Nesoberi Chronicles 10 - Shooting with the 6

Hello everyone and welcome back to Tiro Finale for the tenth chapter of Nesoberi Chronicles! To think we have done ten chapters on a series solely covering Nesoberi(s) just lazing around. For the tenth installment of the series, I have decided to switch things up a little. You see, here on Tiro Finale we take our photography very seriously sometimes even more than we do for our writing. As such, it is imperative that we have the right optics for the occasion whether it is a nice controlled shoot at the home studio of covering an event overseas.

For the large majority of my figure reviews and galleries, my trusty Olympus OM-D EM5 Mark II is more than up for the task. The compact yet, powerful mirror-less and interchangeable lens format is one that has yet to disappoint me whether I am in the studio and on the go. And this is one format that I have stuck to since the beginning of Tiro Finale where my original camera was the original Micro Four-Thirds champion, the Olympus PEN EP-1.

While shooting with a selection of lenses and the secure mounting of a tripod is the ideal situation for all of my photo shoots, I cannot always have things my way. There are times where I have to pack light till the point where even the compact EM-5 will not be able to come along. For times like those, I am always eternally grateful that smartphone cameras have elevated up to the point where I do not need a dedicated point and shoot camera.

Many a times I have contemplated getting a point and shoot camera for the dedicated purpose of being my on-the-go shooting system. Yet every time I review the photos that I have taken with my smartphone and realize that this more than suffices as the role as one. Of course, that does mean being very picky about the particular optics on my device that I choose to sport.

For the longest time, I have sported Nokia's legendary Lumia 1020 as both my daily driver as well as my on-the-go camera. In the many years we spent together, the Lumia 1020 has joined me on countless events and reviews. The best part is, the live manual mode means that the photos I shoot always turn out the way I want them to be. The 41MP sensor also allows for lossless zoom, something only recent smartphones have begun to adopt with secondary telephoto lenses. Even then, the trend seems to be dying out too as many manufacturers are now adopting depth sensors for the secondary sensor instead.

Back then, the ability to zoom was one of the last few defining factors that a dedicated point and shoot camera would have over a smartphone. The other would be low light performance thanks to the larger sensors of dedicated cameras. But as time progressed, image processing and computational photography grew leaps and bounds where low light photos seized to be a problem as far as flagship smartphones were concerned. 

For that reason, the Lumia 1020 was the smartphone that I stuck with for the longest time even when the Windows Phone platform was, by then, long dead. The sheer image quality, noise processing and lossless zoom technology was just something competing manufacturers could not match even years after the 1020's release. As time passed though, manufacturers did eventually come to surpass it as Nokia once became a remnant of its former glory. When that time came, it was time to move on.

In comes the new toy and my current dedicated daily driver, the iPhone XS Max. The XS Max may not have the bonkers 41MP sensor as the Lumia 1020 but, it more than makes up for it with quite honestly one of the best multi-lens cameras in the smartphone market today. Need more proof? Just take a look at the recent reviews as all of that have been shot specifically on the XS Max.

While I will not go into the details about the XS Max's competitors, from a photography standpoint, Apple's latest and greatest really stands out where taking really good photos with complementing clean, light software is concerned. It is for that reason I consider the XS Max to be a worthy successor to my trusty 1020. That is, until a certain penta-lens camera decides to finally hit the marketplace.

But all of that ramble at the start is merely preamble to the main point of today's story which revolves around my current work phone. Apple's flagship offering from 2014, the iPhone 6. Indeed from a smartphone standpoint, there really is not much to write about Apple's now discontinued model. For work, it ticks most of the boxes while still staying secure and up to date with the latest iOS software updates. The biggest gripe I probably have about it is the tiny 1,810mAh battery which runs out by the middle of the day. Otherwise, it does the job alright.

Sporting an 8MP main sensor measuring 1/3" with an f/2.2 lens, the 6's optics are not much to write home about especially in this day and date. It lacks behind modern offerings where computational photography is concerned and low light images leave a lot to be desired even when compared to the older Lumia 1020. Like I mentioned earlier then, an alright work phone. 

But for the life of me, I could not shake the urge to use the 6 to do an entire photo shoot and so, I did. The end results are all the pictures you see in this chapter of Nesoberi Chronicles where the girls were more to happy to be my models in this particular experiment. To top things off, none of these photos were edited one bit either. When you consider that many of today's mid-range smartphone can produce image quality on par or exceeding the 6, it is amazing to think just the potential of great optics that we have all around the world!

Considered one of the best optics on a smartphone at the time of release, it is not hard to see where the iPhone 6 gets all of its praise from. While I did prime the conditions of the photo shoot to get the best possible photos, the end results were nonetheless still very impressive. But most importantly, the shooting experience was really stress free and simple. Of course, the camera is not without its shortcomings and I still am partial towards the picture quality of my 1020 or even XS Max for the matter. But, like a mentioned earlier, for a work phone, that is more than fine.

At the end of the day, it was just a little bit of my curiosity that I wanted to satiate. And with those questions answered, I would have no regrets moving on up towards a new goal for my work phone. For now, what that is, is anyone's guess. If you would like to see more articles featuring shots from the iPhone 6, do let me know in the comments section below. Until then, thank you so much for reading on my little ramble about cameras and have yourself a wonderful day ahead!