Castle Hill, a Concert, and the iPhone 5s

For Father's Day this year the family got together and brought me a new (slightly used) iPhone 5s. My Samsung S3 was becoming increasingly unreliable (turning itself off on a regular basis), so I'd been making noises about a 'new' phone for quite a while.

It also happened that a friend recently upgraded to the iPhone 6s, and was no longer using his 1 year old iPhone 5s (in mint condition). So a deal was done, and we both came away very happy.

I've written on this blog before about not being interested in the cutting edge of cellphone technology. For a start I don't have the budget for it. And secondly, I'm a pretty conservative phone user. I basically use them for texting, the occasional call, and for listening to music on :-) So I don't want the latest or greatest mobile phone. My first cellphone was an iPhone 3, which I absolutely loved. My next phone was the Samsung S3 which I purchased new, since it was about 3 generations old at the time. Another great phone - but it was Android, and I did miss the iOS experience. So I've moved back to Apple again with the 5s and, once again, I'm loving it.

Castle Hill. iPhone 5s. Shot from a moving vehicle.

Exactly one week ago (as I post this) I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket to the Midnight Oil concert in Christchurch. My brother-in-law (thanks Hamish) had a friend pull out at the last minute, so he asked me if I'd like to go instead. I didn't need asking twice!

Because the concert was on a week night, the family decided I would catch the shuttle service to Christchurch from Greymouth and go on my own. Bit of a blokes night out. I traveled very light, basically just a change of clothes and a toothbrush. I certainly didn't consider taking my OM-D E-M1 with me, although I did suspect that there might be a few photo opportunities. Enter the iPhone 5s.

Midnight Oil video screens at Horncastle Arena, Christchurch

I'm not going to bang on again in this post about how a camera phone is no substitute for a 'real' camera - I've made myself very clear on the subject on numerous occasions quite recently. But hey, I had a new iPhone 5s in my pocket, so wasn't I just a little curious about the quality of its camera? Of course I was.

In terms of its camera, the iPhone 5s uses a 1/3" 8MP sensor - which just so happens to be exactly the same specs as the Samsung S3. Is the camera's performance the same then? Short answer - yes. Practically identical. Which is to say, not that great (imho). I know for a fact that the 'newer' generation of iPhones like the 7 (and now 8) have excellent cameras on them - my daughter has the iPhone 7Plus and the photos she gets using her phone are quite impressive indeed. Unfortunately (although not surprisingly), the camera on the iPhone 5s is not in the same league.

Peter Garrett and Midnight Oil. iPhone 5s

Is it unusable as a camera? Well no, of course not. And maybe given the circumstances (a very dark, in-door concert, at night), it actually did a fairly impressive job. At least I thought it did when I reviewed the images after taking them on the little 4 inch screen. The reality is a little different when you look at them on a 21" monitor however.

Midnight Oil, Horncastle Arena, Christchurch. iPhone 5s

There was a good crowd for the concert, although it wasn't packed (not surprisingly on a Monday night). There was plenty of space, and no one was banging into you from the sides or behind - so holding the phone steady was relatively easy. It was also fairly easy to get a good view. We were about 15 meters from the front of the stage without having to push and shove to get there, and probably could have gotten even closer had we wanted to. The touch-to-focus function worked very accurately in low light, although I suspect the high contrast offered by the stage lights helped in this regard.

The 'Oils' in full voice! iPhone 5s

Pinch to zoom (digitally) did help to get even closer to the action, although at a cost. The images taken zoomed in are even softer and more overtly 'digital' looking than those shot at 'normal' focal length (of around 30mm in full-frame camera terms). I won't be printing them out and hanging them on the wall anytime soon (or ever), but as low-res images for the blog (or as wallpaper for my phone) they work just fine.

Dump Trump! Midnight Oil's Peter Garrett as political as ever...  iPhone 5s

Am I disappointed in the images I got from the concert then? Actually no - not at all. I'm really quite happy with them, all things considered. As I said earlier, this wasn't about photography, this was about enjoying a concert. And enjoy the concert I most certainly did!

You can see in some of the photos above that many other concert-goers had their phones out, capturing and recording the event for posterity. And while I can kind of understand why they do it, it also drives me crazy! Yeah, I know - I did it too (although not in video). But over the course of a two hour concert, I took maybe 20 photos on my phone - mostly at the start, and then a few at the end. Many others had their phones out over 50% of the time, experiencing this larger than life event through a 5" screen. Seriously people?