I'm sure a lot of ppl have already figured this out, but I hadn't seen any mention so FYI.
TL;DR: use the Photos app on the Mac (or LR or whatever), to look at the photos you already take on your current iPhone to see how often you use the existing 3x telephoto lens (assuming you have it).
Lots of folks, me included, have been wrapping their heads around the change from 3x to 5x for the telephoto lens. Other threads discuss the technical pros and cons, but FOR ME, which is likely more useful?
One thing that would help is to get some data around how often I use the telephoto lens, and to be able to look at those photos to see whether 5x would have been better or worse on a shot-by-shot basis. Could I have moved closer and used 1x? Could I have moved back and used the 5x? Was the perspective at 3x truly better than either? That's not always easy to answer, but I can try...
So, anyway, here's how you can determine how often you use the tele, and look at those shots:
- Using the Photos app on a Mac, create a smart album to match on the lens name. No smart albums on iOS.
- For each lens name for your iPhone model, note the number of photos. ex:
It’s a bit confusing, as there's a different lens name for each lens plus different lens names for pano and portrait images. As such, each lens name is different than the lens name in the EXIF data. Also note, videos taken from the iPhone do not include lens information (at least not my iPhone 13PM).
- Note down the lens name and quantities, sum them up and come up with the percentage usage for the telephoto lens. Mine looks like this:
So, I use the telephoto 7.8% of the time. Looking at them, at least half of the time, using my feet to zoom would have been fine. However, I can see a mix of keepers where 5x would have been desirable, and a subset where 3x really really was ideal.
Ultimately, for those, am I ok with just shooting 1x and cropping in the future? Well....probably...sigh.
TL;DR: use the Photos app on the Mac (or LR or whatever), to look at the photos you already take on your current iPhone to see how often you use the existing 3x telephoto lens (assuming you have it).
Lots of folks, me included, have been wrapping their heads around the change from 3x to 5x for the telephoto lens. Other threads discuss the technical pros and cons, but FOR ME, which is likely more useful?
One thing that would help is to get some data around how often I use the telephoto lens, and to be able to look at those photos to see whether 5x would have been better or worse on a shot-by-shot basis. Could I have moved closer and used 1x? Could I have moved back and used the 5x? Was the perspective at 3x truly better than either? That's not always easy to answer, but I can try...
So, anyway, here's how you can determine how often you use the tele, and look at those shots:
- Using the Photos app on a Mac, create a smart album to match on the lens name. No smart albums on iOS.
- For each lens name for your iPhone model, note the number of photos. ex:
It’s a bit confusing, as there's a different lens name for each lens plus different lens names for pano and portrait images. As such, each lens name is different than the lens name in the EXIF data. Also note, videos taken from the iPhone do not include lens information (at least not my iPhone 13PM).
- Note down the lens name and quantities, sum them up and come up with the percentage usage for the telephoto lens. Mine looks like this:
So, I use the telephoto 7.8% of the time. Looking at them, at least half of the time, using my feet to zoom would have been fine. However, I can see a mix of keepers where 5x would have been desirable, and a subset where 3x really really was ideal.
Ultimately, for those, am I ok with just shooting 1x and cropping in the future? Well....probably...sigh.
