straying from the straight and narrow

passel o' cameras / iPhone picture ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggen
iPhone picture (#2) Polaroid-like conversion ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenI woke up this AM without a thought of straying from the straight and narrow, straight picture making wise. However, seemingly the next thing I know I am making a picture with my iPhone, something I have done only once previously - a Xmas day selfie using my brothers's Xmas gift to me with the intent of sending the picture to him.

I made the iPhone picture as a result of the desire to picture the passel o' cameras sitting in our front hall. The only digital camera I had at hand to make the picture without removing one from the bunch was my iPhone which, of course, isn't a camera cuz it's a phone. The more I thought about using the phone to make a picture, the more it appealed to me and my long standing like of crappy cameras and the pictures they make.

To wit, is the iPhone picture making capability "crappy"?

I have made my share of crappy pictures using crappy cameras, most notably various Polaroid cameras which produced pictures which were; 1) small, 2) not very sharp, and 3) color and tonal quality which were unique to Polaroid film and varied depending upon the particular Polaroid film (and camera) used to make the pictures.

Turns out, at least in the relatively dim light in which I made the picture, the answer to the crappy question is neither here nor there.

The results were not good enough to use as a good quality picture. On the other hand, while it displayed some crappy camera characteristics (grainy, sorta soft, blown highlights with an odd look) they were not so pronounced as to constitute a true crappy picture - a kinda betwixt and between sorta thing.

IMO, to deliver true crappy pictures, the files require a fair amount of processing in order to bend the results closer to crappy-ness. Sorta like I did in making a Polaroid-like result.

That written, I don't think I'll very often think of my phone as a picture making device. That's true in large part because I don't go anywhere without at least 2 cameras from my passel hanging from my shoulder.