Google Pixel 5's wimpy camera is driving me to the iPhone 12 - CNET

Commentary: For this photo enthusiast, the Pixel 5's middling camera hardware has undercut Google's advanced image processing.

Google's Pixel 5 smartphone has ultrawide and wide-angle cameras, but no telephoto for more distant subjects.

For most shots, I've relied on Pixels because of Google's pioneering computational photography software, which wrings superior image quality out of limited hardware.

The midrange camera hardware on the Pixel 5, and the high-end array of cameras on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, along with the gadget's large image sensor and new software options, are pushing me to the Apple camp.

Sure, rivals haven't necessarily matched all of Google's camera software, but Google isn't close to their hardware.

In 2019, Google's Pixel 4 took a step up by adding a second rear-facing camera, a telephoto option for distant subjects.

That was the same year Apple added a third camera to its higher-end iPhone 11 Pro models, an ultrawide camera that sat alongside its main and telephoto cameras.

The Pixel 5 photo at 2X telephoto, shot here with Google's computational raw format, is fine viewed small but has only a 3 megapixel resolution.

Google tried to match Apple's prowess this year by replacing the telephoto camera with an ultrawide camera in the Pixel 5.

I suspect ultrawide cameras are better for mainstream smartphone customers than telephotos.

In response to my concerns, Google says it's improved the Super Res Zoom technique for digital zooming on the Pixel 5 with better computational photography and AI techniques that now can magnify up to a factor of 7X.

And a Google computational photography guru, Marc Levoy, has left Google and is now at Adobe, where he's building photo technology into Adobe's camera app