August photos are up!
I’m getting around to this a little later than some months, but today I finished selecting and uploading my favorite photos from August 2024 on the RistrettoShots site. You can check them out here.
Spending more and more of my free time cycling around Providence meant that I haven’t been dedicating as much time to my photography. I did still bring my camera with me to things and take some shots I’m happy with, which are what you’ll see on the photo-site above. It feels weird to cut back on taking photos at all, but not entirely bad to have another hobby that’s worth enjoying. As a side-effect, I did start experimenting more with using my iPhone for photographs again. It’s been nice to see a few examples of that practice paying off, where even without my biggest, most capable camera I was still able to take some images I’m happy with.
My preferred iPhone camera app Halide also updated this month with a new mode called “Process Zero” - one that’s dedicated to stripping-back the majority of the iPhone’s built-in image processing. I’ve been hoping for something like this for awhile, since even the iPhone’s default RAW files from Apple have processing baked-in that I find hard to work with.
The images from Process Zero are a lot more natural, even if in the process (heh) they do expose some of the iPhone’s inherent small camera weaknesses. Yes, things can get a bit grainy or blown out, but there’s also not as much smoothing or high-dynamic-range to try and wrangle back into a normal-looking photograph afterward. It feels like predictably exposing a camera sensor with light, rather than a hyper-processed pocket computer image compilation.
The fine folks behind Halide even ported Process Zero all the way back to the iPhone X, which meant I was able to dig out mine from where it’s been collecting dust and take it out with me as a cycling camera. I find the iPhone X’s 28mm and 52mm equivalent lenses far preferable to my newer 13 Mini’s 26mm and 13mm ones (“already too wide” and “even darn wider”), even if the resulting images aren’t quite as impressively sharp or have as much natural dynamic range as shots from the 13 Mini.
It does feel funny to be back shooting phone photos again after having spent so much time researching, learning, and practicing “proper” photography the last few years. I haven’t had this much fun taking photos with a smartphone since high school. Big, big thanks to the team at Lux for the part their excellent tools have played in that.
I’ll finish this post off with a few of my favorite Process Zero images. Cheers!
