Thanks Adobe, with your new Lens Blur effect you’ve just made the iPhone a usable camera.

I, Ben Welland, can not believe that I created this photograph with a mobile phone. I've always felt that phone pictures are too clinical-looking for my taste, with everything being in focus in the picture from the foreground to the background, due to the teensy, tiny image sensor that smartphone manufacturers put into the cameras in our phones. I mean… @Apple made some definite strides towards making phone pictures look more like camera pictures, when they put 'portrait mode' into the iPhone back in 2016, and then other companies followed suit. But it never looked quite right. I could always tell when an image was shot with a phone.

Fast forward to 2024, though, and I think some hat-eating on my part is definitely in order. Cause this, to me, is pretty convincing. This photo was shot in RAW with my iPhone 12 using the Manual app and then edited using Adobe's new 'Lens Blur' effect that you can apply to RAW images in Photoshop, and I really have to say that I think the developers at @adobe have knocked it out of the park. 

Will I be selling all my wide-aperture prime lenses, and all my full-frame DSLRs and mirrorless cameras? No. 

But in the case of this shoot, where I was just casually shooting my girlfriend in her new sweater that she'd knit, and my camera’s battery died and I hadn't brought a spare battery… I think she was right when she said "why don't you just shoot some more pics using your phone?" In the moment, I grumbled at the thought of it. But today, in hindsight, I'm glad I kept shooting, and I'm glad I had a phone in my pocket, and that’s all thanks to Adobe.

Prior to today, I would never have posted a 'phone picture' on my website. 

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#byfieldpitmanportraits
#ottawaportraitphotographer
#adobelensblur