Art without the extra weight

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I played with the camera on my newer phone yesterday while sitting on my porch reading photography magazines. I have to say, even though the lenses still don't give the quality of high end camera equipment, and keeping in mind I only have the two-lens version of an iPhone, not the pricier models that actually have three lenses, and I have not tried it at night, I'm kind of blown away. Taking macro (closeup) images is always a chore with a regular camera. Depending on how much you want the background to blur and how much of the actual subject you want in focus, it takes a lot of fiddling. 

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 With this phone, I can lock the focus on one particular spot after choosing the actual aperture setting without a lot of jumping through hoops. I just moved up from an iPhone SE 2020 to an iPhone 16 and the improvements they've made are astounding. I know the Samsung phones (my daughter has one of those) make really high quality images as well. 


Now anybody can take great photos with their phone and it negates the necessity for me to carry five to seven pounds of camera equipment (depending on what lens I have on the camera), and the phone doesn’t strain my arthritic shoulders like hefting the camera does. 

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I still use the camera and an expensive zoom lens to shoot the freighters that go through town, as the wide angle setting on the phone distorts quite a bit, but for practically everything else, I’m now relying on the phone. The images in this blog post were all taken with a phone camera. Two of them were taken with an iPhone SE 2020 and the rest were taken with an iPhone 16.
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How far we’ve come from the days of the large format bellows camera and glass plates. The guys that lugged that equipment around were really dedicated to their craft. Now anybody can do it - so pay attention and make the best photos you can. Just because it’s easy now, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider your composition, lighting, etc. but for heaven’s sake enjoy yourself! I’m certainly enjoying the “weight off my shoulders”.

 

For more of my images please visit:

mary-bedy.pixels.com

 

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