The perfect shot
The Lumia 1020 may offer you 41 megapixels and endless flexibility, but for virtually every practical point-and-shoot purpose the 8-megapixel iPhone 5 was the best smartphone camera on the market — and the 5S is even better. Apple didn’t sacrifice sharpness for low-light capability, like the HTC One and its Ultrapixel camera, and it hasn’t traded quality for simplicity, like the Moto X. Apple just took a great camera and improved both the hardware and software. The sensor is still 8 megapixels, but it’s slightly larger in size, which means each individual pixel is slightly bigger and collects more light. That means better low-light performance and crisper shots all around, and it delivers.
The iPhone 5S takes excellent pictures, better even than the iPhone 5. Things are a little sharper and more detailed even in good lighting, but the real difference comes at night. The 5S is noticeably better in low-light conditions — where the 5 used to capture only silhouettes and often just black, the 5S can get usable pictures. Same goes for the new 1.2-megapixel front-facing FaceTime camera — awkwardly dark video calls and Snapchats are now totally in play, for better or worse.
The new, faster A7 processor flexes its muscles when the camera’s running. There’s a new burst mode, which I quickly started using all the time: it shoots 10 frames per second, and then either automatically selects the best of your photos or lets you choose your favorite. (I always picked my own — the automatic setting was hit and miss.) Once you’ve selected your favorite, you can easily delete the rest of the burst, which is extremely handy — no one needs all those shots of the same thing cluttering up their camera roll and Photo Stream. Since the iPhone 5S can still take a moment or two to focus, it’s prone to missing the perfect shot — burst mode all but solves that problem.
The new processor also enables slow-motion video, letting you shoot 720p at 120 frames per second and then play it back at a quarter speed. It starts the clip at normal speed, drops into slow-mo, and then speeds back up right at the end just for effect. Get ready for a lot of iPhone slow-mo footage to pop up — pretty much everything looks awe-inspiring in slow motion, and using it is addictive.
There are some other new camera features as well: Apple’s added live filters in the camera app, which are interesting but not quite as artistic as Instagram’s, zooming is now possible while you’re recording video, and there’s automatic digital image stabilization. None are exactly earth-shattering features, but all are nice to have. Same goes for the new True Tone flash, which fires two lights designed to balance with the scene around you and light your subject better; it works as well as any flash can, with far more balance, but you’re still much better off not using a flash at all. Luckily, most of the time you won’t have to.
The 5S basically works like a point-and-shoot, and most of the time takes pictures like one too. For many people, the 5S will be the best camera they own. It really is a remarkable advancement, even if it doesn’t feel like a total overhaul.
yourself.
