Bazbo Loc: Lisboa, Portugal

Thinking of upgrading to this iPone. Anyone use this as a travel camera? Any experiences to share?

I am starting to feel the weight of the D850 and the Zeiss glass so anything anyone would like to share would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

insman1132 Loc: Southwest Florida

I use my iPhone 14 Pro Max all the time because it is always with me. But when I travel I have a Bridge Camera I take along. No Lense changes to worry about and lug around. If when you are on vacation what you usually take is snapshots, I think you will find your 14 Pro does the trick.

Can I recommend to take a look through the postings on this sites SmartPhone Photography section?!

Wingpilot Loc: Wasilla. Ak

I and a few others post smartphone photos frequently on the smartphone photography section. I have the iPhone 13 Pro Max and use it almost to the exclusion of my other cameras. My travel camera is a Sony RX100VII because it’s very convenient and produces very high quality images. But for most other shooting, I use my iPhone because it’s always with me and takes very good images. I suspect the 14 Pro Max is even better. The one limitation with the iPhone is the lack of a zoom lens. You can’t always use your feet to zoom. But for convenience and quality of photos, the 14 Pro Max is hard to beat. And yeah, most of what you take while traveling are snapshots and this is well-suited for that.

BBurns Loc: South Bay, California

I am waiting until this fall for the next model to come out. I update every 5 years.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

For sheer bang for the buck, either the 14 Pro or the 14 Pro Max is fine. Heck, I'm still using an iPhone 7 Plus, daily. It's adequate as a travel camera when I don't feel like carrying something bigger.

The key thing to remember about iPhones is, you don't (just) buy one for the camera. You buy it for the entire Apple smartphone experience. It's essentially an Internet-connected supercomputer in your pocket that just happens to have a phone, a GPS, a camera, an audio recorder, a video recorder, and a FAX machine of sorts. It'll do about 2.09 million different things. That's not hyperbole, either... it's a count of software applications in the Apple App Store.

My favorite thing about the iPhone camera isn't the camera. It's iCloud and the Photos Library. When you make an image, it is automatically sent to iCloud right away. So you can open Photos on your Mac, your iPad, or your iPhone, and it will be there, ready to edit and share. If you want better tools than Photos has, you can export the original, open it in your favorite software, and edit it there.

If you haven't ever used a Micro 4/3 camera, before you sell your heavy Nikon gear, check out the new OM Systems (formerly Olympus) OM-1 and some native Micro 4/3 lenses from Olympus and Panasonic Lumix or Panasonic Leica. Also check out the Lumix GH6, and Lumix G9. If your primary use is still images, the OM-1 is the best of these picks. If your primary interest is video, the GH6 is a beast of a video camera. The G9 is an older model, best purchased used at a good price. It falls somewhere in the middle of the stills/video argument.

While Micro 4/3 flagship camera BODIES won't save you significant weight over the D850, the lenses are 1/4 to 1/2 the size and weight of full frame lenses for the same fields of view and maximum aperture. My whole system (M1 MacBook Air, Lumix body and four lenses, wireless mics, small LED panel light, batteries, flash, filters, cables, memory cards, chargers, cleaning supplies... fits into a backpack that slides under an airplane seat.

Here are some iPhone 7 Plus images for comparison purposes. View the download versions full screen on a large 4K TV for best views. Yes, these are edited in the lowly Apple Photos application. I downsized the panorama in Photoshop to get it to fit on UHH.

iPhone 7 Plus image — Robotic Bar on a Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship, The Wonder of the Seas (largest in the world)

(Download)

iPhone 7 Plus image — Open Air Market, Aix-en-Provence, France

(Download)

iPhone 7 Plus image — Panoramic view of Marseilles, France, from parking lot of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde Cathedral (downsized to fit on UHH)

(Download)

DavidM Loc: New Orleans, LA

See the link below, I have this phone (iphone pro max) and take photos when it suits my needs and when I don't have my main camera with me. It takes really satisfying photos!

https://www.macworld.com/article/1070427/iphone-14-pro-fujifilm-x-e4-mirrorless-comparison.html

These two photos taken at our crawfish boil this past weekend..

(Download)


(Download)

Red6

Great timing! My wife and I just returned from a cruise visiting Spain, Italy, Greece, and Croatia on Sunday. She had her iPhone 14 Pro Max and I took my Lumix ZS70. Comparing our photos I feel the iPhone 14 did an excellent job and held up well against the Lumix. In fact, if you factor in the ease of carrying the iPhone 14 and its simplicity of use, I would probably choose the iPhone. I was carrying my iPhone SE along with my Lumix, so going to a better iPhone only would eliminate one extra thing to carry. Since we were on guided excursions and there are often crowds, there is little time to set up the "perfect shot". You take the shot as quickly as possible and move on. The iPhone does this well and gives great results. The other big advantage of using the iPhone is that you can immediately back this photo up in the cloud and post it for friends and family to see. We were in Venice on Saturday, the day before Easter, and it was very crowded, especially in St. Mark's Plaza.

This was my first trip with the Lumix ZS70. I normally carry a Sony RX100 vIII which I bought to carry on trips after I tired of carrying my heavier Sony kit/w lenses. The Lumix is heavier than the RX100 and, in my opinion, a little more difficult to use than the RX100. My thoughts now are to sell the Lumix ZS70 and purchase an iPhone 14 Pro. I may keep the RX100 a little longer but I think its days are numbered after having seen what the iPhone 14 Pro is capable of.

Scott Kelby has an excellent book on iPhone photography and has a lot of good advice. I have the Kindle version from Amazon. If you are interested in or thinking about getting into iPhone photography, this is a must-have.

joehel2 Loc: Cherry Hill, NJ

I carried the 14 Pro and my D850 on a recent winter trip. I thought the IPhone would be my backup camera, but it was putting out such a beautiful 45mp RAW image, that I used it as often as the D850. It really surprised me by capturing wonderful Aurora images handheld.

CliffMcKenzie Loc: Lake Athens Texas

Same combination - D850 & iPhone 14 Pro. Imagine you are in the Texas Big Bend desert and a UFO is coming right at you. Unbelievable bright light. The D850 is secured away from shooting Twighlight and setting sun. You have seconds. You grab your iPhone and take the shoot and it worked perfectly. The UFO? It was a SpaceX missile fired from CA at their sundown. Shoot raw and do the Kelby series as suggested. By the way...get the Apple watch and you can control the shot on the camera...bet you did not know that.

joehel2 Loc: Cherry Hill, NJ

Thanks for the tip about controlling the camera with the watch.

billmck Loc: Central KY

I have a Nikon D7100 (lighter than your D850), and while traveling I generally take only my Tamron 18-400 lens with it. I also have an iPhone 14 Pro. On my recent trip to Seattle and Victoria, B.C., I chose to take only the iPhone and left the Nikon at home. I was quite pleased with the results. My biggest issue with using the iPhone as my only camera is the difficulty I have in composing shots in bright sunlight, which tends to wash out the screen.

Bill

davidrb Loc: Half way there on the 45th Parallel

Depends upon your reasons for making photographs. If you do so for your own appreciation no one else's opinion really matters. If you make them to please others your task is great, everyone has an opinion. A question for you concerning "upgrade," what do you do with the discarded piece you have replaced?

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Great shots showing what many refuse to call a "real camera".

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

I'm taking my new iPhone 14 Pro Max (500 GB) on a cruise in August.
Right now, it is my camera by my side for every waking moment.
I am still in the learning phase, but I find that it makes very good pics, and the "Auto Pano" mode is easy to use and Excellent.
The low light capability is also very good.
Using my usual Topaz Photo AI workflow will make everyone happy except the (100+%) "pixel peepers".
I anticipate very good results.
Best Wishes,
JimmyT Sends

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Thanks. It's like anything else. You can have the best pots and pans and knives in the world, but without a bit of knowledge, experience, education, training, and good reference materials at hand, you're not a cook. I've been making images since I was a little kid, and consider that skill as important as writing.

I will note that all three images were non-destructively cropped, straightened, and post-processed very slightly in Apple Photos, before export to final JPEGs.

The iPhone and its high end competitors have remarkably decent cameras on them. They are far more capable of recording images, in a wider variety of situations, than most film cameras that a casual photographer might have used back in the 35mm point-and-shoot heydays of the 1980s to '90s. (I make that comparison because most people had one of those, back then. We had a few in our family that we used when we weren't "making serious images.")

Many newspapers and magazines have used smartphone photos on their covers and in their stories. I doubt anyone cared they weren't taken with advanced dSLRs, except the press photographers who were left out.

There are still plenty of reasons to use adjustable, interchangeable lens cameras. But for a "daily driver," I'll always have the iPhone, even when my other gear is in my backpack. It does too many other things to leave it behind.

Back in 2014, my wife bought a Nikon dSLR and a couple of lenses for her marketing job. She's photographed her company's products and processes with it, and made some short videos for a website. But increasingly, the iPhone has taken on that role.

The smartphone has democratized photography like no other type of camera in history.