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Smartphone shooting style vs traditional school


Emanuel
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For casual photography, smartphones bring a new world of possibilities. Sometimes the difference between to get the shot or not. More usual than we can think before to put our hands there. Without mention a whole new universe for computational photography... go figure, selfies also help to subject think we're just taking one. Interesting times for shooting (E : -)

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I think that they have become a lot more better than just for casual stuff. I am not saying they are going to replace a Nikon D850, but used right they can produce some pretty amazing stuff. They can even shoot Raw, and the mobile  Lightroom, Photoshop apps are really pretty powerful.

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10 minutes ago, webrunner5 said:

I think that they have become a lot more better than just for casual stuff. I am not saying they are going to replace a Nikon D850, but used right they can produce some pretty amazing stuff. They can even shoot Raw, and the mobile  Lightroom, Photoshop apps are really pretty powerful.

Indeed. I mean, for street photography though. I do a lot... : -)

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 I have not taken a photo with a "real" camera in years. Well I did going down to Florida. But I don't think they were worth the extra effort other than the reach ability of the Zoom lenses I had.  I find for what I need to do the later Smartphones, other than really dark conditions, fit the bill for me fine. Most people want to see Contrasty, Saturated photos, and most phones deliver that part in spades.

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You are not going to walk around with a camera 24/7. Sure they can take a better shot if you are lucky to have it with you, and someone doesn't punch you in the face taking a picture of them with it, or they say you can't use it there, and you are skilled enough to use manual everything. Other than low light Smartphones now are almost fool proof.

With Photoshop you can make anything look like anything now. Normal looking pictures taken with a "Real Camera" are old hat now. That has been done a million times. Spontaneous stuff is in because you can do that now. The average  person doesn't care how perfect the horizon is, or if every thing is in focus now, they just want to see interesting stuff, not some staged shots people my age did 40 years ago.

Sort of like video is is now, people want movement, to feel like they were there. They are not looking for perfection like years ago. That is why YouTube is so successful. It is fast paced, new maybe everyday, every week. It is exciting, on the move, not static as heck like normal cameras are. And very few people on there are actually very great at making videos, but guess what they have tons of followers because they are interesting, not perfectionist. Not using a Arri, they are using a GoPro, or a cheap Canon camera..

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On a recent trip my wife took pictures with her iPhone and I took video with the GH5.  We often took images from the same vantage points one after the other so there was ample room for comparison.  

One thing I noticed when I started grading the images was how lovely the iPhone photos were in terms of colour and processing.  I've got it on my list to try and break down the iPhone colour science to learn some stuff.

On 6/26/2019 at 1:30 AM, webrunner5 said:

 I have not taken a photo with a "real" camera in years. Well I did going down to Florida. But I don't think they were worth the extra effort other than the reach ability of the Zoom lenses I had.  I find for what I need to do the later Smartphones, other than really dark conditions, fit the bill for me fine. Most people want to see Contrasty, Saturated photos, and most phones deliver that part in spades.

It's an interesting thing, the debate about convenience vs output.  A friend of mine who is into stills photography still uses his Canon 40D (or maybe it's even a 30D) because although he's done several major trips (eg, weeks going through Europe) and really tried to use his iPhone, he says that "the only photos I give the slightest f@#$ about came from the DSLR".  For him the matter is closed - no smartphone picture has ever done it for him so taking a picture with a smartphone is basically like throwing the moment away.

It's not like it's about anything other than the image either: he's a minimalist, hates the size and weight of the DSLR, he prints the odd picture but mostly they go out in a regular email update to friends and family, and he part owns and runs a tech company doing programming and virtualisation of services in the cloud.  He's the perfect person for a smartphone, a parent who values convenience, is completely connected online and has disposable income to buy whatever smartphone he'd like, but nope!

On 6/26/2019 at 2:32 AM, Mattias Burling said:

Imo smartphone cameras just means a bunch of missed shots. Specially in street photography. That's why I hate using them.

Do you think it's the shutter delay that gets in the way?  or something else specific that you can think of?

I've done street photography with both and apart from stealth, the real camera wins in every other department IMHO.

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I think a lot of people base their dislike about Smartphones if they have an older one., and by older I mean even a 2 year old one. My iPhone XS just kills my iPhone X I had and the X killed the iPhone 8 I had before it. They have been improving at a amazing rate. So unfortunately unless you keep up with the latest and great phone you are Way behind compared to say your friends 40D, because Canon has made nearly Zero gains on their lower end cameras. They used the same sensor for years and years.

The Canon 80D my son had was a big let down output wise. Soft photos and soft videos. The DPAF was nice, but that was about it. A big, fat clunky body to boot.  The EOS M I have has a better output than the 80D had, or no worse I think. Even the CS is better on the EOS M. Not a fan of the modern look they have now on their DSLRs.

But sure if I was going on a vacation of a lifetime a Phone would not be my top choice. Probably a 1" mirrorless camera of some sort, or a m4/3, even the Canon M50. But in some places you probably are Only going to get away shooting with a phone.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

Is the iPhone 11 Pro the perfect minimalist travel vlog camera?  Spoiler: no.  

Double spoiler, some of the footage out of it looks terrible.

I have a friend who lugs his 50D around the world even though he's a minimalist and hates carrying it around and all the hassle of memory cards and editing, but he's tried using his phone and however convenient it was, the only photos he likes came from the Canon.  So it doesn't matter how much you like the shooting experience - if you don't like the output, what's the point?

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8 hours ago, kye said:

Is the iPhone 11 Pro the perfect minimalist travel vlog camera?  Spoiler: no.  

Double spoiler, some of the footage out of it looks terrible.

I was honestly surprised how bad the iPhone looks sometimes. Seems to do well with close ups, but wide shots look nasty. The sharpening is pretty terrible. I was expecting more. That said maybe there are after market apps that can improve the look, maybe bypass internal sharpening?? Otherwise its a hard no. The HDR seems to have a weird effect on the footage sometimes too, like it degrades the image further.

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2 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

I was honestly surprised how bad the iPhone looks sometimes. Seems to do well with close ups, but wide shots look nasty. The sharpening is pretty terrible. I was expecting more. That said maybe there are after market apps that can improve the look, maybe bypass internal sharpening?? Otherwise its a hard no. The HDR seems to have a weird effect on the footage sometimes too, like it degrades the image further.

In this video in particular he recorded with a number of different apps, and I'm wondering if it was an app with a low bitrate or bad post-processing that is to blame.  There's one shot in particular (of his partner walking the dog along a trail - I think it was shot with the wide) that is absolutely terrible, but the wide shot of the waterfall wasn't nearly so bad, so I'd take the worst shots with a grain of salt.

Of course, the best shots were also not that great, especially in low-light so there's that.

In many ways this is the perfect architecture - super wide, medium, and tele options.  The iPhone 11 just doesn't deliver that architecture that well with poor ISO performance and heavy-handed post-processing.  Having something that had the same three FOV cameras, but had OIS instead of EIS, and the ability to record in some kind of low-processed 10-bit codec would be a completely different proposition.  

The recipe is good, they just need to upgrade the ingredients.

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2 hours ago, kye said:

In this video in particular he recorded with a number of different apps, and I'm wondering if it was an app with a low bitrate or bad post-processing that is to blame.  There's one shot in particular (of his partner walking the dog along a trail - I think it was shot with the wide) that is absolutely terrible, but the wide shot of the waterfall wasn't nearly so bad, so I'd take the worst shots with a grain of salt.

Of course, the best shots were also not that great, especially in low-light so there's that.

In many ways this is the perfect architecture - super wide, medium, and tele options.  The iPhone 11 just doesn't deliver that architecture that well with poor ISO performance and heavy-handed post-processing.  Having something that had the same three FOV cameras, but had OIS instead of EIS, and the ability to record in some kind of low-processed 10-bit codec would be a completely different proposition.  

The recipe is good, they just need to upgrade the ingredients.

Yeah there was one shot where I wasn't sure if it was an Iphone or Black Magic. But in general all the wides looked pretty bad.

The lowlight is the biggest flaw. My Fuji is way better in lowlight lightyears, but I still am tempted to go full frame sometimes for that added stop or two. 

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3 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

Yeah there was one shot where I wasn't sure if it was an Iphone or Black Magic. But in general all the wides looked pretty bad.

The lowlight is the biggest flaw. My Fuji is way better in lowlight lightyears, but I still am tempted to go full frame sometimes for that added stop or two. 

He did another video blind-testing is you could tell which camera was which and I worked out about half-way to look at the sharpening as that's what gave it away, but yeah, a couple of the shots weren't too bad.  

Then again, I'm shooting a GH5 with a F0.95 lens because of the low-light I regularly shoot in, and I'm upgrading my 8mm F4 to a 7.5mm F2 for better low-light for the same reason, so I'm hardly going to be an average user in that department.  Gotta get those wide-angle blue hour shots...

Japan1_1_24.1.thumb.jpg.76f570972289a7753248fc26c5f061c9.jpg

Or after the sun has completely gone....

Japan7_1_10.1.thumb.jpg.d41483fc2d541d975b3534ac83b69743.jpg

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