Cell Phone Photography

I am one of the deniers of using cell phone cameras as a legitimate tool for photography.  And I was wrong.  They are legitimate and they're really pretty good and they're a whole lot of fun.  And of course there's the old adage about the best camera is the one you have with you.

Recently, and I know I'm late to the game, I've decided to take my iPhone 5s a little more seriously and give it a real try and a workout to see if I could actually get away with using it on an outing.

iPhone 5s with edits in Lightroom 5.5

I loaded up a few camera apps and a few editing apps and set out to take some pictures.  What I found out and came back with was surprising in a good way and has changed the way I do a few things.

First of all I'm a complete amateur. I love photography as a hobby and I'm involved with it almost constantly.  I really love gear too. I've been through lots of cameras from Nikon and Canon to Leica and Fuji.  I used to love the big DSlrs and the myriad of lenses and bags and filters and flashes and tripods.  Then along came the micro four thirds and the mirror-less generation and improvements have been steadily coming down the road.  Camera manufactures continuously improve their cameras in tiny increments and make the weakest amongst us constantly upgrade to the newer, bigger, better and faster. Camera sales could not possibly have ever been better than they have been for these past 10 years or so.

Now cell phone manufactures have moved into the playing field in a big way and have all but killed the small compact digital camera market.

iPhone 5s edits in Lightroom 5.5

It's no wonder either, with some cameras boasting huge megapixels and glass lenses on a device that is already in your pocket where ever you go anyway, why bother to drag yet one more device along.

So now I've decided to give my iPhone a real try.  I've decided that for it to be serious I needed a good "camera app" and after trying several different ones found the built in one and Camera + to be the best.  For editing apps I've gotten

iPhone 5s edits in Snapseed
I thought the performance here was surprisingly
good since the lighting was a little
difficult and no flash was used.

the most use out of Snapseed and find it the most pleasing to use with the best results.  I've also tried iPhoto and although I'm just getting familiar with it I kind of like it.  I've tried several others, like FilterStorm but for my purposes and my thinking of cell phone photography it and a few others were just to complex for use on a small handheld device.

The secret to it all, for me, is that it has to be easy and fast.  So far I've found the results to be favorable but not great for the discerning photographer.  For the casual snap-shooter, which I am frequently, it's fine.  Lets face it, most of our work, our photos, end up somewhere in digital format on the web or on a slideshow on your T.V. For photos that only get to screens I've found the cell phone to be a suitable and handy camera.  I know there are now galleries around the globe that feature "mobile photography" artists and I've seen some of what they do and it is amazing.  For me any work I do and want to take seriously and possibly print in a large format, mat and frame, I'll need a bigger sensor.  However I did just make an 8x10 glossy print of an iPhone photo and it looked amazing.

But for cell phone cameras that are doing things really well these days, and most likely will only get better, cell phone photography can be taken seriously and a lot of fun can be had.  I don't much care for all the filters that are available in many of the apps that are out there however for many they can not only be a lot of fun they can dress up a cell phone photograph that isn't as perfect as you might like it to be and make it look good.  The true cell phone artists out there are making incredible images using nothing more than their phone and a few apps.

My workflow was important for me to develop as well.  Since my theory here revolves around this being mobile (read fast and on the move) I want it to be easy and straight forward.  Shoot, edit, share. So my workflow goes something like this:  Take the image and have it saved to my Camera Roll; Open Snapseed and make any necessary edits and save it back to my Camera Roll and Share.  Done.  Let me say too that I do not intend in any way to diminish anyone who has chosen to take this genre of photography seriously.  I get it.  It's really awesome and organizations like Mobile Photography Awards proves this point clearly. But as an amateur myself I'll only be interested, for now, in this genre as a fun, quick and easy way to shoot and share pretty decent photos.

iPhone 5s edits in Lightroom 5.5

So is it a serious tool?  I have to say yes.  Is it for everyone?  Probably not.  Will it be something I do more of in the future?  For sure.  From what I hear the next IOS update (IOS 8) from Apple will include upgrades to the camera that will give full manual control with things like aperture, ISO and shutter speed control.  That will make these little pocket cameras even more amazing.

Many of our camera phones today are capable of images that are much better than what some of the great photographers in our history were capable of with their cameras and certainly much better than many or most of the early digital point shoot cameras.  So use your phone in the same way you would use your camera.  Be thoughtful with your compositions, lighting and subject and shoot away.

Thanks for following along,

Tom

Tomato at the Magnolia Farmers Market
iPhone 5s edits in Snapseed

iPhone 5s  No edits
What really surprised me here was the dynamic range.  Bright sunlight to shadows
and back to blue skies and really good color.

Gig Harbor, Washington ~ Fishing trawler
iPhone 5s edits in Snapseed

The New Oregon Fishing Trawler in Gig Harbor, Washington
iPhone 5s edits in Lightroom 5.5

Gig Harbor, Washington ~ Waterfront and Net Sheds
iPhone 5s edits in Lightroom 5.5

My Fuji X100s and My 45 Year Old Canon QL17 ~ Photography Gone Full Circle

I've been taking pictures for a long time, never professionally although I have been paid a few times, but always just for the fun of it.  I have struggled to understand what kind of photographer I am, nature; city; architecture; landscape; fine art, and have decided that I'm a little bit of all of them.

The one thing I am clear about is that I love taking pictures, I love seeing the world around me and I love looking at it through a lens.  And I always, always have a camera with me.

Fuji X100s 2.0s @f4, ISO 500 ~ Bell Town in Seattle, Washington
photographed through a hotel room window

About 3 years ago I moved away from the large dSLR's in favor of the smaller more compact systems that are easier to have with me all the time.  I should point out that I'm 66 years old now and loading a bag or backpack with big heavy camera bodies and lenses and filters, and flashes just isn't that much fun and it's just not convenient for my style of shooting.  But I really enjoy good image quality and don't like sacrificing IQ for convenience.

Fuji X100s 1/320s @f8, ISO 200
Gig Harbor, Washington

So when the camera manufactures began producing the micro four thirds lines and the mirror-less lines I got excited about the possibilities and didn't hesitate.  I jumped right in.  I started out with the very first Panasonic micro four thirds right after it came out and graduated over the next couple of years, through a variety of other cameras,  to the Olympus OMD EM5, which I still have and like very much (especially with the Olympus 45/1.8 lens attached).  But even with the fine EM5 I found myself carting around a bag and lenses, albeit small ones, and that still just wasn't what I was looking for.  Simpler, easier, more convenient, great IQ and no bag of lenses, that's what I wanted.

In 1969 when I first got interested in photography SLR's were just coming into their own and rangefinder style cameras were on the way out, more or less.  I shot with a Canon Canonet QL17 with a fixed 40mm f1.7 lens.  It was with that camera that I learned to see the world around me with photographic eyes.  No zooms, no interchangeable lenses.  

Oddly enough it wasn't until after I got my Fuji X100s and unboxed
it that I realized how similar it was to my original Canon - Canonet QL17
purchased in 1969, 45 years ago.
I was very pleased with how they compared in looks.

Forty five years later enter the Fuji X100s.  Small, convenient, great IQ, fixed 23mm lens (35mm equivalent) and an APSc sensor, it's beautiful and can just hang around my neck as if there's nothing there at all.  Perfect.  But, fixed lens.  How would that work out for me after having access to such a wide variety of lenses?  So I looked back through a large collection of images over the past several years and found that the vast majority of my pictures were taken at or near the 35mm range.  I've shot a lot longer and tighter and I've shot a lot wider too, but picking through my favorite pictures over the years, I tend to like the 35mm to 50mm range.  After shooting the Fuji X100s for just a few weeks I realized that it's all I need.  35mm is where I see the world around me and my feet work perfectly as a zoom, in or out.

So it's been a long journey to end up right where I started with almost identical cameras and fewer choices to make that get in between me and what I want to photograph and I've never been happier.  A happy snapshooter grabbing shots of the stuff I see around me everyday, everywhere.  And, maybe, some of the best news is what my wife said; "You don't look like a photographer, you just look like a tourist". Yes!  I love being a tourist.

Here are a few more shots:  One from a day trip up to Port Townsend, Washington a couple of days ago with my good friend Mark for lunch and few snapshots.  The other from last weekend in Seattle, Washington to see Bruce Cockburn.

Electric Port Townsend, Washington
This bicycle is electrically operated and the gentlemen with the gracious smile having lunch is the owner.
Fuji X100s 1/125s @f5.6 ISO 200

Bruce Cockburn at Neptune Theater in Seattle, Washington.  I didn't have good seats so this is cropped way tight
to get this NO flash shot.
Fuji X100s  1/30s @f4 ISO 500

Thanks for reading.
Tom