So today is another cool and rainy day, drizzle actually. Cool not cold as this is San Diego California. We are having the most rain for any rainy season in quite sometime. Point is many activities I normally plan or do on Saturday are cancelled. So time to test some cameras.
The iPhone XS Max phone has a great camera for stills and video. One of the great things about using a camera in a modern iPhone or Android is that you can use different camera apps. I use the native Apple app and also the Adobe Lightroom one. I have tried several others but now just stick with Apple and Adobe as I also use those softwares to organize photos and with the Apple app both photos and video.
This is a significant crop of a close up image. The result is pretty good.
This is the same image taken less than a minute later with the Adobe Lightroom CC app camera and the same crop. Maybe you can see the quality of these images on what you are viewing on, but if you cannot I will tell you that the second one is significantly better. I would say a good portion of the improvement is due to using raw and that the software does not smear the details.
I would have tried Apple’s new and excellent file stacking smart HDR on this shot. I turned it on. But this year the phone decides if it will use HDR or not no matter if you turned it on or did not. This is a change from last year where you could manually control it. Same thing with the flash. You can turn on the flash on the iPhone this year, but the camera software has an override. So if you want to use the flash as a fill in during daylight maybe it flashes and maybe not. For this reason I am thinking about buying another compact camera to replace my Sony HX 80 I sold last Oct. With a real camera when you turn something on it actually does what you tell it to. Nikon is making a new Coolpix 1000 out next month. I am going to look at that and the latest Sony model the HX 99.
Using my Sony A7iii and very good Zeiss 55mm lens here is the result.
Looking at the full sized files I would say the Apple /Adobe shot and the Sony shot are about equal. Frankly this is phenomenal for the Apple camera. A high end smartphone equal to a $2,000 camera body and $1,000 lens. And this is a close up which is to me one of the weaknesses of the iPhone camera as you get a center zone focus but on focus point like on the Sony.
The rain has stopped for a few hours and I am going to get out of my office and get outside.
Bob Nuttmann 