822: iPhone 17 Photography with Tyler Stalman

Hello and welcome to MacPower Users. My name is Stephen Hackett. I'm joined by my friend and yours, Mr. David Sparks. Hello, Stephen. How are you today? I'm good, David. How are you? I am, as always, excited to record the Mac Power users. This is a show that we've been planning for a while. Every year when Apple updates the cameras, I always like to bring in an expert.

And your favorite expert of mine is here. Welcome to the show, Tyler Stallman. Oh, thanks, guys. I'm so glad to be back. This is great. Yeah. Somebody at Apple told me they have like 200 people working on the camera team. which for Apple is a massive team. And it just reminds me that that's how they sell iPhones, is cameras. But...

You know, Stephen and I, we like to play with our cameras, but we don't make our living with our cameras. And you do. And every year, I really look forward to your video reviews and insight as to what Apple's done each year. I thought if we could today, we would share some of that with the audience. Yeah. I mean, if there's any of the camera designers out there listening, I just want to say a big thank you because that team never ceases to amaze me. They really do.

incredible work and it's why the iPhone has become in many ways the most successful modern camera on the planet. Uh, yeah, I do. I, I, and I've been, I don't know if this has changed since last time I was here. I'm trying to remember the dates of last time I talked to you guys, but I actually use my iPhone for our professional video work more and more these days to like it.

It used to kind of be a novelty when we'd mix it into pro work. And now one of our major clients, it's what we shoot every single job for them on. So things have definitely changed over years. Yeah, I mean, it's for real. They have the commercials with the pirate falling out of the ship. You've seen that one, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's not what I'm shooting, but it's what I aspire for. If you ever do shoot a pirate falling out of the ship, can I come watch? That's my only question. Yes.

Today on More Power Users, which is the ad-free extended version show, since we've got Tyler here, we want to talk about the concept of artificial intelligence and creative work. It's a very interesting topic. with good parts and bad parts. And since we've got someone here who makes his living with video, we thought that would be a great topic. And Tyler's agreed to stick around for that one. So check that out at relay.fm slash MPU to sign up for that. I have so many thoughts.

Oh, yeah, I bet we do, right? But as always on Mac Power Users, we start with the bona fides. We've got to check in on how's your life going, Tyler, and what's your gear? Oh, life is great.

Let's see. What is my gear lately? Things have shifted so much since we started this gig of doing photo and video production, which typically we're doing that for... clients is about half of our work where we're doing sort of commercial work. And then the other half is doing social media. So my wife does Instagram and I do YouTube and Instagram and wow, has it changed?

The big one is the iPhone 17 Pro. Obviously, we shoot a lot on that. Pretty much everything for Instagram is captured on that. And then the photography is a lot of... uh my sort of more portable kit is lumix right now the lumix s12 and s1r2 and then on on the bigger side for when we're doing things that demand higher resolution um working with the Hasselblad x2d2 which is 100 megapixels and just has a lot more resolution bigger sensor and uh then also on the i guess the video side

is also those lumix cameras and a lot of that's a lot of the reason i'm using lumix right now is they are in in my opinion they have the best hybrid solution right now out of anybody That if you just have one camera in your bag and you need to get photo and video work done, it can handle both equally well. And so, yeah, even though it's kind of, you know, in maybe third or fourth place, it is not the top.

selling camera by any means, they've really used that underdog status as motivation to build some incredible cameras right now. So that's kind of what I've been leaning into.

what else what other uh what other gear would you like to know about well what about your apple gear what i mean what are you processing all this stuff of course that's so it's for me it's always about the macbook pro um 16 inch that's

what I'm going to keep buying for the foreseeable future because we travel quite a bit. So I need to be able to just do just as much work, whether I'm at home or on the road. And you know often that means i'm cramped into just the screen that's in front of me so i need it to be the biggest screen possible so it's always going to be a 16 inch

And, you know, then sometimes I'll have an iPad on the side of that. But typically I find it makes my bag too much bigger to like to have that screen extension of like, it's really nice when you can just add an iPad and all of a sudden you got twice the space. But so often, I just find it's not worth the additional size of an iPad inside of a case basically becomes another MacBook. You know, I thought...

Because you did a really good review of the Mac Studio, and I thought I was bringing Team Mac Studio into the show. Because we've got a problem here. Steven keeps trying to get me to switch over to MacBook Pro and I'm a Mac Studio.

But yeah, I guess that makes sense for you because you're on the road. I mean, on shoots and whatnot, you've got to have your best gear with you. You know what? I prefer... a desktop solution like that is still my what i'm attached to like my heart kind of yearns for a giant tower mac pro that doesn't really you know that world doesn't exist anymore it's uh i'm sure it's just nostalgia but it it's just a reality check for me that i can't

um i can't get the same work done so you know i i actually have a mac studio here that was from the last review unit i have so um that's what i was i was actually going to try to call you guys on it and i had some trouble connecting a bluetooth mouse to it so i ended up calling you from the MacBook. It came to the rescue. And I guess maybe it's just a little more proof that a MacBook Pro is exactly what I need.

So I don't know if I should ask this question. So I'm currently at M2 Mac Studio, and I'm thinking maybe when they get to M6, I'll start testing the waters. But as a guy who likes his studio on his desk, What's the big downside for you going to laptop? I mean, what are the things where you're like, man, because as you said, you're a desktop guy. Where do you say, man, I kind of wish I was still on my desktop? What are your regrets?

The truth is the downsides are in my head and I don't know if they're even in reality. Like there are not really practical. practical downsides anymore the biggest thing is you know when you have a home setup and a max studio has all of these in and outs you can have every single thing you need ready to go all the time and you're not plugging it you know even though

for my MacBook Pro workstation, I have it all running through an Apple Studio monitor. So there's just one cable. I only need to sit down and plug in one Thunderbolt, and now I'm... ready to go but there's big downsides of uh hard drives especially it's like hey i've got big storage units sitting there

that are connected to the system but if i have them on i can't just i will often do this like i accidentally just unplug my macbook and forget to eject enough things or there's sort of just disadvantages of being portable with a permanent desk setup. If you are sitting in one place for most of your work, committing to that has its upsides. You know how things are configured because you're never messing with them. You don't have that stability on a MacBook.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do in a couple of years. But for a guy like you who shoots a lot of video, how big do you go with internal storage when you get a new computer?

as big as possible really yeah so yeah you you don't you don't need to at all the the speed advantages of having the big internal storage is it's not so much about um working locally is that much faster because of the hard drive speeds that stops being your limit unless you're doing i don't know like really complex like vfx work or something usually the the drives just aren't about or sorry the ssds aren't a bottleneck anymore um

It's more about the speed of managing your data that if you're moving around and you also need to have one drive or multiple portable SSDs and you're trying to remember what's on which one. or they're just not available to you in the moment that you're ready to work.

that's what becomes the real slowdown versus having as much as possible internal. So for me, it's whatever my current working projects are, I try to have a drive big enough to handle all of my... ongoing current projects all of them can be there with some buffer room and then my archives are all on external drives that makes sense so that so if that answers your question it's like it depends on what

what you shoot if you shoot a lot of 1080p video or even there's a lot of 4k video like let's say you shoot on your iphone most of the time instead of on a bigger camera those file sizes are quite a lot smaller um because it's it's kind of Some cameras shoot in a way that's like, it's just ready to go. You could post it as is, and that will be a smaller file size. Whereas on professional cameras, you'll have these big, thick, juicy files that are tons of megabits per second.

because you're probably going to do more to them. You'll do more color correction. They just need more data available for the editing that the camera manufacturer knows you're going to do. So if you have a big camera, you might need more space. If you have a kind of more casual camera, you could get by with a lot less. We're going to talk a lot about iPhone photography. So I'm going to hold off on what iPhone you're using. My guess is that's a complicated question for you.

But what about Apple's other devices? Are you wandering around your house in Vision Pro? I...

I have a Vision Pro sitting beside me that is probably dead. I mean, you know, my answer to the Vision Pro is probably the same as what you'll hear from most people. It's like, it's amazing. It blows your mind for a little while. And then you don't put it on that often. And I just have so little to criticize about the... product it's it's very cool but i i don't really have a lot of uses for it the um you know things i use all the time like air tags are huge for me actually i i have a good

Oh, I have a good AirTag product tip. I'm going to save that for the end of something that every AirTag user should consider buying. But I've got many of them all over the place. You know, I have an iPad Pro right beside me as well. That similar thing. It's like it kind of it's used as a side project. It is not the most important thing to me. If I didn't have it in my life, I'd probably be fine.

What else is Apple manufactured that's essential to me? You know, I mentioned the Apple Studio Display is the monitor that I choose. And a lot of that, you know, it's not the best Apple monitor ever. There are some criticisms I have with it.

I'm hoping there will be a new one soon, but I still find it better than any of the alternatives. To me, a monitor still needs to be designed for the Mac ecosystem. I need to be able to have one Thunderbolt that goes into it and then be able to have a USB port in the back of it. The Apple Studio Display does a great job of that. Have you had any curiosity of making content for Vision Pro as a photographer or videographer?

You know, when it came out, I got excited about that idea. I'd looked into how to get a hold of that Blackmagic immersive video production. And I started just realizing that the... the big thing holding you back is until you have a contract with apple to produce something for them which hey apple like you know i'll do that but there's nowhere to post it there's nothing to do with the content

YouTube supports their own spatial formats and 360 formats that are not the same as Apple's immersive format. So there's really no way to experience that level of production. that Apple is showing you when you watch an Apple TV show. There's no distribution for that. Apple really hasn't opened anything up, which, you know, we need an Instagram or a TikTok of...

immersive video. And that's really what would make it take off. And for a little moment of clarification, too, there's you guys are you guys know, but. For anyone who's forgotten, there's spatial video and immersive. And spatial is when it just kind of looks like 3D. Like maybe you're looking through a window and you can tell that there's depth on the other side. Whereas immersive is all around you.

immersive is a pretty good word for it kind of explains it and you know it's full 360 they're very different formats and to me I just I don't really find the spatial worth it worth the extra production it looks really cool on my phone but that proves to me that Basically, the digital ability of Apple's AI to interpret depth and create a spatial photo, that's good enough for me. I don't need to shoot in that format.

If I'm going to capture anything for a Vision Pro, I would want it to be fully immersive. And that is not going to be seen by anybody right now. Yeah, I really wish Apple would just accelerate the program for creation of immersive content. It is getting better, but if they want the Vision Pro to be a product, they've got to spend a bunch more money on people like you to make cool stuff we can watch in it.

Sure. And you know what? I think they're overthinking it in some ways, or they're overspending on it maybe. Because if they took a similar approach to the way podcasting launched, where Apple took ownership of this is how… This is how it's going to work. This is the system. This is the format. There's lots of creators that would find budgets to.

You know, if there was a way we could recoup our expenses, we would go make the content for the Vision Pro because we want audiences to see our work. But right now there's just no path, right? There's no way to ever make a dime after we spend all this money to.

to go produce it so i i would really just like to see solutions that really open this up to the world and apple to just show us the path like what what can we do how can we ever get into this because it's just not clear right now okay so that does bring us uh

to the iPhone and its camera system. And I think it's definitely true what is said. Most people don't really care about a lot of the iPhone specs, but when there's a new camera, that's when they... look for an update that's certainly true in my household um for my wife and daughter in particular the camera is what sort of drives their upgrade cycle and we've been on this journey now for a few years

Many years, really, where you've got the standard phone and then you have the pro phone. The pro phone has one more lens. It generally has technology that is beyond what's in the standard phone. You know, some years are bigger changes than others. And Tyler, we're going to have your video, your reviews in the show notes for people to go.

check out. But where do you think sort of broadly, where do you think Apple is right now with their camera systems? And what are some of the things that they've done maybe the last couple of years that has impressed you? So I think they're at a pretty kind of a stable point right now where they pulled ahead in a few key areas a couple of years ago, and they're just kind of in a lot of ways maintaining that lead.

solidifying it in others. So I think it's important as we talk about this to remember that also there's a big difference between where they are in terms of photography and video. So I'll try to keep reminding myself to distinguish between.

their exact position in each but if we first let's talk about like the standard camera right the one x the main uh lens that is is on all of these and right now it hasn't actually changed physically at all for a few years. So what's on the 17 pro is the same effectively. Okay. Obviously Apple won't say this, but it's effectively the exact same 17 pro is the same as the 16 pro.

is the same as the 15 Pro. I don't think there has been a physical update to the lens or the sensor in that time. There have been software changes, which you don't get that through an iOS update. It's like the image pipeline. of the physical hardware device. You do need to have the latest to get those advantages. But on the main sensor, they're not hugely significant. My testing between anything from the 15, 16, 17, they kind of match.

uh more or less i don't think many people would spot a difference and also it's worth noting that the 15 was the the biggest step forward we've seen for a while and now if we talk about the difference difference between photo and video um photography is not something that iPhones have really been making their way into the professional world, right? The cameras are very good. We'll talk about how fun they are to just kind of take photos of life around you.

But the video side has been the huge jump on the 15 Pro. They added Apple log, which is the way of encoding videos so that they're. is basically infinite flexibility to do color adjustments afterwards this is a standard format that every cinema camera uses and this is how iPhone has really become part of bigger professional workflows. It's why Apple has been shooting MLB games on the iPhone lately. It's how 28 years later was shot on it.

and looks like a regular movie. Whereas a few years ago, we had films being shot on the iPhone, but they looked like they were shot on it. You could tell. It was a novelty. And now it really just works like a regular camera. And that really started with the 15 Pro. And so if you have anything since then, the main camera will not have a huge update.

You mentioned video, and I think it's a pretty common refrain. If you pay attention to the reviews of iPhones and things like the Pixel and Samsung phones, you know, basically most flagship... phones take pretty good pictures now. But for years, the iPhone has been so far ahead on the video front, right? There are individual specs that may be better, like some phones may shoot 8K or higher frame rate.

Generally, the iPhone has been the choice for video professionals. Do you think they're holding the ground there? There's room for Samsung fans to argue about the photos and say, like, you know, maybe the Pixel or... uh, the galaxies are ahead for a moment in photography. Like you can pick and choose what you like there on the video side. There's just no competition. Like the iPhone is the only one that you will ever see on a professional set. Actually.

The only slight exception might be some of Sony's phones that nobody buys. These are not popular, the Xperia. I haven't even shot with them. But because Sony makes great cameras, they brought some of that technology over to their phones. But they're just not succeeding a lot. Those are not very popular. iPhone is the only one that is really taking into account the needs of the professional ecosystem.

And I think that's why a lot of the announcements, especially with the 17 Pro, a lot of the things they talked about for pro users don't make any sense to regular users. Like you hear the words and you're like, what are you even talking about? Like, why would I need to sync?

40 cameras together with gen lock why would i need to uh you know have perfect frame rate stability like there's all these things that just sound so niche but the point that apple's going after is that an iphone can sit on set with a bunch of other RED cameras, Alexa cameras, Sony cameras, and they can all talk to each other and cut between the final videos without the viewer noticing. The iPhone will fit right in.

And the best example is what they did with F1. So at WWDC this year, we got a tour of a F1 car and how they had integrated the cameras into the car. that were effectively, I mean, they were just iPhone sensors, right? Like it was an iPhone sensor and lens built into an F1 car and that was how they were developing.

Apple log, you know, while they were shooting F1, they were kind of building the story of like, look, we want this to be truly professional. And that's what they've achieved. And they're just pushing that every year, just a little closer and closer. to the iPhone being indistinguishable on set from all the other professional cameras. And if anybody saw the recent Pixel announcement, there was a Jonas Brothers music video. They're like, look, shot on Pixel. You can just shoot your music videos.

It looked terrible. I mean, I'm just speaking objectively. The image quality was not good. It looked like a cell phone. I would not have released that if I was Google. It doesn't meet anybody's standards of what professional video should look like. And, you know, if you put up the Olivia Rodrigo music video from two years ago.

Also shot on iPhone 15s. I mean, it looks so much better. And that was a couple of years ago. You cannot tell that that was an iPhone. So Apple really understands the needs of professionals in a way that none of the other manufacturers do right now. One of the things about that 1X camera a couple years ago is that it made me feel like I never wanted to use the other camera, the other lenses, you know, just because it was so superior.

This year, it seems like they've tried to bring, you know, last year we got parody on the, was it the wide angle last year? And this year we got parody on the Zoom. I don't know if parody is the right word, but, you know, from your vantage point. Where do we stand with respect to the additional lenses now on the iPhone Pro? So let's...

Let's talk about the ultrawide first because it's on all of them, right? It's on the 17. Oh, sorry. It's not on the air. So it's on the 17 and 17 Pro. And it's not exactly the same. Also, yeah, I should be clear again, that 1X main camera, it is not the exact same lens and sensor. on the pro and the regular 17. it is basically like a generation behind so the sensor is a little smaller that's the main difference but

You very rarely notice they are very, very close. And that's missing some of the pro features like being able to shoot in Apple Log that I mentioned and being able to shoot in Pro Raw for photography, which we haven't touched on that yet, but maybe we will. So the ultra wide has been updated and it's good to use the word parody because it gives me a chance to say that it's, it's the place that they, I'm frustrated that they didn't quite get there.

They upgraded the megapixel count to 48. But at that time, they also didn't make the sensor any bigger. And that's what really counts the most. For a long time, Apple had the story of... how they're totally comfortable keeping the resolution at 12 megapixels because they just wanted to make the sensors bigger without adding just just extra data that doesn't have resolving power you know

just because you capture more data doesn't turn into detail automatically unless you have all the components and the size of the sensor is generally the most important piece of that puzzle so when they upgraded the ultrawide the sensor didn't get any bigger. So we have some extra resolution. It's a bit of a bump, but things like low-light performance isn't any better. It's still not quite at the same level as the One X, unfortunately. And I don't want to make that

you know, I don't want to make it sound too bad. I love the ultra wide. I use it very often, but I'm very excited for it to reach actual parody and be as good as the one X. And I think a lot of people would notice this with, say, close up photos, right? When you have that experience of even if you're let's say you're taking a photo of a document and you start moving your phone in closer to it. And once you're I kind of forget the number, it's like maybe.

eight inches away it'll switch lenses it'll jump from the 1x to the ultra wide so that you can use the macro photography mode great feature but the quality goes down because the ultra wide which is used for macro the quality is Not as good. And you can see it in the photo. So ultrawide, it's been getting better. It's not all the way there. I'm hoping for more in the future that's still one to keep your eye on.

All right. What are good uses for that ultra-wide lens, given those caveats? I mean, where do you use it? Oh, I still just use it. I use it for everything. It is a little... less great but it is so fun that i don't i never decide not to use it because of that quality um except maybe very low light that's the one time where it's like no it could kind of ruin your shot using the ultra wide in the dark

not great everything else it is such a fun lens i feel like people should lean into it a bit more uh you know it can just be something as simple as capturing a space like i want to know what this room looks like That ultra wide is the best way to do it. And I think we've all gotten a little used to how wide that is, right? It's about 13 millimeters, which before iPhones added that 13 millimeters was like.

beyond ultra wide usually on uh full frame systems you're talking about 16 millimeters that's standard been standard ultra wide for a long time And now it's just kind of been bumped to even a wider field of view. So I think people should really take advantage of that and lean into it. It's really fun to do. It gives you a bit of distortion, which can be.

fun you know like uh just if you're taking pictures of people don't put them in the corner where their face will get distorted unless you want that you know but just realize it'll look a little goofy but uh you know in general i'm a huge fan of the ultra wide and i think people should

lean into it. And often, you know, when, if you're thinking about just taking one on the one X, try zooming out, just see, just see how it feels to get that difference of look. And a lot of the time you, you might find you enjoy it a little more.

Okay, now flip to the other side. We got the increased zoom lens this year. How are they doing with that one? That was a pretty great jump. They had 5X last year, which I think a lot of people might have seen that as a step down because 4 is a lower number than 5. To me, I don't... If I don't think in terms of 4x and 5x, if I think about millimeters on a big camera, the 4x is so much closer to a common focal length, which is about 100 millimeters.

that would be used so much more often. That's kind of a portrait length. What's important is that as you get a bigger and bigger zoom, if you have 10x, 20x, now your subject has to be...

a mile away from you. Now they're 20 feet away and you have to make sure that nothing is in between you and them. So if you're taking a picture in public and there's... traffic you know as people walking by then they're crossing in front of your frame it it atmosphere can start to add up and if it's a little hazy you'll see that difference like there's a usually when you're shooting most things

with a big camera, you're living in the range of about like, you know, maybe 16 millimeters on the wide, all the way to about 100. I mean, like we're saying 100, the most one of the most popular zoom lenses is 24 to 105. That's the range that normal photography happens in. So the iPhone going from 13 millimeters up to 100 is very representative of what professional cameras do. And it works much better for me.

than the way that the 5X did. And what they did was made the sensor larger, which I was just talking about how important that is. That's so much of what improves image quality. That 4X is now.

a larger surface area, more pixels to capture the light, and you can see the improvement for sure. Because they had those extra pixels, they added the option of an 8x cropped zoom. Apple calls it optical, which I think just... confuses everybody they're not lying but it it does confuse things a lot i would think of it as a crop um so you can zoom in up to eight

times, and it will still look acceptable. And yeah, that's it. I'm a big fan of it. A little tip as well, if you're trying to decide how much to zoom in, I strongly recommend not... uh like pinching to zoom or using that zoom toggle at the end where you might end up at let's say 1.3 times zoom or you could be at you know 5.6 times zoom

You want to generally be on the numbers because Apple is processing the image differently depending on the number that you're at. So 7.9 will look a little bit worse than 8.0. So I would just tap on those lenses when you're trying to select how zoomed in you want to be. Something I've been experimenting with with the 4X is shooting portraits with it, where I'll get like a nice picture of my wife and...

It gets actual bokeh. It's not fake bokeh. And it looks pretty good. And I've never been able to do that with an iPhone before. So I feel like that's kind of a benefit I've noticed.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that it allows people to explore real bokeh on their phone. Because yeah, like you're saying, it's hard to get generally, you know, it's either that you use the 4X or you can go. kind of as close as you can with the one X. Those are the two ways to see real bokeh. But other than that, a lot of people just turn on portrait mode, which, you know, it's fun, but it's not the same as, as real blur. Well, what about that? As a, as a somebody who.

works with really good cameras and gets actual bokeh with proper lenses. Is portrait mode now, I feel like a lot of photographers were negative towards it when it first came out. Has it got better? I think they stopped working on it. I haven't seen it really move forward other than being easier to use. The fact that you can choose it later I think is great. But I find...

I still try not to use it that often on like human subjects or maybe I'll put it this way. I try to make the photo work without portrait mode, like whether I use it in or not in the end, it will look good either way. I'm not. relying on this blur to turn it into a nice photo then later you know optionally i might turn on a little bit of blur just to have some separation so that there's more attention on the subject than on the background but

It still will trim hairs off people's heads. You know, when I use it on our cats, I find like. The fuzz around their ears does not look right. I think we kind of need a step change. I don't think it'll incrementally get a lot better. I think we need Apple to...

you know, do their version 2.0 using some new method to before we're going to see the next big jump, which I think will come. I've seen demonstrations of how this could be possible. But right now, that's that's the main limitation is if there's a quite a bit of like. fuzzy hair, you'll still see that get cropped off. So I'd be very careful about how much portrait mode you use. I just turn it down. Yeah. And now you can even adjust some of that.

in the photos app, which is pretty cool. They're saving a lot of that metadata now. We can go in and tweak it. I think a lot of people imagine that the way it's happening is with the LiDAR sensor. I've heard people incorrectly say that. Or even that when they first released these features, it was using the two cameras. It works just as well on the air. So this is all AI now. This is machine learning that creates the depth. So it is only using one of the lenses.

Again, the air does as good of a job as the others, which is that that is a step forward because I know earlier this required a little more complexity to make it work. And now we're at the point that just one camera can handle it. Another big change this year with the iPhones was the front-facing camera, the selfie camera, where it's kind of a unique thing, right? Apple's calling it a square sensor. It's 18 megapixel.

It lets you do things like instead of turning the phone horizontally, which is going to be like an awkward way to hold a phone, you can hold the phone vertically, but still take a horizontal picture. I guess it crops the sensor. What is your impression been of that new system? This is maybe my favorite. This is the biggest clear win. There is no downside, like no way to look at the upgrade to the sensor to the selfie camera as anything but amazing.

The idea of a square sensor is pretty uncommon, and it's actually something that has been my hobby horse for a while. I've got tweets going back. five or six years saying, why doesn't everybody have a square sensor? This would be the best. And seeing it adopted in such a mainstream way was really validating for me.

So the advantages, like the reason you want to do this is like you're saying, now you just have more flexibility about how you're holding your phone. And the selfie camera is the best for that because you are both. looking at the image and shooting at the same time in a way that's just kind of a different experience from, you know, when you're shooting something other than yourself.

so it has the biggest impact there but again that sensor size that i was talking about not only did they make it square but it's a larger surface area in total so whether you're shooting vertical or horizontal you have more sensor to work with than you ever did in the past and they put a wider lens on there too so you've every single thing about it looks better

much better than it did before i actually saw somebody quoting that the like the light captured per pixel is uh there's there's more pixel density on the new selfie camera than on the previous ultra wides so The selfie camera should be doing a better job than the ultra wide did back in like the iPhone 14, which is pretty amazing. You know, now we're seeing the selfie catch up with some of the front facing lenses, which I.

I wasn't sure whatever happened because they just neglected the selfie camera so much. So yeah, I mean, it's a huge win. If anybody is creating content that revolves around that type of shooting, like let's say TikTok. where you spend a lot of time just talking to your phone and you need to see yourself, it is worth the upgrade just for that. This was the biggest change to the camera system this year.

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Now we've got an iPhone. We want to take good photography. Can you walk us through what's a good workflow for somebody out there that wants to take nice pictures with their iPhone? I think following the path of least resistance is... kind of the best advice I can give right here is that, you know, Apple wants this to be easy for you. They want every single photo to turn out. And we'll talk about some things that, you know, if you want to go past the basics, what you can do, but.

i still spend most of my time in the default camera app that's what most of the photos and videos we capture are with because it has just the most flexibility it's the most responsive you can access it instantly because there's some level of priority in the in iOS that Apple gives to their own camera systems. So anytime you're using a third-party camera, they are great. We'll talk about some awesome third-party camera apps that let you do a lot more.

But they don't have that same really deep integration with the phone. And so an example of that is your ability to jump back and forth between photos and videos. It's always the fastest and the most reliable.

within the default camera app. If I were to kind of give any advice to how you could use it differently than just like how it's set up out of the box, I've made a few videos about this. I try to go through all the settings that you want to change. So without going into that much detail right now, I'd say.

One of the bigger things is that if there is anything dark in your image that is supposed to be dark, like a common example, you're inside of a car interior and maybe your roof is dark gray or black. And your phone will want to expose everything evenly, right? Like it'll kind of want to make everything a bit bright. And so a lot of people's selfie videos or photos sitting inside of a car will look.

kind of weirdly overexposed, weirdly HDR, or if you're wearing a black sweater, anything where there's just like a bunch of intentional darkness in the frame, bring the exposure down. And the two best ways to do that is you can either tap on screen and then drag down. Or what I use even more often is if you slide up from the bottom or press, well, this is all changed. So I should clarify this is for iOS 26 or newer.

either slide up from the bottom or in the top right, there is six dots and you can tap on that. They will both bring up the same menu. From there, you want to go to exposure. And I generally bring that slider down by about negative 0.7. sometimes negative 0.3, but a lot of the photos and videos I take day to day are in that range. And that's mostly about making the darkest parts of the image as dark as they are supposed to be.

Just doing that can often fix a lot of that cell phone look of your iPhone photography. And I find it goes a long way. A lot of people are overexposing their images. You mentioned there are third party.

camera apps out there. When do you know that you're kind of at the tipping point where the stock camera app isn't quite enough? To me, it's about your final delivery of the photo, photo or video. Where's this going to end up? And so if I'm shooting things for our personal Instagram or TikTok, that's usually in the default camera app. If I'm shooting things for YouTube.

Since I need that to look great on a big screen, that's when I'm going to open up typically Blackmagic camera. That's my favorite that I'll have the most to say about. But it's the most complicated. So that's why we'll mention some others. I use Blackmagic Camera all the time. It's free. It is very professional. Blackmagic is a huge company that makes amazing gear.

uh generally yeah it's like if i know that this will be seen on a larger screen than a phone now i'm switching over to something a little more Pro. And then with photography, I find that I don't need to launch third-party apps as often because if I want it to look amazing, if I really want to get the most out of it, all I need to do is switch over to Pro Raw mode. I mentioned that before.

It's only available on the pro iPhones. So this is something you're missing out if you have an air or an iPhone 17, but pro raw is a, you know, Apple approved raw format. So they are still doing some processing. Whereas if I shoot on, uh, you know, my Canon or my Lumix or a splatter or whatever, you're getting a raw photo that is, um, there's no opinion from the manufacturer, right? They're like.

We're just giving you data. You can do what you want with it. Lightroom is going to add some color to it. Or if you're using Capture One, like the software will turn the data into a final image. Apple is like, look, the sensor is pretty small. We know some tricks to make your image look amazing. We'll give you the flexibility of raw while fixing the weaknesses of a mobile sensor that is not as big as full frame.

Just go into your settings, go to camera and make sure that Pro Raw is available. If you are using anything newer than an iPhone 16. I would also make sure to let me check and check as I do this that I'm going to the right place. So this is inside of camera. Then you go to formats and for pro raw format, change this to JPEG XL.

lossy. You don't have to know too much about what that format is. It doesn't change anything for your workflow later, but it will make the files about a fifth as the size. So instead of. something like 80, 90 megabytes, you're going to be getting closer to between 10 and 20. It's a huge difference. And shooting in RAW is what gives you all of the quality of your sensor. And that's when you see...

photography work coming from an iPhone that looks like a big camera. If you just shoot with like regular HEIC or JPEG. those will look more processed that's when it's like okay this is probably from an iphone but the raw format that's when it starts to be like oh is this a big camera like i can't really tell anymore but it requires some editing to get to that point so you know it is a bit more advanced

You're going to have to watch a YouTube video or two if you want to learn how to work with RAW. But that's how you get the absolute maximum image quality out of your iPhone Pro. All right. And so where do you see that tipping point now?

In 2025, where do you go from using an iPhone to take pictures to say, well, maybe I do need a Lumix or a fancy camera? Oh, this is a tough, that's a tough question. I don't even know if I could have prepared for that because it's, I mean, it's very personal. You know, I think there's a lot of people that aspire to take better photos. talk themselves into buying a big camera because they're like, I love photography. I need a big camera.

and then they leave it at home because it's a big camera you know i think i think a lot of it's being honest about yourself uh with yourself about how you want to carry it around i find it's worth it for me that even for let's say for family events, like we're just all having dinner together. We're going to like see the nephews or whatever, like everybody's getting together. That's actually, to me, the most important time to bring a bigger camera.

There's a lot of options out there that aren't as large, like Fuji is a great place to look for that size, like the X100, which is very popular. That's why it's so popular is because it's... pretty compact, and will still take noticeably better photos than your phone. So I like to bring a camera of that size kind of everywhere I can. For me, that's the Leica Q3. It's my preferred.

kind of daily walk around camera. But, you know, this kind of goes back to what I was saying about video. It's like, where is it going to end up, right? Those photos I'm taking at family events, I like to make a photo book at the end of the year where I'm printing these pretty big into a large book. The difference jumps out at you. It definitely looks nicer than an iPhone as it expands. You get more of that real bokeh.

Lens characteristics stand out, more resolution, all of this. But if you're looking at it on a screen, it's not quite as important. So that's... the frame of mind i'm usually in when i'm choosing between cameras where will this go how big will i ever look at it do i want this to be my desktop background that's when a bigger camera will go a long way

Um, you know, or you can just enjoy photography and sometimes it's fun to carry around gear. You know, actually another way to think about this. Some people. appreciate the separation between their phone, which they already live on all day. Like we spend so much time on our phone and then just having something that's like for the creative process. I think it's a lot of the reason that the DJI pocket.

I'm mangling the name. Osmo Pocket 3. Yeah. It's so popular because people just want to separate it. Like, look, I'm sick of my phone. Like, I'm going to be on my phone all day anyway. Let me create with a different tool that is very convenient into my pocket already. I don't find that the Osmo is enough better than a phone to justify that. So for me, it's that I reach for an even bigger camera.

Yeah, that's the that maybe be the other reason. If it just makes you feel more creative, then go for it. You know, I think there is something about physical gear that can inspire you. It is interesting to me, though, that it's about feels now more than it's about quality. For most people, you're going to get really good pictures if you master your iPhone. Absolutely. You can go as far as you want with your iPhone. You could...

You know, you might have a hard time. I was going to say you could have a career with your iPhone. You could take all the photos you need in the world with your iPhone and it could appear in any magazine if you knew how to use your phone well enough. There's some magazines that wouldn't hire you because they...

you just won't look professional or, you know, if you show up at a wedding and you're only shooting on your phone, they might, uh, feel like you're charging too much, but you could shoot, you can make an amazing wedding video or shoot the photos. no problem on a phone these days. I think a lot of it's just about, you know, you don't have quite as much flexibility. You may want to print those photos much bigger someday, but the possibility is really infinite on what you can do with the modern.

iPhones. So going back to apps, we mentioned the Blackmagic app, but like you said, it's really complicated. And I looked at the website and was freaked out. What are some things that may be more approachable to someone who wants to get in slightly deeper waters?

Well, how about I go through my photo and video folder? So on my main screen of my phone, these are the apps that I reach for all the time. First party app from Apple is Final Cut Camera. So that's kind of. a comfortable option to get into it's a free download as well and it'll give you a lot of the same tools that blackmagic camera does

but with a friendlier interface. And there's not as many options. You can't go as deep. So that's why I still use Blackmagic. But I think it's a little easier to start learning those features within Final Cut Camera. I would also take a look at Halide. for photography specifically. And that gives you access to all of those.

manual tools that you might be used to if you ever tried a bigger camera. If you're learning how to operate a bigger camera, you could practice a lot of that in Halide. They're just those developers understand what camera systems should be like and will really kind of prepare you. for that bigger world of it. And then I would also take a look at Kino, K-I-N-O, also from the same developers, that offer a...

pretty streamlined video solution where you don't have to do anything. The automatic mode will work great. And a tip for that is that if you have an iPhone Pro. and you switch it into Apple Log mode, you'll find one of my LUTs is in there. It's called Stallman Film 3. And if you turn that on while you're using Apple Log, you're going to get what looks like a color corrected movie.

As you're shooting. So you it's using that whole color pipeline that Apple developed for F1. That is how professional movies are made, but it's all done for you ahead of time. So you don't get to tweak it, but you just kind of get the final results that could blend into a movie. I mean, once you kind of see it, if you just play around with that, you'll...

get a sense of how close it can look to a bigger camera. And Kino is a great way to just like get started with that. And your videos will look much more professional with minimal effort. David, do you use any third party camera apps? I primarily use the Apple app just because of the ease of use, but I am not a pro user. I've actually been taking notes here as Tyler talks, so I'm going to give a couple of these a try.

Well, do you ever use ProRAW? Have you tried that, David? Yeah, I'm intimidated by it. I think I need to, like you said, just watch some videos and figure it out. So what I do for my actual kind of production work, I have some nice Sony cameras with good lenses that, you know, they're full frame and they take great, great video.

But for the fun stuff, I just use the built-in Apple video format. And every time I watch one of your videos and you do that thing where you scan across the image before and after. And it looks so much better. I tell myself, I need to do this. But I haven't. And now I've got this camera that people are literally using for professional video stuff. I feel like...

I need to go there, but I guess that's, this is me waffling the answer to say, no, I don't, but I'd like to. Sure. It doesn't take that long to, to get good enough at it, to have those results. A lot of it is just kind of connecting the dots of, you know, here's the software that I loaded into. Here's the preset that I apply. And now I'm happy with it. So, you know, I find.

easiest way for the pro raw photos is to do that through Lightroom, which, you know, that's, that's a subscription. So not everybody's interested in that affinity has just made all of their stuff free. So you could also do it there, but once you're in there, you can kind of just turn off apples.

baked in looks or, you know, I've presets that do that for you in Lightroom. And then in the video world, it's LUTs that will do that. And that's called short for a lookup table. It's like a standard format that is like a preset and just like, look, just slap this on top.

And now your video looks nice. And you just need to figure out that workflow. And you do some really great LUTs that you share and some you sell. So the workflow I've used when I've experimented with this has all been in Final Cut, where... you just push a button and suddenly it looks better but it feels a little odd to me like i don't really understand what's going on and for a bunch of reasons we've moved my kind of production video stuff over

to DaVinci Resolve, and I don't have any clue how I would fix it in DaVinci, just because I've never looked into it. I'm sure maybe it's not that difficult. But yeah, you have inspired me with that question. I'm going to try and really make an effort.

to take some look, if you're already, if you're already using final cut in DaVinci resolve, then you're ahead of a lot of people who would be afraid to even open those up. So you, you've probably already got more of the skills than you think. Yeah. Well, and I use, to be fair, I use those for the. the field guides and the stuff I make as max Sparky, I don't like put family videos into them. So that's something I haven't really explored. Ah, it is.

It is something I need to look into deeper. But the flip side is the video that it shoots raw. I'm sorry, not raw. Just the basic video format when you're at a birthday party looks pretty good.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's those times that it will just do the better. There's not enough reason to switch over and just go for it and make sure your exposure is nice and that the focus is in the right place. And a lot of that's just kind of... getting comfortable with that default camera app knowing how how to set exposure like we were talking about earlier how to when it's appropriate to lock focus for example if maybe your focus is jumping back and forth you can tap and hold

on the subject and then you're not going to have that jittering look while it goes back and forth on different focus points. But, you know, those things are pretty quick to pick up. Yeah. Can we dive in on that? Because I think that's something a lot of people struggle with.

What do they call that? Focus hunting, I think, where you're shooting video and it keeps jumping between two different people and it's really off-putting because you can watch it switch between. How does somebody just using their iPhone... lock focus so the way apple's great at this the autofocus is better than a lot of bigger cameras part of the reason is that we don't have that bokeh like the blurry background's not there so

less is out of focus. So it does a great job of getting things in focus most of the time. When you, the exceptions will often be, if you're zoomed in, it's a great example. You're using your Forex, maybe you're at a sporting event.

and the people in front of you are cheering and raising their hands, those hands will suddenly seem like the most important thing in the frame. And the iPhone is going to be like, oh, I should focus on this closer subject to me. Because that's how the phone typically evaluates the scene.

is its priority is partly proximity. Like the closer it is to the lens, the more important the phone thinks that the subject is. And then it also recognizes faces and it makes those a really strong priority. But so if it's... getting those priorities wrong and judging incorrectly, then the easiest thing to do is tap and hold on whatever the real subject is, and it's going to lock on there. The thing to be careful of, though, is that the focus and the exposure are connected.

So sometimes I find people are trying to, let's say, lower the exposures while they're moving. So like if you're going to like, you know, not just stand in one place, but walk towards the subject and you've locked the exposure. You've also locked the focus. So now the person might end up being out of focus when you get close to them. So that's the limitation on how you can do this with the default camera app is that locking focus.

or locking exposure, you should also lock your position in space. You probably can't get a lot closer or further from the subject as you do that. Yeah, you do one feature in your review every year where you do like a... You're walking across like a field and you focus on something kind of far away with the Zoom. I am always impressed with that feature. And I want to find more ways to use that in my daily photography and videography. But I love that you share that.

Yeah, I mean, if you use it daily, you'll have some pretty crazy daily videos. It's, you know, and I think the best use for me is in those review videos because it just makes a great impression. If you can't picture. what David's talking about here. It's basically what Michael Bay does all the time. That's kind of his signature camera move where the subject is in the middle and you, the camera goes really far away from whatever you're shooting and zooms in.

and then circles around the subject so you're still looking at them but you're walking quickly and the reason you couldn't you usually do that on a phone is that as you zoom in your footage gets much more shaky right like you need some amazing stabilization for that to work so in the professional world you would lay down a track that is in a circle and the camera would roll along that track and you'd get a smooth shot

Now we can do it in the iPhone with the combination of the physical lens stabilization built into the phone and also the digital. stabilization that the phone does as soon as you shoot, like as soon as you see the final video, it's already stabilized. You don't have to do any extra steps and it does an amazing job. And I think a lot of people just don't realize how much is happening here.

Because we're just kind of used to our footage looking so good without thinking about how it got that way. If you look at video from an older iPhone, what was the first iPhone with video on it? I mean, the 3GS didn't have it, but it's been a while now. It's very shaky, like just walking will see major vibrations as you go. And they've taken so much of that away so that now as you're walking, it looks very smooth. If you want that really intense Michael Bay shot.

where you're circling, um, you'll also possibly want to turn on action mode and that will crop in a little more. So your, your image will be even zoomed in further. But when you see the results, it just it does blow your mind. You're like, how how is this stable? Like I was all over the place. I could well, I was looking at it. My subject was moving in and out of frame like it. There's no way this is going to turn out.

And magically at the end, you know, action mode has stabilized it and really brought everything to look like a smooth shot. And it blows me away every time. I don't think you need to use action mode in your daily video, though. It's a it's a cool party trick, but most of the time. the way that stabilization runs in the background is excellent and you can just lean on it. And it's, you know, as long as you're walking as smooth as you can, the iPhone is going to do the rest.

Yeah, stabilization has come so far. I remember a few years ago, I was shooting a bunch of video, and I think this was with the iPhone 15 Pro, and I ordered one of those little handheld gimbals. I think the Osmo one, the one that everybody uses. Sure, yeah, yeah. And it showed up and I took it out and I tested it and then I tested without it.

And I literally could not tell the difference. It just felt to me like the built-in stabilization so good. I actually sent it back because I'm like, this isn't going to make any notable improvement. And it's a lot of stuff to carry. I don't know. You've already talked about some stabilization techniques, but is there anything else anybody should be doing, or what's your general feeling on that right now with the iPhone video?

It's all in inside of you. The secret is inside of you all along. It's really about how you walk and how you hold the camera. Yeah. You know, I talked about the Osmo Pocket 3 a minute ago, which is so popular now. And when people love a camera, I don't want to tell them they're wrong. If you're enjoying it, you should keep using it. But I think a lot of the footage that comes from the Osmo.

I find much shakier than iPhone footage. And I think part of that is psychological that you're holding this gimbal and you think the gimbals got you covered, right? You're like, I can do anything now. Like I can jump around, I can run, I can. bounce and it's all the the gimbal has got me covered but it only stabilizes well to a certain point importantly it does not stabilize on the z-axis meaning up and down right and when you step

That's a lot of the movement is like from, you know, how close it is to the ground to how high it goes. That's moving as you walk. And the gimbal can't do anything about that. So I think people are holding that and they move more aggressively because they think it's going to be fixed. Whereas when they're holding a phone, they're more cautious because they think it's going to be shaky, but the phone's amazing. So you've got like people are more thoughtful.

So, you know, there's no system that can make up for your actual physical movement. You've. you've got to do the best you can at the beginning, but the technology can take you a long way after that to taking your already kind of stable footage and making it rock solid. So yeah, it really does just kind of start with how you step.

not bouncing around too much. Then the other problem with video that people forget about is audio, right? If you have bad audio, the video never looks good. And how's Apple doing on that? What are some tips people may want to consider? to get better audio when they shoot video on their iphone The most important thing for audio is always proximity to the mic. I mean, you guys podcast, you're very familiar with this theory. The microphones built in are amazing.

But typically people's problems with audio are not technical. It's not due to anything inside the phone. It's, you know, you're using it wrong. And in the same way, we're talking about stabilization, like you still need to. Follow the laws of physics, which means get your phone as close to you as possible while you're recording. if you are recording videos that require the camera to be further away then it's time to look into getting one of the many wireless options that are available now like

There's tons of them out there. They're very affordable. The ones I recommend that I like the most are either from Rode, R-O-D-E, or from DJI. They both make great, super small, pocketable, great battery life. pretty cheap microphone systems that will massively upgrade.

the quality of your audio but again most of that isn't because the mic is is so much better in there it's that it's mounted on you right you're putting the microphone like on your lapel you're going to hold it or whatever you're going to do and then your camera can be a little further away from you

There is a cool feature, though, if you don't have any third party stuff available. After you've recorded your video, you don't have to do anything special during. You don't even have to remember. You can go into videos you've already recorded and do this. You can, I'm doing this now, so make sure I follow the steps. Look at a video you've recorded, hit edit, which is, you know, your typical trimming stuff. And there was an option that was new in the iPhone 16 called audio mix.

And inside, you've got a few different options. You've got standard, in-frame, studio, and cinematic. You can explore all of those, but I think a good default for most people is to start with in-frame. And the idea is that it's doing... some noise removal on anything that is not directly in front of the lens which is probably you or whoever you're recording and so it'll bring through that vocal sound much more clearly and um

with virtually zero effort. You just change that setting and click done. You've now got much clearer audio coming through. So when you've got no other tools available, that's a great workaround. Also, a promised feature that I believe has shipped now but I haven't tested yet is that you can use an AirPod as a microphone connected to your two phones. Oh, yes.

I talked about that in my review and I was very excited about it. Thanks for reminding me. Yeah. I mean, this is kind of, we've been in this weird place where you're like, well, you know. I know that the mic is fine in my AirPods. I don't think it's a bad mic. But then you call somebody and they're like, I can't hear you on your AirPod. And it's close to your mouth. It should be working. Or if you've ever tried to record voice memos with it.

Or you might have noticed that you couldn't use your AirPod to record video. Like it just doesn't connect as a microphone before. Well, now that is solved. This was an iOS 26 feature and it does work with older AirPods as long as. They have, oh, I don't remember which chip. I mentioned it in my video. But it's about, you know, I know like AirPods Pro 2 will support it and AirPods Pro 3. And it's all about the Bluetooth signal that they're sending to your phone. They just need.

like a bit more bandwidth and a bit better access than they had in the past. And now you've got a real sounding microphone that is it's, you know, I wouldn't say it's on par with the DJI and the, and the. road that i mentioned earlier but it's like right there like it's basically as good if you just put in an airpod you switch to that being your microphone of choice which you got to make sure that it is set because uh by

Default, it'll try to use your AirPod, but I have experienced it still using the internal mic. So, you know, check. by tapping on your AirPod if that is the source of the audio. But you can get really great audio. Again, like you're saying, that distance... You know, the distance issue can become resolved because you've already got an AirPod in your ear, put the camera five feet away, and now it sounds like you're right up against it.

Yeah. And just to, I'll follow up with the third party mics. I bought a set of DJI mics. I don't, it's, I think it's two or three generations ago now, and I've felt no need to upgrade them because they're excellent. And the reason I bought the DJI is because they had the USB-C receiver. So you just plug it into the bottom of the phone. It's just so easy to use these things. And if you're going to like...

shoot some family video or, you know, talk to some of your older relatives and talk about growing up. That's what kind of got me to get into these things. They're great and they're not that expensive and the audio is just stellar with those. Yeah, I'm a huge fan.

So we've talked about iPhone hardware, iPhone software, but the iPhone does exist in this rich ecosystem of third-party hardware, ways to mount phones to a bunch of different things. gimbals, all sorts of stuff. Tyler, what are some of the things that you turn to? I know one of them has your name on it. I'm teeing you up for that. Some accessories that can be helpful in iPhone photography or video.

Sure. I generally like to keep it pretty simple. A lot of the work that we do, I kind of have nothing but a case on my phone. I like to keep it as simple as possible. But there are a few kind of key... things that I think everybody needs to have available. One of them being the microphone that we talked about already. And the other is a good clamp, which I happen to make one. So thanks for bringing it up. It's called the Stallman clamp.

um there's lots out there i don't want to say that mine's the only one mine is more on the professional side so it's going to it's basically made out of like the same aluminum grade material that uh bigger camera rigs are. The company I worked with, Condor Blue, they make rigs for Aerial Xs and Reds and cinema cameras used on set all the time. So it's built to that same standard. You can go pick up an Amazon cheapie if you don't care about any of that. And I would just.

be looking for a way to keep your phone stable so that as you're using it, it is not vibrating too much. Like I've, what's frustrated me is having a secure, I secure my phone to something and. as i tap record it's shaking enough that it slightly changes the composition like now the phone's twisted it's bouncing around or you can see that it vibrates when i hit record

So that's kind of the test I would do. That's like the benchmark for me. It's like I would just want my phone to not move as I interact with it and I'm recording things. So that along with a tripod, there's a million of those out there, but I would.

try you know i try to get one that has some metal built into it there's a lot of cheaper plastic ones i think we've kind of moved on from these days like they there used to be less options available on the market and i think now it's there's a lot i don't know check out small rig as as an affordable example um but just something that is pretty solid that all the way from the ground to your camera things aren't moving

I would add to that a pocketable tripod. There's some really good small ones. Oh, sure. You can get some great pictures. Because we go to Disney a lot. My wife works for the company. And like you've got a pocket tripod and a trash can, you could take a pretty good picture. Yeah, no, for sure. There's, yeah, there's some that can kind of clamp onto railings and stuff pretty easily.

There's like a popular accessory is the little suction cup cases so that people will just like attach it to a window or attach it to a mirror and then you can film yourself while your phone is just locked in space there. Yeah, there's lots of fun stuff out there. I would say, though, you know, just caution people to like, don't go buy 50 accessories at once. Like if you just got your first iPhone Pro.

Don't buy all the accessories in the same moment. Buy them as you need them, as you can actually think of a real world use for them. And then you're much less likely to have a bunch of junk sitting around your house that you may not end up using. Do you ever get third party light sources? Like when you go out and shoot with your iPhone, the idea of lighting. Absolutely. Okay. Well, what do you prefer for that? Ours is on the more professional side, you know, for like family stuff. I don't.

do that a lot. But if you're getting into this phase, especially let's say you're going to start making YouTube videos, I'd be looking at Amaran as a brand. They're definitely my favorite. Um, they come from aperture, which is another sister brand of theirs, but they are now two separate brands and everything they make is fantastic. Uh, anything from little pocketable battery lights, which, you know, I throw one of those in my bag when I'm, let's say I'm going to an app.

event and I need to record in my hotel room, I'll have something smaller or there's plug-in wall lights that like there's one sitting in front of me right now that's permanently in front of my desk so I can turn it on to record video at any time. Or if you want a secondary brand option, the other that I use a lot of is Nanlite. So you can take a look at both of those and just kind of pick based on the size that you need. I think the most important non-obvious thing.

is that if you want the light to be soft, which most people do most of the time, you don't want hard shadows, you kind of need the light source to get bigger. So that's why people will put a soft box in front of it. But just adding.

a like a translucent fabric isn't enough so for example i just picked up a new like i'm saying this amaran battery pack and it's got a little clip-on diffusion plastic piece in the front and that does soften it a little bit but if the light source is small and this one is it's maybe six inches the shadows will be hard to get soft light you need your light source to be

big, like at least maybe two feet. Or if you're lighting a bigger area, that's when you'd get a bigger softbox. It's maybe three or four feet. So keep that in mind. If you're trying to get soft light, you can't really do it from a small source. buying a bunch of diffusion, uh, accessories won't get you there. I use, um, cause I'm cheap and don't do as much of this as you do. I like the, the umbrellas. A lot of times you can get an umbrella. Oh, totally. Yeah.

Yeah, very cheap. No, I still use umbrellas too. There's nothing wrong with umbrellas. And if you want an even cheaper solution, what I did in my last hotel room for the iPhone event actually is I brought a little 60 watt. nan light that fit in my suitcase, very compact and kind of has a bit of a spotlight look. So if I pointed it at me, it'd be too harsh. I just turn it around.

bounce it into the curtains. And now the wall in the curtains with the light bouncing around, that is now the big source, right? So if you look at the circle that the light is shining on the wall, that circle is like five feet. wide that's how big my light source is now and it becomes very soft so that's the cheap answer when you don't have other tools or accessories you can shoot the light into the corner and the bounce back is how it gets softer as long as your walls are white

And you have been always my teacher on this stuff. You've done some great kind of tutorials in Final Cut. But along the way, I ended up...

switching over to DaVinci Resolve. And so I was just curious, where do you stand these days in terms of editing software? What's the good stuff? So I still use Final Cut for almost everything. for all of our editing and i'm constantly tempted to switch to resolve i don't think you made a bad choice at all a lot of that depends on your needs for me final cut is by far the fastest way to edit there's just there's nothing else like it in terms of

having an idea that has been recorded and you just need to organize it. You need to cut through footage. That happens the fastest in Final Cut. So if that's what a lot of your work is, I think there's no better place to be. If you're going to be doing sort of more complex edits, like you're going to dig deeper into them, Resolve has infinitely more tools. It is a much, much deeper program. And the way that I use it is in developing the LUTs that I sell is...

using the color tools in Resolve. It is a professional colorist suite. That's its whole origin was that it was only color in the background. And you can learn Resolve for a decade and you won't know it all. There's as much as you could ever want to use in there. So it's all about depth. And of course, it's worth mentioning, you know, Premiere is still around and popular. So if anybody wants to use Adobe Premiere, there's nothing wrong with it. But I've used it less and less lately.

Yeah, I just never got on the Adobe bandwagon, so I've never learned it. And the reason I went to DaVinci was that I have an editor that does work for me, and that's what he prefers. So I thought, well, I should work in the same thing he does. But it really just took with me because it's a very, I understand it's complex, but it's also very simple. It's easy to kind of get in at the beginning. There's a list of tools at the bottom of the screen. Your workflow is laid out for you.

And you get to the end and you've got a pretty good video. I find the only downside can be if you're distracted by all those other features and you're like, oh, no, I need to know what all of this does or I can't use Resolve. If you can just. Like it sounds like you're doing, you know, just focus on the features that you need at that time and realize that it's fine if you if you take a while to kind of learn your way around all of it. But like you're saying for collaborating.

It's got a lot more available than Final Cut does. Teams working together can both be editing the same project at the same time, which is amazing, just working on the same timeline. So you can really do a lot with Resolve. It's amazing.

I got one more question for you. It's not in our outline. I just wanted to spring it on you. Tim Cook calls you and he says, Tyler, we're going to put you in charge of the camera team. All right. What's the first thing you're going to do? So, I mean, any chance, anytime I have the ear of anyone at Apple, I kind of pitch my big outline, hoping that I'll get that Tim Cook call because, hey, I'd love to steer the ship.

But my bigger vision for it right now is that I think they've done such an amazing job of making iPhone style, but mobile style photography really accessible so that... Anybody can take a great image without having to learn any real skill set. They can just press the button and it works. And I'd start moving it into the world that we had before digital took over. So if you think back to the point-and-shoot cameras you might have grown up with, they all used a 35mm frame of film.

So you had full frame in your point and shoot that could be the cheapest. It could be a disposable camera and it's shooting on the same size of film as everything else. And that film is developed by either, you know, Kodak. or Fuji, who has color scientists that are kind of optimizing for not accuracy, but beauty. So if you go through and look at a lot of people's film photos from back in the day, I don't think it's all nostalgia that makes us love.

I think it's that what Kodak and Fuji were optimizing for was a slightly more... creative interpretation of what the colors of the world look like. And there's a beauty to that look that I think we've lost in modern digital. As we transitioned from film to digital, it was more about precision and this is accurately capturing the world.

Of course, there's a place for that. There's reasons to just make it as accurate as possible. But I think a lot of people would enjoy something that felt a bit more organic and a bit more... like the beautiful accidents we had back in the day shooting film photography. So I'd be looking for paths to bring that sense of a more complete color profile and contrast profile.

removing some of that over sharpening and all the things that I'm after when I, let's say, shoot a pro raw photo and then I edit it in Lightroom. The final goal there is like a much less technically perfect image. It's a little bit softer. The colors are optimized towards like what our brains respond to more than what is.

you know, a calibration monitor would necessarily see. And that's the direction that I'd open the iPhone camera up to with ease of use. You know, I would look for ways that, you know, you could easily sort of. directed into that mode of like, look, I'm not looking for accuracy today. I'm looking for beauty. And you could easily take those photos without learning any of the technical skills. And I just, I 100%.

think that's achievable. And we've already kind of proven it with apps. Like I was saying, like with Kino, how you can build in this color profile and just shoot to it without changing any manual settings or doing color grading yourself. I think it's. totally achievable and i'd love to see them move in that direction yeah in fact i kind of like the um the android cameras kind of have more of a reputation of that of like increased saturation and not as accurate but delightful

Photos, right? Yeah, but I don't think they're doing it well. I think the better example is, have you ever used a Fuji camera? My daughter has one, and yes, she loves it, and I've seen her pictures out of it.

I would do it a little differently than Fuji. I have some notes, but they're taking that direction where it's like, this is why Fuji has the fan base that it does is once you start getting used to like, oh, the colors can just look amazing and I put no extra work into it, but it feels right. A lot of people really enjoy that Fuji experience. And I think, you know, iPhone could use its own version of that. That would obviously be different, but, you know, could be really a nice experience.

Well, that is a great idea. I hope that we get you back next year to talk about this stuff and we get that. Yeah, me too. That's what I'm hoping for. This episode of the Mac Power Users is brought to you by Ecamm. Go to ecamm.com slash MPU and get one month for free of the powerful live streaming platform for the Mac.

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Tyler, we'd like to end these episodes with guests talking about some favorite apps and services. We've talked about a lot of stuff today, but what are some utilities or some other things that help you work along? So there's actually there's a hardware accessory I'd like to recommend first because I just bought another one recently. So it's on my mind. I teased it earlier. If you use AirTags, this is becoming a kind of a must have addition for me. And it's.

basically lets you use AA batteries to extend the battery life of your AirTag to the company claims 10 years, which, you know, I'll believe that when I see it. But so far, I'm a few years in. using it and uh i haven't had my air tag battery die so it's called the uh it's made by elevation lab and it is called the time capsule and basically you just put your air tag in there with two double a's screw it shut

throw it in your suitcase and forget about it. Now you've got an air tag that you're not changing the battery on every year. And I'm just so happy that I did this with her luggage. Obviously, you can't do this if you're putting your air tag somewhere. If you're trying to fit your air tag in your wallet, it's not going to work. But if you're putting it into a bigger bag, like I just love the idea of not having.

to monitor all of my AirTag batteries quite as often. So easy buy. I think a lot of people should look into it. Yeah, I've looked at this many times and thought about getting one because you're right. It just solves such a problem. It is bigger though. It's got to also hold two double eight batteries. Yeah. It becomes, it becomes a big thing. It's not, it is not the same scale as an air tag on its own. So this for me is for like a larger suitcase and I just leave it in there all year round.

That's super cool. A lot of people, I think, get AirTags and sets, and I, right now, I'm in the middle of them all dying. I replaced the one of my keys. I got to replace the one in my truck. It's on my to-do list actually for this week. So this might, this may be a good fit. Probably not for the keys, probably not for my keys, but no, I mean, you know, other things.

And if I could throw in an app while I'm at it to just one that has been a big part of my life for the last two years is heavy, which is to track my workouts. And it's. Pretty straightforward. It doesn't give you workouts, really. It just kind of has a checklist of like, here's everything people usually do in the gym.

select the routine that you're going to be doing. And as you do them, you can check them off. And it does an amazing job of tracking your progress over time. So yeah, I've been a big fan of it for a while. It's got kind of like a social network. aspect to it as well so anybody can follow me on heavy if you lift weights at the gym too because uh i've gotten into it and it it feels great yeah this looks really cool and it's heavy h e v y that'll be there'll be a link in the show notes to people um

But yeah, this is, this is great. I mean, tracking workouts is something that, you know, the Apple watch and a bunch of apps can do, but it's like, okay, you, you know, you lift weights for 30 minutes. Like there's not a, not a lot of detail in there. Apple doesn't know anything about it. Yeah.

That's cool. Yeah. That's the big thing that Apple's whole health solution has not solved anything for weight based exercises. There's sort of nothing in there that I've really found helpful. So third party has been the solution. thanks to that, like this app has kind of become the center of my, my health, my technical health experience. So I've really appreciated it.

All right, Tyler, thank you so much for coming on and educating us on the new iPhone cameras and some good strategies and techniques. I always appreciate talking to you every year about this stuff and love the contribution you're making. Gang, if you haven't, you should subscribe to Tyler's YouTube channel. It's Tyler Stallman on YouTube, correct?

That's it. I mean, it's Stallman everywhere. If you just Google me, it'll come up. It's also got the Stallman podcast and he's got reviews, uh, basically on the phone, but also for a photographer. In particular, if you're going deep down the rabbit hole, got a great Instagram, we're going to link all of that in the show notes. And thanks for everything you're adding to the community.

Yeah, of course. And I'll be thanking you next time I do an iPhone tutorial. I'll try to include exactly the tips that you're going to need, David. All right. I will appreciate that. You have been my Sherpa, so I appreciate it. We are the Mac Power Users. You can find us over at relay.fm slash MPU. You can go over there to sign up for more power users to get the ad for Extendver and the show. We'd love to have you join up.

Thank you to our sponsors today, 1Password and Ecamm. We're going to continue in More Power Users with Tyler about AI and creativity. And otherwise, we'll see you next time.