iOS: Photography Department (2)

Modern phones (not just iPhones) offer the indisputable advantages opened by computational photography. Ars Technica has recently had a good writeup on these. Low light performance is probably the one I enjoy the most, as the phone in my pocket can produce images rivalling the advanced techniques which require carrying heavy gear (tripods) and a lot of post-processing (selective stacking). With a press of a shutter button an iPhone can do all that automatically, in-place, hand-held.

But for those willing to experiment a little bit more, there are many creative photo gadgets to accessorize the phone. Again the popularity of a fairly narrow set of models invites the accessory manufacturers to offer clever add-ons. Despite the fairly niche audience, the accessories offer their designers a great ROI, as they will still be selling in high numbers.

Pictured here are two examples: the flat-folding credit-card-sized magnetic tripod from Peak Design and the case+lens combo from Moment. 

And of course there are more. One other piece I like is the magnetic stand compatible with Arca-Swiss clamps, allowing for easily attaching a phone to a standard tripod / head. It even has a clever flash shoe mount. Finally there are Bluetooth remote triggers of all sizes and colors. Technically they work by sending out the "volume down" key press over Bluetooth, which makes them compatible with almost all phones.

So with three built-in lenses (12mm, 24mm, 70mm), a 2x teleconverter (bringing the 70mm to 140mm), a mini tripod and a Bluetooth trigger, the phone can rival a quite big photo bag weighing probably 10-20x more. Pixel peepers will say of course the quality is not there, which may or may not be true depending on what you want to achieve. But you're getting a photo-editing set of apps (including Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop if you want), cloud backup and social sharing capabilities in the box.

I had two pivotal moments related to digital photography in the past. One was in 2002 when the Minolta Dimage F100 produced results surpassing my previous film cameras and I stopped using film at all. The second was the Nikon D750 in 2014, which got me into deep sky photography (and the other joys of full-frame digital). Time will tell, but maybe the 2023 iPhone 15 will prove to be the third one. I've enjoyed the fairly minimalistic setup during my recent travels and even the window seat shots have been very satisfying.