Pro Mode

Typically, when I use my smartphone to take a photo, I go with the automatic mode on the camera. I just point and shoot.

No muss, no fuss. I can fix things up, later, in post production.

But every once and a while, I like to override some of the automatic settings and take more control of the camera to see what it can really do. After all, the camera on my Samsung S10 is pretty damned good, sometimes rivalling the quality of my Nikon D-SLR cameras.

In some instances, it even surpasses them.

This year, I've used my smartphone to capture photos much more often than I have with my D-SLRs. Mostly, it's out of convenience; many times, it's out of laziness, not wanting to carry a bunch of gear with me when I can slip my phone into my back pocket.

When DW and I were in Mexico, last February, I left my bigger cameras at home, opting to use only my smartphone or my 360-degree cameras. But when we head to Portugal, in September, I'm bringing both D-SLR bodies and at least two lenses (likely, three).

And, of course, my smartphone will come with me.

Last Saturday, DW and I drove to Almonte to kayak along the Mississippi River. It was the first time that we have paddled this stretch of the Mississippi and we only covered about 2.5 kilometres before a set of class-1 rapids forced us to turn around—while we'd have no trouble tackling the rapids in our kayaks, the current was too strong to paddle back.

After our paddle, we felt we deserved to treat ourself to food and drink in the town, and we ended up on the balcony of Joe's Italian Kitchen, right at the corner of Mill Street and Almonte Street, in the narrow heritage building that used to be a mill. As luck would have it, we faced the falls that cut through the main part of town.

Immediately after we were seated, I pulled out my smartphone and took the following photo in fully automatic mode:

It wasn't a bad shot, considering the water level was at a minimum and there wasn't much to the falls. It wasn't like it was when I last photographed them, before sunrise, in early spring of 2020.

I showed DW my pre-dawn photo, from 2020, and she wondered if she could capture moving water on her phone. She has an Apple iPhone 13 (not Pro). She looked at her settings and couldn't find a way to set up the shot manually, which surprised me. I thought that the only difference between her phone and the Pro version was the extra lens, but it seemed that there were no manual overrides.

If we're wrong, let me know in the Comments section.

My phone has manual overrides, which I've used only a few times. In Mexico, I learned that my phone even has a Night mode, which allowed me to shoot in very low light. After failing to capture a good evening shot in Manual mode, and after donning my reading glasses, I learned about this Night mode and it made all the difference in the world.

As DW explored the camera settings on her smartphone, I set my own smartphone camera settings to Pro mode. I slowed down the shutter speed to 1/6 of a second, set the ISO to 50, and opened the aperture to f/2.4. I composed the camera similarly to my first shot and pressed the shutter release.

I don't want to brag but DW swears by Apple phones and I didn't purchase the plus-version of my Android phone. It's a standard S10. And unless we're wrong about her smartphone, my two-and-a-half-year-old phone beats her new one from this year.

Yeah, I leave my D-SLRs at home more often. But when you have a smartphone that can do a lot of what my bigger cameras can do, can you blame me?

Happy Friday!