Austin mann

So I immediately noticed how different that was and just appreciated the naturally cinematic field that, that longer lens has combined with the larger sensor.

Stephen Robles: And obviously with a phone, the constraint you have as far as depth makes telephoto lenses and telephoto photography difficult. One of the things Apple did with the new 3x lens is it actually has a higher aperture number. I believe it's 2. Did you notice that that difference in aperture setting effect low-light performance or anything noticeable? Austin Mann: You know, I actually, I didn't really get to test that extensively.

I expected to see a difference and I can't say that I noticed a significant difference either way. I think that with the larger sensor, just the improved light collection ability that they talked about, I think that helps compensate for the slightly slower lens. But there's a couple of times where I could see it kind of kick in to kind of like a lower quality preview when using the 3x, like a digital zoom.

And that's particularly when you're shooting with subjects that are closer or in lower light scenarios. But for the most part, I didn't have a big problem in low light scenarios with the, with the 3x. I kind of expected that I might have some challenges with it. And I did have some, but certainly not so much that it was not tolerable. As you were basically on a safari, as you were testing these phones, how was the performance and trying to capture fast moving objects and animals?

Did you feel like you were able to capture those? Did you use burst mode or were you just kind of quick on the trigger? Austin Mann: I love burst mode and I use it a ton, because I think timing is really underrated in great photography. I think what makes a great image is more the millisecond that you capture versus having the, the perfect lighting or, or whatnot.

An image that is the perfect moment in bad lighting can be a great image, but if you invert that, if you have perfect lighting in a bad moment, it's not worth anything. So it's really a trade-off.

And so, uh, there's an image that I have in this year's article of a leopard, that leopard was very still for very long, about two hours, uh, that we waited for it to just as it lounge around in that tree. And when it finally did kind of come running down the tree, The light conditions were quite difficult.

It was backlit and there's almost no light like falling into the shade. It was kind of running on down the backside of this tree. And so kind of in that moment, instead of thinking, all right, I'm going to burst and capture the perfect moment.

I knew that I really needed maximum image quality and, and kind of the dynamic range. So I instead just tapped the shutter as quickly as possible. So I could get that ProRAW data to be able to edit and kind of pull up those shadows and recover those highlights.

I was gonna ask about that photo specifically because the photo of the leopard and the tree is very evocative as a beautiful photo. And so it looks like you shot most of the photos in your review with the telephoto lens and being with these kinds of animals, you probably can't get very close to pack of lions per se.

Stephen Robles: And it looks it's like you ended a lot of these in Lightroom right on the iPhone. How did it feel performance wise with the A15 Bionic now in the new phones? Austin Mann: Most of the time when I'm shooting a review like this, I'm not editing the images.

I like to just kind of go straight out of camera and maybe have one or two in there that have some color adjustments. So that was a little bit different this year versus last year and previous years was shooting in ProRAW and editing.

A great tool. And there's a tight integration between the Adobe and Apple camera teams to make everything work well together. And I never feel held back by the power and the speed when I'm editing on my iPhone. And I think that's really important, you know, I'm processing these substantially larger ProRAW files and it's never, I'm not ever getting any sort of lag or hang ups. It's just, it moves exactly as fast as, as I can move, which is kind of a telltale sign of the right hardware in your hands.

Stephen Robles: Right. So the big change in the 13 Pro non Max iPhone is their sensor shift stabilization is now available on both of those phones. Last year with the 12, only the Pro Max got that sensor shift stabilization, but now both 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max both has that on the wide angle lens or the default camera lens when you open the camera app. Have you noticed any difference since the smaller Pro sizes would you use in your day-to-day use, have you noticed any difference there with the sensor shift?

Austin Mann: I did do a couple of side by side tests between the 12 Pro and the 13 Pro handheld low light. And I saw some that that's probably where I saw the biggest difference, but again, I didn't really get to analyze those images a ton. I just looked on the screens in out when I was out in the field.

And so I look forward to testing that more for sure because I think it, it, it should make a pretty notable difference. That's using the new ultra wide camera lens and it's allowing to focus at very close distances. You had a bunch of pictures in your review about it, and frankly, it seems to be almost the most underrated feature. I mean, it's pretty incredible what that lens is capable of capturing as far as macro, what was your experience like that in the field, using the macro lens?

Austin Mann: I've always been a big fan of macro and I have a couple of macro lenses and I carry one with me pretty much all the time. I think that when you're telling a story of the natural world, you know, we tend to think about these big sweeping landscapes, sunsets, and things like that. Or maybe large mammals and lions and bears and all that. But an equal part of the entire, the biodiversity in an ecosystem is also the insects and the tiny little flowers and all of the different fauna.

And so I think macro opens up this kind of new perspective on a kind of a different side of a biodiverse natural ecosystem. And I'm excited to see what people capture with macro.

They kind of, especially people that maybe haven't played with it before, now that they have a macro lens in there. You know, I think it kind of trains you to see differently as a photographer, as an artist, and kind of appreciate different details in the world around you. So I enjoyed using the macro, you know, in order to get pretty a decent magnification, you've got to be quite close to the subject.

So that's worth considering it's not the macro lens that I travel with for my mirrorless cameras, mm. And so it allows you to keep a little bit of distance from the subject and sometimes advantageous so you don't block the light of the subject or, you know, disturb the subject. So I think that that would be one of the limitations of the macro inside of the iPhone 13 Pro.

But especially if you're dealing with static, inanimate objects, um, like flower or whatever, you can get some really, really strong ultra close focus images. Panasonic Lumix camera and I've recently purchased a macro lens. It was the Sigma mm macro, and I was playing around with it and, you know, being a prosumer photographer, it is very difficult to get a good macro shot, especially if you're handheld and trying to like, that's such a huge focal length.

Sometimes it's just hard to find the subject even. And I actually just returned the lens because I was like, I can do it on the iPhone now. And it just seems way easier.

When you have to make a decision now with the 13 Pro between just using the iPhone and using the lens, are there times where you're just like, well, I'll just use the iPhone now?

I mean, you know, the iPhone definitely covers those kind of in a pinch micro macro shots. But I think, you know, and what you're talking about too, is macro photography is just inherently quite challenging because your depth of field gets extremely shallow the closer that you are to the subject. And those are all kind of factors that you have to consider.

The more light that you have, the deeper you can, that your depth of field can be. And your focus is a lot easier to nail when you've got more light available and you're not shooting super, super, super shallow. So the bottom line is though, is that the macro that's built in to the iPhones now is a really capable macro lens.

It can focus super close. Stephen Robles: For sure. Now there's been some improvements with portrait mode as well. You can do it with both the wide angle and the telephoto lens now on the 13 Pro and Pro Max. How's your experience been with portrait mode? Do you even use that or how did that function while you were in the field? Austin Mann: Well for starters, thanks to the large sensor and the 77mm 3x lens, even those shots, even from a purely hardware perspective have showered up the field than we're used to on, on smart and smartphone photography.

And so that's not even factoring in the software of portrait mode. So I've enjoyed using just the natural hardware for portraits. Portrait mode just continues to get better, the algorithms and the edge detection and all of the above, the semantic rendering and recognition of what's in each of the images.

All of the above. It's gotten so much better since we first saw portrait mode launch. So that's, you know, it has been fun to play with and I've used it for a bunch of different things. And especially again, kind of in a pinch, it's just amazing the images that you can create of somebody that you're traveling with, or like Anderson my guide, shooting a portrait mode image of him and having the control of the focus later.

Like sometimes I just back out and realize what a dream it is to be operating with such powerful camera and as subscribed to an entirely new set of rules, like, think about how nuts it is that we can change the focus after the fact that's just bonkers. That's like nothing we could have ever imagined.

Stephen Robles: Exactly. And now we're able to do that on the 13s with the cinematic mode, which you can think of it as portrait mode for video, but does the same thing captures all that depth information as you shoot previewing it live on screen, which just has to be a crazy amount of computational effort on the phone's part.

Which is one of the reasons why it's only p right now and not 4k, but you had a video in your review at the top with some incredible, incredible video footage. And I believe that you strapped an iPhone to a helicopter.

Is that right? You know, I've got to find out where the limit is. We strapped a iPhone 13 Pro Max onto the nose of a helicopter, full collaboration of the pilot, just ensuring safety. And I think we had three different safety straps on it, every different way that it was possible and all of the different screws or anything that could potentially vibrate the shot we had gaff taped closed, and just, it was a lot of precaution.

In fact, actually the very first flight that we did, I hooked it all up and then I didn't even put a phone in there. We went ahead and did a one hour flight or so, hitting a maximum speed without a phone and it just to make sure it was nice and sturdy and we landed. Still there. So we decided to throw a phone in there and see what came out of it.

Yeah, so we, we did some kind of scenic flying where we shot from the cabin of the helicopter, with the doors off and also, uh, recorded some video off the nose that was surprisingly, surprisingly stable and, and cinematic. Stephen Robles: Yeah, I'm watching clips of your video right now and you're hanging out the helicopter, just hand holding the iPhone, with no strap or anything around your wrist. Just bare grasping this type of thing. Austin Mann: Yeah, I used all my strapping stuff for the, the nose mount.

I was like, well, I'll just hold on real tight to this one in my hands and hope that we're good. Stephen Robles: So the footage looks incredible. These herds of animals in the plains and some of the closeup video you also got like of the lions and such, how close were you to those lions in that one video shot?

Austin Mann: Uh, we were quite close. So we had brought a monopod, basically a single extending pole that's about six feet long and we put the DJI Osmo 4 on the end of that monopod and then inverted it, under slung it, kind of held it next to the ground while staying in the land cruiser. So that motion shot that you see that's super tight on that lion, that's with a 3x lens and then the underslung stabilized iPhone being held down by the monopod.

There was one point where the lion kind of looked at us and licked his lips and we're like, it's probably a good time to go. Stephen Robles: Well, he did the one shot with the lion's laying on the ground. It looks like it's staring right at you. He was very curious. She was in that shot. She was very curious about whatever this thing was sticking out of the land cruiser.

Stephen Robles: That's amazing. Now when you had it strapped to the helicopter, what lens did you leave it on to film that? Austin Mann: Yeah, so I kind of was thinking about potentially controlling it with my watch, but that phone was not the one that I had hooked up to my watch and I didn't want to switch them all around and all that stuff.

So I instead I did some testing and first I shot with a 1x lens and, you know, historically there's been some challenges with shooting smartphones from highly, like a platform that's vibrating a lot like a helicopter. Fortunately, we were in a beautiful aircraft that a Bell , that's a pretty stable platform. The rotors on that machine are, just the whole platform runs really stable, very stable.

And so that's a good kind of baseline, but then first we shot with a 1x and then we shot some more with the ultra wide and just the ultra wide footage especially looked incredibly clean, more clean than I expected for sure.

So then we just started rolling anytime we would get up in the air, we'd just hit record on the ultra wide. And at one point I think we had a flight that was two hours and 12 minutes or two hours and 23 minutes, something like that.

And I had a full battery at the beginning of it and hit record. We were shooting 4k at 60 frames a second. So I was pretty surprised to see, I thought it was going to be dead for sure. And then when I saw the screen was on, I thought, oh, it must be an its last moments. And then I looked at the percentage and I was like really? Stephen Robles: No, it's pretty amazing because if you ever want to kill an iPhone battery, it's put it in 4k 60 and just hit record.

You know, full brightness on the screen. So, and that's one of the improvements Apple said that the 13 line has, is that larger battery. And the A15 gives a better battery life being a stronger processor. So that's pretty incredible to hear about that. I had the screen brightness down a good bit just to try to preserve the battery, but yeah, it was impressive, nonetheless.

Stephen Robles: Now with cinematic mode for video, did you use that in the field at all? What was your experience there? Austin Mann: Yeah, we did. We used it for some of the interview content that you see in the video up at the top of my review, but then also there's a longer interview that's uh, in the video on Dr. Ernest and the conservation work he's doing down in Ruaha National Park.

We used a lot of cinematic mode there and experimented with it a good bit throughout so there's definitely some clips in the video that are purely cinematic mode, there's some that kind of look like they might be cinematic mode that are actually just shot with the 3x lens and no cinematic mode. But the interview in that second video, if you scroll down about halfway through the review, that one is all cinematic and we had fun experimenting with changing those focus points later on.

And it's not, it's not perfect. There's definitely some challenges with it, and it kind of made some decisions as I looked back and forth, uh, between the camera and talking to Dr. And we were mostly able to get all the focus points back where we wanted them. There's still some kind of wrinkles to iron out. But overall I think that, I think it turned out pretty nice. Stephen Robles: Also new to the iPhone 13s is these new photographic styles. And this is more than just putting a filter on a photograph, deciding on a photographic style on your iPhone will actually get locked in and the iPhone will capture images based on that photographic style that you choose.

And it will stay in that mode until you go back in there and manually change it again. You have contrast and vivid warm and cool. And so my question is for your work, and maybe just in your day-to-day use, do you use any of the photographic styles and if so, which one?

However, you know, I did mess around with them a good bit and I do like how they work. I love the idea of kind of set, set it and forget it type setting that changes all the images that come through the image pipeline that aren't shot in RAW.

When I turn, if I turn off RAW and I'm one to just do something that maybe is just a quicker turnaround, I don't want to have to deal with the process and the images now, maybe I don't need full control. Uh, I made kind of a modification of the rich warm, uh, photographic style. That is just kind of the look and feel that, that I enjoy the most.

I love the idea of just being able to kind of tweak how the iPhone is rendering images at the pipeline level versus a reactive kind of over the top preset later on. Now one of the other things you talk about is the use of Focus Modes, which is a new feature in iOS 15 that can put on do not disturb features.

You can stop certain notifications from coming through when all of these modes are enabled. How have you been using those Focus Modes and has it made a difference in your shooting? Austin Mann: I like Focus Modes. I like the idea of them and the ability to trigger these different areas of focus.

And so for me, when I'm thinking about shooting on iPhone, I really want my iPhone to behave like a camera. I don't need it to be an internet communication device. I don't need to get, I don't want to get phone calls on it. I don't want notifications.

Austin Mann: I don't want it to be an iPod. Yeah, it doesn't, I don't need it to be anything but the image right in front of me. And so that is one of the challenges of working the iPhone from a professional perspective is it can offer plenty of distractions from kind of what the task at hand of creating a powerful image. What that shakes down to practically, as you can be, you know, framing a photo and waiting for the perfect moment of this leper to jump out of a tree and at that moment you get a phone call that's from whoever and interrupts that moment and you missed the shot.

Or you've got a time-lapse shooting and somewhere in the middle of that, you get a phone call and it interrupts the time-lapse and, or even just, you know, you're shooting, you get a notification and accidentally tap it or get distracted and get kind of sucked out of the camera.

These aren't challenges that you have with traditional cameras because they're not connected and they're not like multifunctional. So for me, I made a focus mode that automatically triggers as soon as I open up my camera and it automatically allows zero notifications and zero phone calls, as long as my camera is open.

So whether I'm shooting a time lapse or, um, you know, just looking at my view finder, waiting for a shot, uh, both in the native camera app and also in Halide camera and also Lightroom, if I'm shooting in there. I won't get any sort of interruptions at all. And that's been super nice to not have to think about. I don't like putting the phone in airplane mode because then I don't get my GPS data and other things like that. So it's really nice to not have to manually tweak anything or turn on do not disturb.

Instead it just automatically happens when my camera opens up and it automatically goes off when I close my camera and it's back to a regular phone. It's been a cool way to use focus mode. So far it's been really effective for me. And you actually just taught me something. I didn't realize you could trigger a focus mode on an app opening.

I knew you could do a series shortcut triggered when you opened an app. But like, I do that for rotation locks.

So whenever I open the photos app on my phone. Rotation lock turns off and I can rotate it horizontally and then it will turn off when I close the app. Austin Mann: That's a good thought too. You can trigger them on the opening and closing of an app. There were two people standing next to him looking shocked.

He didn't have a pulse, checked his breathing, he wasn't breathing so I started CPR right away," she said. She along with another good Samaritan alternated giving CPR for up to 30 minutes, while they waited for paramedics. He was suffering from a potentially deadly arrhythmia. For the first time since the incident, Rod got to meet the woman who saved his life Friday. They were reunited at St. Lily was showered with gifts from Rod and his family, from none other than the heart.

For Lily DeVarona, the gesture was innate, it was what she was trained to do.