While in Indianapolis visiting family over the recent holidays, my daughter Elizabeth showed me a feature on my iPhone X that I was not aware of. I experimented with it a little on the day after Christmas, when Elizabeth, her children, my other daughter, Kelly, and her kids, and Lee Ann and I went to Garfield at the Crossing in the Garfield Park Conservatory.
I had been aware that cameras in newer models of the iPhone give users a "portrait" feature that lightens the intensity of colors and throws the camera's f/stop to a very fast setting (usually 2.8 or wider) to allow for classic bokeh (or blurred) backgrounds.
I'd used the iPhone's portrait feature a time or two, but I've always preferred to use my DSLR for formal portraiture work because I have greater control of the settings with it. But when I'm not carrying the DSLR, the iPhone increasingly has become an acceptable backup.
What I didn't know until chatting with Elizabeth the day after Christmas was that the portrait feature on the later model iPhones also gives users various lighting options while setting up their pictures. When using these, iPhone instantly edits your photos for you, often adding dramatic effects (such as brightening faces using face detection mechanism in the "Stage Lighting" option).
The "Stage Lighting" option also makes the subject appear as if they have a spotlight on them, which will blacken the background, making the final image very dramatic. Even more, there is a monochrome option when using this option, adding a secondary dramatic element.
The three images of my grandchildren Anniston and Maddox below are examples of the portrait feature I tinkered with at the conservatory. The first is the Natural Lighting effect in the portrait mode. The second is the same, but after I edited it post-processing to reduce the color intensity (saturation) on Anni's face. The third is Anni and Maddox in Stage Lighting Mono mode. Notice the blackened background ... and the spotlight effect.
A few days I returned to Raleigh, while out on a walk, I came upon the Bradford pear tree in my neighborhood whose leaves I featured in an autumn shoot post a month and a half ago or so. The leaves on the tree were long gone, but tiny berry-shaped growths remained on the branches, and I got the idea to see how the portrait mode would would on the berries -- especially the bokeh background.
The first shot I took -- the one shown leading off the post -- wasn't difficult, and I edited it on the phone to crop it because I didn't think the berries were very dramatic in the original composition.
When I got closer to the berries for more pictures and a different background, I struggled with the focus. It was as if the portrait mode was telling me they knew I was using the feature on something other than a human face. Or maybe the focus feature was conflicted about zeroing in on the stone ditch in the backgfound. Whichever, it took forever for the focus to lock, even though I touched the yellow brackets on the screen after centering them on the berries. After holding the camera steady for what seemed like 10 seconds, the auto focus finally locked. And I got my pictures.
The first below is how the simple portrait mode looked without any lighting features. Notice the sharp focus on the subject and the bokeh background. Notice, too, the color intensity is not too great. The color intensity kicks up a notch in the second photo, which is the portrait mode using regular Stage Lighting. The third photo below is the Stage Lighting Mono feature. I guess the camera drew a red line and refused to throw the background into all black because it knew my subject wasn't a human or could even conceivably be imagined as being on a stage because it did not throw the background into black. I'm not sure it intensified the lighting on the subject berries' surface, either.
So the lesson I learned here is that the Lighting feature in portrait work aren't going to work if the camera does not detect a human face as the subject or focal point. For those who want to learn more about the iPhone's portrait feature, iPhone Photography School has an instructional at the link in this sentence.
Before ending my exploration of the iPhone's portrait feature for the day, I came upon some wild grass along the roadway and decided to photograph it using the normal picture settings (first image below) and using the portrait mode. Notice the coloring change. This is how each image came out of the camera. In fact, I do any post-processing tinkering with the images in this post except the saturation lightening in the one of Anni noted above.
No comments:
Post a Comment