I love taking photos with my iPhone (5s now 6s) but when it comes down to quality to still prefer my DSLR but as the camera on my phone gets better it is harder and harder to make the effort to tag along my DSLR and gear. By gear that usually means multiple lenses, filters, tripod and maybe some other gear I through in the bag because “I may want it”. With my phone I have it anyway and it is very small and portable. The picture in this post I wouldn’t have had if it wasn’t for my iPhone. The biggest difference between my DSLR and my iPhone is image size and quality of shadows and highlights. For the panoramic image above I used the camera app in panoramic setting which captured an image about the same size of my DSLR because it stitched several images together (5232px by 2332px at 300 dpi). This is getting close to what my DSLR can do in a single image and this is directly related to how big the image can be printed. So now lets look at the difference is the quality of the colors, shadows and highlights. I am fairly happy with the quality sure it is not as good as my DSLR would have been is fairly good. My DSLR tends to have more accurate color representation and be much sharper with more detail in the shadows and highlights but that is not a big supersize. The size of the sensor in my phone is many times smaller than my DSLR’s sensor which is why the quality is still better in the DSLR camera. Another difference between my phone and my DSLR is control. With my DSLR I have full control of how the image will come out. With my iPhone I am limited to the app I used. There are many apps with many options but having so many apps is more cumbersome that I prefer. I still like my full control of my camera with Lighroom on the editing side. I will be interested to compare the difference between my new iPhone 6s with my DSLR but I am petty sure my professional photos will still be from my DSLR. I can say that my iPhone has taken the place of my day to day camera camera though. For family and vacations I tend to use my phone now but my DSLR is still never far 😉 I do see a day when my iPhone will supply a professional photo I can sell but for now I will stay with my DSLR.
To iPhone or not to iPhone
