(embiggenable)
variation # 1 ~ (embiggenable)
variation # 2 ~ (embiggenable)
RIGHT OUTA THE GATE, LET ME CRYSTAL CLEAR, re: the iPhone as a “perfect” picture making device. It is not. What it is is an amazingly good all-around picture making device. However, if the pursuit of technical so-called “perfection“ is your picture making goal, this device ain’t the one for you.
That written, the reason why I start this topic, re: why I like using the iPhone as a picture making device, with the fact that the iPhone camera module does not produce files with what is currently considered to be bleeding edge technical perfection is cuz that fact is at, or very near the top, on the list of reasons-what the hell, let’s call it Reason #1-why I like using this picture device.
To wit, ever since the dawn of my picture making life, it is quite accurate to write that, in my personal photographs-as-Art making life, I have never been in pursuit of pictures which exhibited “perfect” technical characteristics. That’s cuz, as a matter of course, I was-and still am-in pursuit of making pictures, on the technical level, that look like, as much as the medium and its apparatus allows, what the world looks like to the human eye.
Back in the day of analog, aka: film, picture making, I thought that, with the judicious selection of a color negative film type, photographs did a pretty damn good job of looking like what the world looked like. That’s cuz the human eye does not see the world in ultra high-def, saturated colors (unless the referent itself exhibited saturated color), or extreme dynamic range. Consequently, with my very first use of my very first digital camera, I set out, image file processing wise, to “soften” what I considered to be the “harsh” visual effects of digital picture making. And that pursuit continues to this day inasmuch as what, to my eye and sensibilities, appears to be ever increasingly “harsh” visual artifacts seems to be what the CCSoP crowd desires the most and what the camera makers are delivering to them in spades.
Reason #2 - While the iPhone does not deliver current state-of-the-art image files, its superior to that which any traditional camera maker offers AI-like it or hate it-does a remarkable job of delivering really good files in a variety of “difficult” picture making situations. Which not to write that most files do not need some degree of corrective surgery.
Reason #3 - the iPhone is the all-time leader in the convenient to have with you at times camera category. Not to mention, its ease of use and the fact that it’s virtually always at the ready. And, for the purist in me, it’s a 3 prime lens kit that I can hold in my hand or slip into a pocket.
Reason #4 - with the iPhone Pro Max, the viewing screen allow me to see not only an accurate view of my crop of a section of the real world but also how the arrangement of the visual elemts within the crop will look like on the flat, 2D field of a print.
Reason #5 - herein lies a guilty pleasure. I like the feeling I get-just like as if I were to be giving the finger to the CCSoP and gear loving crowd-every time I click the shutter. Or, to be more accurate, every time I touch the virtual shutter release “button” on the iPhone viewing screen.
ASIDE I have to wonder, does that make me a shallow person? END OF ASIDE