iPhone 5 Camera

Howdy! Sorry, no ‘Adventures In iPhone Photography’ today. Catch up on all the previous episodes here. I will have one for you tomorrow over at iDownloadBlog.com so make sure to check it out. Because of the news of the iPhone 5, I thought I would share my about it. In short, I’m kind of excited about the camera upgrade, but far more excited about iOS6. Here’s why…

Yes, the new iPhone 5 will have an upgraded camera. There is quite a bit technically that has been improved. A faster 2.4 aperture will let more light in, as well as some specialized coating that will result in crisper images. The camera itself will also take photos 40% faster. All this is pretty exciting. I’m glad they decided to stick with the 8 mega pixel sensor. I think 8 is plenty good. You can easily print 20×30 inch images from 8 mega pixels. There’s no need to go any bigger than that…well, at least not now. Anything more would just eat up the iPhone storage. Plus, the iPhone 5 will be introducing a cool new panorama mode which will let you take multiple photos and automatically stitch them together into one large uber photo. No guarantees about how successful this will be, but I’m guessing the engineers over at Apple have it pretty well figured out. The true test will be shooting panoramas in tight quarters. The image alignment math is much easier with distant subjects, it’s far more difficult with foreground objects. Apple is also claiming that there will be a low light mode and noise reduction to help you photograph in less than ideal lighting conditions. What I don’t know is if that is a function of the camera or the operating system. If it’s a function of the operating system, then we will all get this functionality once we upgrade to iOS6…even if you don’t upgrade to the new iPhone right away. Pretty cool right? Another reason I’m fired up for iOS6 is its ability to share images form your ‘Photo Stream’. For those old school MobileMe subscribers, you might remember you could share photo galleries. Well, we all know that went away with iCloud. However, with iOS6 it looks like we might be getting some of the functionality back. That is worth the price of admission alone! And because it is a function of the OS, your older non-iPhone 5 should work just fine!

With the iPHone 5, you are getting a camera that will let you take pictures faster that are apparently sharper, even in lower light. Is that worth an upgrade? I’ll let you decide. However, if you decide to stick with your old iPhone, as long as you upgrade your iOS to iOS6 it looks like you will be able to share your photos with others via Photo Stream.

What good is a post about an iPhone without a few iPhone images? Last week I was attending a workshop, when I decided to exercise my creativity and do a few visual pushups. Here are a few studies I shared on Instagr.am