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: ua-cam.com/video/mNqwY_1Xcy4/v-deo.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.
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?
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 👍
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.
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 UA-cam 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!
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
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.
I captured the andromeda galaxy with my 15 pro with the 1x lens, to be honest it was more clear than the 5x photo you captured. The 30 second exposure on a tripod has actually been a thing for a while, it worked on my 12 mini.
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.
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 😔
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.
8:27 Is it actually the 5X or the 1X zoomed? Unless exposure is turned way down, I found a crop of the main camera is commonly used instead of changing to the 5x
Thank you very much for this awesome UA-cam, 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
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
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'm heading to Utah in the spring next year and I'm excited to try getting some nice shots with my Fuji X-S10. Thinking of renting a lens for the trip, since I can't really do astro here being so close to NYC. What would you recommend for Fuji astro lenses? I hear about the same few a lot, but were you just using the 18-55 for the images in this video?
Correct it was just the 18-55. You can get great shots with the 18mm when shooting wide open at f2.8. My go-to for a long time has been the Rokinon 12mm f2. Highly recommend for nightscapes.
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❤!
4:46 Can you please share name of the program you are using to stack the photos ? BTW now I’m confused whether to get 16 pro or 15 pro ( considering 16 Pro blue issue )
I was using Pixinsight, though you can use free programs like Sequator to stack Milky Way shots. I would say iPhone 15 pro will do just as good of a job based on what I've seen others do.
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.
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.
@@DatboiDemonX Thank You. To be honest, I rather dont like the iOS system camera app. It is a bit to automatic for me. However, I'll try to shot some long exposures with it.
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?
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.
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.
At about 5:15 star trails are said to be caused by the motion of the stars; this is not correct - the trails are caused by the rotation of the Earth during the image acquisition. The positions of the stars do not change materially during the exposure.
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 ?
Hello, I recently began taking moon photos with my iPhone and noticed something odd. The images were ok but as soon as I tried to edit the photo it would blow out into a blurry white circle. I’ve never had this happen before though this is my first attempt at moon images. Has anyone else experienced this? Ideas on how to resolve?
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.
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
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 :)
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.
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?
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
If you're really creative, you can lock the Af/Ae on some brighter thing at 5x lens to force the phone to use the actual telephoto camera (on your examples phone was just cropping into the main sensor) and get a darker but more detailed images...
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.
Try Vivo X 100 Ultra with 1 Inch sensor. I have as well have Sony a7RV, RIV but for fast photography on social media AI in smartphon's takes great effects
Just thought I’d throw my hat in the ring but when comparing sensor sizes, to the best of my knowledge the Sony IMX 908 (which is the main camera in the 16Pro Max measures 6.9x9.1mm which would roughly be around 4.8x smaller than Fuji’s apsc sensor … 12x16 would be comparable to the xaomi or other cameras that host a full 1” sensor.
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.
I have a property that is right in the middle of a Dark Sky Reserve here in Australia! Just bought a 16 pro max, looking forward to experimenting 😊 Thanks for the video!
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.
In your video you indicate 2 different lenses as the 1x lens see 7:50 & 8:46 on your timeline. The correct lens is last lens you pointed to. Just thought I’d mention it so you can fix your video
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.
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.
@@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 :)
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
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:
ua-cam.com/video/mNqwY_1Xcy4/v-deo.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 🤓
@@ReflexRLhahaha you stole those words from my mouth hahaha
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?
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
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.)
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 UA-cam 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!
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
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.
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
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
such an interesting video, seriously i loved this
I captured the andromeda galaxy with my 15 pro with the 1x lens, to be honest it was more clear than the 5x photo you captured. The 30 second exposure on a tripod has actually been a thing for a while, it worked on my 12 mini.
Really cool video. Thanks! Have you tried astrophotography mode with a Google Pixel? or a Samsung Galaxy Ultra RAW camera?
Thanks!
Wow that’s so generous, thank you so so much!!! You are too kind!
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.
Hi man, what binoculars for stargazing do you recommend? Budget 400$ - 600$ thanks in advance
Excellent video. Amazing what the iPhone 16 Pro can capture. I thought the Fujifilm photo looked the best.
great video, very professional. Love the footage of the fellow astrophotographers in fast motion. Overall, very cool!
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
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 😔
What software do you use for stacking Milky Way photos?
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.
8:27 Is it actually the 5X or the 1X zoomed? Unless exposure is turned way down, I found a crop of the main camera is commonly used instead of changing to the 5x
Interesting, though I'm not sure why they'd do that if there's a dedicated 5x zoom lens on the phone
Could you explain how you stacked 11photoes in one. Which app did u use?
Thank you very much for this awesome UA-cam, 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
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.
hi sir would you have any advice for a telephoto lense i can get for under $35 for moon pictures?
7:17 how does this compare to micro 4/3rds?
Is not specialised astro cameras already using like 1 inch sensors and m43 sensors anyway?
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
Pretty cool results but what's with the white headlamps at night? Doesn't that ruin your night vision?
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
What tripod and mount you use for the iPhone?
I'm heading to Utah in the spring next year and I'm excited to try getting some nice shots with my Fuji X-S10. Thinking of renting a lens for the trip, since I can't really do astro here being so close to NYC. What would you recommend for Fuji astro lenses? I hear about the same few a lot, but were you just using the 18-55 for the images in this video?
Correct it was just the 18-55. You can get great shots with the 18mm when shooting wide open at f2.8.
My go-to for a long time has been the Rokinon 12mm f2. Highly recommend for nightscapes.
@ianlauerastro I actually saw your video about it right after I commented!
@ awesome! Hope it helps!
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!
4:46 Can you please share name of the program you are using to stack the photos ?
BTW now I’m confused whether to get 16 pro or 15 pro ( considering 16 Pro blue issue )
I was using Pixinsight, though you can use free programs like Sequator to stack Milky Way shots. I would say iPhone 15 pro will do just as good of a job based on what I've seen others do.
@@ianlauerastro thanks, yes 15 Pro is good and it will be cheaper than 16 😉
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😭
So there I'm coming with a question. For what sake do we need 1-2 k mirror less camera when I have iphone in my pocket?
Is the iPhone 15 pro capable of these shots like the 16 pro is?
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.
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.
@@DatboiDemonX Thank You. To be honest, I rather dont like the iOS system camera app. It is a bit to automatic for me. However, I'll try to shot some long exposures with it.
So cool Videos you cut in , awesome photography.
Help! I would like to get a telescope but my vision is getting kinda limited. I would use it for planets and some deep space. Any suggestions?
Question How many star are in the photo?
WHAT A GREAT JOB. THANKS IAN
Have you tried it with Samsung galaxy 24?
I would love to, but sadly no one around had one, they all had iPhones
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?
Can someone explain how we can edit the picture once taken on iPhone
Could you tell me or send me a link for the phone mount you used on your tripod in your video? Thanks.
the stock camera app uses the 1x lens but crops it when you shoot in night mode at 5x... so it's not actuaslly using the 5x
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.
6:00 good doggo learning 😆
Raising em right!
is that Logitech keyboard on 8:42?
what professional things in CROP xt4 ?
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
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.
At about 5:15 star trails are said to be caused by the motion of the stars; this is not correct - the trails are caused by the rotation of the Earth during the image acquisition. The positions of the stars do not change materially during the exposure.
why is background so bight in all three cameras?
I like the video at 4:35 the movement of the night sky, what was used to record that?
It's a timelapse taken with the Fujifilm XT4
@@ianlauerastrocan u do a tutorial for that please?
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 ?
Pentax cameras actually move the sensor physically to eliminate star trails to a certain point of course. I wish Olympus implemented this feature.
Actually it seems like 5x photo is a cropped 1x photo. iPhone automatically switch to cropped 1x over 5x lens in low light condition.
Hello, I recently began taking moon photos with my iPhone and noticed something odd. The images were ok but as soon as I tried to edit the photo it would blow out into a blurry white circle. I’ve never had this happen before though this is my first attempt at moon images. Has anyone else experienced this? Ideas on how to resolve?
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
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.
Saw the video. Great information. What mount did you use for the phone?
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
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 :)
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.
That dog 🐩 😂😂😂😂❤
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?
Very cool. Interested in what photo stacking software tool you were using here. Keep up the good work!
Outstanding review. Lots to think about here. Thx
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
If you're really creative, you can lock the Af/Ae on some brighter thing at 5x lens to force the phone to use the actual telephoto camera (on your examples phone was just cropping into the main sensor) and get a darker but more detailed images...
I'll have to give that a try!
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.
Try Vivo X 100 Ultra with 1 Inch sensor. I have as well have Sony a7RV, RIV but for fast photography on social media AI in smartphon's takes great effects
It’s the lens at the 8:46 time the bottom lens not the side lens you pointed to in your video.
I’d love to see what this looks like with Halide’s Process Zero. Fantastic 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.
Is your mouse a redragon m801 ? it looks very close to mine!
Just thought I’d throw my hat in the ring but when comparing sensor sizes, to the best of my knowledge the Sony IMX 908 (which is the main camera in the 16Pro Max measures 6.9x9.1mm which would roughly be around 4.8x smaller than Fuji’s apsc sensor … 12x16 would be comparable to the xaomi or other cameras that host a full 1” sensor.
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.
How's Oneplus12 ?
I have a property that is right in the middle of a Dark Sky Reserve here in Australia! Just bought a 16 pro max, looking forward to experimenting 😊 Thanks for the video!
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
Great video! What phone clamp were you using? It looks better than the one I use!
In your video you indicate 2 different lenses as the 1x lens see 7:50 & 8:46 on your timeline. The correct lens is last lens you pointed to. Just thought I’d mention it so you can fix your video
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.
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.
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 :)
this was the most interesting video of the week for me
You definitely don’t want a flat Earther wrecking your night. Great video
Best settings for the moon?
Appreciate this video!!! Thank you for sharing!
Can it do night timelapse?
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
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 !
WOOOOOOOOOO LETS GO!!
Thanks Lanchen 🙏🙏🙏