OpenAI has reportedly acquired Glass Imaging, a Los Altos-based smartphone camera company, for more than $300 million according to the Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2019 by former Apple engineers Ziv Attar and Tom Bishop, who helped build Portrait Mode, the startup had raised roughly $30 million before the deal and uses neural networks trained on specific camera hardware to improve image quality directly at capture rather than through post-processing edits.
A photography guide explains that Apple's new iPhone 18 Pro has a slightly wider variable aperture (f/1.48 vs f/1.78) than its predecessor, theoretically producing shallower depth of field. However, it outlines four techniques—Portrait mode, Macro mode, shooting close to a subject, and using the telephoto lens—that let owners of older iPhones create similar background-blur effects without upgrading.
Reports suggest Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 Pro lineup will introduce a variable aperture lens on the main camera, a first for the iPhone. It remains unclear whether both the Pro and Pro Max models will get this feature, or just the larger Pro Max, and the wide-angle and telephoto lenses are expected to keep fixed apertures.
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