Christmas is one of my most loved seasons in the year. My impression is, that the world and people around me are slowing down and get silent. People are focused on their own and their family and friends inner peace. The two sides of a cold and dark street life in this season and the cozy warm and candle light flooded homes. Just having those moments in mind are providing me warm/cold feelings on the back.
My expectation and task today has been to transport those feelings and emotions in my pictures. As I am still in my iPhone challenge, 3 month only making pictures with the new iPhone 16 Pro Max and still using only the original Photo App. At the 24th December I will start to use third party photo apps in my test challenge.
As most compact cameras with small sensors also the modern smartphones are producing great images if you have great light during the day, they even love sunshine. The real challenge is the night and the contrasts of bright and dark spots. Most sensors are asking higher ISO values or technical spoken higher amplifying to produce a picture. The downside of this extended amplifying is the added noise to the images. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is using 4 pixels to sample them down to on real picture pixel. This allows to collect 4 time the light but reduces the resolution from 48 Mega Pixels to 12 Mega Pixel Image resolution with reduced noise, this is the theory behind. The reality is proving this right. The pictures made on this wonderful Düsseldorf Christmas Markets, that reflects the above described contrasts between cold and cozy, are offering a great balance between colors rendering, exposure settings, details and sharpness without any photoshop processing.
As a summary, if no one would tell me, I would expect images with that quality, taken during the night, would be the result of a mid to higher class DSLR. I am speechless how advanced the lens, sensor and image processing technology in the new iPhone 16 Pro Max has evolved.
I am just missing some more control possibilities in the Apple camera APP but image wise, the iPhone 16 Pro Max becomes image wise a real competition to my Fujifilm camera gear. I am wondering if the las little bit will be offered by the third party photo apps where I can control speed, ISO and many other parameters during the process of taking the image.
I am looking forward to the coming weeks and days with my new iPhone.