Description

I've read so many posts and comments about poor pictures when we all have 4k phones in our pockets. I have family/friends that live near a flight path so when I had a few spare minutes between errands I popped down and took a few photos.

I set up a cheap (~€30 tripod, Canon DSLR, hotshot phone mount and my work phone, an iPhone 13). Unfortunately the DSLR Battery was dead and I didn't have the charger with me to make comparisons to the iPhone but I'll pop down again later in the week to grab some.

The iPhone 13 has 12mp dual cameras with an f/1.6 aperture (f/2.4 on ultra wide w/ 120° fov) and 5x digital zoom. It also utilises a sensor shift optical image stabilisation on the seven element main lens. The ultra wide is 5 element.

Using the flight radar app, I could time my photos for when the aircraft came into view. I had approx 20 seconds between aircraft coming into view and going out of view (from treeline to houses/clouds etc obstructing). I took first photo at 1x zoom. Tap once on screen to focus and once to take photo. Then adjust camera position horizontally, zoom, focus and capture. Over several photos I ranged between 4.1x and 5x zoom.

Some photos have been cropped (not zoomed) in post as to maintain some privacy for family and neighbours.

I screenshot each aircraft I photographed on flight radar so I could identify it and also work out distance from the camera. I have only picked a couple of photos here as they almost all looked the same quality wise. For the first 2 photos, they are the same aircraft, 1x and 4.1x zoom, averaging out the height of the aircraft across 6 flights, approx 1,039m (3,408ft) and measured the angle of the camera (see last photo for setup used) at 26° back from vertical, Google gave me approx 2,370m (7,747ft) direct line-of-sight distance from camera to aircraft.

3rd photo at 1x using same method aircraft was 1,607m high, and LOS to phone was 3,665m.

4th picture is (what I surmised to be) a balloon taken in the wind. Clearly seen naked eye, it appeared to be a large (12-14") foil balloon based on its movement. Unsure if I can upload the video I took, I'll try. This was at 10x on my Samsung A54 12mp rear camera. The 50mp camera installed cannot be zoomed.

5th photo is taken on the iPhone of my drone build, showing these cameras are far more suited to close up stationary objects and not moving objects or far away objects.

Last photo is the setup I used to try keep maximum favourable conditions using a consumer grade, relatively well specced phone, keeping control of angle minimal vibration photographing known objects at well approximated heights and distances.

I post this to counter the argument our phones should provide better images of uap. These photos show best possible conditions, lighting, stability and known flight paths.

I also wanted to tie it in with (post) who showed what consumer grade thermal cameras can do.

I hope this can be a reference for those who want to know best scenario quality for phones.