Is iphone 6 camera better than canon s powershot g10? - 1

What I mean by better is quality. Now g10 is a very old camera, so I thought that maybe iphone 6's camera was better for taking photos?

No

Simple answer is not only no, but hell no. The number one mistake people often make, and that appears you're making as well, is that what makes a camera good or bad is not just image quality. While no one wants a great shot diminished by poor optical quality, the deciding factor of how good a camera is, is whether or not it has the technical capabilities that allows the user to get the shot and do what they want with the resulting file.

People who want to argue that a smartphone is as good as a real camera will take photos in situations that do not challenge the phone's capabilities. Remember, the camera module in an iPhone 6 costs only $8 on eBay. So it's kind of comparing a golf cart to a Lamborghini where all you do is go 10mph in a straight line for 10 feet. Sure both a golf cart and a Lamborghini will do it, and you may actually be far more comfortable in a golf cart with 4 of your golfing buddies too. Try fitting four people in Lambo! But many people who say how great their iPhone photos are, are doing just not pushing their cameras beyond a simple snapshot under good lighting conditions which is the photographic equivalent of driving a car 10mph in a straight line for 10'. Just like once you take the Lambo on the open road, the golf cart gets left in its dust, once you try to go beyond a simple shot under bright sunny conditions, that's where the cameras in all smartphones fail.

The 4mm lens in an iPhone is equivalent to about 28mm on a 35mm format camera. It's 4mm and only 4mm. The lens in the G10 has a zoom range from 28-140mm (equivalent to 35mm). This provides you with the ability to take a larger array of photographs. For one thing, the lens in iPhones is wide, which means that when you take a selfie, your face is going to be heavily distorted. With the G10, you can zoom the lens out, hand the camera to a friend to take your photo, and the resulting portrait will show you as being more attractive than you really are in real life. How? By using a longer telephoto lens position, you remove all wide-angle distortion and actually flatten the perspective. This flattening effect will make people look normal or better than they do in real life. This is why lenses in the 85-150mm range are called portrait lenses.

While it's possible to take photos with an iPhone that look fine on the phone's LCD screen and also look just as good as the photos taken with the G10 when looking at the image on its LCD screen, the real comparison is when you review & compare the images on a computer monitor. Once shown large, even on a small 15" laptop, that's where the enormous amount of noise can be seen in the iPhone photos. Because the sensor is so small, the pixels have to be super small too; about 1.5 nanometers. Now, the sensor in the G10 is not exactly big either, but it's big-er than the one in the iPhone 6, with a pixel size of 2.89 nonometers which is almost twice as big. Purely based on pixel size alone, the G10 will have a wider dynamic range (sensor's ability to record details in highlights and shadows) and will have much less noise at any give ISO too.

Taking a shot under lighting conditions and of a subject matter that do not challenge either the technical capabilities of either the iPhone 6 or the G10, the G10 will have better dynamic range which means that the highlights won't be blown out as much and there will be more detail in dark shadow areas, it will be a sharper image because the lens is vastly superior and also due to a lower amount of noise.

Then there's the file format that these cameras use. Both shoot JPEGs which are 8-bit files with 256 shades from pure black to pure white. To calculate this you just take 2 to the power of the number of bits: 2 to the 8th power = 256. The G10, however, can also shoot in RAW and produce 12-bit files. While at first this may seem like a 50% in crease, it's not! Each additional bit doubles the number of tones. So a 12-bit actually has more than 4,000 tones from black to pure white! This means that the JPEGs from an iPhone has only 6% of the information of a 12-bit RAW file from the G10.

Lastly, is the capabilites of both devices. The iPhone is pure auto; it doesn't even have an adjustable aperture. The G10, however, has full auto, full manual, shutter and aperture priority. It has a real focusing system that can track slow moving subjects. It has a real flash as opposed to an LED which has a fraction of the luminosity of a real flash. These additional modes will allow the user to be far more creative. Try taking a shot of moving water with an iPhone and getting the blurred cotton candy effect that you'll get with a long shutter speed. You can't do it with a phone. What about stopping action? Nope, can't do that either. Zooming in to blur backgrounds and isolate your subject? Nope, no can do with an iPhone. There are so many shooting and lighting conditions that no smartphone can handle where the G10 can do it with ease.

Both the iPhone and the G10 can be used to make great shots, especially when viewed on small screen or on the web. But when making prints, the images from any smartphone will fall apart where the G10 will hold up to larger prints maintaining full photo quality.

Nope.

If you think about it, the iPhone 6 has a wide angle lens. 8MP, 1/3.06-inch sensor

The G10 and other point and shoot cameras have optical zoom lenses. 14.7 Megapixel, 1/1.7-inch sensor

The G10 is just an all around better camera.

NO!

READ Rank's answer again. You AIN'T gonna get a more detailed and accurate answer than that! Heck, he included details I had long forgotten about!

Absolutely not. It is simply a convenient automated mini p&s camera with a tiny sensor and fixed lens fitted into a smartphone. I will give it some praise for its processing abilities though…

Frank's answer is probably the best reply to that question that been seen on here in ages!

The g10 takes wonderful pictures and I have a few I have blown up to 11x14 and hung in my home.

Picture quality depends mostly on the skill of the user. Those who know photography, prefer a real camera.

Absolutely not. It is simply a convenient automated mini p&s camera with a tiny sensor and fixed lens fitted into a smartphone. I will give it some praise for its processing abilities though…