Traveling Light: Can Your Phone’s Camera Replace Your Traditional Camera?

[SunshineD]

Could you travel with just an iPhone and leave the camera bag behind?
Rad Drew shares an interesting perspective on shooting with an iPhone and the trade-offs that come with it. https://luminous-landscape.com/traveling-light-can-your-phones-camera-replace-your-traditional-camera/

[Gordon Buck]

I am about to do just that--leave my DLSR and extra lenses in favor of my iPhone 6 pro max on a weeklong USA based river cruise. But I am bringing a telephoto adapter and a DJI OSMO6 stabilizer for videos. I did the same last year and all worked out well.

[kers]

It is just a different camera with much more depth of field and not so good in bad light.
I do not like some of the auto contrast - necessary digital fiddling that sometimes works very nice but often is just too much.

[Rob C]

For me, the cellphone camera experience came in two parts: the first, when I was using an old little Samsung, and later on when I splashed out for an iPad 13 Mini.

Part 1 ended in spiritual tears when the friendly skipper of a locally-based yacht, familiar with my website, asked me to make a large print of some distressed paintwork I shot on a laid-up yacht. Sadly, it had been fathered by the little Samsung, and there was no way I was going to waste mutual time attempting to con the skipper into buying something from such an original. As a retired pro, turning away a few pennies is always painful; those “if only” self-administered kicks are the worst.

Part 2 has been a much happier experience, which really began a few years ago when eye problems prevented me from being able to focus my dslr. That, and finding myself ever more sucked into the Daido Moriyama ethos, led to a revelation: when snaps are free (once you own the expensive little cellphone!), it becomes okay to forget the “value for money” perception of photographic worth, and realise that it is perfectly legitimate to discard long-established preconceptions and photograph anything at all.

This, which is what I truly believe Moriyama has been doing, taught me that something subliminal has been opened up when first feeling that sense of image, where I no longer need to find some specific and often illusive subject before I shoot, but that I need to trust a less visually educated part of my psyche and just make the shot, because when I do that, I realise that the real point of it only comes out when I remove the colours and go with the weight of the parts. The trick is developing the sense of how something is going to look when taken into a different visual dimension. The first step is to remove the skin of colour, and reveal the real flesh and bone beneath.

I guess there’s really a Part 3 to this: I no longer print anything and have no desire so to do.

So yeah, traditional cameras are, for me, redundant. I don’t have a market for their products.

[langier]

For the past five years...yes, an iPhone has created up to at least 25% of my work, including professional work.

When the 3-lens iPhones came out with the 11, the writing was on the wall. The focal range from 13-14 mm to 60-70 mm sits within the range of my most used focal lengths. I wanted one generation and was hooked.

I've shot with m4/3, first as a back-up, then primary. The size, weight and not sticking out was liberating. Smartphone cameras take that another step and put me both under the radar and unburdened even further.

For much of my digital work, 12mp is plenty for a good-quality, large print. I have a track record of hundreds of 16x20-30x40 prints produced with 12mp. It's a matter of using good craftsmanship and excellent techniques in the workflow.

In many situations, especially in HDR, my iPhone has given me with the push of the button a final image that's taken a lot of time and effort to create with a high-end camera in a single frame or as an HDR sequence.

I've also made several international trips to the Balkans where my iPhone has shined doing lots of street photography. That's where it really shines in that one is totally invisible. My favorite work from the last several trips is from the iPhone. Combined with the free Snapseed, the combo can't be beat.

In the palm of my hand is a camera with a wide-range zoom camera, still, motion and sound capture, software to process the photos and a way to distribute to the world! The device weighs a few ounces and costs less than a single high-resolution DSLR/Mirrorless body, doesn't require additional media cards, doesn't have to be downloaded to a computer and it all fits in my pocket!

BTW, this same device carries my portfolio and several presentations, so it helps me sell my services and open doors on top of everything else it can do.

[Rob C]

For the past five years...yes, an iPhone has created up to at least 25% of my work, including professional work.


For much of my digital work, 12mp is plenty for a good-quality, large print. I have a track record of hundreds of 16x20-30x40 prints produced with 12mp. It's a matter of using good craftsmanship and excellent techniques in the workflow.

Indeed; that‘s why, even when I was still printing, I felt no need to go beyond my Nikon D700 and its 12 meagapixies. If it hadn't frozen solid after Nikon stopped supporting it, perhaps it would get some use today. My D200 still works, but it's cropped format, and I hate the way it screws with focal lengths.

[Pogo33]

I have come close a couple of time in leaving a digital camera home and just relying on an iPone 17 pro. I did so last year on a Danube Cruse but ended up taking a Sony a6700, and quite frankly, I have used an iPhone for a number of events, one of which was our middle grandson''s Highschool Graduation in which I obtained remarkable distance images from it. However, the next day at dinner, I tried to capture a shot of the 3 in relatively bad lighting, and the iPhone failed me. Upon a lot of research on what Apple does to the supposed Apple Raw file, I have decided that there are better options in traveling light than the iPhone, like the Sony RX100 Vii with its 1 inch sensor and its 24+200 mm lens: For you that do not know, this is what happens in an Apple RAW file:

Here is exactly what Apple does to their DNG files before you ever get to edit them:
1. Multi-Frame Stacking (Smart HDR & Deep Fusion)
Unlike your Sony, which takes a single exposure when the mechanical shutter fires, the iPhone is constantly rolling a buffer of images. When you press the shutter in ProRAW, Apple merges multiple frames of varying exposures together to maximize dynamic range. The DNG you get is actually a composite image, not a single captured moment. 
Reeflex Store+ 1
2. Demosaicing is Already Done
A true Sony RAW file requires your editing software (like Lightroom) to interpret the mosaic of red, green, and blue pixels on the sensor. Apple ProRAW files are "pre-demosaiced." Apple has already interpreted the color data using its own proprietary algorithms. Because the color interpretation has already occurred at the system level, altering the white balance of a difficult indoor scene in Lightroom feels less like true RAW manipulation and more like aggressively color-grading a high-quality JPEG.
3. Baked-In Noise Reduction
Apple applies heavy computational noise reduction to the ProRAW file before wrapping it in the DNG format. While this makes the file look cleaner out of the camera, it permanently destroys the finest, pixel-level micro-contrast and textures that you are used to seeing in a Sony file. 
Alessandro Michelazzi Photography
4. Tone Mapping and Local Contrast
Apple uses machine learning to identify elements in the scene (e.g., a face, the sky, a building) and applies localized contrast and tone mapping to those specific areas. These algorithmic decisions become permanently embedded in the Linear DNG. This is why importing an Apple ProRAW file into desktop software often results in skin tones suddenly pulling unnaturally red or skies looking overly dramatic—your software is fighting the iPhone's embedded computational masks.  Reddit

Until Apple produces a true RAW file, I will alway take something else with me that I can rely on

[raddrew]

Thanks for reading and commenting on my recent article about the iPhone!

I don’t really disagree with the basic technical point: Apple ProRAW is not the same thing as a traditional single-exposure RAW file from a Sony, Fuji, Nikon, or Canon. It is a computational RAW file. Apple has already done some of the work before we ever see the DNG.

But that’s where I think the conversation sometimes goes off track.

For me, the question is not whether an iPhone file is “pure” in the old RAW sense. It isn’t. The better question is whether I can make expressive, high-quality photographs with it, and whether I understand the tool well enough to use it intelligently.

It’s also worth remembering that every camera system makes decisions before we ever touch the file. Lens corrections, color science, noise handling, sharpening defaults, camera profiles, and even the way RAW converters interpret sensor data all shape the result. None of this is completely neutral. The iPhone is simply more explicit — and more aggressive — about using computation as part of the photographic process.

That does not make it the right tool for every situation. I would never claim that it replaces a larger camera, a larger sensor, interchangeable lenses, or a traditional RAW workflow when those things matter. There are certainly times when I want those tools.

But there are also many times when the iPhone gives me files with remarkable dynamic range, good color, and enough editing flexibility to make the photograph I want. In those situations, I’m less concerned with whether the file conforms to an older definition of RAW than with whether the photograph works.

I think we sometimes get hung up on whether a tool behaves like the tools we already know. The iPhone does not behave like a Sony. That doesn’t make it less legitimate, just different.

For photographers, the important thing is to know the strengths and limits of each tool. If someone wants a traditional RAW workflow, they should absolutely use a camera or app that gives them that. But dismissing iPhone photography because ProRAW is computational misses the point. Computational photography is not a flaw in the iPhone system, it is the system.

In the end, I’m less interested in whether a file passes a purity test than in whether it helps me make a photograph that says what I want it to say.

[Rob C]

Thanks for reading and commenting on my recent article about the iPhone!

In the end, I’m less interested in whether a file passes a purity test than in whether it helps me make a photograph that says what I want it to say.

I wouldn’t argue with that; I would add, though, that for old guys like me, the cellphone camera marks the difference between continuing to play or to give up and turn bitter, disillusioned and ready to say goodnight.

[Jonathan Cross]

In the end, I’m less interested in whether a file passes a purity test than in whether it helps me make a photograph that says what I want it to say.

Thanks for the article, Rad, and your comment as above, with which I totally agree.  I do not think about whether the image matches the scene I took, as it can only be compared with my memory.  Obviously I try to look out for any glaring differences, such as the how bright or dark the colour is of the coat someone is waring, which I then correct in LR post processing.  I have taken several ProRAW images at 12MP and used super resolution to make it 48MP, and then printed at 18" x 12". Very few have detected that it was taken with an iPhone.  If I am converting to B&W, then I process to show how I want the image to look, high key, low key etc.  Rob is a master at that!

Obviously there are limits compared to an ILC.  I do not use the phone for sport or wildlife.  I do like , however, that I do not have to think about aperture if I want a large depth of field.   I am quite happy to carry one body, two lenses and my iPhone.  That covers all I need.

Jonathan

[Rob C]

Thanks for the article, Rad, and your comment as above, with which I totally agree.  I do not think about whether the image matches the scene I took, as it can only be compared with my memory.  Obviously I try to look out for any glaring differences, such as the how bright or dark the colour is of the coat someone is waring, which I then correct in LR post processing.  I have taken several ProRAW images at 12MP and used super resolution to make it 48MP, and then printed at 18" x 12". Very few have detected that it was taken with an iPhone.  If I am converting to B&W, then I process to show how I want the image to look, high key, low key etc.  Rob is a master at that!

Obviously there are limits compared to an ILC.  I do not use the phone for sport or wildlife.  I do like , however, that I do not have to think about aperture if I want a large depth of field.   I am quite happy to carry one body, two lenses and my iPhone.  That covers all I need.

Jonathan

Jonathan,

Thanks for the plug; that I like b/w so much is mostly to do with the fact that for many years the vast bulk of my work was in black/white; I did a lot of colour darkroom work too, before I went freelance, mainly processing colour neg and transparency films (4x5) and making prints from them. However, colour darkrooms were hopelessly uneconomic prospects for a freelance such as I, so I had to grit my teeth and farm that out. Fortunately, when I got into calendars I was mainly able to shoot them on Kodachrome, which only Kodak processed in the UK, though I think the US had other labs able to do it too. However, for my own earlier fashion clients, it was b/w for the most part.

There’s a part of me that’s quite masochistic: I love masking my iPhone car snaps and blurring the backgrounds so that the cars are the crisp bits. The difficult part of that is deciding what I see through the windows is or is not part of the interior, such as mirrors, hight seats etc. Of course, if my Photoshop skills were better it would be a faster process…

There’s another point worth making: though my colour vision was okay - at least, when I worked in that colour lab - it doesn’t help me to get turned on by the colours I see around me. Keith's the cat for that gig! 

The subject freedom that I realised Daido Moriyama had bestowed upon us came to me as a direct result of using the iPhone. It no longer mattered a damn about resolution, thoughts of printing, colour fidelity etc. and the buzz came from turning the snaps into something not actually visible at the time of exposure, and just seeing where they could go. The only incentive to swapping from my 13 Mini is a longer lens.