14 DAY TRIAL // On a trip to Scotland, National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson had the privilege to take an iPhone 5s with him to see how its camera fares in various conditions.
He explained that “Cameras all have personalities. Or perhaps they have visual signatures. To some extent they always lead us around by the nose. Little by little we come around to taking the pictures the camera can do well.”
While he did note quite a few downsides (compared to a DSLR), Richardson went ahead and took no less than 4,000 pictures, and concluded that “the iPhone 5S is a very capable camera.”
He explained: “The color and exposures are amazingly good, the HDR exposure feature does a stunningly good job in touch situations, the panorama feature is nothing short of amazing—seeing a panorama sweeping across the screen in real time is just intoxicating. Best of all it shoots square pictures natively, a real plus for me since I wanted to shoot for Instagram posting.”
After four days of shooting with the iPhone 5s, Richardson admitted that he’d begun to forget all the things the phone’s camera didn’t do well. The results are truly impressive, and I invite you to check out his works over at National Geographic.