We've had an event past few days at Topaz Lake on the California/Nevada border, first with 9"of snow by Thursday morning, then with "pogonip" ice fog forming every day since. It looks like we'll have another morning with strong ice fog again this morning, creating hoar frost up to 1" thick on trees and other vegetation around the lake. These are all photos captured on my iPhone 5S, I'll have photos from my Canon DSLR shortly.
#weather #weatherphotography #winter #TopazLake
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Beautiful shots.
It looks cold.
Beautiful.
looks great from an iPhone already!
Great shots! I love these mornings when the hoar frost breaks away from the trees and the sun sparkles through the falling ice crystals making it look like we live in a humongous snow globe.
magnificent album !thank you Jeff !!
Great pics as always Jeff. Amazing the 5S has such resolution quality. Thanks for photos
Awesome images! Have you used any other camera phones other than an iPhone? Just curious.
muy hermoso!!
+John Sicat Thre are three important factors in a complete answer to that question:
1. Photography is my #1 application need, so iOS is key for access to a wide variety of useful apps, such as +PhotoPills for example.
2. The camera itself is secondary, but because mobile phones have camera sensors with limited dynamic range, they often take horrible pictures with bright areas blown out to white. The multi-exposure blending "HDR" functionality on iPhones has been useful for reducing that, an reducing the need for post-processing.
3. After PDA phones like the Palm Treo, my first smartphone was the original Droid, but it became useless when Verizon stopped updating the OS about 3 months into my 2 year contract, at which point I lost access to current apps. Sadly, with Google selling its smartphone business to Lenovo, Apple is once again the only smartphone vendor retaining end to end control over OS updates. Even my 3 year old iPhone 4 had 100% access to current apps when I retired it in November, and I've printed photos from it up to 18" x 24".
4. Hardware compatibility is a consideration as well. I bought a set of +olloclip lenses which give me everything from 2X telephoto to wide, ultra-wide and fisheye capabilty, plus a circular polarizer. I'm considering buying a waterproof case. These are the sorts of things I wouldn't have access to if I didn't have a phone which sold 51 million units in its first 90 days on the market. I can control my +GoPro 3+ from my iPhone, and via wi-fi use it as a real-time monitor of what's being shot. Could I do that with another phone? Maybe. Maybe not. I'm a fairly aggressive adopter of new technology, and it's unlikely that I could possibly predict what new apps and useful hardware I might miss out on if I pick some obscure model.
As far as the mobile phone cameras themselves, obviously I keep my eyes open regarding what's on the market. My family tends to have a variety of phones. We used an HTC EVO for a while for Internet access, but while it had great resolution at the time, resolution is worthless without excellent dynamic range, optimal exposure. For the times when I want to capture an image, high ISO capability and low noise are important.
So while there are some cameras on the market with nice specs, I just bought the iPhone5S 2.5 months ago. I'm really happy with the picture quality, but would I buy the same phone today? Given the latest rumors flying around, I'd probably wait for the iPhone 6.
Don't get me wrong, there's no way I'm giving up my DSLRs, but for a quick representative snap to share a status update with friends, it's nice to have reasonable quality that, as a photographer, I won't find utterly embarrassing.
Just got out there yesterday for the first time in 5 years. Got some great pictures.
Nice
Beautiful!
+Jeff Sullivan Thank you! That's the best unbiased response I've ever received from anyone regarding phone cameras. I always find that the iPhone's cameras to be superior to the rest out there at the moment. And this will help my wife decide on her next phone. It's just a hard sell personally if I'm getting my next phone since I really love the Android OS and its customizability. Camera phone is secondary to me (I love SLRs as well and I carry my G11 around for good measure). Thanks again!
+John Sicat Thanks for the feedback. There's a lot of noise out there which people are trying to pass off as wisdom, often because they're bought off by the vendors they're trying to pitch. (Some people have an amazingly low price to compromise their integrity, apparently as little as receiving a free device.)
I went for Android first, in part due to Google's stated values… open systems, open source, unbiased search results, "Don't be evil", the whole package. I like Google and I want it to succeed. I even provide unpopular feedback when necessary to help Google correct course. But at some point you have to do what makes the most sense, even if it involves compromising on all those other factors.
Here are some statistics I ran into entirely by accident after responding to you, to put numbers on the OS issue into perspective:
"the latest numbers released by Google show that only 55% of all Android users are using devices that run on Android 4.1 Jelly Bean or higher, even though Google first released Jelly Bean all the way back in the summer of 2012. What’s more, Google says that just over 1% of Android users have adopted Android 4.4 KitKat, the latest version of the platform that started rolling out to users in November. iOS 7, in contrast, reportedly hit a 60% adoption rate just one week after it was released."
http://bgr.com/2013/12/31/ios-android-software-upgrade-comparison/
This is why it takes so long for Android phones to get software updates
http://bgr.com/2013/12/27/android-software-update-infographic/
I'd love to entertain the thought of buying a +Nokia 1020 or +Samsung Mobile USA Galaxy S5, but smartphones are computers, which carry with them an ecosystem of applications and hardware accessories which either are there to support your broader needs or aren't. There will always be some people who have niche needs and the camera may be the deciding factor for some small segment of the market (and as a photographer I like that mobile phone manufacturers are competing to deliver more value in that area), but as I discovered with my Droid and later with an HTC EVO, the typical 2 year contract is a long commitment, and a long time to wait if you find that you need a particular photography app or want to use a general purpose app not supported on the OS your handset manufacturer or carrier supports. At that point the smartphone megapixel war becomes even more meaningless.
I saw a headline yesterday that a "Huge leak suggests Samsung’s Galaxy S5 will outclass the iPhone 6", based on specs. And I saw another article insisting that Windows will be the fastest-growing OS by far. But what will app vendors support? They have limited capital and human resources to invest, so they must follow the biggest revenue opportunity:
IBM: iOS crushed Android in Christmas shopping with 5 times the sales
"Apple's iPhone and iPad represented the vast majority of U.S. online shopping and sales during Christmas, accounting for more than an 83 percent take of sales compared to Android."
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/26/ibm-ios-crushed-android-in-christmas-shopping-with-5-times-the-sales
+Jeff Sullivan Yeah. I definitely understand the whole adaptation issue to the new Android OS. But, as you said, these things are practically computers. Everyone has their own preferences. I honestly love my app drawer, widgets, and live wallpapers. I too had an iPhone 4 and an iPad (the first one), I still have them actually (it sucks that the iPad didn't get updated to iOS7). But I still find the iOS to just not have the kind of flexibility I can do with my Android. I just wish they have better cameras like the iPhone. The statistics doesn't really tell me much. The fact that every company participating in the Android platform has their own specs can cause that kind of compatibility issues.
Thanks for the articles! I love reading things like these. It's definitely helpful especially since I teach Mobile tech to adults. I try to be unbiased when helping them understand the ins and outs of smart devices. As I suspected, there's really very little competition when it comes to camera. And a Windows Phone 8, I think, is just too much of a sacrifice for a more superior camera.