The Technology Behind The New iPhone 5S Camera Is Incredibly Clever - Here's How It Works

The camera on Apple's new iPhone 5s comes with some pleasant surprises.

It's got a higher resolution and more automatic tech to make sure your photos are perfect. Best of all, it can take 10 photos at once and picks the clearest, sharpest one without you having to do anything.

The latest, greatest iPhone camera may still have the 8 megapixel resolution of the iPhone 5, but it increased its sensor area by 15 percent, to a 1.5-micron pixel size. Bigger pixels means more light can get in, and so the new camera can capture more detailed photos in low light.

The phone also automatically adjusts your white balance, exposure, tone map, and autofocus. If you're trying to snap an action shot, it can auto-stabilize by taking multiple shots and blending the sharpest parts into a single image. If you feel like slowing life down, you can play back your 120-frames-per-second videos at a quarter speed.

You can also hold down the shutter to activate the camera's new burst mode, which takes 10-frames-per-second and will suggest individual shots or a sequence of the best photos.

Take several photos:

Have the best one selected:

Sick of ugly color distortion caused by your flash? The new camera boasts "true tone" dual LED flash to match the color balance of the light in the room, either with cool blue or warm amber light.

Beyond regular pictures, the iPhone 5s camera can take either square or 28-megapixel panorama shots and it comes with built-in filters, so you might not even need to change anything before sharing it on Instagram.

Sure, most of these features can be found in typical point-and-shoot cameras, but that's the point - the iPhone now has all the basic capabilities of a standalone camera so users don't need an extra camera.