out shooting with iPhone only


It's been a very long time since I've gone shooting with my iPhone. I normally shoot with whatever camera I'm reviewing at the time, or with my Olympus 35RC. It wasn't actually intentional - i forgot to pack the RC on the way out and since it's so light, I didn't realise.  Instead of not shooting, I decided to use the iPhone as my camera of the day, after such a long time.



As the saying goes "the best camera is the one you have with you". That was the iPhone 6S for me. To be fair, the camera on the iPhone 6S is nothing shorty of amazing, technically speaking. The photos come out looking crisp and pleasant in most cases. Where I think the iPhone suffers, like most smartphones, is dynamic range. There's the option of shooting HDR, but I really don't like that. I usually try as much as possible to shoot scenes where the dynamic range isn't too wide. As such, I don't like shooting with the iPhone when the sun is out.



Another weakness of smartphone photography in my opinion is the rendition of some natural colours - like the red in flowers, or the blue in the sky. The iPhone really does something weird with the sky.

Something great about street photography is it gets you doing some exercises. Walking is great for you. It also encourages you to explore some nooks you wouldn't normally venture into. I do tend to walk for hours and hours. Normally while shooting film, I'd stop when I run out of film. With the iPhone, you can end up shooting all day, well, until you run out of battery.



Talking of battery, I have what I think is the very best budget power bank in its class. With 20100 mAh of juice, it can charge my iPhone more than 6 times! My iPhone only needed charging once, but because USB charging is ubiquitous now, I was able to charge other things such as my Bluetooth keyboard and earphones on the go.  It does have some heft to it, the battery. I wouldn't say it's 'heavy' though. It's about the right weight for what it is.


Talking of my Bluetooth keyboard, I typed most of this while taking a break at a café on Roman Road. Ironically, having been shooting on the iPhone all day, I turned my head to the right to be confronted by a Zeiss Super Ikonta wedged into the exposed brick wall of the café. Eh?

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