Apple Shares Three New Humorously Dramatic Ads Showing Off iPhone 13 Pro Camera Capabilities

[Da_Hood]

I was all in till the tag line.

 

[citysnaps]

Taking the OPs argument to its logical conclusion, "full-frame" digital (based on a 35mm frame) is crap. It can't hold a candle to the larger sensor in a Hasselblad.

Funny, professionals said similar things about shooting 35mm film (in Leicas) vs. 4x5 or 8x10 negatives. If you believed those people, some of the mid-20th Century's greatest photographers should not have been published. The image captured was not as important as the size of the negative upon which it was exposed.

I studied Ansel Adams technique in my youth, but never shot my landscapes with anything larger than a Nikon F. My bad! And me, a professional photographer and all (well, for about 15 years of my working life). In my experience, a tripod is a far more important tool for Adams-style photography than a huge negative/image sensor. (Of course a large negative/image sensor is certainly icing on the cake.)

And as I said back in the days of 35mm film photography, I'm not shooting with the intent of producing 16 x 20 exhibition prints, full-page magazine spreads, or billboards. I never had any expectation of a mounting a gallery exhibit. What was the point of shooting 4x5 if the end product was an 8X10 print, a newspaper using a 150 lpi halftone screen, or an inset image in a print book? Today, one can say the same about using a full-frame sensor for a 200 x 300 dpi web graphic.

My ability to communicate with a camera is not appreciably changed by having a smaller sensor. Despite their inherent technical "inferiority," the vast majority of my best photos over the past 10 years have been taken with iPhone.

Every camera, regardless of film/sensor size, has its strengths and weaknesses. Part of the craft is knowing how to shoot to the camera's strengths and to minimize its weaknesses. There's little point to shooting a soaring Bald Eagle at 500 feet with a wide angle lens, regardless of sensor/negative size. Of course, with a huge negative/sensor you have a chance of enlarging that tiny dot into something recognizable as a bird. If there's no motion blur/camera shake perhaps you'll even be able to identify it as an Eagle. On the other hand, if you happen to have a long telephoto attached to a small sensor camera, you might have a usable photo. I often shoot with a Micro Four Thirds-format camera - among other things, it means a lightweight, compact 300mm telephoto becomes a 600mm-equivalent birding/sports "cannon." Which would you rather carry all day in a backpack?

So, can professionals use the features of iPhone to make videos that the layperson would not recognize as "shot on iPhone?" Sure. That's part of what makes them professionals - they're capable of producing professional results with less-than-professional tools. However, the camera is only one of many ingredients in the end result - composition, lighting, blocking, set decoration and wardrobe, scripting.... A better question than "Were the images captured with the iPhone camera" is whether the audio was captured with the iPhone's built-in microphones (I'd wager the answer is a solid 'no') - but then, they usually don't clamp a mic to an Arriflex or Project RED either - camera-mounted mics are rarely in the right place to capture clean sound.

I will quibble with the premise of "Pavel." No iPhone to date has had a continuously-variable zoom lens. The iPhone 13 Pros have three rear cameras, each with a lens with a different, fixed focal length. You can switch from lens to lens, but you cannot continuously zoom ("dynamic zoom"). While it appears that all three focal lengths have been used, each shot also includes a dolly-in (or, more likely, steadicam-in) move - the entire camera is being moved towards Pavel. Digital zoom/cropping has almost definitely not been used.

Well said. Also...I think many people who want to get into photography lose sight of what photography is about.

And sadly, too many times it starts with gear and a quest for always wanting/having "the best." Rather than thinking about the images one wants to capture, for what purpose, and how they might (or should) inform or communicate to one's self or others.

Although I can do it, discussions about gear in the context of seeking the best, leave me cold and try and avoid them. I'd much rather talk about projects - mine or those done by my friends. Or well known photographers and their bodies of work or projects for inspiration. I could talk about work done by Richard Avedon, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Robert Frank, Daido Moriyama, etc for hours on end. Getting pumped up about the latest Leica M body, or who makes the sharpest f/1.2 glass, for more than a minute is numbing.

 

[MacBH928]

Funny ads, but too corporate-y not like the unique old ads like think different. This one feels more like superbowl ads.

on a more realistic note, does Apple really need to advertise the iphone!?

 

[tubuliferous]

I spent a lot of time making movies in high school on iMovie back when digital camcorders were new and exciting, and I would have traded a kidney to have had access to this sort of video quality and editing convenience back then. Not many people are going to shoot a feature film on an iPhone (or other modern phone), but there are a few notable examples (Tangerine is probably the most famous one). The progression of digital video technology over the last couple decades is deeply impressive, and it's absolutely wild to think that so many people have such capable cameras.

 

[randallw9]

The supporting detective may have questionable odds of survival.