We recently celebrated another milestone with Edin as she graduated with her PhD. This is the third “pyjama party” we have shared with her with the pyjamas getting a bit smarter each time. 2016 saw her graduate BSc, followed by Post Grad Diploma and MSc in 2018 and now PhD in 2024.
This timeframe has seen an evolution in camera technology and especially smartphone camera capability built into my iPhone 14 Pro and have written before how it can at times be the best camera for the job. So the question is whether it’s worth the trouble of carrying a “proper camera” in addition to the phone camera?
In 2016 my phone wasn’t up to the job and my compromise in terms of size and capability was a Fuji X100 and XT1. It is always a busy day with a lot of students and families celebrating so it challenging to find a clean background to try and do a portrait worthy of the occasion. I used the XT1 and 55-200mm to achieve this graduation portrait using a carved panel in Aotea Square as background.
2018 was a combined graduation for her Postgraduate Diploma and MSc so the pyjamas were a bit more complex and I was wanting a background that complemented the blues of her Diplomate scarf and Degree hood. Luckily a building on campus gave an opportunity to offset the blues against yellow using the Nikon D810 and 70-200mm f2.8.
This brings us to the photo at the top of the post taken with my iPhone 14 Pro to share on the day with relatives and friends. We had spent a bit of time working with different backgrounds and I was feeling a bit frustrated as I hadn’t found anything that I was happy with. This autumnal tree was a good location and included some colours that worked with colours in the Doctoral regalia as well the possibility of out of focus foreground and background elements. The iPhone photo in portrait mode replicates shallow depth of field to an extent but there is no replacement for as fast telephoto. I was finally happy with some images at capture and knew they had potential in processing to make something decent.
Using my usual workflow with masked adjustments in Lightroom and then Nik ColorEfex 7 in Photoshop I was able to apply differential contrast was well as shift some of the still green leaves to a warmer colour. Some areas of busier background were cleaned up with generative fill to achieve this final image.
Looking at the iPhone image I am impressed with just how good it is but I think it is fair to say that it is nowhere near the image from a “proper” camera. My input to the iPhone image was finding a location, choosing portrait mode and framing followed by minor editing in Snapseed. The Nikon image gave me far more control of the elements at capture and in post making it much more “my” image of the occasion including Edin’s seabird bitten hands!
The other pleasure I take from this is that I think I have gotten better at taking graduation portraits (of my daughter) so it seems both of us have made progress albeit of dissimilar magnitudes. While feeling quietly pleased with my image, I made a print for Mother’s Day and it again highlighted the huge benefit in printing images. Seeing the image on screen is great but there is something about holding the print and seeing the detail that is just so much more.
So, yes, it is well worth taking a “proper” camera to a pyjama party, processing and then printing the photo. The iPhone does a quick and easily shareable good job but as they say it’s like chalk and cheese.
