Another iPhone 5s shot

I've written before about the iPhone 5s and its camera: see this post which described how it worked out for me in Italy.

The 5s continues to be the best camera-that-you-have-with-you, at least for me. I'm never out of the house without it. True, it works best in daylight, it only produces JPEGs, and the controls are limited. There are apps that add useful features (I like Camera+ but haven't tried others) but in the end it's pretty much a point-and-shoot.

We traveled to the Finger Lakes region of New York recently. There are wineries EVERYWHERE! We stopped at one, Sheldrake Point on Lake Cayuga in Ovid, NY. There were two folks playing guitar and banjo on the lawn, kids romping on the grass, and a food truck. And wine. What more could you ask for on a beautiful summer afternoon?

You could ask for a camera. Or you could put down your wine, pull out your iPhone and get a nice shot of the late day sun across the lawn and vineyard.

Sheldrake Winery, Ovid NY

Another iPhone picture

You may recall that I recently purchased an iPhone 5s, in part because of the nice camera that it contains. Here's a photo of our cat Ty Ty in his never-ending quest for sunshine and warmth, taken with the 5s. It's a jpeg straight from the phone, with no adjustments.

A couple of things are notable about this image, I think. First, in this very contrasty shot, with direct sunlight coming through a window, you still get decent detail in some of the shadows. Look at the painting in the background, for instance.

And the resolution is very good. Here's a crop of the same shot:

The fur and the paint texture hold up nicely in this enlargement. I didn't add any sharpening. Click on the image to view it larger.

The iPhone has some issues. The very-low-light pictures I've taken aren't great but, c'mon, this is a small sensor (4.89 by 3.67 mm, according to AnandTech). I've had one lock-up unrelated to the camera, and the voice dictation--great when it works--mysteriously refuses to be available in the Notes application at times. Overall though, and in particular regarding photos, I'm happy so far.

My previous iPhone photos are in this post.

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.