In the end, the strength of a photograph has little to do with the gear that was used to capture it. Sure, there are edge situations; i.e. shooting in low light, shooting professional sports, etc. But those edge cases are not Apple's market.
Actually, those edge cases are the norm. I was shooting photos of a conference the day before yesterday in a school gym during the day, and to get decent depth of field and shutter speed, the auto ISO was running around at 8,000-12,800. That's usable on a 6D. That's nonexistent on an iPhone. I usually end up with four-digit ISO ratings even when shooting photos of what most people would perceive as a brightly lit stage (perspective is funny that way—when the room is dark, the stage looks bright).
Basically, unless you shoot exclusively outdoors, all photography is low light. I mean, low is relative, and if you have a steady hand or IS, you can get away with slower shutter speeds and get something serviceable in moderately low light. But there are times that even with IS, I would get smeared photos of a lit stage on a DSLR shooting at ISO 1600 (the iPhone 6S's max ISO) on my older, crop body DSLRs, because people would move just quickly enough to blow the shot.
So basically, ignoring the higher noise levels, the key difference between an iPhone camera and a DSLR is that the DSLR will nail the shot almost every time, whereas the iPhone will nail the shot only some of the time, whether that is because the small sensor can't manage the needed ISO rating to get the shutter speed down, because you don't have a zoom to get you the needed reach, because you don't have enough pixels to crop sufficiently, or because of some other limitation.
No, not even close. Look at flickr, Instagram, Facebook, etc. The overwhelming majority of photos are not low light.
This is true, but it doesn't mean what you think it does. The majority of places that people would want to take a picture
are low-light environments, but only a tiny minority of photos that are actually good enough to post come from those locations. Whether that's because they are deleting most of their photos because they're horrible or because they recognize their camera's limitations and limit their shooting habits, the huge discrepancy between the environments where people would want to take pictures and the environments where they actually do is a sign of a real problem.
Right, and Apple's market is not professional photographers. Rather, people who like to make photos of their friends/family and what's happening in their life. Usually to post on flickr, IG, and FB. And that's great, nothing wrong with that.
That's why these campaigns annoy me. Clearly, Apple's market is not professional photographers. Anybody who even approaches being called a pro photographer recognizes that. But instead of using lots of photos captured by average people, they're posting a lot of photos shot by professional photographers on their days off. That creates the false implication that this is a tool for pro photographers. They should be showing vacation pictures with the kids, parties at the pub, food, cats... you know, the normal sorts of pictures that people use cell phones to capture—sort of a "photography for your life" campaign. There really shouldn't be any professional photographers in that sort of campaign.
I thought the ad was basically saying - hey, you don't need a seperate point and shoot or an SLR to take great pics. The camera you already have in your pocket is great.
Except it
isn't a great camera. There's no zoom, which severely limits what you can do with the camera. Even the cheapest point-and-shoot cameras are a lot more capable than an iPhone. DSLRs leave them in the dust.
The notion that you don't need a separate camera to take great pictures is just plain wrong. In my experience, the need for reach is the norm, not the exception. You might occasionally get a great shot with a cell phone, but you'll get a lot of duds in between, and you'll miss the vast majority of potentially great pictures because you can't get close enough to get a great shot. And even if you can get close enough to take one shot, doing so will cause you to miss other shots.
For example, when shooting pics at a Mass last weekend, I shot photographs of the bishops at the altar, closeups and group shots of the musicians on one end of the gym, and closeups of the cantor at the ambo on the opposite side of the altar. I got all of those shots from the far corner of the gym with my DSLR, staying out of everybody's way, carefully avoiding being disruptive to the other worshippers. To do that with an iPhone would have required walking across in front of the front row of chairs in the middle of Mass and walking right up to the musicians, which is generally frowned upon....
I mean, I realize that advertising always puts the most positive spin on things, but this is a really grating ad campaign because it stretches reality so severely. It is my view that once you've used a real camera with a decent optical zoom and IS system, assuming you take the time to actually learn how to use the zoom, you'll never be satisfied with a cell phone again. You'll use it begrudgingly when you don't have anything else handy, but that's about the limit.
. I just believe that Apple is going the regular route of pushing the product name / brand itself instead of features, specs etc. that compare. It's simply putting the name of their product out there and keeping the brand present. And yeah, it's helpful to have people look at pics that they perceive as pretty, in that context. At that point the whole "they are saying that this only works on iPhone!!!11!!" is kind of hilarious anyway, considering the quality loss on the large scale of the media they are advertising in/on, I'm pretty sure that they are aware of that quality loss at Apple, what do you think?
