iPhone Photography

[Greg Mihalik]

Just in case you have doubts about being creative with an iPhone – Teasers and Inspiration Here. BTW, the Sedona Arts Center offers a class – iPhoneography I'm sure others do too. [No vested interest in Apple or SAC]

[Roger Moore]

Hi all,

I’m heading out to Glacier NP for a week. I’m wondering if people think the iPhone can take publication quality photos in the hands of an average photographer?

I’m using the Moment Lens which greatly improve the photographs I have taken. I have the telephoto lens, the wide angle lens, macro and the fisheye lens. The telephoto is only 58mm. But I love my wide angle pictures and what the macro lens reveals is amazing.

I’m also wondering what the best settings are for the phone? Or perhaps, what apps would help me capture better pictures.

[Bonzo]

I’m wondering if people think the iPhone can take publication quality photos in the hands of an average photographer?

Short answer: yes.

Slightly-longer answer: Some of the best photos I’ve taken have come from a cheap Soviet piece of junk.  Camera quality – even for published usage – is largely irrelevant: get your head in the right place and you’ll be fine.  The lenses are only important insofar as composition and deployment are concerned; they’ll all make garbage images if you don’t do your part.  Take care, because equipment-fixation can quickly become a crutch that hampers your vision.

Better answer: I’ve seen entire portfolios – excellent ones – that were shot with nothing but an old iPhone.  No accessories, no extras.  You have nothing to worry about as long as you keep your mind and eye creatively linked.

[Rex Sanders]

“Publication quality” is not a clearly defined concept since the Internet slammed print publications. More than half of all Internet images are consumed on smartphones, where anything above ~4,000 pixels is definitely wasted.

All my BPL-published non-historical photos were shot with an iPhone. OTOH, I’ve learned the hard way that a series of photos taken under exactly the same lighting and other conditions sometimes have distracting and hard-to-repair color shifts, even using fixed exposure and focus. Too much camera intelligence creates other problems.

I have the Moment “tele” lens (smartphones have even corrupted our language). It’s sitting in a box in the basement, because I so rarely see a need for it. When I upgrade my too-many-year-old iPhone to a Max model, even that need will go away.

For almost all situations, it’s the photographer’s skill, not the camera, that matters most. By far.

— Rex

[Roger Moore]

Thanks for the advice. The telephoto lens seems like the least useful. I think because it’s not that powerful. I’d have to noodle on that.

But I love the Macro. There is nothing better than taking pix of a pile of termite dust and seeing the striation on each pellet. And most of my landscapes seem better with the wide angle. (I can always crop them later.)

And good advise on the web vs print. Thank you.

[Bonzo]

For almost all situations, it’s the photographer’s skill, not the camera, that matters most. By far.

That’s the beginning and end of it.

[Rex Sanders]

General iPhone photography tips, using the native apps:

– For best quality, avoid the front camera.

– In Settings > Camera, turn on Grid, and use the Rule of Thirds to help compose better photos, including keeping horizons and similar lines level.

– Avoid two-finger-spread-to-zoom, it usually degrades image quality. You can always zoom in later using your favorite photo editing app.

– Play with HDR. Sometimes it produces noticeably better photos, but I’m not a fan.

– I generally find Live photos annoying, and don’t use it.

– I usually shoot in regular Photo mode, holding the iPhone in landscape orientation 99% of the time. Haven’t tried Portrait. Square seems like a waste of good pixels, but if you’re “publishing” to Instagram a few seconds later … Pano takes practice to get decent results, but I rarely use it anyway.

– I’ve rarely found the built-in flash to be useful. Take another high-quality light source if you frequently need to shoot in low light.

– I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the quality of Photos color editing in the latest versions. But even with an iPhone “Plus” screen, I prefer final cropping and editing on a much larger desktop Mac screen.

– I usually use Settings > Formats > High Efficiency, and do Mac editing in “.heic” format, exporting to JPEG (or whatever format the publication prefers) at the last step. Not sure if this is good, bad, or indifferent for quality.

– Avoid deleting “bad” photos on the iPhone. Sometimes those look great on my Mac after editing.

There are many, many books and websites on taking better photos. I’m definitely not an expert, but started with a college photography class too many decades ago.

HTH.

— Rex

[Arthur]

As my father says about golf, it’s not the club, it’s the guy holding onto the club.

[Bonzo]

Good advice from Rex, there.  My biggest compositional tip would be to avoid taking the “that’s a good photo” shots when you first see them.  Instead, try to figure out what makes the photo so good, and then only photograph that element.  And yeah, don’t delete things: right now, I’m working on images that are fifteen years old, and that I thought to be garbage when I first looked through them.

As my father says about golf, it’s not the club, it’s the guy holding onto the club.

My dad says something similar.  “You can miss birds with an expensive gun, just the same as you can with a cheap one.” He’s right. 😉

[Kevin Babione]

I’m astounded at the number of people who only use their iPhone for photos but don’t know that you can use the “up volume” button to snap the shutter.  I see them, trying to hold their phone in landscape mode, and then tap the button with either a finger from the hand holding the phone or using their other hand.  I use the “up volume” button so frequently that it’s hard for me to take a photo in portrait mode.

[David Thomas]

Maybe other people don’t know this – I didn’t until I was driving two college students over the pass last winter:  iPhones now have incredible low-light capabilities.

There was a hint of an aurora – the way it is some nights.  Is it the aurora?  Or distant city lights?  Or headlights bouncing off the snow?  Or the aurora?

Unlike my iPhone 9, my son’s iPhone 10 showed more colors than I’ve almost ever seen – reds and greens at the same time, which is rare with the naked-eye visible ones (red is always rare).  The structure and character of the display was the same as the brighter ones I’ve seen many times, but with vastly more clarity, color and texture through the camera than by eye.

So now I’ve got a iPhone 12 (thank you local electrical consumers!) and can play with that, too.

[Bonzo]

Maybe other people don’t know this – I didn’t until I was driving two college students over the pass last winter:  iPhones now have incredible low-light capabilities.

Not long ago, I saw some night images from an 11: impressive, to say the least.  I, too, was amazed at how much color and clarity they can pack into the image with the new multi-lensing technologies.

[Author]

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