New Toy

This past week, my iPhone bit the dust. (The battery.) So I got a new one. I had no desire to spend the money, as Apple phones are getting ridiculously expensive. On the other hand, I understand why. The new toys. The bright screen with rich colors and tone. The lovely camera options. So this week’s images are simply the product of playing with my new phone.

He’s a couple of prosaic images from the great outdoors, from a cloudless Saturday evening and a cloudy gray afternoon.

The camera produces good images, especially when you use the RAW or proprietary Apple ProRAW file options. I’ve not tried TIFFs but they presumably are good too. The multiple camera-lens combinations are sharp (my 12 Pro has three, effectively ultra-wide, normal wide, and standard lens lengths). And the multiple cameras allow you to do 3D effects (basically blur the images, as if you are playing with an adjustable aperture.

The sensors also are better indoors than in the past, in terms of handing lower light without all sorts of noise. The ultrawide camera-lens is pretty stunning, particularly in Apple’s ProRAW files. The two images below were taken with the phone’s native camera app and imported into Lightroom. Both are of the main floor, reference section of the Hekman Library at Calvin University.

Finally, another black and white, of the corner windows in my bedroom at home, the bright light from outside and the deep shadows in the room providing the challenge for the camera. Again, for small sensors in an iPhone, these images are really good in terms of noise.

With all three of the indoor images, I processed them in a pretty contrasty way, adding some warm orange-brown hues to the monochrome image.

My iPhone’s camera options can’t replace my Fujifilm cameras, with their larger sensors and diverse lens options. But the new iPhone 12 models and their ultra-wide, wide and (if you have a 12 Pro) standard lens equivalents that if your iPhone is the only “camera” you have with you, you’re in pretty good shape.

Stay warm and stay safe!