Flipperoo

So this is pretty funny. A 180-degree turnabout....

In 2013, readers challenged me to get to grips with the camera in the iPhone 4s I had owned for about two years. That first iPhone was my second mobile phone. I was reluctant at first—well, "resistant" would also be an accurate word—but I persevered, and eventually I began to get comfortable with it. Up till then I had learned to use the iPhone 4s as a phone, and I used other apps, but had pretty much ignored the camera.

The funny thing was that in the months that followed, when I was out of the house without my camera and saw things I wanted to take pictures of, I'd get all mad at myself for not having my camera with me. Again and again, I'd completely forget that the phone in my pocket was also a camera, one that I was trying to use more. So I'd be thinking I didn't have a camera with me when I did have a camera with me.

Canandaigua Lake, from the spot where I eat lunch sometimes.
Apple iPhone 7+ in Pano mode.

Cut to now. The other day I needed to go to Canandaigua, a not-so-nearby town, to do some errands. It was a gorgeous, sun-drenched day, and I kept seeing pictures. But by chance I didn't have my phone with me. Forgot to pick it up on my way out of the house. So I kept thinking, damn, left my phone at home: can't take any pictures.

It wasn't until I was on my way home that it occurred to me that a few weeks ago I had put my old Fuji X-T1 on the floor of the passenger seat so I'd have a camera in the car. It has the small 18mm (~28mm-e) lens on it. It had a mostly empty card in the slot. And a charged battery.

Just didn't occur to me...oh, yeah, I don't need my phone, I can actually take pictures with my camera.

Duh. What a difference seven years makes, huh?

Of course this has to do with my empty head more than anything else. They say as you get older you get better at the things you were always good at and worse at the things you were always bad at, and I was already absentminded by the time I was twenty. Or maybe by the time I was six.

Nothing's changed. Still, the parallel—the inversion? Whatever—made me chuckle.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

JimH: "My iPhone 8 Plus is now my primary camera. I always have it with me for snapshots but I've also been using it for photos for my web publishing and just finished using it for videos on a YouTube lecture. My adapter for the Manfrotto tripod is indispensable. Perhaps you've heard how bad the air is here in California because of the wildfires? We were out near the coast today and I shot this photo through the trees. This is full frame using the telephoto lens. The color rendition is as I remember it. The sun was so attenuated the camera was able to render the luminosity variation over the surface as you can see from the enlargement in the upper right hand corner. Amazing. Now if we could only breathe safely."

Mike replies: That's amazing, but...don't you wish you had taken that with a better camera? How's it going to print? That's my problem with the iPhone: when the magic happens and you get a hit, all you've got is a phone file of it. For me, the whole point of using a good camera is that when the magic happens, you get a file that you can do anything with. For 99% of shots, it doesn't matter what I'm using. It's that 1% that I'll carry a better camera for.

Comments

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

Yes, that's funny.

I mainly need two things more from a phone cam (I have iPhone 10), a tele lens, and faster autofocus.

Eolake Stobblehouse

[Albert Smith]

I never leave home without a proper camera, usually an old DSLR that I've written off years ago. I get the most use from cameras after I've bought its replacement and don't care about trashing it anymore. It lives in the trunk waiting.

I have always felt that when I don't have a camera, I'll see Elvis getting out of a UFO. Maybe that hasn't happened because I always have a camera.

And yeah, I have a phone that I never take pictures with.

[Stan B.]

A) Shoulda called- I remember you have the XT-1 in the car!

B) It was probably a dream anyway.

[PaulW]

This post made me smile. I had my first smartphone for the better part of a year before it dawned on me that I had a camera with me all the time. Old dogs, new tricks?

[Thor D.]

I have a related problem. Even though I have been a 'photographer' for nearly 20 years, I often forget to take pictures. I get lost in the moment and don't even think about recording it. Then, when the moment is gone, I get to kick myself for my other-mindedness. Is it possible for people to be in the moment as an observer and as a photographer at the same time? Maybe for a more practiced artist, but for me I have to choose.

[longviewer]

I persist in my phone-buying habit of ignoring the camera features and just getting a capable phone with a decent screen. This protects me from ever thinking that I have a useful camera. My tablet's imaging capability is quite awful, so I am just as likely to use a pencil and gas receipt to sketch an image as I am to capture one with an appliance that also takes pictures. Just not worth the effort to grab a bad photo - except when i run out of receipts, at which point I take a pic of the numbers on the gas pump for my records.

[WilliamA]

By a strange coincidence, I was on holiday in Canandaigua exactly ten years ago. The weather was not good. But it didn't matter. Nearly all of the thousand photos that I took were of different aisles or products on sale in Wegmans. Something you take for granted can seem extraordinarily exotic to a tourist from England !

[Oh. We do not take Wegman's for granted, believe me. The best grocery stores in the U.S. of A. --Mike]

[Phil]

Longviewer: Thanks for that idea of a picture of the gas pump when they are of paper! I hate walking to the cashier and asking for a receipt. I usually forget to look for the pump number. I recently got a new AC/Heater. When finished, the installer got his phone and photographed the ID plates of the heater, compressor, and cooling unit. He says it is better than getting a flashlight and writing down the numbers, and perhaps making a mistake.

[JimH]

Mike, I've been thinking - your comments are quite perceptive and probably ring true for many but don't really apply to me. Over the last 60 or so years my photography habit has evolved.

When I started with my Leica M2, I ran an observatory darkroom as well as having my own at home, so I spent lots of time making prints while developing plates from the nights observations.

I went through changing to SLRs, and after many moves gave up on the bathroom darkroom in the mid-80s. I was traveling a lot - a LOT - so I started carrying a Minox 35 with color film on my travels, sending film to Kodak or the local processors when the automatic machines came in. I sent photos to pro labs to have enlargements made.

With the advent of computers I started scanning photos in the early 90s and had my first digital camera around 1995-6. I got rid of my Nikon SLR and bought a D100 when it was introduced. All digital since.

Since the advent of the web, I've been publishing online - I did one of the first 30,000 web pages. I created my own photo sites in 1995 and had lots of traffic until the photo sites began showing up a few years later.

In the last 20 years, I slowed down on prints. I tried printing myself, a frustrating, expensive experience. When I wanted prints, it was usually large ones and I used pro labs. I did several 4X4 feet (1X1.3m) prints off 6 and 12MP cameras with amazing results.

Today most of my photos end up on my own screensaver for my MAC - around 1300 photos of abstractions from all over the world and artwork I like. Haven't made a print in 3 years, except this one.

Look closely - that's the view from my desk looking out on the balcony. Instead of seeing my neighbors apartments (look at the top of the photo) I see the Colorado River North of Moab, a 7x10 foot print (~2X3m) from a D200 photo 15 years ago. (A bigger version is here http://www.jimhayes.com/photo/OnlinePhotographer/PatioL.jpg

So for my purposes, the iPhone works fine. I'm not a camera aficionado, artist nor a perfectionist.

But I might add that the photo I showed before is something I want to research. In very bright light, those small pixels may have an advantage. And my next patio mural, when I tire of this, will probably be from an iPhone shot.

[Earl Dunbar]

Well, I seem to remember a certain iPhone XS shot that enlarged quite well to 30 inches (76cm) on the long side. It was made using the iPhone app "SimplyBW" and the grain effect was added in the app.

https://bit.ly/33uTE2y