There’s gotta be a oneworld way – Evening Photographic Test: Apple iPhone 7
In this epic:
- OTAs: I really hate them…
- To Heathrow, BA Galleries South
- BA485 Heathrow to Madrid
- The Spanish Solution? Run dear fellow…
- IB6275 Madrid to Chicago
- Radisson O’Hare
- Evening Photographic Test: Apple iPhone 7
- Hyatt Regency O’Hare
- Lunch with RenesPoints
- Back to O’Hare
- AA710 Chicago to Dublin
- When Irish eyes are waking up
- BA4465 – Dublin to London City Airport
- Adventures home
- One World?
EDITORS NOTE: This segment blends in with Travel Plus… Technology/Photography – a section where I take a look at Technology that I run into on my travels.
Sometimes, I load heavily when I do trips (this trips being one of them). However on this first night in Chicago, I wanted to use something lighter than a full DSLR camera – rather I chose to use something a lot lighter.
In this case – my iPhone 7.
We’re all aware of the iPhone 7’s lack of headphone socket – which took Apple “courage” to remove – but one of the most often used features of an iPhone is the camera.
How does it work in the field?
Well there’s one way to see if a camera on a phone will work or not – and that’s to do a field test in the evening in the Loop district of Chicago.
Let’s start with the Picasso Artwork
Hmm. Slightly grainy as I use the digital zoom, but nothing that won’t pass for ok when swiping through images on your phone.
The different tones of the stone add sky appear to have been picked on nicely. Also not the LEDs of the bus route are one set so you can read what it says.
Some nice tones here as we begin to move from day into night.
Sadly, low light and moving traffic = motion blur.
The building where Target lives has an interesting relief on it, and it can be a challenge to pick these details out. The details have come out rather well.
Using High Dynamic Range (HDR) can help you pull colours out. It can also make images look a colourful mess. The purples in the light-stalks seem to have pulled out well, whilst not making the background colours vomit.
In night photography, I’m looking for colours other than the ambient light of the streetlights. It seems the iPhone7 can pull these colours out well – both in terms of the display lighting, the car brake lights, and the colours of the leaves.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of distortion on the lens – always a welcome thing to see.
Let’s look at the Chicago Theatre lights
The Chicago Theatre sign always proves a little bit of a challenge – with the amount of light it throws out. It seems the iPhone 7 handles this without any issues.
Let’s look at some unforgiving moving targets – trains around The Loop. Whilst the trains might be slow-moving… are they slow enough for a iPhone camera at night?
Nope. In this photo, it makes for a nice blur.
This photo suffers from motion blur and some overkill from a street light. So, like most iPhones, pretty useless for capturing motion at night.
Still photography is ok though – with the details being plucked out nicely of this CTA L train at O’Hare Station
And again with HDR – you can get your colours correct the first time.
Overall: Incremental improvement is the term of the day here for the iPhone 7’s camera. I’m seeing that HDR is rendered better than before and the image processing appears to be spot on. Motion during the night is as troublesome as usual, but more importantly – the images render nicely on-screen and on a laptop.
I don’t think many will complain about the iPhone 7’s camera at all. Me? I’m living with it and using it daily. For times when I can’t reach for a DSLR… this will do nicely.
Next: Time to check in with an Economy Class and Beyond favourite – The Hyatt Regency O’Hare.
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