iPhone camera for photography of colored gems

[T L]

I have an “antique” iPhone 8 Plus, and the color gem photos are really lacking. How are the latest iPhones for gem photos?

 

[Neptune]

I thought you liked the newish (9?) better a while back…?! Im still rocking my geriatric iPhone.

 

[minousbijoux]

I *believe* I have a 12 (can't keep track). While my camera has greater ability than prior models (I want to say in regards to focus and necessary lighting), it still overly enhances color. To be truly representative, I sometimes have to mess around with tone and saturation after the fact.

 

[2Neesers]

I ”upgraded” my iPhone 8 Plus to the iPhone 12 Pro and it’s terrible! It doesn’t focus well and it takes many attempts to get the color correct, and by that time, I’m not even sure if what I think is correct is correct . Maybe I got a dud. Very frustrating!
I actually kept my 8 Plus and discovered I can charge it up and take pictures even though it’s not activated, so I do that occasionally.
My husband has an ancient iPhone X and it takes excellent pictures!
Which iPhone does your husband have that you mentioned you used in the garnet thread @TL? I thought the pictures looked very nice!

 

[T L]

I ”upgraded” my iPhone 8 Plus to the iPhone 12 Pro and it’s terrible! It doesn’t focus well and it takes many attempts to get the color correct, and by that time, I’m not even sure if what I think is correct is correct . Maybe I got a dud. Very frustrating!
I actually kept my 8 Plus and discovered I can charge it up and take pictures even though it’s not activated, so I do that occasionally.
My husband has an ancient iPhone X and it takes excellent pictures!
Which iPhone does your husband have that you mentioned you used in the garnet thread @TL? I thought the pictures looked very nice!

My husband has the iPhone X as well, and it does take much better photos than my phone, but it doesn’t always focus the best. If you’re saying the X has a better camera than the pro, that’s good to know.

iPhone X


iPhone 8 Plus

 

[2Neesers]

My husband has the iPhone X as well, and it does take much better photos than my phone, but it doesn’t always focus the best. If you’re saying the X has a better camera than the pro, that’s good to know.

iPhone X


iPhone 8 Plus

What a coincidence they both have the X! It does take much better gemstone pictures with more accurate colors than the 12 Pro in my experience.
I was told that the 12’s weren’t really designed with macro photography in mind when I had complained to Apple about the issues I was having. I’m not sure about the newer 13 & 14 iPhones, but I would hope they are better than the 12!

 

[minousbijoux]

What a coincidence they both have the X! It does take much better gemstone pictures with more accurate colors than the 12 Pro in my experience.
I was told that the 12’s weren’t really designed with macro photography in mind when I had complained to Apple about the issues I was having. I’m not sure about the newer 13 & 14 iPhones, but I would hope they are better than the 12!

I stand corrected - I clearly don't know what I'm talking about!

 

[2Neesers]

I stand corrected - I clearly don't know what I'm talking about!

It’s possible I just got a bad camera on my 12 Pro! If yours works well, it could be that there is something wrong with mine. I spent a lot of time with Apple support trying to get to the bottom of it and they did acknowledge there have been issues with some of the 12 Pro cameras, but in the end they weren’t able to offer any help. I’m glad yours works better than mine!

 

[T L]

What a coincidence they both have the X! It does take much better gemstone pictures with more accurate colors than the 12 Pro in my experience.
I was told that the 12’s weren’t really designed with macro photography in mind when I had complained to Apple about the issues I was having. I’m not sure about the newer 13 & 14 iPhones, but I would hope they are better than the 12!

My bad, he corrected me and said he had the iPhone XR? Is the camera different? Than the X?

 

[clairebc]

I have an iphone SE 2 and it takes decent pictures, but does not represent all colors properly. I have a color change teal/purple sapphire. When it's teal, the phone photo still shows purple!

Guess I need to upgrade the phone

 

[T L]

I have an iphone SE 2 and it takes decent pictures, but does not represent all colors properly. I have a color change teal/purple sapphire. When it's teal, the phone photo still shows purple!

Guess I need to upgrade the phone

Color change gems are impossible to photograph!! So are emeralds, but green always causes issues it seems.

 

[DAF]

I have the iPhone 13 ProMax, upgraded last spring from a 7 Plus. Significant improvement in photo quality, but colors are still a bit off in accuracy and saturation, if that makes sense.

Below is a Fancy Vivid Blue Cushion lab diamond sent to me last week for inspection. The sun is out, but it's 10 AM and some trees shaded some of the light. On my macBook Retina display, the color is a vivid swimming pool blue color and appears very saturated. IRL, it's not as vivid out in the sun. In the shade on a sunny day, I see a cornflower blue color with a lavender undertone. Inside with LED lighting set halfway between incandescent and bright white, its a beautiful baby blue.My experience is that the iPhone camera usually washes out color, so this diamond photo is a surprise.

 

[Starstruck8]

I have an iphone SE 2 and it takes decent pictures, but does not represent all colors properly. I have a color change teal/purple sapphire. When it's teal, the phone photo still shows purple!

Guess I need to upgrade the phone

This is a problem for all cameras, not just phone cameras. It almost always comes up when colour change stones are mentioned here.

Here is an example I set up a while ago, with a colour change garnet (I guess sort of similar to your sapphire) and my DSLR (Nikon D7000). Left as shot, with basic processing (white balance, exposure), right edited to show what I saw:


The basic problem is that camera sensor spectral sensitivity curves differ from those of our cone cells (all curves normalized to max 1):
The curves are for my camera, but no camera I know of does a much better job of matching the cone cell curves. In plain words, cameras see colour differently from our eyes.

The wonder is that cameras do as well as they do, not that they sometimes get it wrong. You might just get lucky with a particular stone, camera and lighting. But don't count on it.

 

[clairebc]

Color change gems are impossible to photograph!! So are emeralds, but green always causes issues it seems.

Yes, the greens are tricky!

 

[clairebc]

This is a problem for all cameras, not just phone cameras. It almost always comes up when colour change stones are mentioned here.

Here is an example I set up a while ago, with a colour change garnet (I guess sort of similar to your sapphire) and my DSLR (Nikon D7000). Left as shot, with basic processing (white balance, exposure), right edited to show what I saw:


The basic problem is that camera sensor spectral sensitivity curves differ from those of our cone cells (all curves normalized to max 1):
The curves are for my camera, but no camera I know of does a much better job of matching the cone cell curves. In plain words, cameras see colour differently from our eyes.

The wonder is that cameras do as well as they do, not that they sometimes get it wrong. You might just get lucky with a particular stone, camera and lighting. But don't count on it.

Thank you, very helpful! And I'm an engineer so I do love any post with plots

I tried to get into editing my photos, but am currently limited to the editing features in my iphone photo apps (and tbh haven't explore too much of that). Also haven't done any research on decent free editing software yet.

 

[2Neesers]

My bad, he corrected me and said he had the iPhone XR? Is the camera different? Than the X?

I’m not sure, but I would guess they are the same or similar since they’re from the same series.

 

[Autumn in New England]

I can't speak to the iphone, unfortunately, because I started as a Samsung person, and haven't had the courage to move on from it. I love my Galaxy Z Flip 4 for everything but photos. It's not the coloration that's a problem though, it's just impossible to focus on fine detail.

 

[T L]

I can't speak to the iphone, unfortunately, because I started as a Samsung person, and haven't had the courage to move on from it. I love my Galaxy Z Flip 4 for everything but photos. It's not the coloration that's a problem though, it's just impossible to focus on fine detail.

Detail is an issue, but the real problem is that no matter how great a camera is, a photo is still a 2D depiction of something that needs to be seen in 3D to fully appreciate. Hey maybe one day we’ll have metaverse 3D camera shots!

 

[ShinyPink]

In my case, it's the user. I don't know how, but my kids take better photos with my phone than I do. They always tell me what I'm doing wrong (not so nicely) but no matter where I stand (sun/shade), what part of the screen I tap to focus or fix color, I screw it up. I think my headstone will say, "Super nice person. Sucked at photos."

I've always thought Samsungs take great pictures, but I'd screw that up, too.

 

[Starstruck8]

Detail is an issue, but the real problem is that no matter how great a camera is, a photo is still a 2D depiction of something that needs to be seen in 3D to fully appreciate. Hey maybe one day we’ll have metaverse 3D camera shots!

Good point. As Gary H likes to say, we have two eyes. Much of the magic of faceted stones comes from 'binocular rivalry'. A facet might catch the light as viewed by one eye but not the other. Result: a magic shimmer.

In this article we discuss at great length matters of human perception including the biology and mechanisms as they pertain to diamonds. Especially the fact that we view diamonds with two eyes.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...tion_and_fire_depend_on_human_vision_features

Check out the stereo pair on p93. It's amazing! The individual images look flat and dead. The fused image shimmers.

 

[Voodoo Child]

My great-grandfather’s blue zircon pinky ring taken with an iPhone 14 Pro in macro mode. The color is pretty spot-on. Also, don’t make fun of me for my ashy hands. It’s winter here in Michigan and it’s colder than my ex-girlfriend’s heart out there.

 

[SandraLynn]

Any photos I’ve posted here of my jewelry was taken with iPhone XS Max

 

[PrecisionGem]

I had an iPhone X and found the "telephoto" lens (which really isn't telephoto but at least not wide angle) was better for gems than the normal lens. I now have a iPhone 13 mini, as I don't like big phones, and both lenses are wide angle. I tried a clip on macro, but that forced you to get way to close to the stone so the stone was always in a shadow. I would think the new iPhone 14 with 3 lenses would be best, but not using macro but rather the telephoto lens.

For my shots on the website, I use a Nikon D750 with a 200 mm Nikon Macro lens. The longer lens allows a greater working distance from the lens to stone. In my set up it's about 12" or more.

 

[Avondale]

Detail is an issue, but the real problem is that no matter how great a camera is, a photo is still a 2D depiction of something that needs to be seen in 3D to fully appreciate. Hey maybe one day we’ll have metaverse 3D camera shots!

Good point. As Gary H likes to say, we have two eyes. Much of the magic of faceted stones comes from 'binocular rivalry'. A facet might catch the light as viewed by one eye but not the other. Result: a magic shimmer.

Yep yep yep.

I hadn't considered it before, but upon reading this I thought "hmmmmmm", closed one eye and sure enough - a good chunk of the beauty, the sparkles, the glow is gone. Simply because the light reflections that the second eye was seeing and processing are no longer seen. No wonder phone cameras do such a poor job.