MS

Hello, I’m Michael Sliwinski, founder of Nozbe - to-do app for business owners and their teams. I write essays, books, work on projects and I podcast for you using #iPadOnly in #NoOffice as I believe that work is not a place you go to, it’s a thing you do. More…

Effortless photography. Why taking pictures with a modern smartphone feels like cheating.

📲iPhone

Tomorrow I’m finally going to unbox a new iPhone 11 Pro (non-Max - it’s too big for me), Midnight Green (the new “hot” color), 256GB (who needs more space?) but before I do, I’d like to share with you some thoughts on smartphone photography with my now-retiring iPhone XS. In short - shooting photos with this thing should be considered cheating - I keep being stunned how good the photos are without any effort at all.

Effortless photography. Why taking pictures with a modern smartphone feels like cheating.

You should never shoot against the sun… is a myth!

This is common photography wisdom - never shoot against the sun as the objects you’re photographing will be too dark and the background will be too bright… right? Wrong!

This should be considered a myth. Look at the photo above - I just pulled out my iPhone, aimed at the sun and shot straight at it. No fiddling with any settings, no post-production or post-editing. Just pointed at the sun and boom - this is the photo that my iPhone XS took.

The background is beautiful. The trees and the grass are green and detailed, you can even see the boat pretty clearly. Amazing photo. Without any effort. Borderline magic.

And don’t shoot at the sun when it’s blinding you…

It gets even better. Recently when I was sight-seeing I noticed that the sun was so strong that I had to cover my eyes with my hands to be able to see. To test my new theory and push the envelope even further, I pulled the iPhone again out of my pocket, pointed straight at the sun and shot this:

Effortless photography. Why taking pictures with a modern smartphone feels like cheating. 2

The details of the buildings are crystal clear with all their colors and shapes, the trees are green and the street is bright… and you can even see my uncle’s had clearly in the left bottom corner of the photo. Incredible. No editing, no fiddling with settings… just point-and-shoot photography and the magic of software and hardware of the iPhone XS does the rest.

That’s truly effortless photography.

And you need a true DSLR to get the depth of field…

As I’m surrounded by 4 amazing women at all times (3 daughters and my lovely wife) I get to take lots of pictures of them and particularly I like the “portrait mode”.

To respect their privacy I won’t post any of their pictures here, but believe me, I’ve got lots of portraits of my girls and these are some of my most favorite photos to look at.

However, to add insult to injury let me show you a portrait mode of myself that I did with the selfie camera of the iPhone XS. Can’t believe it turned out so well - the background, the shadows, the works:

Effortless photography. Why taking pictures with a modern smartphone feels like cheating. 3

New iPhone 11 Pro should be even better!

According to Apple and Federico Viticci’s review straight from Rome the new iPhone 11 Pro will take my photography to a whole new level thanks to much better lenses (and now 3 of them - here comes the ultra-wide!). Much faster and improved chip (A13 bionic) will power the thing and better software like “Night mode” and “Deep fusion” will get the details even more…

Can’t wait for the unboxing tomorrow. Taking my photography skills to a whole new level without any effort on my part is my favorite kind of “increased productivity”…

Wednesday, October 16, 2019 /photo/