Category Archives: iPhone Photography

Buyer’s Guide: Recommendations For The Best Photography Equipment, Software, Books, DVDs, Online Photo Labs, and More

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Welcome to my online buying guide for photographers. With over 80 articles it is one of the most comprehensive photography buyer’s guides on the web.

I get lots of photo questions, especially at this time of year, and many of them begin with “What is the best . . . .” They usually come from photographers or someone who is shopping for a photographer.  If you are shopping for yourself, or for a photographer in your life, this series is for you.

My “best of the best” series recommends the best photo gear, accessories, software, books, DVDs, online photo labs, and a whole lot more. Thanks to the information in these articles I get emails from photographers thanking me for saving them time, frustration, and a lot of money.

This article is reposted annually in November with some updates in between. Reposted: November 30, 2024. Most recent update: December 19, 2024.

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Buyer’s Guide: Recommendations For The Best Photography Equipment, Software, Books, DVDs, Online Photo Labs, and More

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Welcome to my online buying guide for photographers. With over 80 articles it is one of the most comprehensive photography buyer’s guides on the web.

I get lots of photo questions, especially at this time of year, and many of them begin with “What is the best . . . .” They usually come from photographers or someone who is shopping for a photographer.  If you are shopping for yourself, or for a photographer in your life, this series is for you.

My “best of the best” series recommends the best photo gear, accessories, software, books, DVDs, online photo labs, and a whole lot more. Thanks to the information in these articles I get emails from photographers thanking me for saving them time, frustration, and a lot of money.

This article is reposted annually in November with some updates in between. Reposted: November 30, 2024. Most recent update: December 19, 2024.

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Great Blue Heron: iPhone vs DSLR at 130 Yards

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Great Blue Heron at Lake LaShane

I was driving along a country road at one of my favorite local lakes and spotted a Great Blue Heron straight north of me near the shoreline. I got the crazy idea to do comparison photos between my DSLR and my iPhone. The heron was too far away to get a high quality image with either camera, but I decided to do it anyway.  I also wanted to check on the quality of the iPhone’s built in digital zoom versus cropping the original image and resizing it later in the computer.

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“Where exactly was I when I took those photos?”

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Ludington Dunes in the moonlight. Click the image for a larger version.

My primary camera, a DSLR, does not record the GPS location of my photos. Why does it matter? Some photo editors will not publish a photo unless you provide accurate GPS coordinates of the image location. Of course I knew I was approximately a couple of hundred yards up the beach from the parking lot, but not precisely where I was.  Plus I am curious. Some of my photos are taken in less obvious locations and I like to know where I was when I clicked the shutter.

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My iPhone Photography Apps

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My iPhone Apps

I keep my photo apps together on one screen on my iPhone. Many of these apps are also available for Android phones. I thought I would share a screen capture of my photo apps and tell you briefly what these apps do. Some of these apps do things with the photos that are on your camera phone. Some of them help you control your camera phone. Some of them deal with an external camera (like my DSLR) or with external hardware. A few apps help you be at the right place at the right time. One or more of these apps might be just the ticket for what you like to do.

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Step By Step: How to Get Blurred Backgrounds with an iPhone

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Using portrait mode to blur a background.

How do you make your subjects “pop” by blurring the background when you are using an iPhone? To get the maximum amount of blurriness there are several step involved, most of them after you click the shutter. I will take you through the process, step-by-step- complete with illustrations. I used an iPhone 11 for this step by step guide. If you have a different model the options and screen layouts might look different.

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The Chinese Lens Rip Off Series – Overpriced, Low Quality Camera Phone Lenses

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The ads started showing up on FaceBook all the time. They talk about wonderful lenses that will turn your smart phone into a camera that is better than a DSLR costing thousands of dollars. They brag about German engineering, a NASA optical formula, or the testing that proves their lenses are better than expensive lenses from Nikon, Zeiss, Leica, or Canon. The names of the companies change on a regular basis, but the scam is the same. Sad to say, a lot of people actually fall for this nonsense.

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The Chinese Lens Rip Off Series – Overpriced, Low Quality Camera Phone Lenses

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The ads started showing up on FaceBook all the time. They talk about wonderful lenses that will turn your smart phone into a camera that is better than a DSLR costing thousands of dollars. They brag about German engineering, a NASA optical formula, or the testing that proves their lenses are better than expensive lenses from Nikon, Zeiss, Leica, or Canon. The names of the companies change on a regular basis, but the scam is the same. Sad to say, a lot of people actually fall for this nonsense.

Continue reading →

Buyer’s Guide: Recommendations For The Best Photography Equipment, Software, Books, Magazines, DVDs, Online Photo Labs and More

Posted on by

Welcome to my online buying guide for photographers. With over 70 articles it is one of the most comprehensive buyer’s guides on the web.

I get lots of photo questions, and many of them begin with “What is the best . . . .” They usually come from photographers or someone who is shopping for a photographer.

My “best of the best” series recommends the best photo gear, accessories, software, books, DVDs, online photo labs, and a whole lot more. Thanks to the information in these articles I get emails from photographers thanking me for saving them time, frustration, and a lot of money.

This article is published annually in November with regular updates. Most recent update: December 14, 2019.

Continue reading →

The Chinese Lens Rip Off Series – Overpriced, Low Quality Camera Phone Lenses

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The ads started showing up on FaceBook all the time. They talk about wonderful lenses that will turn your smart phone into a camera that is better than a DSLR costing thousands of dollars. They brag about German engineering, a NASA optical formula, or the testing that proves their lenses are better than expensive lenses from Nikon, Zeiss, Leica, or Canon. The names of the companies change on a regular basis, but the scam is the same. Sad to say, a lot of people actually fall for this nonsense.

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My Favorite Smart Phone Tripod Mounts

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Square Jellyfish smart phone tripod mount with conversion plate for an Arca-Swiss compatible tripod head.

After seeing too many incidents when smart phones popped out of their tripod mounts and came crashing to the ground, I decided it was time to write this article.

Posted Dec 16, 2017. Revised and re-posted November 16, 2018.

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The Chinese Lens Rip Off Series – Overpriced Camera Phone Lenses

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The ads show up on FaceBook all the time. They talk about wonderful lenses that will turn your smart phone into a camera that is better than a DSLR costing thousands of dollars. They brag about German engineering, a NASA optical formula, or the testing that proves their lenses are better than expensive lenses from Nikon, Zeiss, Leica, or Canon. The names of the companies change on a regular basis, but the scam is the same. Sad to say, a lot of people actually fall for this nonsense.

Posted Sep. 12, 2017. Updated and re-posted November 15, 2018. Updated November 12, 2023.

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The Chinese Lens Rip Off! Part Three

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This is pretty much the same kind of rip off I have written about before. Take a cheap smart phone lens that people can buy at Amazon for $16.99 or less, jack up the price to $56, make outrageous claims, and see how may people you can sucker into buying the item at the higher price. They even used the same “questionable” technologist who has multiple identities.

Posted Oct. 17, 2016. Revised and re-posted June 3, 2018.

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Same Guy, Several Different Names, Several Different Ads, Several Different Products – The fake German engineer used in the Chinese lens rip off ads

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Screen captures from three different ads.

Same photo, three different names, and three different ads for three different products. Does this make you suspicious?

Update: September 12, 2017. I heard from the REAL Simon Greig. Details below.

Originally Posted June 20, 2016. Revised and re-posted June 2, 2018.

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The Chinese Lens Rip Off! Part Twelve. Lens Comparison Test Three: “Shoot the Moon”

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Side by side comparison test: Chinese lens vs telephoto lens and teleconverter on a DSLR.

Almost every day I see ads for the same plastic, cheaply made Chinese lens, and the ad often uses the same faked photo of an impressive picture of the moon (see examples below). I decided to do a “shoot the moon” comparison test. As you will see in the results that follow, it is impossible for this Chinese lens to take the moon shot used in these ads.

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The Chinese Lens Rip Off Series, Part Eleven. The Same Lousy Lens With Many Different Names

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HD Zoom Pro Lens Ad

Don’t get ripped off. The quality of this lens is so bad and the reputation of the company is so awful that the people who market this lens have to keep coming up with new names for the lens and new web sites to sell it. So far I have found 16 different names for this lens and it is sold with the same fake information on dozens of web sites. Continue reading →

The Chinese Lens Rip Off Series, Part Ten. Good Luck Trying to Get a Refund

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HD Pixel Pro ad on Facebook

Don’t get ripped off on an overpriced, lousy quality lens from an unscrupulous company that has an “F” rating at the BBB. Good luck trying to get a refund as you will read in Annie’s story below. I see ads like this on Facebook almost every day. These ads are costly so they must be making a lot of money. These companies change names and addresses all the time to keep ahead of the bad reviews, so be careful out there.

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The Chinese Lens Rip Off! Part Nine. Comparison Test Two: 8-18X Telephoto Phone Lens vs 12X Telephoto Phone Lens

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8-18X telephoto lens on an iPhone SE.

If you haven’t done so already, read this article first: Don’t get ripped off! Part Seven. Comparison Test One: Telephoto Phone Lens vs DLSR and Zoom Lens. It will explain the background and methodology behind this comparison test.

I purchased the 8-18X telephoto lens to check it out. Like the lens in Comparison Test One, it is another Chinese lens for smart phones. The ads for this lens say this lens is amazingly sharp. It is being sold for $59.99. That is an outrageous price of course. I found one on Amazon for less than $12. I knew when I bought it that it would not be worth $12. I had read other online reviews for this lens which point out how bad it is, but I wanted to see for myself.

Posted Sep. 22, 2017. Revised and expanded Dec. 12, 2017.

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