iPhone 14 Pro camera: It passed the travel photography test with flying colors [Diary] - 9to5Mac

It’s official: The iPhone 14 Pro camera is now good enough for me to use it as my only travel camera – something I couldn’t have even imagined five years ago.

I’d already made the switch from a heavy and cumbersome pro-body DSLR system to a much lighter and more portable mirrorless camera when travelling, but switching to an iPhone had still felt like an enormous step.

I did try the travel camera experiment once before, with my iPhone 11 Pro back in 2019, but that was a special case!

Unless otherwise stated, all shots are straight from camera, aside from cropping and resizing.

Admittedly it was a particularly spectacular sunset with those god rays, but still a really impressive job by the iPhone 14 Pro camera.

It has remained present in the 12 and 13, and it’s still there with the iPhone 14 Pro. .

Any lens will show halos when you shoot directly into very bright lights, but with the iPhone 14 Pro camera you can also see a very specific internal reflection:.

If I’m taking (planned) portraits, I’m still going to use a standalone camera, with optical depth of field control.

The iPhone’s Portrait mode has improved over time, and in particular it now manages quite convincing focus fall-off in some shots, rather than the binary version back when the feature was first introduced.

I would, though, note the old saying: The best camera is the one you have with you at the time.

But the lens which was attached to my camera 99% of the time was my trusty Nikkor 24-70/2.8.

When I switched to a mirrorless camera, the kit lens offered the same range.

The iPhone 14 Pro camera offers the 35mm equivalent of 24-75mm: a little more than the range I used almost exclusively.

But for 99% of shots, the iPhone offers the focal length I want.

There was a time when I made a bit of pocket-change from selling my travel photos through stock photography sites, which meant both quality and resolution requirements, but that long ceased being worth the effort.

These days my quality threshold is, “Is there anything about the photo that bugs me when I look at it?” The iPhone has long passed that test for daylight shots, and it’s now there with night shots, too.

As I say, black sky shots don’t generally do anything for me, but from a technical viewpoint, it’s on a par with what you could expect from a mirrorless camera – with the added benefit that it was handheld.

The iPhone 14 Pro is simply stunning in this respect.

There are shots where, no matter what the camera, I expect to have to manually reduce highlights and boost shadows, but take a look at this shot. .

Back in the days when I carried a DSLR, camera backpack, and travel tripod, it wasn’t unusual to be approached by security guards at popular locations, stating that professional photography wasn’t allowed?

Swap that for a mirrorless camera and a mini-tripod, and most of those issues go away?

Additionally, the tiny form makes it practical to do things that would be tricky even with a mirrorless camera.

On the SkyView ride, the cabins had only very slim ledges on all four sides, which would have made it impossible to balance even my exceedingly compact mirrorless camera.

That fact enabled me to simply lay the camera against the glass, one side per rotation, set it recording and then sit back to enjoy the ride – rather than having to view the experience through a viewfinder or screen.

I’d expect to have to do both on a day with such flat skies, no matter what camera was used:.

I said it right at the start: The iPhone 14 Pro camera is now good enough for me to use it as my only travel camera!

Of course, that doesn’t mean the camera is now on a par with mirrorless cameras

It’s great peace of mind that the iPhone automatically backs up all my photos to iCloud, and, in my paranoid case, to Google Photos, too

If you’re using an iPhone 13 Pro, and none of the new iPhone 14 Pro camera features grab you, then there’s really no need to upgrade

Given the pleasure I get from having a decent camera with me all the time, that’s an easy sell for me

Now that I’m at the point of happily taking my next trip with the iPhone 14 as my only camera, I consider it a bargain