The Camera You Always Have With You

Some ideas that I have heard around the photography world in recent years that are either profound or cliché are:

The best camera to use is the one you have with you.

I like to carry a camera because it is hard to take a photo without one.

Both these statements are undoubtedly true. The ubiquitous camera of the digital age that one always has with them is the mobile phone camera. Actually, I encourage photographic expeditions without carrying any camera—and this includes the iPhone camera—but that is a jeremiad for another day.

So, yeah. Mostly we have our mobile phone cameras with us and therefore many photos are made on-the-fly with a mobile phone camera, far more than with “big boy” cameras, and more even than were made with point-and-shoot cameras back in the Kodak era. Many of the photos would have been missed had one waited for camera and tripod.

However, there is often an apology for using the iPhone camera rather than a more “serious” camera. I am here to say, “No more apologies!”

Once upon a time, “miniature” 35mm cameras were also regarded as toys. I do not diminish the power and capability of my iPhone camera, nor do I always feel the need to have the latest and greatest model of the iPhone in my pocket. As a closet Luddite, I would miss my headphone dongle and have, therefore, stuck with models that are a few years old.

Let me explain my fondness for the iPhone camera as a professional tool. In this regard, I have been encouraged that there is a market for many of the images made with my iPhone camera.

First of all, the resolution in iPhones has become a great deal better. The resolution even in my Luddite iPhone is better than that of the first DSLR that I used at the dawn of the digital era. Upsampling and interpolation software technologies have also improved greatly. It’s really practical today to enlarge an iPhone JPEG up to a reasonable printing size.

Besides the ubiquitous nature of the iPhone camera and the fact that it is always with one, this is a really fun camera to use. It’s also great to have a darkroom in my pocket.

Patterns in the Sand—Wandering along a lonesome beach on the Oregon coast, I came across these patterns in a creek emptying into the ocean. It seemed like too much trouble to pull out my tripod and DSLR—but I had a great time photographing the patterns in the sand with my iPhone.

iPhone 6s, back camera, 4.2mm at 1/318 of a second at f/2.2 and ISO 25, hand held; converted to monochrome using Snapseed.

Bamboo—Visiting an artist’s studio, I noticed a stand of massive bamboo adjacent to a wooden deck. These trees were definitely a decorative element that were part of the appeal of the studio space. I snapped an image with my iPhone an used Snapseed to add an HDR effect and to convert to monochrome.

iPhone 6s, back camera, 4.2mm at 1/250 of a second at f/2.2 and ISO 25, hand held; converted to monochrome and border added using Snapseed, roundtripped to Photoshop.

I travel a great deal, and it is fair to say that I am never bored in train stations or when eating by myself in a restaurant in a foreign land—because I can entertain myself processing photos using many of the great apps on my iPhone.

As a final point, consider that the craft of photography is always a craft of trade-offs when you are dealing with photographic gear. An obvious benefit of the iPhone is its light weight and its small form factor. A benefit that is perhaps less obvious is the small size of the camera sensor.

It is not perhaps well understood that depth-of-field involves three variables. In addition to focal length and aperture, you need to consider sensor size. The smaller the sensor, the greater the depth-of-field. The sensor in an iPhone camera is very small, meaning that iPhone captures inherently have a great deal of depth-of-field. This should inform your photography practice with an iPhone because it is good for some kinds of imagery—where you want everything to be in focus—and bad for imagery that would work better with selective focus, such as a portrait with a blurred background (recent iPhones have come up with workaround for selective depth-of-field images).

Since iPhoneography is part of my photographic practice, and since I am particularly drawn to black and white photography, I felt it was important to include a section on black and white photography with the iPhone in Creative Black & White.