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Search results for "austin mann"

Austin Mann’s Review of the iPhone XS Cameras

In addition to the early slate of iPhone reviews from the press, it’s become tradition in recent years for each iPhone to be graded as a camera by professional photographer Austin Mann. I especially enjoyed Mann’s review this year of the iPhone XS camera system. He writes:

Most of the time my expectations for camera upgrades on “S” years aren’t so high, but after shooting with the iPhone XS for a week, I can confidently say it’s a huge camera upgrade. There’s a lot of little improvements, but Smart HDR definitely takes the cake. This is a feature and technology that improves virtually everything you capture with your iPhone camera. I think you’ll be really thrilled when you experience the results yourself.

As I shared in last week’s issue of MacStories Weekly for Club MacStories, the iPhone XS and XR announcements caught me by surprise in that I expected there to be more change in the devices compared to last year’s iPhone X. I’ve ordered a XS Max, but the primary reason for my upgrade was the additional screen real estate compared to my X; bigger display aside, September’s keynote didn’t provide much of a compelling reason for me to purchase a new phone this year. However, Mann’s review and that of John Gruber have helped provide much-needed additional detail on the camera upgrades in the XS, which sound impressively significant.

One of the standout lines in Mann’s review for me comes near the beginning, where he says, “iPhone XS captures what your eyes see.” It’s hard to find higher praise than that.

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Austin Mann Reviews the iPhone X Camera

On paper, the differences between Apple’s iPhone cameras can be hard to discern year-to-year. That’s why I find photographer Austin Mann’s iPhone camera reviews so valuable. Every year, Mann puts Apple’s cameras through their paces while traveling around the world. In September, Mann took the iPhone 8 Plus to India. He’s back, this time from Guatemala, with a review of the iPhone X’s cameras.

Mann was particularly impressed with the iPhone X’s telephoto lens:

When we got the telephoto lens in the 7 Plus, it was a huge upgrade but the telephoto quality was noticeably less than the wide lens, especially in low light. This created a shooting conundrum… often wishing to zoom in but not wanting to sacrifice quality. Apple closed that gap this year by investing heavily into improving the telephoto lens.  

The iPhone’s screen gets high marks too:

This probably the most amazing display I’ve ever seen. Colors pop, blacks are true black and contrast feels just right. I actually found it more rewarding to shoot & share because of how amazing the screen is. 

During his tests, Mann also discovered that the iPhone X’s slow-sync flash has been substantially improved:

One of my favorite things about the iPhone 8 Plus review was the slow sync flash comparison against the 7 Plus so I decided to take the iPhone X to the streets for a similar test. While I set out to see the difference in slow shutter effects, what I actually found was the iPhone 7 was easily 2 seconds slower in focusing/firing when shooting moving objects in low light…

The technical differences between the lenses in an iPhone 8 Plus and X may seem small on paper. Austin Mann does an excellent job demonstrating the added flexibility those differences afford users in everyday situations. Be sure to check out his post for examples of what the iPhone X’s camera can do.

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Austin Mann’s iPhone 7 Plus Camera Review in Rwanda

I consider the iPhone a computer with a camera more than a computer that makes phone calls. Therefore, Austin Mann’s annual iPhone camera review is my favorite of the bunch. I’ve been linking them for the past couple of years, and I find Austin’s approach always fascinating and well-presented.

This time, Austin has outdone himself. To properly test the iPhone 7 Plus’ camera with optical zoom, they’ve flown to Rwanda in collaboration with Nat Geo Travel and Nat Geo Adventure to track gorillas and take close-up pictures, timelapses, test wide-color gamut photos, and more.

He writes:

As many of you know, in the past I’ve created this review in Iceland twice, Patagonia and Switzerland, but this year I wanted to really change things up. With indicators pointing toward possibilities of optical zoom I asked myself: where’s the best place in the world to test optical zoom? Africa of course.

So this year, in collaboration with Nat Geo Travel + Nat Geo Adventure we’ve set out to get you the answers. I’m writing you from deep in the Nyungwe rain forest in southwest Rwanda… we’ve been tracking gorillas in the north, boating Lake Kivu in the west and running through tea plantations in the south… all with the iPhone 7 Plus in hand.

I’ve had a blast playing with the wide spectrum of new features and tech but as always, our mission is to find out the answer to one question:

How does all this new tech make my pictures (and videos) better than before?

The result is beautiful. The video “review” is a mini-documentary/short film about tracking down mountain gorillas, and it’s 9 minutes long. Seeing how they found the gorillas brought a big smile on my face, and you can notice how the zoom interface of the iPhone 7 Plus was useful for that purpose.

Watch it below, and go check out Austin’s photos and summary of the experience here.

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Behind the Scenes of Austin Mann’s iPhone 6s Camera Review

For the past few years, Austin Mann’s iPhone camera reviews have been at the top of my list of articles I want to read whenever a new iPhone is released. This year, Austin went to Switzerland to test the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, with some impressive results.

Today, he posted a behind the scenes video that is possibly even more fascinating than the photos themselves as you can see how everything was made and, more importantly, where. Pretty amazing to see what Austin and his team go through to make their reviews possible. The video is 17 minutes long, but worth watching until the end.

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Austin Mann’s iPhone 6s Camera Review in Switzerland

Each year, Austin Mann puts together the camera-focused iPhone review I want to read. This year is no different, and I was curious to see what he’d create this time given the camera improvements to the iPhone 6s.

I liked this bit about Live Photos:

I really appreciate the deeper story each of these tells — the sound of the cowbell, the flying dust under the drone, the steam rising from my Swiss hot chocolate. We take pictures to tell stories and share experiences with those around us, and Live Photos helps us do that in a way we simply haven’t before.

What I love about Live Photos is its ability to accomplish this, completely behind the scenes. Some of these Live Photos in this gallery were completely unintentional, which is the best part about it.

His entire review is full of videos, comparisons with the iPhone 6 Plus, and technical explanations than aren’t hard to understand and are well-illustrated. Recommended.

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The Halide Team Compares the Camera Specs of the iPhone 14 Pro to the iPhone 13 Pro

If you’re curious about the technical changes to the iPhone 14 Pro’s cameras, the Halide team has you covered with a side-by-side comparison between the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro. There are a lot of interesting details in the post, but it looks like the most significant changes are to the Main (formerly known as Wide) camera:

The Wide camera sees the greatest changes. The lens gets a bit wider, a 2mm focal length difference. The aperture is smaller (‘slower’), means the lens collects less light. This was probably necessary to work with a larger sensor. We calculate that the Wide camera is able to collect 20% more light compared to last year’s camera, even with this slightly worse aperture, thanks to its larger size.

We’re astonished by the improvement in the camera sensor’s ISO range. It goes far beyond previous iPhone cameras. Given high ISO values are accompanied by more noise, it’s highly likely this ISO range is made possible by how its higher resolution sensor combines 4 pixels into one, vastly reducing noise.

How these spec changes play out in practice will be interesting. We got some initial impressions in the reviews published earlier today, and Austin Mann’s review reveals some of the practical implications of the numbers cataloged by the Halide team. Still, I’m eager to see what Halide’s Sebastiaan de With and others think once they’ve had more time to push these cameras to their limits.

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MacStories Unwind: macOS Monterey and iOS and iPadOS 15.1 Are Here, Plus Shortcuts for Mac, and a MacBook Pro Review

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Sponsored by: Daylite – It’s Monterey Ready!

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • A collection of John’s favorite XL widgets
    • Federico on the gap between Apple system apps and their Shortcuts actions
    • An all-new MacStories Unplugged that take a behind-the-scenes look at the making of John’s macOS Monterey review.

AppStories

Unwind


MacStories Unwind: iOS and iPadOS 15, the iPad Mini, and iPhone Camera Reviews

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Sponsored by: DetailsPro – A Design Tool Made for SwiftUI

This week on MacStories Unwind:

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Coming Saturday:
      • The ‘Making Of’ Federico’s iOS and iPadOS 15 review
      • Two Club-only advanced shortcuts
      • Lots of app coverage

AppStories

Unwind


MacStories Unwind: Federico’s iPad Pro Review, M1 iMacs, Spatial Audio and Lossless Streaming, Halide, and Pok Pok Playroom

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Sponsored by: Bartender – Take Control of Your Menu Bar

This week, Federico and John recap the week’s Apple announcements and news including the new M1 iPad Pro that Federico reviewed, the new M1 iMac, Spatial Audio and Lossless coming to Apple Music, new watch bands and accessibility features, plus reviews of Halide for iPad, Pok Pok Playroom, and more.

MacStories

Club MacStories

  • MacStories Weekly
    • Wallpaper Collection
    • A Mac window management tip
    • Federico on using a DAC to listen to lossless music

AppStories

Unwind