Jefferson Graham

USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — So, is the Apple iPhone 7 Plus really the greatest smartphone camera ever?

That's the question many are asking of a phone that's being marketed as a potential camera killer, one that's already as good as sold out at retail over the weekend. At its Sept. 7 event, Apple said the new camera was so good, it was getting close to DSLR quality.

To see just how the camera fared, we tested the iPhone 7 Plus against the flagship Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, a mid-range Canon DSLR, the $1,200 80D and the previous iPhone model, 6S Plus.

We set up a backdrop in the USA TODAY bureau and used staffer Michelle Arbogast as our model. We also met our friend Jen Wei Warren for lunch that day and took her across the street to see how the camera would fare in natural and really bad light.

We also took photos in the basement of a parking garage that was as dark as it gets.

None of the pictures shown here but have been retouched or altered in any way. Watch the accompanying video, which was shot entirely on the iPhone 7, to see the shoot and more back-to-back comparisons.

But first, the basic specs. The new Plus phone has two lenses, a wide-angle (28mm equivalent, down from 29mm on the previous edition) and a portrait lens (56mm) for medium close-ups. Both have better low-light and color capabilities than on previous editions and improved optical image stabilization. The second lens is a feature of the stepped-up iPhone 7 Plus, which starts at $769. The entry-level iPhone 7, which starts at $649, only has the one wide-angle lens.

The wide angle lens has a faster lens opening, f 1.8, from f 2.2, for better shooting in low light.

The second lens, billed as "telephoto" by Apple, is actually a medium focal length portrait lens for producing people-pleasing portraits, with a 2.8 lens opening. The iPhone is not the first to offer dual-lenses, but it's the most high-profile entry, and the portrait lens is so sharp and people pleasing, it makes the 7 Plus now the smartphone cam to beat.

Better close-ups

When I took pictures of our USA TODAY colleague Michelle the other day, the second lens let me get better portraits, without having to shove the phone in her face. That is exactly what I had to do with the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, the comparable top-of-the line Android offering to the new iPhone 7 Plus, to produce a similar image to what I was getting on the iPhone portrait lens.

The images of Michelle knocked me out. They were so sharp, and frankly, didn’t look that far off from the quality I was getting from a mid-level $1,200 DSLR, the Canon 80D.

That said, the iPhone won’t let me shoot in manual control, put on additional lenses, take long exposures of the night skies, add a strong flash and other professional accessories like any good DSLR. I'll still be turning to the DSLR or a mirrorless camera for superior travel photos, and when I shoot weddings and other events. But the 7 Plus is a hell of a camera to always have by my side.

Apple's 'telephoto' zoom

When you take photos with the iPhone 7 Plus camera, you have two options: Start with 1x (which means the wide angle lens) and then click it and it goes to 2x for the portrait lens. Hold your finger down, and you get a scrolling wheel, which kicks in a slight optical zoom (1x to 2x) and then the big digital zoom. The camera appears to enlarge the image all the way up to 10x. A true 10x zoom would be like slapping a huge 240mm telephoto lens on your iPhone.

But photographers, beware. Unlike a camera lens, no true zooming is actually involved with the digital zoom feature. Instead, the software crops the picture for the illusion of zooming, and enlarges pixels to try and make it presentable. While in my tests the second portrait lens photos were remarkable, as good as any point and shoot camera I've ever used, if not better, the 10x zoom results were highly pixilated and pretty useless. (That said, I'm a photographer, and may be looking at it differently from most folks, who may not be bothered by the grain and pixilation.)

The 50mm focal length has long been considered one of the optimum lengths (along with 80-85mm) for distortion free portraits, so Apple did consumers a huge favor here.

Before the new 7 Plus, to get those close-ups we've come to love over the years, many smartphone photographers have turned to accessory lenses from the likes of Olloclip and Moments for similar results. But I'm seeing a much sharper, crisper image on the iPhone camera. (Your old accessory lenses won't fit on the new iPhone 7 Plus. Olloclip says it's at work developing new models for the new phone.)

In the garage, the 7 Plus was okay, not great, and it had a really hard time focusing. (These are terrible lighting conditions for any camera. The 7 Plus shot is clearly better in low light, slightly, than the 6S.)

We were inspired by Apple, which told us that the new iPhone had better color reproduction, to snap some images of yellow lemons and green limes at our local Rubio's. The iPhone shots do seem a tad richer, but that's a software trick. We may not always want hyper colors, and any program like Adobe's Lightroom or Photoshop can increase or decrease saturation.

But during back to back shots of Jen against the shrubbery, the greens pop on the 7 Plus in a way they don't on the 6S Plus, without any noticeable changes to her facial tones.

When Apple introduced the iPhone 7 at a media event on September 7, it showed how the new camera could throw the background out of focus, (what's called a "bokeh" effect,) to have your eyes just go to the subject. This is something we usually achieve with DSLRs and great lenses, and Apple says it can achieve it through a software update that will kick in later this year.

Reality check: as good as the iPhone 7 Plus is, it still has a ways to go to catch up to my beloved Canon 5D Mark III or Sony A7S cameras, in terms of shooting in low light, manually adjusting lighting and focus and producing killer videos.

But who in their right mind needs to really compare a smartphone cam to a DSLR? Is the iPhone as good as a DSLR?

No and it never will be.

But the advancements we've seen in smartphone photography over the last few years are absolutely amazing, and the new iPhone 7 Plus camera, thanks to the portrait lens, pushes it a little further. That new second portrait lens is going to do wonders for your people pictures, and even considering how poor the the digital 10x zoom looks when extended all the way out, I'll still be thrilled to have the new iPhone 7 Plus accompanying me through daily life, for vastly improved smartphone portraits.

Follow USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham on Twitter, @jeffersongraham and listen to the daily #TalkingTech podcast on Stitcher and iTunes.