iPad Pro, iPad 2, iPad 3, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone SE–shot by an iPad A16! (yep that’s Kirby!)
(Still doing more inventory and cleaning up my junk!)
In charging up all my old idevices (iPads and iPhones) to see if they all still work I thought about the ones that have cameras. They definitely show the quick progress that Apple put into their tech over the course of 12+ years. Whereas you can still use an out of the box 20 year old DSLR for “professional” photos, these old iDevices had their limits for sure. Advancements was really enabled by people buying every iteration year after year, thus pushing phone video/photo tech to well past the point of sufficiency. (and in the case of video, far far superior to big cameras in my honest opinion)
On this morning I just wanted to see if these old iPhones were still worth using as old digicams. With all the craze in lo-fi keychain digicams, perhaps the answer to that nostalgia might be the old iPhone that you have in a junk drawer somewhere.
There’s more iPhones I didn’t “test” this morning
In some iPhone models I would have to say there really is a unique look or signature to the rendering. “They” have already come for the digicams. Now “they” have come for our old DSLRs for a “vintage” look. It’s only a matter of time before folks start using old iPhones for portrait shoots. 😉
All photos in this Post shot with iPhones or iPads, some with slight cropping and contrast adjustment.
iPad 2
The camera on this model is the simplest one in my collection. I even posted them straight out of camera, as they are only 960×720 pixels and tiny in size! (better than a Charmera!)
iPad 3
Pretty big improvement from 2 to 3. What’s more astounding is the battery in this thing. It’s sat on the shelf for months turned off and the charge still had like 68%. Crazy! This and the 5S are close.
iPhone 3GS
I really love the 3GS rendering. It’s imperfect with almost a touch of randomness to the photos. I think a lot has to do with the lens quality, or lack thereof. It looks like the plastic lens on a disposable film camera. It looks like shooting through a plastic bag sometimes because there was really rudimentary autofocus on this early model. The images are a good deal darker than the later models, but there’s just something about LCD technology from this era. Old digicams have a distinct color hue on their screens and this iPhone 3GS is the same. The 3GS reminds me of the early Olympus CCD digicams.
iPhone 4
The iPhone 4 didn’t inspire me personally back in the day to shoot. It wasn’t that great in low light, and the picture profile was just different. To be the best looking iPhone (in my opinion) it does make me want to shoot it more now, to see if there’s maybe some different type of magic I’d missed. I wish it rendered like the 3GS though.
iPhone 5S
I think the 5/S had a solid camera that millions enjoyed back in the day. For taking photos of my drawings done with small mm mechanical pencils, it really does capture the detail and strokes. Score one for phone cameras with their sharp modern lenses and almost infinite depth of field.
iPhone SE
This is a solid image maker too, with the same sensor as the 6S. I could have tested the 7 I have here, but after the 5, I think these cameras are small incremental quality changes. Especially for still life photos like these drawings.
iPad Pro
The iPad pro definitely produces some clean looking images. I’ll have to pull up and edit the few people photos I’ve shot with it. I mostly use it as my video archive and occasional ProCreate machine but I’ve always been impressed with the brightness of images on its high refresh screen. The secret to iPad/Phone photos is that they are meant to be viewed on the same device that shot it. Open them up in other programs on a desktop and you can see the mangling of the pixels and detail lost from noise reduction. Still though, not going to complain too much about a mini computer with a 3mm f/1.8 lens
iPad A16
The newest iPad I have (the pink Kirby sticker one) has a really aggressive sharpening effect to the photos. You can see it immediately in real time when you boot up the camera and point it towards scenes like my drawings. I only use this iPad for storage of work photos and downloading stuff for live posting in the field. I’ll definitely have to use this more for photos on a fun goofing off adventure. It’s at the very least as good as an iPhone a couple of generations back.
Just like the drawings that I shot for this post, all these old iPhones and iPads have some sentimental meaning to me. I know at some point comparisons like these are like listening to different headphones on random stereo receivers, but I enjoy seeing the progression of this imaging technology. To have seen everything from an NES to a Playstation or a Sony Mavica floppy camera to iPhone–in my lifetime is something pretty crazy when you think about it.
Photographers get attached to certain cameras, so who knows, maybe an even more potent effect might be going back and using the phone camera you had in your formative years. Last month I watched the indie film “Didi” which is a growing up story set in 2008. It’s amazing how they captured the look and feel of those early days of social media. Eventually even the early and mid 2010’s will seem like a different and distinct era.
