Into the garden

I mentioned before that I was considering the purchase of my first smartphone. I read several reviews of smartphone cameras but didn't find them especially helpful. Maybe I'm spoiled by reading camera reviews that are usually quite comprehensive. In contrast, the smartphone camera reviews weren't very systematic and were hard to compare with each other. Many came to dissimilar and unclear conclusions.

Today I bought an iPhone 5s. I was swayed by its popularity among people I know, the decent 5s photos I'd seen (including the one in my previous post) and the pressing need to have a phone, having lost my previous phone a week ago.

I won't write my own inadequate smartphone camera review, but here are initial thoughts and a few shots. First, the photos look good: nice detail, good colors and adequate exposures. Focusing on close objects like these leaves seems to depend on whether there is any motion in the subject. Leaves lying still on the deck came into focus easily, but leaves swaying gently on a branch never got close to being in focus. The tap-to-focus feature didn't help in that case. But I was able to easily shift focus (using tap-to-focus) from foreground to background, as you can see in the last two images, when things weren't moving. All of these are jpegs straight from the phone.

Meanwhile I'm connected to the world again, using the first Apple device I've owned in perhaps 15 years.  Let's see how it goes.