Apple Goodbye iPhone SE

Bruce McL

Regular
I traded my iPhone SE in on a jet black iPhone 7 a few days ago. I have no regrets, but the SE was the first phone camera I felt OK about. Here are some iPhone SE black and white photos from this year.

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I shoot DNG files with the Moment app, and process in Lightroom 6 on a Mac.
 
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This would have been science fiction back then.

Another fun question: "Would you trade your current phone camera and workflow for your compact camera and workflow X years ago?" For X = 5 I think I would trade. For X=15, definitely not.
 
I know it's more of a mental block than anything else, but I still think of cel phones as being for "snapshots" and "cameras" being necessary for "proper photography". I know it's mental, because I regularly get shots on my cel phone that have appreciably better IQ than shots made with my cameras.
 
I have that mental block too.

On a side note, I just went(downgraded?) from a 6S to an SE and love it.
How are you liking your upgrade Bruce?
 
can you imagine telling people 25 years ago that you would be able to take photos like this with a telephone ?!
25 years ago I was carrying around a pocket calculator that was roughly the size of my current iPhone SE. I was also carrying a thick file with inserts for notes, diary, address book and maps, which was about four times the weight and volume of my current iPhone. If I had been carrying my then compact camera, it was roughly three time the volume of my current iPhone. To get all that functionality into a single object the size of a modern smartphone is remarkable. Plus they can make telephone calls too.

-R
 
I have that mental block too.

I was taking (film) photographs 25 years ago and taking cell phone phone photos 15 years ago. There is definitely a mental barrier for me to get over in thinking of a phone camera as a real camera.

I use RAW on my “real” cameras, and adding RAW capability to the phone camera made me rethink the value of my phone photos. That was in late 2016 when Apple added a DNG option for camera apps.

Late 2017 I started using Lumariver Profile Designer to make my Lightroom camera profiles. This was a step up for all of my RAW photography, particularly for color images. Making new camera profiles for older cameras and photos at the same time as making camera profiles for the iPhone opened my eyes to how good phone cameras can be now.

Note that Lumariver requires a color target and is a little bit buggy with the iPhone. I can make a separate post about it if people are interested.

On a side note, I just went(downgraded?) from a 6S to an SE and love it.
How are you liking your upgrade Bruce?

I definitely like the larger size of the iPhone 7 screen, that's a big help for my eyes. So far the camera seems about the same as the SE camera, which I really liked. The specifications say I have a wider aperture on the 7, ƒ1.8 vs ƒ2.2. I haven't noticed that in my photos yet.
 
25 years ago I was carrying around a pocket calculator that was roughly the size of my current iPhone SE. I was also carrying a thick file with inserts for notes, diary, address book and maps, which was about four times the weight and volume of my current iPhone. If I had been carrying my then compact camera, it was roughly three time the volume of my current iPhone. To get all that functionality into a single object the size of a modern smartphone is remarkable. Plus they can make telephone calls too.

-R

Off topic but it made me think of my early adopter cell phone. Early 90s? A corded dial home phone size headset with an attaching battery pack. It was quite large and I was quite proud of it. ( :
 
The main things that fuel/ed my mentality.

Isolating a subject. The dual lens phones do a pretty good job.
Dynamic range is much better as you have shown. I'm going to give RAW a try.
I'm very interested in dual lens phones.

Right now the dual lens iPhones are larger and more expensive than I would like. Maybe Apple will migrate that feature to smaller phones in the future.

Huawei/Leica are doing some interesting things with multi-lens as well, using monochrome sensors and three lens setups.
 
It was on accident. My 12 year old's android phone failed. He wanted an iPhone but $800-1200 is unrealistic for an adult imo. I asked him about the SE $350 and he said, "Dad that phone is five years old. No thanks."

I did a little product research, bought the SE and gave him my 6S.
I love the carry and the feel. And since my eyes are bad anyway what's holding the screen a few inches closer.
 
It was on accident. My 12 year old's android phone failed. He wanted an iPhone but $800-1200 is unrealistic for an adult imo. I asked him about the SE $350 and he said, "Dad that phone is five years old. No thanks."

I did a little product research, bought the SE and gave him my 6S.
I love the carry and the feel. And since my eyes are bad anyway what's holding the screen a few inches closer.
I bought my 6S because of screen size, better for eyes, but guess what I use to read on at night before sleep.... my old 5S. I also prefer the size. There are rumours of an SE2 coming, saw something in macrumors.com this morning.
 
There are a lot of factors involved in picking a favorite phone size. People have different preferences and see the world differently.

To get back to photography, when I’m shooting in daylight and using a screen instead of a viewfinder, I like to see the image on the screen in black and white. It makes it easier for me to compose.

With Apple’s camera app this was easy, I just set the image to black and white. When importing, Lightroom on the Mac ignores the black and white instructions in the metadata file, and so I get the original color JPEG. You can also change any image back to color (with no loss of IQ) in the Photos app on the iPhone.

On many dedicated cameras, similar workarounds can be found and used when shooting RAW.

With third party apps on the iPhone that save as DNG, this is not so easy. I couldn’t find any apps that had a “preview image in black and white” option. To solve this problem, I converted my phone to black and white! It started out as an experiment, but I’m liking it. The Moment camera app doesn’t know that the phone is set to black and white so it makes a regular color DNG.

To convert your iPhone to B&W, go to Settings: General: Accessibility: Display Accommodations: Color Filters and choose Grayscale. While you are in Accessibility you may want to turn on Bold Text and “Increase Contrast: Darken Colors” as well.
 
I bought my 6S because of screen size, better for eyes, but guess what I use to read on at night before sleep.... my old 5S. I also prefer the size. There are rumours of an SE2 coming, saw something in macrumors.com this morning.

Yes I read the rumours about SE2 coming. Would be good. I have an iPhone 6 just got a 2nd hand iPhone 8 plus for my wife who loves taking photos but does not want the hassle of a camera (her words). I think she's OK for quite a while now. She had an iPhone 4 and took some great photos with that. She's over the moon with this one.
 
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