I didn’t own the very first iPhone, but I joined the party early with the iPhone 3G. Almost immediately, I started using it to shoot photos.
Looking back through my photo library, you can pinpoint when that shift occurred. One moment, there are sporadic snaps from Nikons, Pentaxes and Canons. Then it’s all iPhone – and a precipitous drop in image quality. The second Apple’s upstart barges in, my archive becomes a sea of murky 1600×1200 JPEGs.
Part of me winces at those early pictures. I sometimes imagine how future photo editors or magical AI wizardry might resurrect them, wipe away the noise and restore lost detail. But it would be guesswork. The captured reality is gone forever.
Oddly, though, I have no regrets. Sure, I wish those photos looked better. But the only reason they exist is because of my iPhone. My previous cameras had bigger sensors, sharper lenses and real optical zooms. They also had a frustrating habit of being left at home, running out of battery at inopportune moments and holding limited (yet spendy) storage cards full of photos I’d forgotten to clear.
In other words, the cliché is true: the best camera is the one you have with you. And from day one, I always had my iPhone with me.
Snap happy
As years passed, things quietly improved. Each new iPhone brought a better camera. Video went from a novelty to something genuinely usable. Apps became more capable. Gradually, snapshots of life were captured with increasing fidelity. Heartwarming clips of my dearly departed dog that I’ll treasure forever. Fragments of my daughter growing up, including her earliest laughs and wobbly adventures. Because the iPhone was always there, ready, in my pocket.
Today, I own an iPhone 16 Pro. It’s no longer cutting edge, since Apple had the audacity to release a newer model in September. Still, its 48MP main camera, macro mode, dedicated Camera Control button, 5x zoom, speedy cloud sync and increasingly amazing apps now make it an amateur photographer’s dream, not merely ‘better than nothing’. To call the iPhone anything other than a ‘real’ camera today feels absurd, given what it’s capable of. It just so happens that it can do a bunch more than take photos.
So, yes, I still use an iPhone over a (let’s now call it) ‘traditional’ camera because I always have one on me. The difference is I no longer expect to look back with a pang of disappointment. Although more powerful cameras exist, my iPhone shoots objectively great photos that feel like they’ll stand the test of time – snaps with enough resolution, dynamic range and detail to weather the years.
Perhaps that’s naive. Maybe in 20 years, shots from the 16 Pro will look as murky as those iPhone 3G photos do today. Still, for my needs, I’m not sure there’s anything meaningfully better out there. Except for the more powerful 8x telephoto lens on the iPhone 17 Pro, but that’ll have to wait until my next upgrade!
Related reading
- Why I think iPhone is a game changer for photography (and always has been)
- The 10 most significant iPhones ever released and how they changed photography
- I compared photos taken on my iPhone with my £4000 mirrorless camera, and was shocked
The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of Amateur Photographer magazine or Kelsey Media Limited. If you have an opinion you’d like to share on this topic, or any other photography related subject, email: [email protected].
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