iPhone 7 Plus shot in raw. I was on a trip to the United Arab Emirates, specifically to Ras Al Khaimah which is a city near the highest summit (Jebel Jais) in the UAE. I saw the scene with sun rays moving all over, they were moving rather fast, I took out my phone and waited around 10 minutes for a sun ray to hit that tree directly. It was very far away, so I cropped the image a lot, a bit more than 100%, then processed in Lightroom.
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Cell Phone Images
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I have to say, it's a great capture, however based on your description (heavy crop), I'm having doubts that it's shot with a phone. I would expect a lot more artifacts / noise for such a massive crop. Because of this, I gave it 3 stars, but if it turns out that it's indeed taken with an iPhone, I will modify my vote to 4 stars :)
i can assure you and give you my word, it really was shot on an iphone at iso 32 or something ridiculous like that, in raw, on the telephoto lens (which is 56mm) then cropped heavily, denoised and sharpened carefully with a bit of grain applied back (and actually, a lot of fine and even not so fine detail is gone there, I had to work that tree like mad to get any sort of texture out of it). You'd be surprised how much you can push and pull an iphone raw file in post, including cropping, and the iphone xs max that I have now is even cleaner! I have another one that i have also cropped around 100% and it still holds up relatively fine for an 18x13 cm print, I think I'll put that one up here as well. Although I don't consider this photograph something particularly special, it's a great testament to how you can achieve great results with an iphone or any other modern phone shot in raw (for web at least), if you have a bit of knowledge of post processing and the lowest iso possible. I can guarantee this would look absolutely atrocious if it was shot with the stock app in jpeg :) I would get zero gratification if I had shot this with something else, and it was picked for critiquing, it makes no sense to me, I'm a great advocate of truth and honesty, unlike some other community members that have entered this critique. I appreciate your comment and your good words regarding the image itself, thank you! I've said nothing but truth, it's up to you whether you believe me or not!
damn!!!
in the end, it's not obviously about the camera, but more about when and how framed. Magical!
thank you
This is the result when you are skilled both as a photographer and with the post processing. I automatically clicked for four stars on your pic. A fifth, it would have been with slightly more details in the mountains. Wow!
Thank you very much for your kind words! This was quite some time ago but I remember I did try an edit with mountain details more prevalent but it took away the focus from the tree too much in my opinion. Regardless, I appreciate your input!