Daniel Hruska Photographer and traveler Austin Mann went to Iceland even before the official sales of the new iPhones. There is nothing special about this, if he did not pack the two new Apple phones with him and properly test their improved cameras (especially the 6 Plus), which are among the best among mobile phones. With Austin's permission, we bring you his full report.
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This year I had the opportunity to attend the keynote where Apple introduced the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus and Watch. It was truly an unforgettable spectacle to see all these products unveiled in the style that only Apple can (the U2 concert was a great bonus!).
Year after year, the new iPhone is crammed with new features across hardware and software. However, we photographers only care about one thing: how does this relate to the camera and how will the new features allow you to take better photos? In the evening after the keynote, I am in cooperation with The Verge went on a mission to answer that question. I compared the iPhone 5s, 6 and 6 Plus during my five days in Iceland.
We've hiked through waterfalls, driven in a thunderstorm, jumped out of a helicopter, slid down a glacier, and even slept in a cave with a Master Yoda-shaped entrance (you'll see in the picture below)… and most importantly, the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus were always one step ahead of us. I can't wait to show you all the photos and results!
Focus Pixels mean a lot
This year, the camera's biggest improvements have been to focus, resulting in sharper photos than ever before. Apple has implemented several new technologies to achieve this. First I would like to say something about Focus Pixels.
The last few days in Iceland have been rather gloomy and gloomy, but at the same time, never with such a lack of light that the iPhone could not focus. I was a bit nervous about the autofocus constantly working while shooting, but everything behaved intelligently… rarely did the iPhone change the focus point when I didn't want it to. And it's incredibly fast.
A somewhat extreme low light scenario
Ideas for testing focus in low light were still running through my head. Then I had the opportunity to take part in a training night flight in an Icelandic Coast Guard helicopter. It was impossible to refuse! The aim of the exercise was to simulate finding, rescuing and evacuating people in inaccessible terrain. We played the role of the rescued and were suspended under the helicopter.
Note that all of these photos were taken in near-total darkness while holding the iPhone in my hand under a vibrating helicopter. The photo of the pilot's eye illuminated by the green light from the night vision goggles captivated me. Even my SLR camera is not able to focus in these light conditions. Most of the images below are unedited and shot at f2.2, ISO 2000, 1/15s.
Focusing under normal conditions
Check out the comparison below. I shot this scene with an iPhone 5s and 6 Plus. The photo shoot itself took place exactly the same on both devices. When I looked back at the photos afterwards, the one from the 5s was very out of focus.
Why does the 5s take blurry photos and the 6 Plus so much better? I'm not sure... it could be that I didn't wait long enough for the 5s to focus. Or it could have been insufficient light to focus. I believe the 6 Plus was able to take a sharp photo of this scenery due to the combination of Focus Pixels and the stabilizer, but in the end it doesn't matter...all that matters is that the 6 Plus was able to produce a sharp photo.
Exposure control
I adore olvhil in almost every photo. It works exactly the way I want and the way I've always wanted it to. I no longer have to lock the exposure of a specific scene and then compose and focus.
The manual exposure control was extremely useful in dark environments where I wanted to slow down the shutter speed and thus reduce the possibility of blur. With a SLR, I prefer to take darker, but still sharp photos. The new exposure control allows me to do the same on the iPhone.
Maybe you've experienced it too, when your camera's automatics aren't quite to your liking... especially when you're trying to capture the atmosphere. Most of the time, automatic works great, but not when trying to capture a darker and less contrasty subject. In the photograph of the glacier below, I reduced the exposure more significantly, exactly as I imagined.
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A little iPhone photography technique
Macro photography requires a bit more depth-of-field (DoF) plays a big role here. Shallow depth of field means that it is focused on someone's nose, for example, and the sharpness starts to be lost somewhere around the ears. On the contrary, a high depth of field means that almost everything is in focus (for example, a classic landscape).
Shooting with shallow depth of field can be fun and produce interesting results. To achieve the desired effect, several things need to be observed, and one of them is the distance between the lenses and the photographed object. Here I was very close to the drop of water and my depth of field was so shallow that I had trouble photographing it without a tripod.
So I used AE/AF (auto exposure/auto focus) lock to focus on the drop. To do this on your iPhone, hold your finger on the area and wait a few seconds until a yellow square appears. Once you've locked AE/AF, you can move your iPhone freely without refocusing or changing exposure.
Once I was sure of the composition, had it in focus and locked, I discovered the true value of the iPhone 6 Plus display… just a millimeter away from the drop and it would be blurry, but at two million pixels I simply couldn't miss it.
AE/AF lock is useful not only for macros, but also for shooting fast subjects, when you wait for the right moment. For example, when I'm standing at the track of a cycling race and want to take a picture of a whizzing cyclist at the given place. I simply lock AE/AF beforehand and wait for the moment. It's faster because the focus points and exposure have already been set, all you have to do is press the shutter button.
Extreme dynamic range test
I took the following picture already in advanced twilight, quite long after sunset. When editing, I always try to go to the very limits of the sensor, and when I buy a new camera, I always try to find those limits. Here I highlighted the mid-lights and highlights… and as you can see, the 6 Plus fared much better.
(Note: this is just a sensor test, not an eye-pleasing photo.)
Panorama
Shooting panoramas with the iPhone is just fun… it's so incredibly easy to capture the whole scene in snoramata shot at a significantly higher resolution (43 megapixels compared to the previous 28 megapixels on the 5s).
I also take a vertical panorama from time to time, for two reasons. First of all, very tall objects (for example, a waterfall that cannot fit into a normal picture) are excellently photographed in this way. And secondly – the resulting photo is in a higher resolution, so if you absolutely need a higher resolution or if you need a background for printing in a larger format, the panorama will add some of that resolution for good.
The Pictures app
I really like the new Pictures app. I love the option of trimming the most and I will definitely use it for almost half a pint, which I think is quite good. Here they are all:
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Front camera burst mode + waterproof case + waterfall = fun
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New video recording features
live autofocus, super slow motion (240 frames per second!) and even optical stabilization.
Focus Pixels: Continuous autofocus for video
It works absolutely great. I can't believe how fast he is.
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Time lapse
This might very well be my favorite video feature of the iPhone 6. Time-lapse is a whole new tool for capturing your surroundings and their story in a whole new way. When the panorama came two years ago, the mountain became a panorama of the mountain and its surroundings. Now the mountain will become a dynamic work of art, which will capture, for example, the energy of a storm with its unique style. It's exciting because it's a new medium to share experiences.
Incidentally, time-lapse is another good place to use AE/AF lock. This ensures that the iPhone is not constantly focusing as new objects appear in the frame and then leave it again.
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Slow motion
Playing around with slow motion is a lot of fun. They bring a completely new perspective than what we are used to with video. Well, the introduction of 240 frames per second will undoubtedly start a trend in slow motion shooting. Here are some samples:
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Comparison
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In conclusion…
iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are packed with innovations that make photography a better experience and more fun. What I like most about these innovations is the way that Apple allows ordinary users to acquire life, rather than spewing stark specifications at them. Apple clearly understands the requirements of users, continuously strives to create devices that solve various technical problems with ease. They've done it again with the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Photographers will be really excited about all the improvements… with better low-light performance, a huge 'viewfinder' and new features like time-lapse that work flawlessly, I couldn't ask for more from the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus cameras.
Yes, iPhones have great cameras, but 8 megabytes is really too little. Unfortunately, this is a marketing move so that the ajfon7 can have 12 mega and the ajfon8 maybe 20, unfortunately they will still be about 5 years behind in the number of MPX and that's just because of marketing.
The most important article does not have it - and that is a comparison of the electronic and optical stabilization of the iPhone 6 and 6+
What is the 20 megabytes for?
A classic motion picture is 20 megabytes, so this is the limit where we would catch up with a classic photograph and that would be great.
I think it's like asking me a question: What's the use of LTE when you have EDGE. The answer is up to everyone...
When the iPhone or some other mobile phone has a sensor the size of a movie frame, then the 20MP will make some sense. But thinking that the more MP, the better photos is the most common mistake. I've been shooting with a 8MP SLR for 10 years now and it's perfectly adequate and will last me at least another 8 years (I hope).
I have to agree, MPx are always a very misleading parameter and definitely do not determine the final quality of the photo. On this year's vacation, I took photos with an iPhone 5S and a friend with a digital (about 3 years old) camera with a resolution of over 15 MPx, and what were the better photos? From an iPhone, from a digital camera, they were incredibly grainy even in slightly worse conditions for taking photos, and it was almost impossible to look at them.
cinema box has mpx? Where did you come up with that?
The size of a movie frame!
Of course, the cinema film box does not have MPX. But when I take into account many years of experience with cinema film scanning, the ideal reproduction is up to A4 (in RGB it's about 24 MB). At higher magnifications, it is already grainy, of course it also depends on the film used. So about that much for the "resolution" of the film.
It would be more like asking What's the use of LTE when you have 3G. In practice, as a regular mobile user, you won't know the difference either.
Where did you find out that motion picture is 20MPX? This is a very bold statement…. And I don't mean that he really has them, I know you mean it in terms of conversion. The subtlety of the film affects many things…
I wonder what the 20MPx should be there for. :)) I see the only advantage – more detailed cutouts.
But from my personal experience of how I use and edit photos on the iPhone, I don't see a reason for increasing it (if they didn't increase the sensor - then I would like more MPx !!!).
I don't crop the photos and apart from additional adjustments like exposure or contrast, I don't do anything else.
Yes, the iPhone could have more MPx, but that would make the individual pixels smaller and increase the amount of noise in the photo - unless they basically made the sensor bigger.
And I dare say that Apple gets better results from such a large sensor than the competition...
Just look at how they catch up to the quality of Nokia, which has more than double the sensor.
PS: I personally consider the 20 MPx to be a marketing move ;)
it's a little on the details, but the iPhone has a limited aperture of the optics and the chip, the same light per more pixel means less light per pixel and therefore a larger sum. How Nokia can do it is a mystery to me :-)
20 megapixels? with this size of optics and sensor chip? don't go crazy!
8mpx is not enough. On a 27″ monitor or even on an iPad Air, I can immediately recognize the difference in mpx. When I take comparison photos from the iPhone5c/Nokia925/Nokia1020/iPhone5s... the details are simply missing from the iPhones. Too bad. The iPhone has nicer photos, better colors, but the overall impression of the image (e.g. forest, grass, etc.) does not show details like on Nokias. The difference is significant. Still, I prefer to take photos with an iPhone.
Well, if he couldn't focus with his SLR camera and yes with an iPhone, then 1. he either has a very low-quality SLR camera or 2. it's a total failure or 3. he got paid by Apple for advertising. My guess is that the 3rd is correct.
Here is also a small comparison of iphone vs dslr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZMvJ5qFWlc
I'm looking forward to it, the camera is awesome!
I would be interested in comparing the iPhone 6 with regular cameras. We decide whether it is worth buying a dedicated camera or getting by with a better mobile phone for vacation. In what price category are cameras with a similar quality of photography as the iphone6plus?