Peter wrote:
What program did you use Ted, and can it batch process a whole directory?
Rawtherapee, I am not sure if it’s better than lightroom, but it is more transparent from a technical standpoint, and multi platform and yes you can do batch operations. The RL deconvolution is good for dodgy optics (I think the algorithm used on Hubble but I could be wrong), or maybe better cockpit shots, stuff where a little extended depth of field might help. I am actually a bit of digital newbie, but I have had a long interest in photography.
Peter wrote:
In fact I am not sure if 3rd party camera apps can get access to the actual image data at all. The ostensible reason for this is user experience optimisation
I have a Motorola G3, and it can’t do raw, with no known API, so I was a little disappointed, but I never thought to look until this thread… I am not surprised some of this is intentionally hidden, made more difficult, who would have thought instagram would be worth…
Sounds like Apple is leading the way here or maybe you haven’t just found the right app yet?. Even though the native camera app doesn’t support RAW, with apps like ProCamera it’s a piece of cake. They just show up in it’s camera roll and at Lightroom import.
Good result though Peter and Ted!
The S7 stock app does it all but the “convenience challenge” is finding an app which can write the stuff to the SD card, which is not supposed to be possible. On a rooted phone there are various ways under unix to do this e.g. symlinks and there are apps which will move the data in the background as soon as each file is closed. I will advise if I find something.
Yikes
An Iphone has no external storage at all so being able to write to a 200GB card is a bonus 
Mind you, a friend has just bought the Iphone X with 256GB for £1300… that is neater and you get better read/write performance, at a substantial price.
Unless I am mistaken the Galaxy S8 stores fotos on the SD card
They all can. The weird limitation is that if you want to save RAW pics, the Samsung camera app forces them (and the concurrently taken jpeg) to internal storage. Most likely this is done to “enhance the user experience” because internal flash is much faster.
And one obvious way around this – 3rd party camera apps – don’t get access to the full resolution… If the S8 can store RAWs to the SD card, and do it with the camera app which can be launched with a double-click on the home button, that is great.
The other way around this is to use one of the various apps which can move files in the background. You may need root access for that however.
Peter wrote:
An Iphone has no external storage
Yes, that’s true. I would never advise to take the low spec model. That’s just un-future proofing your purchase. I.e. take the 128 Gb model, not the 32 Gb. Once you get the hang of your new (smart)(i)phone and its awesomeness, you’ll find out why. Worrying about running out of memory is so old-fashioned.
1,000 RAW photos take up about 15 Gb, when the processed JPEG is saved simultaneously (RAW+JPEG).
It wouldn’t surprise me that the internals of a Samsung phone are less capable than the internals of a contemporary iPhone. There is a one-and-a-half year gap if I have to believe you. However with every year that passes both will be at a higher level. That’s why I think this thread is not dead for a while The camera is a big selling point with every new model phone that comes out.
I have just uploaded another file pair to here.
These are from an app which actually seems to work properly: writes raw (and jpeg) to the SD card, keeps its config, etc. Footej Camera
1:1 zoom, raw untouched
same, ex-phone jpeg
same, ex photoshop CS6, adjust curves, Topaz de-noise, unsharp mark
IMHO the phone jpeg has way too much unsharp mark on it, as well as unnecessary jpeg artefacts. Given the file size there is no excuse for that
Even just importing the raw into Lightroom and doing almost nothing with it yields a much better result:
Admittedly these are horrible shooting conditions: drizzle, and lots of foliage to eat up the data and nicely screw up jpeg compression.
