The Best Camera Is

. . .  the one that’s with you!  I bet you thought this was going to be another in my Dan’s Cameras postings.  Nope.  That phrase is actually the title of a best selling photography book by Chase Jarvis.  It contains a collection of his iPhone photographs and tries to drive home the point that it’s the photographer that makes the photograph, not the camera.  

While out on the Oregon coast last weekend with Ann, I realized that I’ve been using my iPhone more and more to make images.  Not just document a location, but to make a photograph to keep.  Now, while I don’t manipulate my images with the plethora of photo apps that are available for the iPhone (and I have a few of them) like Chase Jarvis and others do, I realize that sometimes I am taking serious photos with my iPhone.  Most of the time I’m either documenting a photograph that I’m making with my other cameras (the iPhone will record the GPS coordinates of an image and most cameras don’t), and sometimes I use the iPhone to take a “sketch” image to see what a photograph may look like.  If I like what I see with the sketch, I’ll then pull a camera out and make the image, and sometimes not.

So I decided to make an image-intensive posting of my iPhone images.  Folks who are on Facebook will recognize some of them (another reason I’ll take an image with my iPhone is to be able to post quickly on Facebook), but many will be new.  Unfortunately, I have not been assiduous about taking iPhone images at all the locations I’ve been, and most of the images below will have had minimal tweaks (i.e. they are as they were taken [one could argue that they have already been heavily manipulated by Apples’/the iPhone’s processing engine as the .jpg image was created {contrast, sharpening, etc.}]), but you’ll get a feel for the variety of places we’ve been to as I’ll try to identify where shots were made. 

Also, I will try to be better at periodically showing what I’ve shot with the iPhone and to not overload you with iPhone images in one big post the future.  Then again, if I did a better job of processing the raw images from the camera and writing up timely posts, I wouldn’t have to think about posting iPhone images.  But that’s another issue . . . . 

So my first iPhone photograph was of . . . a splendid couple of lattes crafted at one of our local coffee shops.

And occasionally I’ll take photographs of places I’ve been at, restaurants and stuff, especially if the lighting is particularly nice or they happen to have Francesco Totti jersey hanging on the wall.

I’ve also occasionally grabbed the camera at hand (usually in my left shirt pocket) when something unusual happens in front of me while I’m in the car.  Bicyclists do need to be aware of that pavement joint up ahead.

But much of the time I use my iPhone and iPhone camera as a tool while in the field shooting.  Unfortunately, it took me a while to realize this (why are there no iPhone photographs from when we went to the Columbia Gorge?), but now it’s become an incredible tool.  Sometimes the image makes me realize it isn’t worth pulling out the cameras to try and improve.

Sometimes it convinces me that it would be worth the effort, like here at Pinard Falls.

Or here at Bryce Creek.

I also have an iPhone app that posts a lot of data on the image, and I’ll use that to record the location of a site, like here on Opal Creek.

Other times I just use the camera (with the GPS coordinates in the EXIF data) like later that day at Opal Creek.

One of the problems with camera phones is that they have such small sensors, which makes it great to have everything in focus, but generally limits the contrast range the sensor can handle.  So like with many of these images of waterfalls you’ve seen already, this image below from Opal Creek has the whitewater blown out.  That’s why I’ll often pull out the regular cameras - to not only get better color and tonal fidelity, but to handle contrast extremes.  However moving to the larger sensors has its own implications, so sometimes the iPhone photographs are the better of the two (though not in this case)!

You can see the sensor blow-out again in the image below from Fall Creek, just off the Umpqua River.

The key is to try to avoid extremes in contrast or highlights.  Grotto Falls.

Sometimes when I’m making a sketch image with my iPhone, I see something that my eye missed, which then becomes a primary focus of creating an image with my camera.  With the image below, I hadn’t initially seen the sunlight playing on the water (slightly right, lower, central portion of the image).  Once I saw it, I (and Ann) waited for more sun to come out and move into locations that added some unique warm colors to a generally cool (color temperature wise) image.

And sometimes, you just say, “Damn” and pull out the iPhone!

Now if you recall, the above image was similar to the images used in the Artistic License post from February.  If you look carefully, you’ll see a lot of noise (what looks like grain or splotches) in the sky.  This is another drawback of small sensors, particularly in low light.  While with my larger camera it was easy to remove the noise and especially to pull out the different colors that were present in the low tone areas, that simply isn’t possible with camera phones.  You pretty much have what you have with an iPhone image, and while you can apply all sorts of app tricks/manipulations to the image, you can’t pull out inherent data that isn’t readily available - it’s simply not there.

As I noted before, some images are made simply to post on FaceBook, like this shot on our trip down to the Coos Bay area.

I’ll often pull out the camera to record a “Shooting the Shooter” image.  However, for that to be successful, the shooter has to produce something that she thinks is worth publishing, which wasn’t the case in this instance.

And sometimes one photographs with an iPhone because it seems like the tool to use.

Just like with the shooting the shooter images, plenty of sketch images just don’t work out.  This shot from Silver Creek Falls didn’t inspire me to pull out the Fuji and deal with the mist blowing around behind the falls.

Other shots, I realize that it really is a good iPhone shot and that a better camera wouldn’t make a better image.  This shot has qualities straight out of the camera that the Fuji wouldn’t.  This really was one of my favorite images from our trip to Klamath Falls.

Later that same day we’d set up for a sunset shot at a pre-determined location I’d scouted out via Photographer’s Ephemeris and different maps.  We arrived at our sunset shooting location with about 40 minutes to spare so I set up my camera for the shot I wanted then . . . passed the time by taking photographs with my iPhone of things like the incredible cloud formations in the sky.

And I would make images with my iPhone pretty much identical to that of the Fuji (though the iPhone has a wider angle lens) just to have them on two different devices.  The goal was to have the sunset behind the ridge line with the sun striking the snow-capped mountain off to the right.  While things didn’t quite work out that way, we did get an incredible exhibition of different cloud formations.

I did say incredible didn’t I?

Often times when Ann is finishing up a photograph, I’ll turn around and look to see if there are images to be had in the opposite direction.  Here is one from our Klamath Falls trip.

Occasionally I’ll do the closest thing to a selfie I’m likely to do.  Again, another image done to post on FaceBook. 

In addition to sketch shots, I’ll make scouting shots.  This one was done to see what I could get if I stayed on the lawful side of the barbed-wire fence.  Based on what I learned from this scouting trip, later that afternoon we hopped the fence, carefully avoided the cow pies and got our moonrise shots at Fort Rock.

And, of course, the iPhone is great to record the simple, "I’ve been to this place" type of shot.  There’s nothing wrong with that!

But as I noted above, our recent trip to the coast really got me using the iPhone as a tool with its own merits, as something I should try and make interesting photographs with.  And while I may have then later pulled out the Fuji to re-shoot it, or to continue working the image, it was the iPhone that led me to that point.  These next few are just that.

I started by noticing the frozen sand patterns created by the wind and these rocks.

And then realized I need to focus more on just the rocks and less on the context.

That same sense of exploring/experimenting was done with the rocks, water patterns, light and framing with the sunset.  How did this look horizontally?

How does it work vertically?

The same holds true with timing.  How does one capture the energy and sound of the sea in a single image?

And again, sometimes you just look down, say, “Wow” and reach into the pocket to pull out the handiest camera around.