February 5, 2023

Sunrise with new iPhone.

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I'm extremely happy with the camera in the iPhone 14 Pro. It solves a problem I had with the iPhone 12, which was that it made sunrise pictures too bright and I had to figure out how to adjust the camera or tweak things afterwards. The iPhone 14 figured it out automatically. 

The photos above were taken at 7:13 a.m. This is 3 minutes later:

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ADDED: Actually, it was this picture — taken at 7:21 — that made me exclaim out loud. I'm pointing the camera straight at the risen sun and it's not blowing out everything. The sun is handled, looks charming, has interesting light around it, and the trees are sharp and dark, and there is subtlety to the light on the snow in the foreground:

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46 comments:

tim in vermont said...

OK, time for me to finally ditch the iPhone 7.

Guimo said...

Chinese balloon up in the sky?

Ann Althouse said...

The only adjustment I made to those pictures was to level the shoreline.

Caroline said...

Dang. Now I want one. I genuflect before the glorious advances in phone camera technology. I’m ashamed of myself.

Breezy said...

They look great - given the vantage point difference, did you zoom in while shooting or crop the first two?

rehajm said...

I like it for macro. I take some beautiful pics of my watch movements…

Ann Althouse said...

If the top two pics looked alike, they were. My mistake. All 3 photos are different now!

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

A reminder from the clouds to eat your cheerios.

Ann Althouse said...

"They look great - given the vantage point difference, did you zoom in while shooting or crop the first two?"

The difference is just from zooming in or out.

Ann Althouse said...

I could walk across the lake to the capitol. It would be a pretty nice walk!

Ann Althouse said...

"I like it for macro. I take some beautiful pics of my watch movements"

Yeah, I have not yet tried that.

Owen said...

Professora: is Apple comp’ing you that phone? Because the pics are a compelling demo of its tech. Wow.

As for walking across the lake, how far would it be? In the pic it looks (deceptively?) close.

Temujin said...

Hmmm....

And you can even do macro on it? Jeez. Do I have to get one of these now? Hell with my Olympus.

wendybar said...

WOW!! Beautiful. It almost makes me want to get an I phone, JUST to take pictures. I don't own a cell phone, don't want one, but for pictures alone, I may have to get one!!

Coop said...

Welcome to the club Professor! I got the 14 Pro Max back and December and still learning many of the new features. I have a set of Sandmarc lens and filter that attach via a special case that I had purchased for my prior 11 Pro.

One thing interesting is that all 3 lenses are dynamic and Apple’s software will switch between the 3 for the most optimal image. I’m trying to understand more about that as only the main camera is 48 MP so not sure if it uses just one in an image capture or all 3 and how that actually impacts the final image. Probably not a concern for you, but when using an external lens, I attach over whichever lens I need for the shot and have to use an app like Manual or Camera Pro to control which lens to shoot through; with Apple software, it may or may not shoot through it and if not, I get a nice image of my subject with the edge of the lens prominent

Also and finally, Apple has given us their version of shooting in RAW. For DSLR users, this is the format that captures the most data and is very important for processing and manipulation. I do astrophotography and have had to use apps that simulate RAW rather than the real thing.

I’ve also gotten similar shots as your sunrise photo (mine are sunsets, though as I live on the East side of our lake) and have been very impressed with the software figuring out the bright sun against the rest of the photo. I know you only made the one (or maybe two) adjustment before posting but I would manipulate a little more creatively and don’t have to do as much to get the images to my taste. It still can’t fully figure out how to control the black sky against the Moon but it does a much better job than it did. Android OS has figured this out, really in more of a post capture manipulation, and I expect Apple will tweak to match at some point in a future release.

As always, your blog is my first coffee stop for the sunrise photos and content. Glad to see you have new kit and are enjoying it!

Original Mike said...

Wow. Love the cloud shadows. And the sun rising in the Pinckney (Webster? Butler?) gap. And the glowing fog. Just awesome.

That should up on the freshly painted walls.

Meade said...

I’m going to wait for iPhone 15 Pro+. It’s supposed to do everything iPhone 14 Pro does plus gets itself out of bed, jogs out to the lake, takes its own pics and then comes back and crawls into bed with me.

It’s also a coffee maker.

Tofu King said...

Congrats on the new phone! I always enjoy your sunrise pictures as I wake up here in cloudy Portland.

BIII Zhang said...

For those of you keeping score at home, the current Joe Biden position on Chinese spying of American citizens is:

1) Spying by balloon? Out.

2) Spying with Apps? Still allowed.

It's getting harder and harder to keep track of which Chinese spying our own President is going to allow and which he's not. I suspect maybe he was still good with balloon spying until regular Americans started spit-balling how they could shoot down that balloon satellite on their own. Find out how it worked. Put its parts on the internet for all to see.

Our own President is allowing this Chinese spying. Remember that.

wendybar said...

No wonder why you married him, AA!! He cracks himself up!!

Meade said...


Blogger Owen said...
As for walking across the lake, how far would it be? In the pic it looks (deceptively?) close.

4 to 5 miles

Big Mike said...

Any idea what that circular cloud is in the top two pictures? Is the University of Wisconsin blowing smoke rings? Another Chinese balloon?

Meade said...

wendybar said...
“He cracks himself up!!”

Wendy, be patient. I hear that feature will be coming out on iPhone 16 AutoPro.

Ann Althouse said...

"4 to 5 miles"

Walking straight across the lake to where the capitol is would only be about 2 miles.

The walk the other way to Governor Nelson State Park is more like 5 miles.

madAsHell said...

I walk a nearby park that’s full of wildlife. I tried carrying a 10 year old Sony camera, but found it clunky, and slow to energize......missed that shot....again.

I started using the iPhone X camera, and found the results comparable, if not superior to the old video camera. I was pleasantly surprised.

hawkeyedjb said...

Meade said...
"...gets itself out of bed, jogs out to the lake, takes its own pics and then comes back and crawls into bed with me."

Is that different from what Althouse does?

Flat Tire said...

Beautiful. Time to get rid of my old #6.

tim in vermont said...

Anonymous DOD sources have “leaked” that there were three balloons under Trump and former Trump officials deny it and want the DoD put under oath before Congress. Leaker forgot to mention that this is the second time under Biden.

What a joke.

wendybar said...

They are lying to us again....


https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/that_claim_about_three_spy_balloons_on_trumps_watch_is_deflating_fast.html

Quaestor said...

"The iPhone 14 figured it out automatically."

Which leaves Althouse with even less to do. From photographer to porter, it won't be long before Althouse speaks of her iPhone as Sahib.

Big Mike said...

It’s also a coffee maker.

@Meade, industry rumor says you’ll still have to load the coffee beans and water. Recommend you wait for the iPhone 17.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Amazing. In the top two images, I see what looks like a contrail, but more interesting to me is the cloud that seems to have curled its hand into a fist. What on earth?

Owen said...

The camera software seems to be uncanny. I can report that a grad student at U of Arizona recently showed us tourists (in a night tour of Mt. Lemmon observatory above Tucson) how his software could sort 12,000 images taken over a 2-minute view of Jupiter through the 31” reflector telescope. The computer almost instantly ranked the pics by clarity and acuity and delivered a composite image that seemed better than the “real” ones.

rcocean said...

Very Nice.

Ann Althouse said...

"In the top two images, I see what looks like a contrail, but more interesting to me is the cloud that seems to have curled its hand into a fist. What on earth?"

What gets me is that the "fist" cloud seems to be casting a shadow on the cloud behind it, like a ball of cotton set on a sheet of cardboard.

I didn't notice that in person, and I'm not against interesting stuff that I couldn't see, but I'm concerned that we are slipping into an artificial life, where we only want what is filtered through computers.

Ann Althouse said...

"Professora: is Apple comp’ing you that phone? Because the pics are a compelling demo of its tech. Wow."

I'd feel creepy writing it up if they did.

tim in vermont said...

Prolly uses AI to do the instantaneous post processing, another white collar type skill subsumed. I wonder how long before you can type a description into AutoCad in natural language and get a design you can feed into a milling machine?

tim in vermont said...

I spent a couple hours a day for four months learning Creative Suite to be able to post process images in raw format to achieve results that might slightly surpass that camera, in the eyes of experts, but 99.9% of viewers would not even notice. Those would be the same kinds of people impressed that a person learned Latin to read Virgil.

Still cool that raw is available though.

Owen said...

Ann @ 1:11: “ ‘Professora: is Apple comp’ing you that phone? Because the pics are a compelling demo of its tech. Wow.’

I'd feel creepy writing it up if they did.”

That’s why I like your blog so much.

Friendo said...

Have I told you that I adore you lately, Althouse?

Original Mike said...

"What gets me is that the "fist" cloud seems to be casting a shadow on the cloud behind it, like a ball of cotton set on a sheet of cardboard."

Of course it is, but more like the cloud above. Trace out the light rays from the sun to the clouds in your head. It is beautifully cool.

Fred Drinkwater said...

Owen, that's a form of "image stacking" and is the state of the art in astrophotography. If interested, there are several subreddits devoted to it. r/space, for instance.

Kylos said...

The tree branches in front of the sun are actually visible! That’s extremely impressive.

wildswan said...

I want an iphone 14. Which I did not, only 15 minutes ago.

CStanley said...

The 7:21 one almost made me exclaim out loud too because it’s gorgeous!

gpm said...

>>OK, time for me to finally ditch the iPhone 7.

I held onto my iPhone 5 until the 12 came out. All the interim ones were way bigger than I wanted. I seemed to be the only person in the world who didn't want a bigger phone. The smallest 12 is only a little bigger than the old 5.

--gpm