iPhone 5 – Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth

September 25, 2012September 25, 2012

iPhone 5 Photo Quiz – Part 5

Same as before. One of the photos in this group was shot with an iPhone 5. The others were shot with other phones…and one was shot with a conventional camera. For the big finale, I’ve expanded the lineup to seven perps instead of just five:

(Click on the image to go to Flickr and embiggen. Come back to comment.)

And just like before, I haven’t made any changes to exposure, color, or sharpness. All I’ve done is crop the same section of each photo and scale it to 300×400 pixels for comparison.

Which is your favorite? And can you spot the iPhone 5 image?

Thanks for all of your comments, by the way. This isn’t a scientific test by any means, but all of these subjective reactions to these side-by-side comparisons are very useful to me.

My three-part review of the iPhone 5 begins tomorrow…with a discussion of the iPhone 5’s camera. When the column hits the web, I’ll publish the answers to each of these little quizzes.

September 24, 2012September 24, 2012

iPhone 5 Photo Quiz – Part 4

Finally — at least as far as these little Quizzes are concerned — is my test of low-light performance. This feller is in a shadowy corner of an unlit hallway.

As before, none of these have been modified in any way, apart from a crop. Oh, and: apparently I was careless and only used four cameras on this. But I promise you that one of these four was shot with an iPhone 5.

Which is your favorite?

Which one was shot with an iPhone 5?

September 23, 2012September 23, 2012

iPhone 5 Photo Quiz – Part 3

And now we’ve finally reached The Boston Public Library, the site of so many of my standard test photos. I take two shots here in Bates Hall. The first is a straight shot down the middle of the hall; this is the second. Why aren’t I using the first one in this quiz?

Because: (oh dear) two of the cameras failed to take a usable photo. Too blurry. My usual protocol is to take three in a row, and then use the best of the three for comparison with other cameras. Nope…these two cameras screwed up three times.

Hmm!

Well, let’s just take a look at View 2 then. As with the others: I’ve made no adjustments to exposure, color, or sharpness. I’ve just cropped the file that came out of the camera.

(Click to visit Flickr and embiggen. Come on back here to comment.)

Which is your favorite?

Which one do you think was shot with the iPhone 5?

September 23, 2012September 23, 2012

iPhone 5 Photo Quiz – Part 2

What…you think I’d entitle the Washington post “Part 1” and not have more?

Here’s you’re next case, Angels. The same shot taken five times with the same five imaging devices as the Washington photo. One of these was shot with an iPhone 5. The rest were shot with devices available in stores today. Click the image to visit Flickr and see an embiggened version. Come back here for comments.

I’ve made no edits to exposure, color, or sharpness…I just cropped a section out for close examination.

Which is your favorite?

Which one was shot with the iPhone 5?

September 23, 2012September 23, 2012

iPhone 5 Photo Quiz (Part 1)

I’m still chugging along on my big iPhone 5 review. And because Apple takes photography as seriously as a camera company does, part of the testing involves taking lots and lots of comparison photos. I don’t publish all of them. But all of them help me to understand what Apple’s done to improve the iPhone as a picture-taker.

Witness this image right here, which I present straight from the camera without any adjustment. I just cropped it a bit and rescaled it to 1600×1200.

It might be an iPhone 5 photo.

It might be from one of the 4 other Gadgets Capable Of Shooting Photos that I carried with me on Saturday. I took many, many photos five at a time, to see where to put the iPhone 5 in the spectrum of Image Awesomeness.

I think I’ll have my review ready for posting tomorrow. It might be a bit later. “Better to get things right than to get things first,” I always say, because it’s good journalism and also cuts down on the 5 PM to 6 AM work sessions.

Until then, why don’t you look at a zoomed in section of all five images? Each device is available in stores today; as amusing as it might be to try to trick someone into saying that they thought an 8-year-old Sony Ericsson outperformed Apple’s latest and greatest…I didn’t dip into my hardware morgue. I will only say that one was shot with an iPhone, and each image was taken with either a phone or a conventional camera.

(Click to go to Flickr and embiggen the image. Come back here to discuss.)

As with the full photo, each of these croppings comes straight from the device with no adjustments to color, exposure, sharpness or anything else. Which is your favorite?

And which one was shot with the iPhone 5? Are they one and the same?