iPhone 13 Pro iPhone 13 Pro as only camera for trip to Europe?

[ToddH]

If you plan on printing large prints I'd say to bring a camera otherwise if you are familiar with basic photography fundamentals (mainly composition) the iPhone 13 pro will probably be fine for most situations.

I've brought an SLR and GoPro to a couple of vacations, but primarily due to the hassle of carrying and setting up the cameras I ended up mostly using the iPhone. Afterward, I looked at the pics, and they were great for at least viewing.

I have printed up to a 16 x 20 with my iPhone 12 pro max last year sometime with excellent results. I haven’t printed anything from my 13 Promax yet, I guess I will someday. I really just don’t print that much anymore. That’s kind of sad because I do have a lot of print worthy photos that I could print out and hang on the wall. there are some YouTube videos comparing the iPhone prints compared to a 50 megapixel camera, the differences can be seen within a couple inches anove the print but standing a few feet away you can’t tell the difference. I use an app called Image Size and I will typically enlarge my 12 megapixel image up to a 33 megapixel for printing. Great app.

This photo was enlarged to 33 megapixels.

I believe this is a 100% crop.

 

[EthanDMathews]

A lot of this is true but I shoot with ProRAW all the time and just like a DSLR on the iPhone you have to expose for your highlights. The photo of the statue with the blown highlights from the iPhone can easily be fixed by lowering your exposure compensation by a -1 to-1.5 and lifting the shadows. of course it depends on which iPhone you’re using but the current 13 pro models offer excellent highlight control and approximately 14 stops of dynamic range when shot in ProRAW. Also using third-party apps like Halide or Moment and even the BeastCam usually have better highlight and ProRAW control and the default camera as the default camera sometimes adds too much saturation. However all of that usually is canceled out when shot In Raw. I’ll have to look around on my two iPhones to see if I have any examples that I can share similar to what you have. since I do photograph things with my iPhone all the time, I can confidently say that I am extremely good at it without sounding cocky lol, I rarely shoot JPEG. Thanks for your post, it was a good one.

Thank you - this is welcome news to me. I wasn't aware of ProRAW - that seems to have been rolled out December 2020 for iPhone 12 Pro and newer. From what I've skimmed, it seems to be more of an automated RAW, which combines the power of the iPhone's computational processing (done mainly for the JPGs, or HEIC formats) but leaves the added color, exposure, and other information in the file.

Here's a video from November of 2021 by a photographer who started with a strong preference for shooting RAW over ProRAW in iPhones, to being conflicted. Sharing because it illustrates the power of the ProRAW format, including the impressive 14 stops of dynamic range:

Here's another video I found which compare an iPhone 13 Pro to a high end DSLR. It's an impressive mixed bag, with the DSLR looking better in some examples, in others it's difficult to tell, and a few the iPhone looks better than the shot out of the camera (because of the iPhone's auto-processing, it sometimes does better with skies).

A few caveats remain: when it's hard to choose which is which, it's a full sized image being displayed scaled down on a computer screen. When you zoom in or view 1:1, the DSRL-type camera, with its larger lens, wins for sharpness, color information, etc. *But* that won't matter for most people.

File size could also be an issue for a camera with limited space. In one example, a 4MB JPEG became 36 MBs in the ProRAW format.

In light of what I'm seeing, I would shift my preference more in favor of an iPhone than a DSLR for most people. You still can't beat a DSLR-like camera for overall image sharpness, quality, etc. due to the basic physics and quality of the lenses and sensors. But the iPhone's supercomputer processing is really very impressive.

In a perfect world, you'd be able to have the brains of an iPhone in a DSLR body, with its larger sensor and lenses.

 

[ToddH]

Thank you - this is welcome news to me. I wasn't aware of ProRAW - that seems to have been rolled out December 2020 for iPhone 12 Pro and newer. From what I've skimmed, it seems to be more of an automated RAW, which combines the power of the iPhone's computational processing (done mainly for the JPGs, or HEIC formats) but leaves the added color, exposure, and other information in the file.

Here's a video from November of 2021 by a photographer who started with a strong preference for shooting RAW over ProRAW in iPhones, to being conflicted. Sharing because it illustrates the power of the ProRAW format, including the impressive 14 stops of dynamic range:

Here's another video I found which compare an iPhone 13 Pro to a high end DSLR. It's an impressive mixed bag, with the DSLR looking better in some examples, in others it's difficult to tell, and a few the iPhone looks better than the shot out of the camera (because of the iPhone's auto-processing, it sometimes does better with skies).

A few caveats remain: when it's hard to choose which is which, it's a full sized image being displayed scaled down on a computer screen. When you zoom in or view 1:1, the DSRL-type camera, with its larger lens, wins for sharpness, color information, etc. *But* that won't matter for most people.

File size could also be an issue for a camera with limited space. In one example, a 4MB JPEG became 36 MBs in the ProRAW format.

In light of what I'm seeing, I would shift my preference more in favor of an iPhone than a DSLR for most people. You still can't beat a DSLR-like camera for overall image sharpness, quality, etc. due to the basic physics and quality of the lenses and sensors. But the iPhone's supercomputer processing is really very impressive.

In a perfect world, you'd be able to have the brains of an iPhone in a DSLR body, with its larger sensor and lenses.

Great video reviews. I had no idea that you didn’t know about ProRAW on the iPhone. The first guy I like, he talks a little slow though. You should check out his video on the Even longer app. That’s a fantastic app to use which gives you even cleaner noise free images from the iPhone in true raw. Tripod required though. These video examples should help a lot of iPhone photographers out moving forward. Thanks for sharing.

Some ProRAW shots of my own:

 

[ToddH]

I’m trying not to post too many photos in this thread since its mostly a discussion topic, but since we are on the topic of ProRaw, I’d like to post a few. especially now that I think the original poster probably has decided to just take the iPhone on vacation. I’m just posting this one shot because of the details I get from the iPhone and ProRaw. Edited in Lightroom mobile on iPad Pro 5th gen 12.9”

 

[EthanDMathews]

Great video reviews. I had no idea that you didn’t know about ProRAW on the iPhone. The first guy I like, he talks a little slow though. You should check out his video on the Even longer app. That’s a fantastic app to use which gives you even cleaner noise free images from the iPhone in true raw. Tripod required though. These video examples should help a lot of iPhone photographers out moving forward. Thanks for sharing.

Those are great photos. Forests can be tricky (or at least, I've had trouble): exposure is more varied than readily apparent; auto-white balance often gets thrown off, and if there's water present on leaves/needles you can get odd color distortions (a polarizing filter *might* help).

Yes, I'm genuinely impressed by the ProRAW. I appreciate that you made a point of explaining it.

I had heard about the new format, but hadn't learned anything about it. I assumed it was just Apple's native RAW format, similar to what you get with Adobe Lightroom or other apps on your phone. The fact that it's a combo of the computational photography + the RAW info is a big improvement.

Aside: the new iPhone 13 Pro Max has a slightly larger and better sensor, lenses, etc. And it also has Dolby Vision for the video, which no one else has, not even DSLR-style cameras. And ProRAW works with all of the lenses, including the front facing camera.

For those interested in more comparison:

Here's a video in Toronto (street photography during the pandemic) comparing a $6k DSLR with an iPhone 12 Pro using ProRAW. One brother edited the photos to try to make them more similar to one another, the other one guesses which is which. He gets 5 of 7 correct but with a lot of hemming and hawing.

The results are very impressive. There are some tells, e.g. the iPhones images tend to be sharper, the transitions for depth of field a bit less smooth, and background bokeh isn't a natural or smooth especially with lights, skies tend to be sharper and darker). Not all of those differences are bad - just default stylistic choices that are made for you. And many of those differences are not easy to spot without some effort.

Here are some straight A/B photos lined up on a page where you can slide a divider back and forth. The pictures aren't great, but it's a quick and accessible side by side.

$5,000 Pro Camera vs iPhone 13 Pro: Can You See the Difference?

Apple boasts that their new phone's cameras are better than ever, but how good are they? In this real-world comparison, I capture multiple challenging scenes with very impressive results. Can you identify which photos are from the iPhone 13 Pro and the Canon R5? Without diving too deep into the...

fstoppers.com

I'm still curious to see how these images appear in Lightroom. The one video in Paris gave a few examples where they zoomed in. The iPhone images were less clear, less sharp, etc. But that's less of a concern for images viewed in smaller formats. Conversely, a photo taken from an iPhone is more likely to be more or less good to go, whereas a RAW file from a DSLR will usually need some tweaking in LR first.

 

[EthanDMathews]

I’m trying not to post too many photos in this thread since its mostly a discussion topic, but since we are on the topic of ProRaw, I’d like to post a few. especially now that I think the original poster probably has decided to just take the iPhone on vacation. I’m just posting this one shot because of the details I get from the iPhone and ProRaw. Edited in Lightroom mobile on iPad Pro 5th gen 12.9”

If it helps, I'm definitely okay with more photos! I'm enjoying them!

Plus, your photos of trees/the forest are great, and help showcase an area where the computational adjustments from an iPhone are likely giving impressively similar or better results than a DSLR, up front. (At least, without first photographing a Macbath color chart, from which to sample off of).

 

[ToddH]

If it helps, I'm definitely okay with more photos! I'm enjoying them!

Plus, your photos of trees/the forest are great, and help showcase an area where the computational adjustments from an iPhone are likely giving impressively similar or better results than a DSLR, up front. (At least, without first photographing a Macbath color chart, from which to sample off of).

Whenever I photograph the trees or an area in the forest it looks darker than everything else I automatically lower the exposure compensation down to -1.0 because the camera is going to automatically adjust that area to a brighter tone to compensate for the lower light values. the final result of that is go to brighten the image to +1.7 or near that. So think about that when shooting landscapes.

 

[ManuCH]

To answer the original question: I only bring my iPhone 13 Pro Max as my camera on all my important trips. I still own a "real" camera but I found myself dragging it along and never use it. As they say, the best camera is the one you have with you. And I just don't feel like carrying weight around anymore when enjoying a place. And I'm more than satisfied with the results.

 

[cthompson94]

If I were doing a big trip to Europe (I am in the U.S.) I would bring my Mirrorless camera. I would use a mix between the 13 ProMax and the camera and part of that would be dependent on where I am and what I am doing and which makes more sense to me. Even where I live I follow this same guideline, sometimes just taking the snapshots from the iPhone is enough for me and sometimes I want a more thoughtful photo (if you will). For example, I love bringing my camera to take photos of my little one even if we just go to a park 10 min from where we live, I have taken some pretty nice photos with my camera and usually the park is pretty empty so using my camera is easy, but sometimes more parents bring their kids and I switch to my iPhone or stop all together just to not cause any possible issues that may arise.

The biggest determining factor IMO is if you feel like doing edits after your vacation. No matter how good you got the settings in camera just the nature of taking RAWs you will need to do some sort of edits even if you did a batch preset or edit since the photos will have different colors in them and need an ever so slight adjustment.

 

[victry1]

So I’m going to Europe in about a month and am wondering whether it’d be a mistake to rely on my iPhone as my only camera. Has anyone ever done this? While I’m often amazed at the IQ from my 13 Pro, I acknowledge that using a dedicated camera is likely to produce better pictures. I recently sold my Fujifilm X100T due to its age but was thinking about purchasing something similar from Fujifilm or even Sony. Still, I understand that acclimating oneself to a new camera right before a major trip is not exactly ideal. Any advice is appreciated.

ive Never regretted my choice to only bring my iPhone on a trip, when I have thought thru what I would be photographing while on the trip. I especially appreciated my phone when in Tennessee during July! It’s tough to lug a DSLR around in the heat. (IMO). I will be going thru these same questions when I travel to California to see my grands. I usually bring my DSLR with a 50mm lens for photograping the kids. But, this next time I might leave it home. The 12 pro max is really good.

Enjoy your trip!

 

[dodgywanker]

Thanks, will do! And I would love any recommendations that you may have regarding tripods, preferably ones that are ultra portable (i.e., able to easily collapse to fit into a backpack). When I visited Japan in 2017 I took a small JOBY tripod - one of their GorillaPods - and didn't use it the entire trip except for one shot, which ended up being one of my favorite shots from the trip. Needless to say, I was very happy that I had decided to bring a tripod with me.

I use the blitzwolf bs4. It's a tripod & selfie stick combo with a remote shutter. It's compact, lightweight & cheap (price) enough for my needs.

Software I use include:
-procam 8
-focos
-darkroom
-organic maps (for offline maps)
-a language app with offline translation for the local language

Enjoy your trip!

 

[Globug]

I'm going to Greece, Mykonos, and I'm bringing my iPhone 13pro. How safe is it to have that on you?