Phone Cameras Have Peaked

Yours truly with a 1950s Argus, the beer-can-with-a-stapler-attached of 35mm film cameras. The new iPhone 18 has a camera has a physical aperture, just like the one you see on this 70 year-old camera. Why? Because there's nothing else Apple can do to make it look better than the iPhone 17, and the number one thing that drives iPhone users to upgrade is the camera. The sensors are the same as last year's, as is the software, so we may have hit the wall on what phones can do. Does anyone need aperture blades on a phone camera? It depends. Do you like blurry backgrounds that isolate your subject, created by a shallow depth-of-field? Currently, that's done on your phone with software. It's pretty good for portraits (if the subject is centered), but it's not perfect. Real cameras do it better. A variable, physical aperture could help, in theory. The problem: Most lenses, even the pro ones on pro cameras, don't do well wide-open (more open = more blurry background, but also more errors).…