Can you control camera resolution for still photos on the iPhone 6? What does the HDR/Auto setting do?

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Level 1

9 points

Can you control camera resolution for still photos on the iPhone 6? What does the HDR/Auto setting do?

I have an iPhone 6 and I'm sometimes amazed how poor the image resolution is when taking still photos. From what I can find on the web the iPhone 6 has no control (settings) for the resolution. To be clear, I'm referring to setting the camera to a higher or lower resolution before taking a picture. Am I correct that there is no setting for this?

The photo of my girlfriend included shows what I mean. If you look at her face it's a mass of pixels. This may be because of low light which I know causes pixelation on video cameras. But the image file is only 1.5 MB which is equivalent to something like a 2 megapixel camera.

Also, what does the HDR/Auto control do? I have a sense of what HDR is, but what happens when you have this set to HDR vs Auto?

iPhone 6, iOS 10.3.3

Posted on Aug 17, 2017 10:03 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 17, 2017 10:09 AM in response to calkahuna

Some reading about HDR here:

http://lifehacker.com/5991508/what-is-hdr-and-when-should-i-use-it-in-my-photos

In the case of the iPhone it will take 10 photos, and give you the best of it. Of course you can always go back and choose a different one from the 10 taken if you think it looks better.

iPhone User Guide entry on HDR:

http://help.apple.com/iphone/10/#/iph2cafe2ebc

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Answer 2

ShagCA

Level 5

6,347 points

Aug 17, 2017 10:37 AM in response to calkahuna

calkahuna wrote:

The photo of my girlfriend included shows what I mean. If you look at her face it's a mass of pixels. This may be because of low light which I know causes pixelation on video cameras. But the image file is only 1.5 MB which is equivalent to something like a 2 megapixel camera.

Also, what does the HDR/Auto control do? I have a sense of what HDR is, but what happens when you have this set to HDR vs Auto?

I don't think the file size of an image represents the camera resolution. It does however represent the amount of data captured by the image sensor. Your picture was taken in low light condition. That's very likely why the size is only 1.5MB. There's just not enough data captured by the sensor. Noise is of course unavoidable due to high ISO. Low light causes pixelation too. Also, I doubt HDR will help you in the sample picture.

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Answer 3

calkahuna Author

Level 1

9 points

Aug 23, 2017 8:54 AM in response to ShagCA

Thank you Phil 0214 and ShagCA! I will study this more. For us semi-serious photographers, having a decent camera always with us in the form of a cellphone is a great tool. I wish I'd remember to use it more often. My previous phone, the iPhone 4 had a camera that worked in this regard more like what I'm accustomed to with my Canon digital camera. I was able to set it to take photos with higher or lower resolutions.

ShagCA, with all due respect, I beg to differ that file size is not linked to photo resolution. It stands to reason that more data will result in a larger file and higher resolution is certainly more data. I would agree that it's not a linear function. There are other factors that go into file size as your assertion suggests. I'm just very surprised that a camera as sophisticated as an iPhone 6 does not allow the user to control resolution (before taking the picture). This is a no-brainer. It's a result of the ever continuing dumbing down of products from the tech industry and Apple is unfortunately a big proponent of this.

I agree that the low light is the culprit but the small file size (which represents either low resolution or high compression or both) doesn't help. I took a series of photos in broad daylight the same day with the same settings and those pictures are also 1.5 MB (but look much sharper). As I stated in my original post, that file size is equivalent to something like a 2 megapixel camera. I think those were made out of wood if I remember correctly ; )

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Answer 4

Aug 23, 2017 11:43 AM in response to calkahuna

Hi. Just to clarify, the resolution of every photo taken with the camera is the number of pixels given in the device specs. You can use the free MetaPho app to confirm this. However, the images are stored as JPEGs, which means they are compressed, and we cannot control the level of compression. If adjacent pixels differ little in hue and intensity, they can be compressed quite a lot, and the file size will be smaller as a result. Plain backgrounds are easy to compress and can result in relatively small files.

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