Camera: Apple iPhone 11 Pro
Exposure: 12 Sec.
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm equivalent
ISO: 1,250
Well, another barrier in photography has fallen to smart phone cameras… Low light photography has long been the providence of dedicated SLR or DSLR cameras. The thought of tiny, head of a pin sized imaging sensors performing well in low light would have been crazy talk just a year ago or so. But improved algorithms, calculus and some artificial intelligence is now giving us amazing low light performance from these cameras, in this case, the iPhone 11 Pro.
Protip: Use a tripod for your cell phone, and in the Apple world at least, you can trigger the shutter from your watch using the camera app to remove any movement for the long exposure.
My frustration is the metadata is not reporting out the actual capture time on these images made in almost pitch darkness. The photo above was made in a cabinet of a bunch of microscope objectives, and was approximately a 12 second capture. The light in the image comes from a tiny sliver of light from the cabinet edge being held open, while the image below of my Leica M9 camera in a darkened room with low light red illumination providing the only (very dim) light available.
I am stunned by the performance of these new cameras and am looking forward to more experiments from me and others…
Camera: Apple iPhone 11 Pro
Exposure: 8 Sec.
Aperture: f/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm equivalent
ISO: 400