iPhone Mirror Photo Bends Space and Time ⇥ petapixel.com

Matt Growcoot, PetaPixel:

Standing in front of two large mirrors, Tessa Coates’ reflection does not return the same pose that she is making, and not only that, but both reflections are different from each other and different from the pose Coates was actually holding.

[…]

The photo is not a “Live Photo” nor is it a “Burst” — it’s just a normal picture taken on an iPhone. Understandably, Coates was freaked out.

Photography is real strange these days.

Apparently, an Apple Store employee told Coates that the company is testing a feature which sounds similar to Google’s Best Take. This is, as far as I can find, the first mention of this claim, but I would not give it too much credibility. Apple retail employees, in my experience, are often barely aware of the features of the current developer beta, let alone an internal build. They are not briefed on unannounced features. To be clear, I would not be surprised if Apple were working on something like this, but I would not bet on the reliability of this specific mention.

Update: MKBHD researcher David Imel, on Threads, says it is unlikely this photo is being depicted accurately, pointing out how different the arm positions are in each pose compared to the narrow exposure window used. The metadata posted by Coates does not disprove this, but says the exposure time was 1/100 of a second. If three photos were shot in rapid succession at that shutter speed, that would occur in a total of about 1/33 of a second, assuming no lag between images. I have seen some bizarre computational stuff off my iPhone, but nothing like this.

Update: It may not be a panoramic photo, but it sure looks like an iPhone photo taken in panorama mode, according to Faruk of iPhonedo.