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Covers for TIME Magazine Special Series Shot Entirely on iPhone

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The iPhone offers a high-quality camera that Apple improves with every iteration, and the photos and videos that it takes have been used for fashion runways, feature films, and other professional applications.

TIME Magazine is the latest publication to exclusively use the iPhone's camera for a photo shoot, with its new "Firsts: Women Who Are Changing The World" series, which features iPhone images captured by Brazilian photographer Luisa Dörr.

Over the course of the last year, Dörr has used an iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 7 to capture photos of notable and accomplished women like Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Melinda Gates, Sylvia Earle, Alice Waters, Mae Jemison, Cindy Sherman, and more.

timeiphonecover.jpg

In a TIME interview, Dörr says she uses an iPhone because it offers great pictures anytime, anywhere, and it because "feels less intrusive" to the subject when the photo is captured with an iPhone instead of a standard camera. Dörr's images are unique because she uses only natural light and sometimes a reflector to capture women who are often photographed with more lighting and production equipment.
I like the simplicity of how these pictures are made. But the best part is that as a photographer, you feel extremely light and free. It is almost as if I can make pictures with my hand. There's no noise, gadgets, tools or plugs--just the subject and myself.

I was always trying to imagine these portraits as paintings. I'm fascinated by the landscapes and topographies from women's faces, their stories and context. I'm interested in the way life and time is writing on all of them--not just with physical marks but also with more spiritual traces.
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Dörr says the women she photographed were "surprised" to be the subject of a photoshoot with an iPhone and no other equipment, and that oftentimes, she did her work in just minutes. The shortest shoot was two minutes and the longest shoot lasted 20 minutes.

Each portrait was captured using the regular iPhone camera with the square format, and automatic HDR was turned on for more lighting detail in the photographs.

Powerful stories, striking portraits! Bravo @TIME and Luisa Dorr #ShotoniPhone #SheIsTheFirst https://t.co/i5hS8IFgE8 - Tim Cook (@tim_cook) September 7, 2017
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Dörr's full interview can be read over at TIME, as can an accompanying piece on how TIME Director of Photography Kira Pollack discovered Dörr and recruited her to work on the project.

Article Link: Covers for TIME Magazine Special Series Shot Entirely on iPhone
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/09/07/time-magazine-iphone-covers/
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Was RAW used at all? Because the pictures look fairly flat and not that sharp I think a proper DSLR wouldve done a much better job
 
Scrolled through the album on the linked site -- so cool to see Nikki Haley pictured! It's great to see her doing such big things. She was a heck of a job creator for our state, I can tell you that (South Carolinian here).

Great photos by Luisa Dörr. It's always a great reminder to see such great photos taken with a phone. It reminds me that it's not just about the gear. Sometimes when I don't have my DSLR with me, I feel that I'm unable to get great photos. However, once I pull out my phone and start shooting, it surprises me. Back in the day, I'd be a sitting duck without a dedicated camera, since phone cameras used to be terrible. While a phone isn't a replacement for a dedicated camera, it gives you a chance to get a photo that you otherwise would have never had the chance to get -- and that's really special, I think.
 
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PortableLover said:
Was RAW used at all? Because the pictures look fairly flat and not that sharp I think a proper DSLR wouldve done a much better job
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It'd be nice to know that, I second that question.

But multiple embedded links and postings online takes form sharpness. I'd rather see the original printed out or on the phone first.
 
Some of these are pretty nice, but I am underwhelmed by a lot of them. The lighting is pretty sub par in a few and a lot have very distracting backgrounds for a portrait. The Hillary one is especially distracting with that much foliage being so sharp. I didn't really see any done in the "portrait" mode. And I've gotten breathtaking results using an app that captures the iPhone images in RAW, such as the Lightroom app. I love seeing the iPhone pushed to its photo limits!
 
The shortest shoot was two minutes and the longest shoot lasted 20 minutes.
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and she shoots with a smartphone.

Nothing about this sounds right.
This whole thing is just a lame promo for Apple. As digital cameras go (not smart phones) iPhone photo quality is near the bottom of the heap. But as a smartphone camera, the 7 is one of the best.
 
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Great shots of all the subjects. I liked the wider field of view here, instead of the usual portrait focal length.
 
Shot in an iPhone but was the magazine layout and editing done in an iPad? No one has ever said the iPhone camera isn't good.
 
Not even a tripod used? I like shooting with my iPhone but more often than not they're not that sharp. I'm thinking of buying a cheap tripod to see if the problem is me or the phone.
 
PortableLover said:
Was RAW used at all? Because the pictures look fairly flat and not that sharp I think a proper DSLR wouldve done a much better job
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You're missing the point. The focus of photography should be the subject, not the file format or the pixels.

As stated from the post
MacRumors said:
In a TIME interview, Dörr says she uses an iPhone because ... "feels less intrusive" to the subject when the photo is captured with an iPhone instead of a standard camera.
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What's the point of having a DSLR setup when the subject becomes uncomfortable? A pro should be able to perform with the tools he/she has at the moment.
[doublepost=1504849198][/doublepost]
now i see it said:
As digital cameras go (not smart phones) iPhone photo quality is near the bottom of the heap. But as a smartphone camera, the 7 is one of the best.
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Not really. Sure, spec wise, even a traditional point-n-shoot (we're talking about JPEG only regular point-n-shoot, not pro cameras like the RX100) should perform better. Thing is, Apple has the upper hand in image processing, and Apple continually improves the software. Regular digital cameras are stuck with whatever programmed on their chipsets during manufacturing, and usually that is not updated for years.

I have various point-n-shoot from Olympus, Panasonic, etc, and although their 1/2.3" sensor are bigger, their image quality are worse/not any better than my 6S simply due to the aging image processing those cameras have.
 
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I love to see this kind of news. It shows that the iPhone evolves to a proper camera; one to people react differently than to a DSLR (even though the quality is better). And you can shot with both eyes open and not be glued to the viewfinder
 
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The iPhone 7 Plus takes great photos! I've been using and love the Bokeh effect since it came out. I'm guessing this will be improved on even more with the next set of iPhone's.
 
There are two things I find amusing about the inevitable "it doesn't look as good as the same photo taken with a DSLR would have":

One is that, to the vast majority of people who look at that cover or other photos taken by the artist, they look like interesting, engaging photos. Most--and most by far I would guess--people don't look at photos like these and say "it looks flat" or "the micro-contrast is weak" or "it's not sharp enough" or "there isn't enough subject isolation" or whatever else. They see an interesting photo, and appreciate it.

And the other is the more salient point from an artistic perspective: Indeed it's true that if you took the exact same photo with an EOS-1D X mk II and an expensive lens it would be sharper, higher resolution, and have more dynamic range. It would almost certainly look better.

Except it's quite possible that the photographer couldn't take that exact same photo with an EOS-1D X mk II. As noted in the description, the subject might well have reacted differently to a photographer holding a huge camera with the shutter clicking away, or she never would have been in that particular location carrying a large camera, or whatever other nuances of the actual act of photographing another human being in situ might have come out differently.

It's the same if the photographer had tried to take the same shots with a large flash kit versus only natural light--the photo might be better lit, but what the person in it is doing would probably be less natural, and depending on the intent of the photo, less interesting.

If you've got a tripod, sufficient time, and are photographing a landscape or model, sure, a large-sensor, large-lens camera is going to produce a better photo than an iPhone in every way. And sure, there are photos that an iPhone is incapable of taking for technical reasons--available light, field of view, depth of field, bokeh. But following around a human trying to take a certain kind of photo, the act of photography itself changes the result, possibly for the worse.

Heck, I'm just a casual photographer and I've noticed it plenty of times just taking street photos while on vacation. I hold up a smartphone to take a picture, nobody even notices. I hold up my bigger camera, people look at me, stiffen up, react like they're being photographed. Occasionally the effect can be positive, but more often it results in odd expressions and less natural behavior.
 
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Am I thinking they did this just for the extra PR....
The iPhone is no match for a DSLR with a good Lens.
 
I thought this was somewhat the norm these days.

Remember a few years back when major newspapers fired all their professional photographers because it was cheaper to obtain photos from reporters with smartphones?

Okay, this is different because she's a famous photographer, but still. Pocket cameras are more convenient and work "good enough" for throwaway mass print media.

Now if something like Nat Geo was all done on a smartphone, that would take away some of its magical appeal to me. Color me a traditionalist. I loved 2013's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty".
 
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KAZphoto said:
Some of these are pretty nice, but I am underwhelmed by a lot of them. The lighting is pretty sub par in a few and a lot have very distracting backgrounds for a portrait. The Hillary one is especially distracting with that much foliage being so sharp. I didn't really see any done in the "portrait" mode. And I've gotten breathtaking results using an app that captures the iPhone images in RAW, such as the Lightroom app. I love seeing the iPhone pushed to its photo limits!
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm just doing it wrong, but at this point, I think I've tried every app capable of shooting RAW under the sun, and none of their output looks as crisp or noiseless as the stock camera app. Now I realize that the purpose of RAW is to capture exactly what the sensor is capable of, but IMO the majority of the output I received was just plain bad.

VSCO, ProCamera, RAW, Manual, ProCam, Manual Cam, Camera+, 645 Pro, Lightroom...
 
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