I was recently in Puerto Rico for a bachelor party in San Juan, and a friend's wedding in Vieques. As convenient coincidence would have it, they were both happening in the same week! Taking advantage of this opportunity, I really wanted to shoot a few rolls of film while I was there, and rather than lug around gear for both my film and digital setups, I only brought my Nikon F3 with an f/1.2 50mm prime lens. I wanted to run an experiment in just bringing my new iPhone 13 Pro Max for the digital photos.
I didn't have unrealistic expectations for the phone to take better photos than my D800 DSLR
Having said that, I did hope that I wasn't going to be regretting my decision to not bring my DSLR, thinking that I was missing beautiful shots every few minutes.
I'm happy to say that the phone completely exceeded my expectations, by a large margin. Granted, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the iPhone XS Max camera when that phone was released, but Apple has come a very long way in the past few years.
While I enjoyed using my previous XS Max for day-to-day captures, there were definitely some limitations. First, the old phone did not have an "ultra" wide angle lens, and next, it was pretty terrible in low light. In fact, the peripheral telephoto lens was effectively unusable in low light scenarios. The iPhone 13 Pro Max tackles both of these issues pretty well. The pic above is from the ultra wide angle lens, in a dimly lit restaurant, with a challenging lighting situation. Still, there is plenty of detail in the shadow areas, without much visible noise.
As a result of the increase in aperture size and sensor quality on the ultra-wide and telephoto cameras, you can use those lenses in low-light scenarios. Portrait mode, for instance, is now usable in dimly lit scenes.
I wouldn't have attempted the photo above in portrait mode on the XS Max.
The 13 Pro opens up a whole new set of possibilities, particularly for shooting at night, though those are certainly not the only improvements, as I will get into below. Now, you can't have a Puerto Rico photo dump without palm trees, sunny beaches, and pastel colored buildings... so let's begin:
Another major change from the XS Max, is that the 13 Pro now has a 3X telephoto lens, rather than 2X. This makes a huge difference in how you can compose your images, and the lens that compression you can achieve in landscape shots.
What you do not see in this picture, however, are the HDR capabilities of the 13 Pro.
The phone now natively supports HDR for stills, and Dolby Vision for video. For screens and players that support this, the image above absolutely pops with vivid color and bright highlights in the clouds. Reading this blog in your browser, you're likely seeing a much more muted version of the image above.
Autofocus on people and animals is also lightning fast - and yields some tack sharp results.
An interesting observation I made when looking through the photos in Lightroom was that more often than not, I didn't have any meaningful edits to make. Whatever aesthetic the phone had baked in via its computation photography algorithms were pretty spot on to how I would have edited them myself.
In addition to using most of the photos straight off of the phone, I also didn't try the "ProRAW" mode. This did save a lot of time in not having to edit the photos after shooting; for the most part, I just pulled the photos directly from Apple's own photo viewer into this blog... having said that, I'll definitely try the RAW mode when I next take the phone on another photo trip to see if there is any noticeable difference in quality. I typically only shoot in RAW with my DLSR to have more creative options later on.
When it comes to video, the 13 Pro is a beast. The videos it creates look like they were taken on a stabilized dolly, in 4k HDR. The new Cinematic mode only shoots in 1080p, and can be a bit fussy in some scenarios, but in proper lighting, it is definitely more than a novelty and conveys some pretty convincing results. I compiled a sample of the videos I took in San Juan, though exported here for web and in 1080p.
In summary, I'll probably be bringing my aging D800 around a lot less, and look to downsize to a new mirrorless setup in the near future. One key takeaway from this experiment was that the form factor of the film-based F3 made it such that I could just sling the thing around my back and forget I had it with me. That's definitely not possible with my beast of a DSLR from 2012.
Not featured on this post was my time in Vieques - I have a lot beautiful shots from that island as well, but I'm going to save that for a separate post. I will leave you with a rainbow over the Cessna puddle jumper that we took to the island. 'Til next time!
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