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Cell Phone Images

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2.89 - "Solid" 

A herd of Brahman cows, that I photographed on a cattle ranch in Belize. I remember reading an Fstoppers article about the long exposure feature available in the mobile Lightroom app. Using this technique I was super amazed to get a shot like this, handheld while perched on top of fence boards that were constantly jostled by the cows down below. Technology is amazing these days and this a shot I simply couldn't have captured with my DSLR

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2 Comments

Why couldn't you have taken it with a DSLR? You can do longer exposures with a camera...

Yes that's true and I see your point but here's some reasons I couldn't have done it with a DSLR in this situation.

The biggest reason being there was no way I could have hand held a camera steady enough at this angle, remember I was perched on an unstable fence above the cows and no normal tripod goes that high. This was shot during bright sunlight so I would have needed a very strong ND filter for a long exposure (which I don't own).

Where as my phone captures a "fake" long exposure by taking a burst of photos so it can stabilize each shot and then merge them together. My DSLR doesn't have a fast enough shutter burst to realistically create something like this. Plus later it would be a ton of painstaking time in Photoshop to align everything and merge the photos together. Now with my phone it was simply a couple of seconds for it to process the shot.

But yes with enough setup, time, and effort this shot would technically have been possible to take with a DSLR / mirrorless camera. But in my case I didn't have the right gear with me to make that possible.

And lastly "the best camera is the one you have with you" I needed to be ready to help the cowboys at anytime and to keep myself safe. I simply wouldn't have wanted to bring my gear into this scenario.