Let's Compare

A couple of weeks ago I got a couple of Gerbera daisy's at Trader Joe's. If you live close to a Trader Joe's and like flowers for photography you can get some pretty nice flowers inexpensively.

The Gerbera's were starting to fade so I thought Sunday would be a good day to take some photographs. The day was cloudy and my studio had some great light to shoot. My studio is my kitchen table with an east wall of windows and a south door that I can open to let in additional light. I had them all wide open and used my Micro Nikkor 60mm f2.8 lens.

Below are two photographs. One from a little distance and the other much closer. Which one do you like the best?

Some people are going to like the top one because it shows the entire flower and some will like the bottom one better because it fills the frame with the flower petals. They are both OK but there is one difference.

The top photograph was taken with my Nkon D300 and the bottom photograph was taken with my iPhone. So this at least answers some of questions about the iPhone and what kind of photographs I can shoot with it. I used an app called Camera+ and I did cheat and after working the image in Snapseed (which is coming to a PC to you soon, you lucky Mac folks can already download and use that program) and I used Nik Sharpener Pro to sharpen the image. Could I take the same image with the Nikon that I did with the iPhone? I sure can and it might be sharper, etc. but overall the same iamge.

The top photograph was processing in Lightroom and then I used Nik Color Efex Pro 4 to add some details using the Detail Extractor, used the Pro Contrast and finished it up with a border. Then I used the same Sharpener Pro to sharpen the image.

So, if you didn't know what kind of photograph you could capture with an iPhone you do now. Is it as good as the Nikon? No in some ways, but in some ways I like it better. Overall it is a nice tool. Photography is changing. I think the time of the Point and Shoot cameras is coming to an end as the phone cameras continue to get better. The apps they have for them are great and for less than $25 you can get most of the apps you need to make some pretty darn good images. Like I said before ... think different. Use the light to your advantage and see that something extra.

Thanks for stopping by the Iowa Farm Boy blog home of the American Photo Picker. I hope I am giving you something to thing about photography for 2012. Check out the Zenfolio gallery as well and I will be adding several of the images I have taken with the iPhone. I have been taking more photos of my family with this phone. Since it isn't as big it doesn't seem so scary to the little ones.