Panzerino does year on year comparisons at Disneyland with his family.
https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/the_iphone_11_and_iphones...
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/17/iphone-11-pro-disney-after...
The iPhone is certainly a decent point-and-shoot camera.
She got out of our 1996 Saturn SL, walked around a few minutes, snapped a single picture, and got back in the car.
A couple of months later, she gave me slightly blown up print of that picture, developed in black and white, in a simple frame, and asked if I'd like to put it on my desk at work.
The photo was stunning, and so I took it to work.
Over the year, a number of people came by and commented on the striking beauty of that picture. In fact, two different people (at different times) came, looked at the picture very carefully, and said that they were quite surprised that there was an Ansel Adams photo they had not seen before.
At my suggestion, she entered it into various local and state photography competitions, and won all of them.
Alas, it was lost in a fire many years ago.
My wife has no training, formal or otherwise, in photography. But she has a naturally keen eye for graphic design and layout.
Equipment is good and important; location, timing, and an eye for composition is, in my opinion, far more important.
This is fantastic! The Eastern Sierras are an amazing place to explore through camping and day hikes. In my own experience, my parents had planned backpacking trips in this area several times when I was a teen, where each trip was filled with moments like the one your wife and yourself experienced. New places, or points of perspective — where you see the world around you in a new light — are precious and awe-inspiring.
> Alas, it was lost in a fire many years ago.
This is sad to read. Losing personal photos is hard to come to terms with
> Equipment is good and important; location, timing, and an eye for composition is, in my opinion, far more important.
This makes sense, and seems to be a broad truth across disciplines: artists and creators are not bounded by tools.
My wife and I plan to take our children out to these places. Seeing a sky full of stars and seemingly boundless nature, against the background of quiet sounds and the natural world around you, is something that I wish everyone would experience in their lifetime.
Yes.
As a teenager, with my grandparents, we were camped here for a while: https://goo.gl/maps/zYf5SvSZ2WMaFQpx5 The moon was new, and not yet risen. Even though it was mid summer, near midnight, the outside temperature was below freezing.
I walked out away from the camp, past a small ridge, and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I could see not a single artificial light.
At more than 10,000 feet of elevation, the air was sharp as a knife. It was dark, yet it wasn't. The arc of our galaxy looked like cotton, it was so bright and clear. The stars were steady, with barely any atmospheric distortion.
I sat on a large rock and opened the book I was carrying.
"By the starlit mere of Cuiviénen, Water of Awakening, they rose from the sleep of Ilúvatar; and while they dwelt yet silent by Cuiviénen their eyes beheld first of all things the stars of heaven. Therefore they have ever loved the starlight, and have revered Varda Elentári above all the Valar."
The thing that better equipment gives you is options, and if you know how to use it, the possibility of getting photos you otherwise couldn't get (at least not a decent version of). That's it, really.
Even the most modest equipment can take a great photo - but the conditions have to be just right for that gear.
Like you say, equipment is only a small fraction of the equation.
A photographer friend shared with me a long time ago very similar advice to get better shots: location, timing, make the subject wear red, and push the shutter button more.
You can't frame what you didn't take.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EEH38ZxUYAQDPBT?format=jpg&name=...
There's also a lot of editing skill that goes into this - a photographer won't simply take whatever processing the phone comes up with use it out of the box.
I personally use the lightroom mobile camera to capture RAW photos and play around a bit with curves, exposure, hsl etc. to get the look I want. I assume if they're a pro photographer, they move the RAW photo to the PC / iPad and add some photoshop magic as well.
The output (depends on the photographer ofcourse but for the ones I like) looks very natural and doesn't have the same look as simply applying an instagram filter on top of an iPhone camera shot image.
Obviously the composition etc., that folks are talking about matter a lot as well but IMO, these days camera hardware is so good that you can get all sorts of detail out of what you assumed was a blown out camera RAW. Crops work fairly well too because of how high-res the photos are, so if you're not too pleased with your initial composition, crop + photoshop fixes will get you a long way. As a whole, photography these days is about 70% editing and 30% photo taking technique (lighting, composition, aperture, shutter speed, iso etc.)
To be fair, one of the things highlighted in this review is that the new iPhone has this functionality built in. Everyone (with this phone) has a wide angle view now.
The standard iPhone lens (26mm) has always been pretty much normal for phone camera lenses. When Apple introduced the second lens (51mm), they called it "telephoto," even though that focal length is pretty much dead-on the traditional definition for a "standard" lens. No traditional photographer would call a 51mm lens a telephoto lens.
So, for people who grew up with phones as their primary cameras, the new 13mm lens really is the first thing that they'd call a "wide angle" lens.
/end_nitpick ;)
The main camera on an iPhone has a 70-degree field of view, which most people consider wide.
The main camera is a wide by traditional standards, but not by phone camera standards, where the main (primary, "normal") camera has always been a wide angle, so nobody whose primary camera is a phone would think of it as wide.
For example I would guess this pic has some photoshop to emphasize the light and atleast some simple Lightroom.
We all have amazing cameras in our pockets, and it's possible to take thousands of shots (ie, practice) for effectively no additional cost. When I was a kid, film and developing was expensive to the point that taking a picture was a somewhat special thing.
Most people don’t even try to frame properly, because they don’t know it’s a thing, and also because they don’t really care.
http://photonlab.com/photography-classes-florida/creativity-...
This is especially true when taking a picture of someone in front of a mountain (or something similar). Don't zoom! Take a picture of the mountains with the people in view, not a close up picture of the people with a sliver of mountain in the background.
It will make your pictures better in angle of view possibilities, better low light, and more correct exposure. That is, in the technical aspects that they've improved on.
It wont make your framing better, or the subject matter more interesting.
The Lens being used is more important than the camera sensor being used
The camera sensor is more important than the camera body being used
Stick to this fundamental reality in that order and the novelty of “a pHoNE dID ThIs” wears off quick.
Now, I can say that the depth cameras and non-destructive software depth processing is getting some amazing effects and enhancements outside of this framework.
Like you said even if you're not a "photographer" it can make a huge difference.
EDIT: Also even if somebody has no clue what they're for, it can help keep the image level at the very least.
That's because making a nice photo is less about the tool used and more about framing, contrast, subject, &c.
I can't find it right now but there was a website showing amazing pictures taken with early digital cameras which were horrendous compared to today's entry smartphones.
The cormorant fisherman literally pose in costume in front of dramatic landscape features. All you need to do is show up at the right time of day and give them a few yuan to take their picture, and you will get comparable results.