Leica LUX App for iPhone: Comparison testing

[LocalHero1953]

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I have taken a handful of photos with the Leica Lux app and the iOS Camera app on my iPhone 13 (not Pro, not Max etc). I'll show the results here. Posting lots of side by side photos is a bit tedious, but since this thread appears moribund, I will not upset many people and it may be helpful to others.

All the photos were taken with the default auto settings for both Lux and Camera, with the standard '28mm' lens. The Lux photos are all raw .DNG and the Camera photos are .HEIC. They are 12mp images, imported into Lightroom. This post shows straight out of camera files, no processing by me (except that I have straightened them, to make comparison easier).

In each case I show the Lux shots first, then the Camera shots.

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Edited November 30, 2024 by LocalHero1953

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[LocalHero1953]

And now the same comparison but after basic post processing of the Lux raw images: 

• Auto exposure, highlights, shadows, whites, blacks, saturation, vibrance
• My own preset: a manual tone curve that lowers the shadows a bit, with increased contrast in the highlights; increased vibrance, increased clarity

These edits made the Lux image look approximately the same as the Camera image at first glance.
I made no changes to the Camera images.
Same order as before.

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[LocalHero1953]

Finally, 100% crops of selected parts of each image. No additional processing from the previous post.

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[LocalHero1953]

My conclusions.

It is obvious that the iOS Camera images have been heavily processed, with high levels of sharpening. Saturation is high, and it appears that the higher saturation areas have received an extra boost, while pastel areas have received little or none. There is a strong HDR look to the Camera images.

With more effort I could make the Lux images resemble the Camera images more closely. I would not want to do so, however: the Camera images are processed suitable for online, low magnification use. With the Lux raw images I would expect to be able to enlarge them further and, for printing, add the appropriate amount of sharpening. As one would expect when shooting raw, the Lux app adds a lot more options for processing. I don't intend to use the phone and Lux app as a substitute for my Q or SL, but when I see that once in a lifetime shot with just a phone in my pocket, I want to get the best image I can.

The iPhone 13 is an oddity in that the Camera app will not take raw images, but the Lux app can. I believe in other iPhone 13 models the Camera app can take raw shots, and later models certainly can. I would be interested to know how the Lux output compares to raw images from standard iOS apps.

[LocalHero1953]

57 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

have taken a handful of photos with the Leica Lux app and the iOS Camera app on my iPhone 13 (not Pro, not Max etc). I'll show the results here. Posting lots of side by side photos is a bit tedious, but since this thread appears moribund, I will not upset many people and it may be helpful to others.

Thanks to the mods for moving my posts from the inappropriate thread where I posted them originally - that explains my reference to a ‘moribund’ thread!

[andybarton]

You’re welcome. 👍

[ianforber]

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I use an iPhone 12 mini and the free Lux app and the camera app can only take HEIF images. I’ll do some testing to confirm but on a quick test just now the Lux version looks slightly less processed than the camera app version. 

[LocalHero1953]

FTAOD I was using the free LUX version as well.