More than meets the eye.

Apple tells us that the exciting ultrawide (UWA) lens in the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro is fixed focus. At 1.3mm focal length (13mm FFE) that’s hardly a limiting factor. Looking at SOOC images from the UWA, everything is indeed sharp from some 6″ to infinity.

This SOOC image testifies to that:

The loudspeaker is 6″ from the UWA lens. No distortion correction applied.

But a quick look at this image in Focos discloses that a full depth map is saved with the photo, and it’s a matter of a second to change focus from ultra close to infinity, thus:

Focus alternatively on the speaker and at infinity, using Focos.
Distortion removed using my lens correction profile.

Is the definition any better? No. It’s identical. Are the creative possibilities great? You betcha! Can your $10,000 full frame DSLR do this? Nope.

iPhone 11 Pro.

No more mustaches.

Click here for an index of all iPhone articles.
Here’s an index of the iPhone 11 Pro pieces:

Part I – The revolution realized
Part II – Upgrading
Part III – The ultrawide lens
Part IV – The Normal lens
Part V – The Telephoto lens
Part VI – The Focos app
Part VII – Quirks and anomalies
Part VIII – HDR and the Night Mode
Part IX – The digital zoom function
Part X – A lens correction profile for the ultrawide optic

It’s common when correcting distortions in ultrawide lenses to end up with a ‘mustache’ effect in originally straight lines. You can see it in my corrected images taken with the otherwise excellent 20mm f/3.5 UD Nikkor.

The 1.54mm (13mm equivalent on FFE) ultrawide (UWA) lens in the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro suffers from this malady. Use the distortion correction slider in LR and you get the mustache.

Here’s the uncorrected original image – Apple applies no distortion correction to images taken with the UWA:

Straight out of camera image shows heavy distortion of straight lines.

You can correct the distortion using this setting in the LR Develop module, and get the mustache distortion:

Spherical distortion correction in LR yields the ‘mustache’ effect.

Or you can manually invoke my newly created lens correction profile for the UWA thus, using the Develop module, for truly straight lines at the edges:

How to invoke my iPhone 11/11Pro UWA lens correction profile.

Here is the comparison of the LR corrected image, left, with that corrected using my lens correction profile, on the right:

Comparing LR correction with that from my UWA lens correction profile.

Now you can use that wild UWA lens in the iPhone 11/11 Pro for architectural images.

Go to my Lens Profiles page to download the profile – jump to the end. That page includes installation instructions which must be followed carefully if the profile is to show up in the LR Develop module.

This profile works with JPGs only, not with RAW files unlike the other profiles in that linked page.

The digital zoom function.

Click here for an index of all iPhone articles.

Here’s an index of the iPhone 11 Pro pieces:

Part I – The revolution realized
Part II – Upgrading
Part III – The ultrawide lens
Part IV – The Normal lens
Part V – The Telephoto lens
Part VI – The Focos app
Part VII – Quirks and anomalies
Part VIII – HDR and the Night Mode
Part IX – The digital zoom function
Part X – A lens correction profile for the ultrawide optic

Here’s the image before enlargement or zooming:

The original scene.

Here it is enlarged and zoomed:

LR enlargement at left. iPhone digital zoom at right. .

In addition to its choice of three lenses for non-selfie photography, the iPhone offers a digital zoom. In the Camera app you hold your finger on any one of the lens selection icons – 0.5X, 1X or 2X – and a rotatable protractor appears at the right allowing enlargement options up to 10X. While this protractor will appear for any of the three lenses, the iPhone only uses the best lens for digital zooming, the 1X optic. The digital zoom function is accessible in Photo mode, not in Portrait (blurred background) mode.

At 10x LR reports an effective FFE focal length of 270mm. That’s seriously long, but are the results any good?

To take a closer look I took one image using the 1X lens at the regular 1X un-zoomed setting and the other at the 10X digital zoom setting. Importing both into LR I enlarged the central section of the 1X un-zoomed image to the same size at that in the 10X digitally zoomed image. Stated differently, the first image was using enlargement in LR and the second was using the iPhone’s digital zoom function to enlarge the center when the original was snapped.

The results – see above – discloses that the iPhone digital zoom image (on the right) shows fewer artifacts than the LR enlarged one. It also shows meaningfully less grain/digital noise. So zooming ‘in camera’ beats selective enlargement in post-processing.

Is it usable?

At a pinch, yes. An 8″ x 10″ print from the digital zoom file is just about presentable if you avoid sticking your nose in the print, but the image is clearly breaking up. So on those occasions where you need to really zoom in, by all means use the digital zoom in preference to later enlargement in software, just be aware that there are limits as to what can be extracted from that tiny iPhone sensor.

To liven things up a bit and to increase apparent definition and blur the background, simply pass the iPhone’s digitally zoomed image through Focos and you get this:

Focos does not get blurring of the love knot-enclosed background right.

Not half bad, huh?

Control of dynamic range and Night Mode.

Click here for an index of all iPhone articles.

Here’s an index of the iPhone 11 Pro pieces:

Part I – The revolution realized
Part II – Upgrading
Part III – The ultrawide lens
Part IV – The Normal lens
Part V – The Telephoto lens
Part VI – The Focos app
Part VII – Quirks and anomalies
Part VIII – HDR and the Night Mode
Part IX – The digital zoom function
Part X – A lens correction profile for the ultrawide optic

Outstanding results, no user input required.

This image, snapped handheld on my patio the other night, is of a subject with extreme dynamic range. The firepit and flowerbeds were in pitch darkness, but the iPhone 11 Pro came through, automatically switching to Night Mode. Unlike with the iPhone 7, HDR is not a switchable option. It’s working all the time – as it should be – and the superb Night Mode kicks in invisibly when needed. The image is straight out of the iPhone camera, absent a small crop to restore verticals. The cameras actually takes some 5 seconds to record nine images, with the CPU selecting the best bits for the final result. A moving indicator on the left of the screen reminds you to be patient. Note that Night Mode is not available when using the 0.5X lens; it’s automatically invoked in poor light with the 1X and 2X lenses. There are no stitching or digital artifacts visible.

Lightroom reports the exposure as 0.5 seconds at f/1.8, and the iPhone has cranked up the ISO to 800. Though the snap was made handheld, the details are tack sharp with grain barely visible in 1:1 pixel peeping on screen. That means a 30″ wide print. Further, an outstanding job has been done of color rendering, from the warm interior of the sitting room, to the white light on the love cross.

The only way to obtain a like image with big digital gear would be to take multiple images for HDR layering using a tripod, and applying extensive post processing labor. The post processing labor involved here was exactly zero, which can only ever be a good thing. Spending time at a computer display trying to make your poor pictures look better is time wasted. For me HC-B is the exemplar here. He never processed a single roll of film or printed an image. He had a back office functionary execute these mundane tasks, applying fungible skills, ones which could be executed by thousands of like operators. His time was better spent taking pictures. The dynamic range processing in the iPhone 11 provides that functionary at no extra charge.

There are many reasons to like the iPhone 11 but I’m learning that control of dynamic range may be the most important one for photographers.

Here are the EXIF data for that snap (GPS location hidden):

Note that the file is a mere 2.24mB in size, making Lightroom behave once more like a spring chicken. It is a JPG not RAW, and remains tack sharp at huge enlargements, virtually grain free. Data selection and computational photography are at work here. For reference, a 14mp RAW file from my (sold) Panasonic GX7 MFT camera saved as a TIFF/PSD/DNG or whatever uncompressed format you favor, balloons to 42mp. The 50mp sensor in a gigantic DSLR generates a 150mp (150mp!) uncompressed file which needs a faster computer and more hard drive storage to load in a reasonable time. And you will need to combine several of those files for one HDR image. I’ll take the iPhone’s 2mB over the DSLR’s terabyte (500 times larger) any day.

Quirks and anomalies.

Click here for an index of all iPhone articles.
Here’s an index of the iPhone 11 Pro pieces:

Part I – The revolution realized
Part II – Upgrading
Part III – The ultrawide lens
Part IV – The Normal lens
Part V – The Telephoto lens
Part VI – The Focos app
Part VII – Quirks and anomalies
Part VIII – HDR and the Night Mode
Part IX – The digital zoom function
Part X – A lens correction profile for the ultrawide optic

This article mostly examines some of the non-camera issues of the iPhone 11 Pro. Previous pieces have focused largely on the iPhone’s use as a still camera. The iPhone 11 is not all sweetness and light and in some instances the maker has regressed. I address these areas below.

Without a proper case the iPhone 11 is an accident waiting to happen. It’s slippery as an eel, will not sustain a drop on concrete – forget the Apple videos, it’s glass front and back, for heaven’s sake – and has thin, rounded sides which invite dropping. Get a protective case, and I don’t mean one of those poncy silicone designer things. Good stout leather is called for, affording a proper grip.

Face ID only works in vertical orientation with the screen notch pointing up. Other orientations do not work as, presumably, it only knows your facial contours one way up. Not a big deal but as I pre-visualize images before raising the camera, I learned that raising the iPhone 11 Pro in landscape mode expecting Face ID to do its thing is a non-starter.

Face ID seems especially sensitive if you switch between glasses/no glasses. I had originally programmed it wearing eyeglasses and noticed it would hesitate for several seconds on occasion if my glasses were removed. It must be especially sensitive to the detail in the eyes, I would guess. No matter. I programmed an additional ‘face’ without glasses and all is again well, and super fast. I still have difficulty believing just how fast it is and how it works even with relatively acute face-to-display angles. This is a magnificent implementation of a technology no one asked for.

FaceID is currently limited to two ‘faces’. More would be nice to allow use by friends and relatives.

I do find the notch at the top of the screen – where the Face ID sensors and selfie camera reside – much more of an irritant than I expected. Just something to get used to, I suppose.

You cannot get the battery percentage to show on the home screen. The notch at the top for all the Face ID and selfie tech leaves too little space. The quickest way is to swipe diagonally down from the top right and the percentage will be disclosed. Not that big a deal as the battery life is extraordinary. Despite several days of hard use I could not get it to fall below 65% at the end of the day.

Getting the battery percentage to show.

The option to show large app icons has gone. There’s a clunky workaround using zooming, but it’s sub-optimal. Like the inappropriate manner of its hipster Apple Store clerks, Apple has forgotten that the core of its affluent base is older people – with older eyes. They like hipsters as much as they do small icons.

Small icons only – a shame.

Taking screenshots is far trickier than of old. You have to press the ‘volume up’ button on the left briefly while holding down the power button on the right. Try that one handed.

Some genius at Apple has decided to remove the Loupe feature which made editing such a pleasure on the small screen; the replacement – a vertical cursor – is awful and makes editing far harder. Go figure. Change for change’s sake.

Apple makes its usual claims about enhanced thumbprint resistance, stating that new coatings help. The display still merrily gathers fingerprints, but I have to say it’s better than before.

Everything you have read about the extraordinary battery life of the latest iPhones is true. Even after a hard day’s use I find mine is still at 50% whereas with iPhone 7 it would be below 20%. As my third Kindle has now failed I will use the iPhone for reading on cross country flights. Despite Amazon’s dishonest claims (the real details are in the fine print), using decent brightness it is impossible to have your Kindle survive such a flight. None of my last five did. None. And as my third one has now failed – a crazed display this time – I am through with the gadget. So that’s $200 saved right there.

Apple states that the brightest display on any of its iPhones is the OLED one in the iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max. It’s certainly the best I have yet used in bright sun, and that includes all I have tried on digital cameras, but it could still be brighter for really bright light. But one gets by. For what it’s worth the OLED display delivers true blacks, but OLED screens are far better used in big TVs, in my opinion, than in small hand held devices.

And processing images from the camera on that small display is not easy. Outlining small areas is very difficult and, frankly, the display is really too small to be of much use for photo editing. I export to an iPad when touch screen editing is called for, then on to LR on the desktop.

As for water resistance, I am not about to test this but such is the liability exposure for lying that I am inclined to believe Apple.

I can assure you your high priced DSLR cannot survive this.

Apple claims: “iPhone 11 is water resistant up to 2 meters for up to 30 minutes”. Having once fallen in the pool with my iPhone 6 attached by belt holster – it immediately died – that’s nice to know. I was drilling a hole for a thermometer lanyard, and the laws of physics disagreed with me.

Finally, the tricky subject of settings. The number of variables which can be set in the Settings app is now overwhelming. Given the modern fad for refusing to publish a proper instruction book, I am gradually working my way through these to see if there’s something which will make life simpler of which I am ignorant. Surely, Apple can do a better job of this?

My commitment to the iPhone 11 Pro can be gauged from the contents of my gear cabinet. All the MFT hardware has been sold, leaving film and digital FF Nikon bodies and some old lenses, mostly MF. Of these only the 50/2 Nikkor MF compares for resolution to the lenses in the iPhone. All the others are worse or far worse and neither body has a hope when it comes to proper control of dynamic range in the recorded image. The iPhone is simply in a different class in that regard.

Gear cabinet denuded.

All gear dies and why anyone would collect useless, depreciating, lumps of metal and plastic which will cease functioning in the near term, mystifies me. This is, let’s face it, obsolete, crappy old gear devoid of art or artifice, not an appreciating Ferrari collectible artwork clothed by a master like Pininfarina or Scaglietti.

Disclosure: I have no relationship with the Apple Corporation, I own no stock or derivatives in Apple, and I am in no way remunerated by them. I do think the iPhone 11 Pro is a groundbreaking device of unique value added to photographers. Finally, I would rather have a root canal then have to visit an Apple store.