Daily Archives: March 10, 2021

Nature Phonography: Chickadee in 4K

Still experimenting with my iPhone SE 2020 and the Sirui add on lenses on the Moment thin case. This shot is a frame from a 4K video, and, given the limits of the phone camera, I think it shows promise. I had the phone on my selfie stand on the deck with the Sirui 400mm lens prefocused on the meal worm dish and again, I was inside with the bluetooth remote. The frame was captured from the video at full 4K resolution using the Lumafusion app on my iPad, and then processed as I would a normal image, in Polarr and Apple Photos. This might be as good as the iPhone SE can do. I have a photo grip for the phone arriving today…just a little hand grip with a bluetooth trigger that fits one the end of the phone, so my next experiment will be to see if I can get anything at all from a hand-held 4K video. 🙂 The video is too large for upload to WordPress, but I will post it on FaceBook. I have been digging into Phone camera reviews, and, while there are certainly better phone cameras out there than the one in the iPhone SE, it looks to me like the limits I am seeing in the telephoto images are not going to be eliminated by investing in a “better phone”. The reality is the sensors are just so tiny, that they reach their limits for nature work, especially wildlife, very quickly. Still, it is amazing to be able to get anything at all at 400mm with a phone. 🙂