A nice sunset was forming as I made my way towards the Bélem Tower in Lisbon, Portugal after shooting the Sacadura Cabral and Gago Coutinho Monument. Ever since I got the iPhone 4, I always like to take a shot on the iPhone in addition to taking a few on my “real” camera, a Nikon D7000. By doing so, I also get the advantage of recording the location of the photos I take by referencing the GPS data from the iPhone shots. It also allows me to post the photo to the various social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram once I have an internet connection.
In this case, after taking a couple of shots on my iPhone and being happy with the results, I proceeded to shoot the same scene on my D7000 and AF-S 12-24mm lens. I took a few shots, briefly checked the LCD for exposure and moved on. I didn’t zoom in as I didn’t think that the camera would have trouble capturing that scene in focus with a shutter speed of something like 1/60.
To my dismay, when I finally checked the whole series of shots back in the hotel on my Macbook Air which I have brought along, they were all out of focus. In fact, I couldn’t find the point where the camera had focussed on. Strangely, shots before and after that were perfectly fine. So it must have been some random fluke.
So, the only good shot of that scene is the one on my iPhone. It’s a little noisy of course, but it’s better than nothing. A real camera does not necessarily produce a better photo than a smartphone camera. Sometimes, the simpler device may just get you the shot that you wanted.