We were roaming at Agrassen Ki Baoli in Delhi and were taking photos at the not-so-haunting place. We took some shots and went down the stairs to explore the place and take some more shots. The next moment I saw my phone slipping from the hands and it dropped on the stairs. I was hoping for nothing major. My friend took it up, checked the screen and then quickly turned it around with a “Oh Shit” expression. We checked the phone and on the screen, I could see the cracks from the left of the screen going all the way to the center of the screen.
That was the last time I saw my iPhone 6 at its best. I thought to get it repaired but fast forward two weeks, I was deciding whether to get iPhone 8 Plus or Google Pixel 2. I went with 8 Plus because of iOS. I feel the iOS ecosystem is very well sorted, it works well with MacBooks and the overall experience is top notch which is what matters the most to me. I used an Android phone a few minutes back, tapped on a WhatsApp notification but it didn’t open the app, so it seems Android is just as it was when I used it last time, miserable.
Thoughts on iPhone 8 Plus Camera
I’ve been using iPhone 8 Plus since last few weeks now and talking about the camera, the picture quality is literally amazing and is on par with professional cameras if we ignore the portrait mode. Photos come crispy and with lots of details. Sometimes to add proper exposure to the subject, the camera over-exposes other parts of the photo which most times looks fine. Support for RAW is very useful but unfortunately, iOS stock camera app doesn’t support RAW capture. It would be great to have RAW support in stock camera app. Apart from that, I found the telephoto lens to be very useful.
Portrait mode — It works well when you take the shot properly, but you just can’t point your phone and take the shot and expect a good portrait shot. After taking tons of portrait photos, I’ve found that it works best when the lighting is good, the object is a person and is well separated from the background and is at right distance from the phone. It takes some time to get a good portrait shot and you have to position the object well.
Gallery
I recently came back from a trip to Patna where I took tons of photos from iPhone 8 Plus’s camera and being honest, I’m really impressed with the quality of photos it captures. Here are some selected shots from the trip. Most of these photos are shot with stock camera app, some with Halide. Also please note that these photos are edited and processed in VSCO Cam app.
