quick iPhone photography assessment

About a couple of months ago I started my experiment to use the iPhone for taking my snapshots, instead of a DSLR. I haven't completely followed the process, but I'd guess that 95% of my pictures over the last two months were from the phone.

I should position it that I've used the iPhone more or less when I'd use a non-zoomed compact camera in the past. My mental model is a 35mm Olympus Trip, although that's probably too ancient for many people to recognise.

Something more recent would be a Fuji X100 or similar fixed lens camera. The iPhone does have a zoom range of around 10x, but it is purely electronic so all I'm really doing if I use it is enlarging the middle of the resolution and spreading it over more pixels.

What do I think?

GENERAL
• The iPhone works very well for medium to well-lit pictures. As jpegs they are well-defined, crisp and detailed.
• I know about many short cuts to fire up the camera quickly, but am still ill-disciplined to use them so occasionally have missed pictures when fiddling around with the start-up screens.
• Apple has published a pretty good set of hints and tips videos in their own website. Many can apply to a wide range of cameras
• I have several different camera apps, but have ended up using the Apple one the most. I will experiment further with others but don't think I'm going to find much advantage.
EXPOSURE
• In low light it can work well for fireworks and produce surprisingly reliable pictures.

• Low lit people can also look good, but require some practice to get the picture steady enough. This is where the small camera starts to drift away from what is possible with a DSLR.

• Slight tilting of the camera can change the exposure quite significantly.

• The automatic smart HDR is quite helpful on some pictures.
ACTION
• Music band and theatre pictures don't come out so good, unless they are posed or almost static. I couldn't use the iPhone for any real theatre pictures and certainly not if I needed a reliable set for (say) publicity.

• The burst mode is good for outdoor action and can capture water droplets and fast motion. I have about a dozen similar to the one below.
PEOPLE
• The portrait mode works well and gives that ability to re-blend the background bokeh, which is something I'd seen a few years ago on a specialised camera, but is now becoming mainstream. It works on objects too, but sometimes with strange results.
USABILITY
• There are dozens of casual pictures which I've taken with the iPhone where I might not have seized the same moment with a compact alternative. Here's some sashimi, and no, I don't usually take foodie pictures.

• Holding the camera level gives pretty good verticals across the frame.
EDITING
• Cropping works fine for the edges of the picture. Less usable for a zoom into a particular part of the frame. The resolution shows its limits when zooming at probably around 3x.

• Compared with using a RAW from a DSLR, the JPG files run out of data quite a lot sooner. There's less latitude to rescue a picture.
• Some editing (eg of Portrait depth) is only available in the iPhone App. I still prefer to get the pictures into my standard catalog and editor (Lightroom), where I can use Adobe-style editing in a single workflow.
• The synchronisation with Lightroom CC Classic works fine. Pictures can be moved to other catalogues and collections once synchronised inside Lightroom

The pictures in this post are a casual selection from my last few weeks of snapshots. My main test is whether they look as if they could have been taken with something more than a phone.

It increases my confidence to walk out with just the phone on considerably more occasions.