New York City

iPhone 7 series

 

Every now and then, Timehop will show me a photo I took on my phone five or six years ago. Sometimes I'll be able to remember what in the scene made me take it. I imagine my past self swiping through Instagram filters, finding one that had that "something" and feeling pretty happy with the end result. But looking down at the photo now on a retina display phone, the limitations of the old hardware are evident. There's muddled looking contrast and unsightly digital grain, only slightly disguised by the kitschy filter.

I probably would have a hard time telling the difference between a photo taken on an iPhone 6S and a photo taken on an iPhone 7 (not counting the 7+'s fancy Portrait setting). But these cameras do get incrementally better every year, and per my Timehop example, those improvements are even more evident when skipping generations. So for me, the 5s to the 7 is a big jump.

It would be difficult for me to pinpoint just how much better the 7 is than the 5s short of doing shot by shot comparisons, which would likely drive me bananas. So instead I figured I would instead actively shoot and post on the 7 over the course of a week and see how I felt at the end of it.

For this post, I tried to focus on subjects that would typically catch my attention on the street, as well as a few that might be good for showcasing the new camera (such as the flowers and produce below). As an experiment, I edited in the Photos app rather than Instagram. I'm not in love with the Photos app's editing interface. I like the attempt at simplicity with the master Light and Color sliders, but I found myself almost always digging into the subsliders anyway, which makes for a lot of expanding and collapsing of menus. Things would also often get cumbersome after I cropped an image: I would crop it, and then the image would automatically expand under the top and bottom control bars to the edges of the display. So I'd have to tap the image again so that the bars would disappear and I could see the whole thing. Still, every now and then it's good to shake loose of old habits, so I like to think it pushed me to be a little more purposeful in my edits instead of following my rote Instagram editing routines.

Overall, I'm very happy with how these came out. As has always been the case with phones in recent years, in good conditions, the camera on your phone will do a great job. In more challenging conditions, like nighttime on the street or high contrast environments, things get trickier. But even then I still think they came out well. Rarely did I take a shot that I felt was unusable because of the quality of the image (i.e. it's not you, phone; it's me).

Two other neat things, apparently iOS 10 now allows you to shoot in RAW on third party apps. The f/1.8 aperture is also a nice improvement. I could imagine using a third party app to shoot in aperture priority and attempt to squeeze some nicely bokehed shots out of it. But digging into these features does run counter to the sense of simplicity that I've enjoyed while shooting on my phone this week. I like that I can point my phone at something, take the photo, and feel alright about it, and move on. The fact that it's a phone lowers my expectations on what I ought to be trying to control.

I don't think the iPhone 7 quite beats my GR II, but sooner or later I imagine an iPhone will (just as how the iPhone 7 is likely now at parity, if not better than, my old S90). And of course, the biggest advantage that it has over my GR II or my DSLR is that it is always in my pocket. As photographer Chase Jarvis has said, "the best camera is the one you have with you".

But also, it doesn't hurt when that camera also happens to be really good.

Yellow

Taxi on Lexington Avenue

On Lexington Avenue, I'll often pull out my phone and try to grab panning shots of cars going by. So as the car comes up, I'll hit the shutter and attempt to move the phone in the same direction as the car while it passes. Hence the blurry background and less blurry car.

Vote Your Conscience

Saw this while I was walking through Noho. Did a quick Google search and found this info on it.

Cemetery

Main Concourse, Grand Central Terminal

This same shot, from the balcony of the Apple Store, is probably taken thousands upon thousands of times per day.

Strawberries

Bus Stop

43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue

This needs a bit more contrast, but I wasn't able to get it quite right.

Sunset

Barber Shop

I really like how the contrast between the cool florescent lights inside and the red neon on the edge of the window. The operator error here, though, is that I think this ought to be a straight shot of the window, with the neon lights lining up with the edges of the photo. I grabbed this as I was walking by, though, and I thought backing up to take that straight shot might be a bit too obvious or awkward with the people right inside.

Under Construction

Again, needs more contrast. This might be due to a filter effect that I applied.

Grapes

Urbanspace Vanderbilt

This was shot using the Panorama setting. I haven't used Panorama much before, mostly because my old phone was always nearly out of storage.

Always On

For shots of people on the street, I've found that using the volume button as the shutter works best. It's a little less obvious than pressing my thumb to the screen. Also, since the volume button is a physical button, I can keep my thumb on it while looking ahead. The iPhone 7 has image stabilization that supposed to help with blur at low shudder speeds. When shooting like this, though, I'll inevitably get one good shot out of every 10 or more, since usually both myself and my subjects are in motion.

1

This seems like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. On the one hand, you don't want to have piss or shit on your doorstep. On the other, having signs and depictions of pissing and shitting on the front of your house probably isn't a great feeling either.

At The Strand

No Trespassing Beyond This Point

Trespass to here; no farther.

Looking

Union Square Park

High Contrast Black and White

Hello from London! My wife and I are presently enjoying our honeymoon, and in anticipation of that, earlier this month I put together the below post in advance (more fun with the Ricoh GR II, this time focusing on street photography using its high contrast black and white setting).

We're still traveling for a few more days, and I've posted a handful of photos from the trip so far on the Facebook page. I'll probably put together a post in a few weeks with other select shots (most likely one with street photography, and another on signs and signage that caught my attention).

Hope you enjoy the below!

Cheers,

Rob

--

Since I post-process just about everything I shoot, I've rarely looked closely at camera reviews' discussions of in-camera JPG processing. But people seem to really like how Ricoh cameras process their black and white JPGs, so I thought I might spend a few days shooting only in the High Contrast Black and White JPG setting, with minimal post-processing. It was tough to keep minimal "minimal"- ultimately I did a lot of cropping and some adjustments to exposure and vignettes. But in the end, the time it took to edit these did turn out to be much shorter because the in-camera JPG processing actually did a pretty good job in the first place.

I don't know if I'll use this approach too often, as giving up the control of working with the full RAW file does feel wrong somehow (If I really like this look, theoretically, I ought to be able to create it in editing anyway). However, I do like the idea of using a filter like this to push me in a different direction than I would have gone if I were starting from scratch, so it will no doubt be a useful tool to shake things up once in a while in the future.

Scooter Man

Pedicab

Work Ahead

Crossing Madison Avenue

Caught

On the Job

Smoking

Mannequin

Easter

I was scrambling to find an idea for a photo blog post, and my fiancée made the excellent suggestion of shooting the New York Easter Parade (which, I confess despite living here going on fifteen years, I hadn't even known was a thing). We got on the train, then realized that due to subway work, getting to the parade would involve taking two different trains, walking two avenues over and seven blocks up, spectating/shooting, and then walking back down, over, and taking two trains back.

I intended to soldier on and shoot the parade out of commitment to the cause. Then, after all of 20 seconds of going through that travel route in my head, I got off that train as quickly as I could.

To an extent, I am lazy.

Fortunately, it was a beautiful day, and her alternative suggestion to walk to Astoria Park and take photos of budding flowers and trees around the neighborhood was perfect.

Blossom

Since I had planned on shooting the parade, I had my 85 mm f/1.8 lens on me.  It was well suited for the change of plans, as closeup of flower-in-focus/background-out-of-focus is something this lens does pretty well. This can get kind of tricky, though- for a flower in a tree, even while out of focus that background can get plenty busy, and the depth of field on the 85 mm can get pretty thin (so in this case, there's some blur in the branch and buds closer to the lens). It is springtime, though, so I feel I ought to include this kind of shot, and out of the ones I had like it, it was my favorite.

Stretching

Sunday in the Park

Squirrel!

I spent a good five minutes or so slowly following this little guy around.

Easter Egg Hunt

There was a sort of Easter fair for kids in the park on Sunday afternoon. We walked to the edge of area, where kids and parents were lined up awaiting the start of an Easter egg hunt. At one point, a bunch more kids ran up to join the line. The hunt had not started yet, but they ran right on through into the field and started grabbing eggs. Seeing the others going ahead of them, the rest of the kids in the line then surged forward and poured into the field, the hunt having de facto started before the whistle had blown.

Too many metaphors came to mind than can be listed here, and the anarchic moment combined with the dust that kicked up gave the whole thing a feeling that bordered on the post-apocalyptic.

I guess I have to add, though, that despite my ominous interpretation of events, the parents and kids did indeed seem to be having a nice time.

Coasting

Astoria Park is bordered by the East River, so in addition to a spectacular view, you can also see plenty of sea gulls hanging out along the water.

Branches

Sunlight

Sneakers

Happy Easter.

My contribution to the Easter table: arranging our mini Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and Peeps around one plastic egg containing Star Wars: The Force Awakens stickers.