Now that I have taken the 1000th photograph with my iPhone 12 mini the novelty factor has finally worn off, and I'm more aware of the balance of advantages and shortcomings inherent in using a smartphone camera. Or, at least, in this one. So, to my surprise, I have to declare that I'm still pretty much as enthusiastic as I was initially, and that we are now going steady, as people used to say. I can't imagine not using my phone as a daily walk-around camera now. Frankly, you'd either have to be something of an exhibitionist or a very serious photographer to want to do anything else. Perhaps both: they're not incompatible.
There are shortcomings, of course. For a start, there is the restricted focal length range. I miss the flexibility of a medium-range "kit" zoom, but I don't mind having a fixed focal length wide lens, even one equivalent to a 28mm wide lens in ye olde 35mm film terms (now generally referred to as "full frame", which is ridiculous). After all, my hitherto favourite pocket cameras, a Fuji X70 and a Ricoh GR, have exactly the same lens limitation, although admittedly both front a 16 megapixel APS-C sensor. Which, of course, is another potential iPhone shortcoming – that comparatively tiny sensor, yielding 12 MP files – although I have to admit this hasn't been a problem for me yet, at least when photographing in good light and with a steady hand. And you won't hear any complaints from me about the massive depth of field, even at a fixed aperture of f/1.6. Blurry backgrounds? No thanks. Another annoying little problem is the susceptibility of settings like exposure compensation to be changed or the lens to be smudged by handling, and then there is the lack of a lens hood or any means of attaching one; flare and "ghosts" inevitably ensue.
It's important to note I'm not talking about the native iPhone camera here. I'm using the superb Halide app, which delivers proper unprocessed "raw" files, which are for my purposes far superior to the native Apple JPEGs. Not in terms of instant eye-candy appeal, it's true. I realise that most phone users have no greater ambition for their snaps other than for them to be agreeably colourful and sharp and suitable for sharing, and which will never be viewed on anything other than a screen. Apple cater to this desire superbly: every sky is made into a blue sky whether it was originally blue or not, every colour is rendered bright and saturated, no matter the quality of the light at the time, and all the edges and textures are satisfyingly crisp, especially when seen on a screen. But, look closely at an Apple JPEG, and you'll see quite how over-processed they are, sometimes like a mosaic of pieces of vividly-coloured glass, or in extreme cases like dabbed brushstrokes on a watercolour painting. It's very well done, but designed in sunny California to a consistent eye-pleasing AI formula. Plus, being JPEGs, they're not terribly hospitable to any remedial post-processing. Whereas a Halide raw file is indistinguishable, to my eye, from one produced in a "proper" camera (that is, you might say: soft, drab, lacking in contrast, and badly in need of exercise and some sunshine) and will respond to your favourite post-processing moves in exactly the same way.
Going back to the lens and lens hood problems, I did consider the possibility of investing in one of those add-on systems, like the ones from Sandmarc and Moment, which are based on a dedicated phone case with a built-in screw-mount that allows the use of various supplementary lenses and filter options. But they are very expensive, and I can't believe a supplementary lens wouldn't degrade the basic image quality. Besides, to end up carrying around a bagful of extra lenses and filters would take away much of the point of using a phone in the first place, not least its spontaneity. But I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has gone down that route. It's almost worth buying one of those cases just to be able to add a hood when needed.
Meanwhile, on to the second thousand iPhone photographs!
As to the title of this post, a "ton" in British usage refers to "a lot" of something – "a ton of trouble" – or, in more precise expressions, 100 somethings, usually pounds or miles per hour, despite being a measure of weight. Bikers used to be known as the "ton-up boys", referring to their habit of trying to reach or exceed 100 m.p.h. on certain stretches of road. Why "ton = 100"? Nobody seems to know. In the late-unlamented imperial measures, a ton was 20 hundredweight, one hundredweight was 8 stone, and one stone was 14 pounds. Thus a ton was 20 × 8 × 14 = 2,240 pounds. Obvious, innit? When I was in primary school this stuff was regarded as elementary knowledge, along with pounds, shillings, and pence, not to mention gills, pints, quarts, and gallons, or even feet, yards, furlongs, and miles. I can still recite "one mile is 1,760 yards" without even thinking about it.
Curiously, a full half century after decimalisation (that's 50 years here, like everywhere else, thankfully), I'm pretty sure most of us still think of our bodily weight in stones, and our height in feet and inches. I doubt many Brits could be told that a man is about 178 cm tall and 76 kg in weight and have any immediate sense of his physical presence. Whereas 5' 10" and 12 stone? Got it! It seems some measures are precise, universal, and easy to calculate, but others are more appropriate for certain purposes. The size of Wales, for example, or the thickness of a cigarette paper (one standard red Rizla is equal to three hair's breadths, IIRC) are standard imperial measures still much in use today.
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