If You Go Down To The Woods Today!

Yesterday was the first Sunday in over a year that the entire family were together, with Hazel finished her work contract it was time for a well deserved family walk up the the local Moore Abbey forest. I purposely left the DSLR at home, having recently got my hands on the HTC 1 smart phone. So it was a perfect opportunity to run it through its paces and see what it can do. An interesting recent development in photography has arisen in the shape of Iphoneography. Even some Photography Federations are running some award schemes in this discipline. Thats right, there are some photographers out there using their Iphone to capture images, and they are doing a good job at it too. I have never been too pushed about the Iphone, it just had no appeal for me, besides I hate I-tunes, its a bloody torment. But credit were credit is due, it does have a fairly decent camera. I have never been one to use a camera phone for anything other than a quick snap or uploading to social media. But that all seems to be changing!

So back to the HTC 1. I have been a huge fan of HTC and their phones for the last few years and last week I finally got my hands on the HTC 1. I was a bit unsure at first, as their camera boasts a 4 Ultrapixel camera. Ultrapixel! WTF is an Ultrapixel I hear you scream. Well according to HTC an Ultrapixel is the same as the Megapixel we have all grown up with, except its BIGGER. Yes, BIGGER! So the question is, ‘Have HTC come up with some fantastic new Tech? or is this a huge marketing ploy. My very first digital camera was a Sony S40 point and shoot, which at the time was state of the art, but now 4 mega/ultra pixels, Im not so sure. The only reason I took a chance on getting this was because I was extremely happy with my last three HTC devices.

The concept is that the pixel size is large, hence there are fewer of them, so that you get 4 “ultrapixels” on the same size sensor that also could support 13 “normal” megapixels. Well I tested it out and Im still not sure? What do you think. For a camera phone its quite good and reviews have put it up against its rivals the Iphone and Galaxy S4 which you can read HERE. I wont bore you to death with tech specs but with image resolution of 2688 x 1520, an aperture of F2.8 and full HD video it seems to pack a punch. Lighting was difficult in the woods yesterday, but managed to get a few shots, no special effects applied but there are the usual point and shoot settings with the addition of something called Zoe. Basically Zoe gives some extra control over image editing, It look fun and you can read about it HERE.

All these images are as shoot with the addition of a watermark in Lightroom. Im still getting to grips with all the new device has to offer, but am quite satisfied with it so far. I did notice some focus issues in hard light and obviously resolution suffers with zoom, but so far no complaints. So will I be hanging up my DSLR to get into this Iphoneography lark? Hell no, its a great phone and i will use the camera for off the cuff snaps and uploading images to social media, but until they come up with a camera that gives the freedom of using a DSLR, I shall be sticking to my trusty Nikon for 99% of my image taking. 🙂

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