The ultra-wide camera in the iPhone 11 models is fixed-focus, does not support RAW capture

<a href=”https://www.dpreview.com/news/6137710561/the-ultra-wide-camera-in-the-iphone-11-models-is-fixed-focus-doesn-t-support-raw-capture” target=_new” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>Gannon Burgett for Digital Photography Review:

Last week, Apple debuted its new iPhone 11 devices, all three of which feature an ultra-wide camera module. This marks the first time Apple has put an ultra-wide camera in an iOS device and with the new camera comes all-new capabilities and shooting modes.

Revealed by Halide developer Ben Sandofsky, the ultra-wide camera has a fixed-focus lens and doesn’t offer any RAW photo output. The reasoning isn’t yet known, but as noted by a number of responses to Sandofsky’s tweet, it’s possible the reason for not offering RAW output from the ultra-wide camera is due to the barrel distortion present in the uncorrected images from the ultra-wide camera.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s possible that Apple could turn on RAW support for the ultra-wide camera in a later iOS update.

More about RAW and iPhone:
• The Power of RAW on iPhone: Part 1 by Sebastiaan de With.
• The Power of RAW on iPhone: Part 2 by Sebastiaan de With.

9 Comments

    1. We have been given to believe that the only difference between the base and Pro camera systems is the addition of a telephoto lens. If the raw (lower-case) output of the ultra-wide camera contains serious distortion that requires correction in the camera in real time, RAW (upper-case) files would be pretty useless, wouldn’t they?

      1. No, RAW files would still be beneficial. The biggest reason you want RAW if for the higher bit depth so tamhat you can take the image into something like Lightroom and recover blown highlights or crushed shadows. Removing barrel distortion is trivial in Lightroom especially if a lens correction preset is written (which you can be sure there would be.)

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