Chitro's Travel Photography

iPhone took the world by storm, not once, but a number of times, and one of the greatest things that it added is the concept of computational photography. In fact despite so many criticisms from purists and traditionalists, it continued to evolve, so much so that the whole camera industry was threatened, forced to change designs, had to move to lightweight mirrorless cameras, and as matter of fact had to constantly innovate ways to stay in the competition. Let’s face it, the vast majority of the consumer segment has already moved to iPhone or smartphone in general for capturing day to day moments or travel pictures. Nobody has to take a separate device called “camera” when leaving home, the iPhone in your pocket is good enough, may be too good for a lot of people.

What about the Pros or the so called serious enthusiast community? Well, they have all embraced the “iphoneography” bandwagon , and combined with the AI based apps to eliminate even tripods for long exposure shots, night shots, I think not only the camera industry, but all those supporting tools and gadgets companies, like camera bags, tripods, and filters and so on have started to feel the heat too!

So as a travel photographer, I wanted to share my experience about travelling with iPhone as a travel camera. I will also mention in the end about my thoughts of using iPhone for other genre of photography.

Lightweight, flexible and Instantly available

iPhone is lightweight and it is highly flexible, you do not need to switch lenses, just tap between the .5x (ultra wide), 1x (wide) and telephoto (2x or 3x or 5x depending on the model), and you have all the focal lengths to shoot the same image in multiple different ways, at the same time without wasting time to switch lenses. And your iPhone is probably in your back pocket, just take it out , swipe and the camera is instantly ready to shoot. In travel photography that’s extremely important. And portrait mode or photo mode or pano or slo-mo video , all at your finger tips right away.

The ultra wide angle camera of the iPhone is really good!

I usually like to travel lightweight, which means one camera lens and an iPhone. I was not like this before and always had 2 to 3 lenses and was putting my bag down on a bench or sometimes on the ground to change the lenses. It is no fun, and I grew tired of it over time to finally decide that I will travel with a universal zoom like 24-120 or 24-200mm which serve the purpose. But then I was missing the ultra wide angle lens and I was constantly debating about whether to take a 16-35mm with me as well or a DX 10-20mm (which means I need to take an additional camera or use a DX system). Finally I decided to give the iPhone ultra wide angle 13mm a shot. I was pleasantly surprised. The iPhone 16 pro now adds even a 48mm sensor to that lens. I would print my photos big!

I don’t pinch to zoom

I see so many people especially during travel that they love to pinch to zoom in while taking pictures with iPhone. What they don’t realise is that the digital zoom creates pixelated images and are useless when viewed on a bigger screen or printed. I don’t always print my photos, but digital zoom is bad pixels and ruins the photo. I never pinch, and I only use the assigned real cameras – 0.5x to 3x or 5x, that is, the optical zoom, not digital, and happy with whatever photo comes out of them.

I don’t zoom too much to analyse my photo!

The only persons interested in zooming to 100, 200 or 300 percent to check if the photo is sharp or noisy etc. are photographers. Pixel peepers are unhappy people, they buy more gears than necessary to achieve perfect photos, and forget to enjoy photography. If you zoom iPhone photos (particularly the ones taken with 3x or 5x telephoto lens) to 200 or 300 percent to see if everything is alright, you will obviously be not satisfied, and unhappy with iPhone. It is fine for me not to be zoom in so much to validate my photo. You are forgetting the main reason why you are iPhone in the first place.

AI Apps is replacing my need to carry tripods

If travel light is the way to go for you, you would definitely like to avoid tripods, even the light weight carbon fibre ones. I have heavy tripods and super light weight CF tripods, yet with the advent of AI apps like Reeheld, Light Stack (my personal favourite) , tripods are becoming unnecessary, and I fully embraced it. During my travel to Venice, I realised how my AI apps were life savers in creating the slow moving smooth water, night photos etc. without having to carry tripods and putting them over Venice bridges among crazy tourists. And not to mention the ND filters that you need to put on your cameras if you are still in the camera-only world. The AI apps do that too for you!

I did not like that iPhone replaced 3x lens with 5x

One of my most used lens for travel is the 3x lens. Replacing that with 5x in the iPhone 15 series onwards is not an upgrade! There is a reason why 24-70mm focal length is still a popular choice for travel photography. Having not 70mm or 77mm is a major gap that I hope Apple will realise and bring it back on the 17 series. Samsung still has both the 3x and 5x lenses in the Ultra series phones, and that’s how it should be. A lot of people don’t care and they are jubilant about having the 5x telephoto, but I am not joining them. Some will say you zoom with the foot, but it is not always possible in places where you cannot move and you have to take that photo from that spot.

Apple ProRAW for all good Photos

Whenever I see a potentially good photo, I switch to RAW in my camera! JPEG or HEIC images are over-processed to my taste adding excessive sharpness and contrast that take away the freedom of editing. That’s not to say JPEG images are bad or useless, and in fact the quality is improving with every new release, in fact it isn’t possible to always shoot in RAW (unless you turn it on for everything), and I also shoot a ton of images in JPEG in every trip, but when it comes to that one photo which I want to hang on my wall, it has to be ProRAW.

That’s all for today, I just to end this blog by saying, remember one thing when you are out with your iPhone for taking pictures, don’t give up on your iPhone photography and enjoy every moment!