I love to shoot aperture priority.  If I look at my cameras, the setting that I consistently see is AV.  I love being able to control the depth of field and I have a whole series of lenses that allow me to be at 1.2 or 1.4 with lovely blurred backgrounds.

I've had an iPhone for years.  I choose an iPhone because it fits with my ecosystem of iPads and MAC computers.  I wanted everything in my personal and work life to sync easily and when I made a change from the PC environment to the MAC environment in 2009, I changed my thinking to the IOS way of life.

Except for my image capture.  I am so tied to aperture priority that I find myself very frustrated with using my phone as an image capture means.  In fact, last year I was due for a new phone and was interested in the new iPhone X, but backed away and bought a wonderful P&S in the Canon G7M2.  And to me that was a very important decision because my new little P&S was my "go to" image capture device during many trips last year.  And I was very satisfied with my photos and very glad that I didn't have to carry the weight around of my Canon DSLR.  There are times now that I travel with just my Canon G7M2 and leave my Canon DSLR at home.

But this year, I desperately needed a new phone.  I looked at various choices and then decided the iPhone XS was the phone for me.

Since my purchase a few days before Christmas, I've been experimenting.  I've read camera tips on various websites, watched YouTube videos and just experimented with capturing images.  I found that I like the new Portrait feature and am glad that I decided on the iPhone XS.  I am continuing to play around with the different controls on the provided camera app and I am also exploring some alternative camera apps.

What I discovered along the way is that there are three camera apps that I seem to be favoring:  Camera+2, Obscura, and ProCamera.  ProCamera, in particular, has become my camera app of choice.  For me, it provides a user experience that I feel comfortable with and allows me to easily change settings and get the types of photos that I like within the limits of the iPhone.  I consider them limits because my DSLR and my P&S represent the ideal of my image capture world.

ProCamera allows me to have a simple interface during any of the shooting modes and with a simple click, I can get to a more advanced menu and quickly change options.  I can shoot RAW if I want to.  I can manually determine my shutter speed and ISO.  I can have different advanced settings.  And, I can easily check the metadata, something that I always find frustrating with the iPhone camera app and IOS's photos.  Histograms can be shown while taking photos.  And I can easily use exposure compensation.

The only thing that I am missing from ProCamera is the macro feature that I find very easy to use in Camera+2.  If I am going to take any macros, I find this camera app extremely easy to use.

And I will continue to experiment and use the Portrait feature on the native camera.  I love being able to change the lighting configuration.  And I want to see if I can simulate an aperture type experience with this new feature realizing that it's meant for portraits rather than landscapes.  It will be interesting to do some table top work and see what the portrait feature can do.

These are my musings about my new iPhone and my initial experimenting and use of other image capture apps.  Next post, I will add some photos that I've taken with the native camera, ProCamera, and Camera+.