolutionize the way we approach photography by making advanced techniques more accessible, faster, and easier to achieve. It’s not about replacing traditional methods; it’s about enhancing them to unlock new creative possibilities. Hopefully, we’ll see camera manufacturers catch on and embrace these advancements instead of sticking to old methods. The future could be incredibly exciting!
Great video and review
Excelente video! Muy chingon.
Awesome video. Really searching for a new iphone and want to see its capability to take a shoot of the stars. Is the star trials that you mentioned and showed on the minute 5:24 shooting star?
Great video!
What camera settings do you run on the IPhone 16 Pro Max because I have a tripod and my pictures don’t show like this😭
hey man! there's a big hardware problem right now that affects about half of all 16 pro and pro max models including yours, it would be nice for it to have more reach! It's this problem where astrophotography pictures get these blue lines across the screen. the darker the environment, the worse it is. If you put your phone down on a desk, cameras facing down, and take a 30 second picture you should see the photo comes out almost entirely blue. A youtuber called shayne mostyn has talked about this in more detail. It would be awesome if you could talk about this as well! Currently, not enough people are complaining for apple to do anything about it, sadly...
I use halide and slow shutter camera apps on my iPhone 14 to do cool stuff like that. I like how slow shutter has a “bulb mode” so I can just let the sensor cook in the starlight for a while and get some star trails.
Stairs in aircraft stripes are due to the physical movement of the sensor or the lens element. Perhaps the iPhone senses the subject (stars) and automatically corrects Earth movement. Pentax DSLRs actually do something similar. Your theory of multiple exposures isn’t entirely correct; there would be gaps between individual sections, not stairs.
loved the vid ! Also I have a 15pm and I don't understand the use of the Pro RAW and Pro RES formats, can you explain it and show its utility in another video ?
Amazing Photo. Could you please try the S24 Ultra? it has a 10 minute exposure on astrophotography mode. would love to see how it compares.
You should also check the photos from google pixel phones. They take 4 minutes but the results are insane
great comparison, i love the video, very informative. In addition to that, I would also love to see the comparison between an iPhone and an Android phone, example Samsung S24 Ultra on Milky Way Photography. Cheers !!
idk if it's youtube but the iphone picture looks a lot more compressed, with the artifacts that you mentioned and general noise pattern in the sky.
good tutorial, even if a bit stretched to the 10min mark imho.
I tried this with my 15 pro a while back and I couldn't believe my eyes. Iphones are absolutely insane with night photography
Mannn you got me brother foreal I died laughing when you said ok that’s not the picture.
The music qued and I was like omg that looks goooodddd
What software do you use for stacking Milky Way photos?
I'll wait for iPhone 17. My 14 still performing well enough for me right now.
Is the iPhone 15 pro capable of these shots like the 16 pro is?
some people are complaining about how many of the iphone 16 pro max models have a hardware fault where when you take pictures in extreme low light some blue lines would form in the background. Did you notice them in some of your pictures?
I think this would’ve been great to test with a more entry level apsc camera like a Sony a6400 or a canon t7i type thing if we wanted to get really cheap. I still think one of those cameras with a 16mm lens would blow the iPhone out of the water if you don’t do the 30 second exposures and go for something shorter but really take advantage of the better glass selection and manual controls. I remember getting pretty useable Astro shots as a teen on my d5200 I just didn’t have a wide lens so it didn’t look all that grand. I have some really beautiful shots done on my A7iii and I have yet to do any Astro on my A1
Awesome photo. But looking at those results, iPhone still cannot beat Galaxy S24 ultra with astromode. It can makes awesome photos with wide lens without iPhone NR artifacts, and does great job with zooms too.
I'd love to try the Galaxy in a dark sky location and see what it's capable of!
@@ianlauerastro Yes, that would be awesome. Sadly, I do not get proper dark sky anywhere near me. But, few weeks back, we had super clear skies. I went out to wonder early morning stars, with supermoon and whole first view on winter constellation (orion, syrius, procyon). Sky was bright from supermoon, starting twilight, and ground lights, and yet still my S24ultra managed to snap with 5x zoom M24 purple hue in Orion's sword. But photo took 7 minutes. I am pretty sure i did multiple shots and did automatic stacking, but no idea how it works in detail.
@@robertbloch1063nope iphone astrophotography has been significantly better than the Samsung since the 15 pros
@@what.are.you.doing.stepbro if so then it seems the iPhone16 presented here clearly is a downgrade. Because this astrophoto is worse than Samsung.
@@robertbloch1063lol you're coping
Btw it is not how you calculate the size of the sensor. For example a one inch sensor is not one inch diagonally. The imaginary circle circumscribed about a rectangle is one inch so the actual size is different and depending on also on the aspect ratio(2:3) most of the time. I think veritasium have a video about it
Very cool! Awesome video.
7:21 Based on those cutouts*, Fuji has double the sensor size. Checked in photoshop, can stack two iphone sensors side by size for perfect fit on Fuji sensor. And then on next comparison, new iphone sensor is 4x the size of the old iphone 11 sensor shown.
*Also, noticed down below someone calculated actual sensor sizes so my observation is based purely on cutouts in video.
Area can be deceitful when looking at it like that. Reminds me of that math question with pizzas - whether you want 2 small ones or one larger. Where that one larger turns out to be more area than the 2 small ones combined, but visually it's easy to be fooled.
Either way, good informative video, hopefully my comment didn't sound to snarky :D
No worries, glad you enjoyed the video :)
It's tough because I couldn't find exact specifications on the sensor being used, only speculation that the iPhone is possibly using the Sony IMX903 sensor. Someone else commented that it's not using that sensor, though I can't find any confirmation anywhere on the what actually in the phone, just articles that guess.
The lines pointing to which camera is which is wrong, if you hold the phone in portrait the bottom camera is the 1x, top is 0.5, and the left one is the 5x
My bad! It’s what happens when you combine late nights of astronomy and late nights of video editing 😂
@@ianlauerastro 😂 keep up the great work
I captured the Andromeda using the 10X Telephoto lens on my s23 ultra last year. It came out amazing for a phone camera. It's a shame samsung discontinued the 10x camera and replaced it with a 5x in the 24 ultra.
Crazy that the Pixel was doing this 5 or 6 years ago
9:56 🤦♂️😂😂😂 good vid mate 👊
7:50 - the position of the cameras on the iPhone 16 Pro is wrong. the 5x telephoto pentaprism is between the LiDAR & flash, while the 48MP Fusion Camera is on the top left.
I´m not a Apple guy but this is pretty impressive
Try it with a Google pixel- my pixel 7a does amazing astrophotography and goes for up to 4 minutes
Pixel 9 pro, iPhone 16 pro and s24 ultra astrophotography comparison would get your channel sooooo many views.
That’s a comparison I would LOVE to do!
@@ianlauerastro I'm willing to bet the iPhone will be the worst vs the other 2 phones, but only 1 way to find out.
@@iLuseMy1v1s from what I’m seeing others comment, sounds like the iPhone is at the bottom for astrophotography. But ~55% of people in the US own an iPhone, so my hope is by showing people the iPhone can take good Milky Way photos, it will get more people out under the night sky giving it a try!
@@ianlauerastro It would also show that the iPhone isn't the best at certain things because people blindly believe that. Apple marketing is brilliant.
Can it do night timelapse?
my shitty 15pm can't even focus on the moon. Why is there no manual focus on the trash camera app????
12x16mm sounds even closer to m43 13x17.3mm. Wonder if apple is just using a m43 and using outer pixels for digital image stabilizatuon or whatnot
8:11 2,5millions of light years away but… with an apparent size 6 times that of the moon.
Andromeda is a big boi
best part of the video starts from here 9:50
LOL.
Very cool video ! I have a 15 Pro and I was wondering if you knew how to lock the focus at infinity? For the life of me I cannot find a setting for that 😞
No need to. It does infinity focus automatically. Just point and shoot in nightmode and make sure it is 30s, etc.
@@gooddad11 Thanks. I thought so as well but for some reason my focus hunts on bright objects like Jupiter or Venus or the recent Aurora and usually ends up not at infinity.
Buddy that iphone 16 is doing good but a Vivo x 100 pro or Xiaomi's flagship series phone with a 1 inch type sensor and Vivo also allows you to capture astro mode which opens the shutter for arround 2.5 min and also it stacks them together too I've used a half inch sensor with that perticular mode and it is impressive (I was shooting in a city lights) can say a brottle class 7 or 6 try to make a video on that 👍🏻👍🏻
hi sir would you have any advice for a telephoto lense i can get for under $35 for moon pictures?
And Samsung S24 ultra with 200 Mp?
I love when you use a baseball cap at night was there so much light in the sky that you got blinded?
Interesting! Thank you...
Did you try shooting in ProRAW format ? You say it's an advantage of the professionnal cameras to shoot in RAW, but iPhones have a comparable format since a few years. By default it still processes the image, but you can revert it afterwards and basically start your editing from zero like with a RAW. You can probably get even better Milky Way pictures this way !
Best settings for the moon?