{"id":222101,"date":"2025-10-18T11:33:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222101\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T11:33:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T11:33:12","slug":"can-you-tell-which-photos-were-shot-on-a-leica-and-which-on-an-iphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/222101\/","title":{"rendered":"Can You Tell Which Photos Were Shot on a Leica \u2013 And Which on an iPhone?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Split-view<\/a>One photo was shot by a Leica, the other was shot by an iPhone 17 Pro. Can you tell which one? It stumped the Waveform Podcast. <\/p>\n

Smartphone cameras have taken giant leaps forward, but can they really be as good as a Leica? Photographer David Imel<\/a>, who is co-host of the Waveform Podcast, recently created a fascinating test to find out. <\/p>\n

On a recent trip to the French Alps, Imel brought along an iPhone 17 Pro<\/a> and a Leica M11<\/a>. In an experiment to \u201cpush the limits of the iPhone camera,\u201d he downloaded the Halide app<\/a>, which allows photographers to shoot in \u201cactual RAW\u201d rather than Apple\u2019s ProRAW, which Imel says is \u201calready a little bit processed.\u201d <\/p>\n

Imel says the photos seen here are \u201cbarely processed\u201d from the Halide RAW file, therefore they don\u2019t have the usual computational photography<\/a>, HDR style of an iPhone photo. <\/p>\n

\u201cI decided I was going to shoot a bunch of photos on all my cameras and I was going to take a look at how different all of the photos were,\u201d Imel explains to his fellow hosts, which include Marques Brownlee.<\/p>\n

Imel made a Google Slideshow of the images, which severely compresses the photos and levels the playing field somewhat. The photos on this article are taken from the same slideshow. Imel also adds that he shoots \u201cclosed down\u201d, meaning he sets his aperture small so that everything is in focus. <\/p>\n

Leica or iPhone? \"Two<\/a>First picture
\n \"Snow-covered<\/a>Second picture \"Split-view<\/a>Third picture \"A<\/a>Fourth picture \"Snow-capped<\/a>Fifth picture \"A<\/a>Sixth picture \"Snow-capped<\/a>Seventh picture \"A<\/a>Eighth picture
\n \"A<\/a>Ninth picture <\/p>\n

The answers are below. But remember, there are a couple of caveats: all of these photos have been compressed by Google Slideshow and most of the photos were shot during peak sunlight on a glorious Alpine day, which, as Brownlee points out, \u201calmost any modern sensor is going to do a very respectable job.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the point I wanted to make,\u201d Imel adds. \u201cIs that phone-processing sucks. All they\u2019re doing is optimizing for storage, optimizing for shadow details.\u201d <\/p>\n

Imel points to when Google got rid of their regular RAW processing, and introduced Pro-RAW. \u201cIn my opinion, it\u2019s worse because it just lifts the shadows. And you don\u2019t always want the shadows to be lifted if you want it to look like a real picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Answers \"Two<\/a>iPhone \"Snow-covered<\/a>Leica
\n \"Split-view<\/a>Leica is on the left, iPhone on the right \"A<\/a>iPhone \"Snow-capped<\/a>iPhone \"A<\/a>Leica \"Snow-capped<\/a>iPhone \"A<\/a>iPhone \"A<\/a>Leica<\/p>\n

Imel says of the experiment: \u201cThe point of this was to show you that while I still prefer traditional cameras for the shooting experience, you too can take pretty cool pictures just with your phone.\u201d <\/p>\n

As they say, the best camera is the one you have with you. <\/p>\n

Image credits: Photographs by David Imel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One photo was shot by a Leica, the other was shot by an iPhone 17 Pro. Can you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[83463,1572,49,48,106641,106642,1575,28956,106643,106644,106645,106646,61,106647],"class_list":["post-222101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-iphone17pro","tag-apple","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-comparing","tag-davidimel","tag-iphone","tag-leica","tag-leicam11","tag-marquesbrownlee","tag-mkbhd","tag-smartphonephotography","tag-technology","tag-waveformpodcast"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}