iPhoneography - An Introduction

Photography movements are as common as 3D movies and Twilight fans these days. Each has their own interesting take on photography, be it either a certain subject, or a certain style of shooting. It leads to some excellent innovation that otherwise wouldn't have been possible.

The movement I've recently become quite heavily interested in is that of iPhoneography. The name is pretty self-explanatory - iPhone photos. However, it's not just about taking some blurry photos of you and your mates at a club, it's about taking proper photographs with a camera with some serious limitations. The camera on the iPhone 3GS is a meagre 3 megapixels (which we all know is largely irrelevant). The bigger issues come from the noise that is dangerously apparent in photos. It adds a clear lack of quality in the photos. There's also a slow 'shutter speed', fixed aperture (2.8), fixed focal length (5.9mm), and hugely varying ISO which ranges from ~70 to 1000+ as it pleases.

With the handicap of a camera like that, it makes for a very interesting and rewarding experience to make it work. The beauty of the iPhone is the software versatility and variety. Application developers have made the severely limited iPhone camera able to do some wonderful things. Although there are no real hardware changes, the software totally changes what the camera once was.

Now there is an entire movement about getting some beautiful results out of such a limited camera. Chase Jarvis coined the phrase "The Best Camera Is The One That's With You", and iPhoneography shows how steeped in fact this statement is. The saying "it's not what you use, but how you use it" is also apt. A good photographer shouldn't need the best camera in the world to take excellent photos. Seeing as most people with an iPhone will have it with them, it creates the possibility for a lot of 'on-the-go' yet still high quality photos.

Over the course of these articles, I plan on reviewing applications, techniques and products which can aid you in your iPhoneography and even in your general photography ventures. Many of these applications allow you to pick a photo from your hard drive, so they can be used as post-processing tools for photos taken with any other type of camera. Although that is not strictly iPhoneography, it will still benefit anyone who wishes to try their hand at utilising their iPhone or iPod Touch in a more interesting way. As the iPod Touch does not come with a camera, it can only be used for post-processing. It seems straightforward enough, but time after time I see people rating camera applications one star because they don't work on their iPod Touch. At the start of each review I'll state the compatibility of the application/product, so people don't unwittingly waste their money on products that don't work with their device.

Finally, I'll end this introduction with a few my favourite iPhone shots:











And here are a few of my own shots, just in case you were interested:




That's it for this little introduction to the vast world of iPhoneography. Hopefully, I'll be speaking to you all soon.

-S