There’s an old saying in photography that the best camera is the one you have with you, which goes some way to explaining the massive trend in iPhoneography – using an iPhone to take photos.
With the camera getting better with each passing generation, the iPhone is now capable of truly stunning photography. It still lacks the full technical capabilities of a DSLR, but it’s good enough and the fact that owners always have their phones to hand means that more and more moments that simply wouldn’t have been recorded for posterity are now finding their way on to Flickr, Pinterest and Instagram.
However, it’s important that those memories do not just stay stored on a computer drive or cloud somewhere, as to hold a photograph or see a print in a frame is still, and always will be the best way to enjoy your images.
The World’s most popular Camera?
According to Flickr, which is arguably the world’s most popular photo sharing site, iPhone is the world’s favourite camera.
Tech Specs
The resolution of the camera is more than enough for the internet as bigger images would have to be compressed in any case to upload on Facebook or other mainstream social media platforms.
So if the image is correctly exposed and perfectly captured, an iPhone is just as good a camera as anything Canon, Sony or Nikon can offer right now, in fact I must confess some of the main shots, framed on my wall at home are holiday photographs captured with my iPhone rather then my normal DSLR.
Apple are so proud of iPhone photographers around the World that they have a dedicated gallery for some of their favourites.
Third party apps and even hardware add-ons, like external lenses to alter the field of view, have been created to turn the iPhone into a more serious camera for the keen enthusiast like this iPhone lens add on kit from Amazon.
Here are some of our favourite iPhone Photography Apps :
Apple’s very own Photos app is great as its not only the main place where your iPhone photographs are stored but it also contains some very easy to use photo editing tools. We think the light and colour tools are really good, however filters aren’t that good.
Camera+ is one our long time favourites. It is always being updated giving you more and more tools in your pocket. However you do have to purchase the extra options to make the most of the app. It comes with a selection of borders, filters and some intelligent editing features.
By now you must have heard of Instagram. It’s probably the World’s most used Photo sharing social media site. The app gives you a collection of superb filters and extra tools. Once you have shared them online via your Instagram account, it also saves your photos with edits to your iPhone so you can also share offline too.
Afterlight is a complex set of tools to help you get creative with your post production. It too has upgrade options, however the basic options will give you lots of control over things like exposure, tones, adding text and lots more.
One thing is for sure, iPhoneography is not going away, it’s only going to get bigger and it will help shape the world we see.
Why not add your best iPhone shot taken within Oxfordshire to our photography competition.
p.s. we know there are other smartphone cameras out there that are great too, we just happen to love this one 🙂