Photographer, computer network administrator and overall tech junkie are all adjectives that accurately describe me. Apple fanboy, however, I am not. While I am a Mac user and have owned no less then three iPods, I’ve never had the urge or need to get an iPhone or wait in long lines during the launch of them over the past three years. This all changed for me, starting June 15th when pre-ordering was available for the iPhone 4.
One of the main features that drew me in was the new 5mp camera with 5x digital zoom and 720p HD video. For the photographer looking for something to carry around that isn’t your entire equipment bag, this is a great compromise
I’m happy to report that the camera functions beautifully. Friday night I went to my local Velodrome to watch the races and do a first big shoot with the camera. Admittetly, this is far from an ideal place to photograph as the races start when the sun is going down, harsh artificial lights and fast moving objects. While not ideal, it is real life and what people will be trying to capture.
For the sake of this article, no photos have been edited in any way aside from resizing for the web, and I took all photos in the horizontal, or landscape mode on the camera.
These photos required me to pan as I was shooting. I would prefocus and expose in the lower right corner of the touch screen to follow the lead racer and shoot as I’d pan. That explains the rear of the pack (left side of the 2nd photo) to show motion blur. There are no manual functions on the iPhone camera so it does require some trial and error to nail a shot.
The photo below shows a lovely amount of blur and would look nice printed on stretch canvas.
By this point in the race I had no hope at all of panning fast enough to stop motion so I instead focused on the photojournalist and let the cyclists whizzing by show a lovely wall of motion blur.
Packing a somewhat impressive sounding 5x digital zoom, I was skeptical to say the least. The iPhone camera is fairly wide angle, but zooming in with less than ideal situations really shows the limitations. Again, these conditions are far from ideal, but they are a reality for us who shoot everywhere, all the time.
From the third turn of the track, this photo shows the start / stop on the track and the back side of the awards podium.
Zoomed in 5x on the iPhone 4, the JPG artifacts become very apparent at this point.:
Saturday I needed to run some errands and at one stop saw these brightly colored kayaks leaning against a store facade. It was bright, but the haze and slightly overcast day meant no harsh shadows or reflections off the plastic.
Given these more ideal conditions, I’m happy with the color representation, even if it is a little saturated. Using the iPhone to take this photo was also easy, the reflection off the glass face of the iPhone is barely noticeable when outside on bright days and the auto adjusting brightness of the screen helps to further increase visibility.
One of the best features of the iPhone camera system is the one touch spot meter function. This is great, but it definitely isn’t perfect. Below are two different photos, again neither edited, but clicking on the touch screen of the iPhone shows dramatically different exposures.
A hike Sunday afternoon gave me another opportunity to try out the exposure control on a very common and sometimes difficult shooting situations, horizons. The day was humid and somewhat hazy, but the sky was still bright and our view from high atop a local mountain was several miles. With the sky bright and the ground below dark, exposing properly is tricky for any camera without the aid of exposure compensation or lens filters. Again, two photos below, neither edited, the same scene showing two different exposures based on where I touched.
My dog Bella came along for the hike and I was anxious to get some photos of her atop the climb. She was hot and not in the mood to sit still, so this is the only shot of her facing the iPhone. Sadly, the auto focus didn’t focus on her, rather the shrubs behind her to camera left.
The built-in flash included on the iPhone 4 was perhaps one of the most overlooked and sought after accessories that previous users were waiting for. My Windows Mobile phone had a flash and, for what it’s worth, it was pretty good. While I haven’t had as many opportunities yet to play with the flash in darker situations, take a look at the example below. On the left is BBQ chicken legs on a grill, taken without the flash. The iPhone adjusted the ISO to 1000 for the photo. To the right I turned the flash on and the ISO dropped to 400. The results are pretty amazing.
Personally, I prefer how the right one looks, it has a warmer town and the flash almost creates a vignette look to it.
Out of the box, the iPhone’s camera function is pretty impressive, but there is still plenty or room for improvement. What I’d like to see added by default, some of which was available on my Windows Mobile phone:
- Exposure compensation
- White balance
- ISO selection
- Manual controls
Again, my hopes are to eliminate the need to carry a point and shoot digital camera with me, and I think the iPhone falls a little short. That said, I have a few photos that I’m very happy with that were taking in more idealistic conditions, perhaps those conditions were used when the sample photos were taken.
Accessing the flash and exposure controls are simply done by touching the screen, they work and respond fast. The camera app itself loads fast, writes quickly to the internal memory and accessing archives and even taking photos in rapid succession seems to be without problem.
Accessing the photos on my Mac utilizing Image Capture gives me all the important EXIF data, and allows for easy transfer. I’ve shot just over 150 photos total since Thursday night when I got it, along with a few movies. I plan on exploring some of the photo editing, capture and emulation apps shortly because I feel they will give the camera functionality that perhaps was left on the cutting room floor in Cupertino. Right now, I’m on the fence of it being a full time replacement fun camera, but with the help of some apps, the potential is there.
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