Many of us will agree that photography can be an art form. As well as composing the perfect composition it takes skill to set your DSLR or mirrorless camera’s metering mode to capture detail in shadows and highlights. We can also adjust the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO to get a balance between revealing detail and keeping nasty noise at bay. And then there’s the joy of processing a Camera Raw file in a digital darkroom such as Lightroom Classic to tease out more color and detail before rewarding ourselves with a perfect print that we’ve sharpened in post to give it more punch!
However… the AI-assisted computational photography found in smartphones such as my iPhone 16 Pro takes away much of the art of photography. Sure, I can shoot in Apple ProRAW but the iPhone’s Camera is still using Smart HDR to combine rapidly shot multiple exposures to capture detail in bright and dark areas in the resulting .DNG (Digital Negative) file. The iPhone’s Fusion Camera can also recognize multiple people in the frame and expose for them individually using AI-created masks to reveal color and texture in their skin and clothing. The photographer becomes one link in the chain that triggers the AI ‘magic’ with a press of the Camera Control button. This can result in fantastic-looking photos but where’s the ‘artist’ in this equation?
