iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro

At this point I’m so happy with my little preset that taking nice phone photos is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Point phone at nice building. Apply preset. Ta daa!

iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro

The other trick with these overcast photos is to use the automatic sky selection in Photomator to create a second set of adjustments and add more texture and clarity to the clouds, as well as dropping the exposure slightly. This gives you a much more distinctive sky, without turning the rest of the photo into an over-contrasted mess.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised about how good the ML sky detection is, I’m always worried that I’ll end up with a garish border. Not sure if this is just because I’m taking pictures of buildings with well-defined edges, or because I’m just looking at these on a little phone screen.

iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro

On this trip I haven’t brought a computer to edit photos from my a6500 on (ok I’ve got my iPad but that’s a whole other thing) which has led me to spend a bunch more time editing my phone photos.

Through a combination of copy/pasting adjustments between similar photos, and saving some presets, I can quickly and consistently get pretty good results.

These ones aren’t actually too heavily reliant on presets, but are the starting point of the style I settled on. It’s basically just some exposure adjustments (raising the shadows), boosting the clarity and texture, accentuating the colour and brightness of the walls, and adding a mild vignette.

The overcast weather meant there wasn’t a lot of room for playing with the light, but I think this really helped the phone capture the scene better. Without a lot of dynamic range—everything is pretty washed out—you’re free to add contrast back in yourself later.

iPhone 15 Pro

iPhone 15 Pro

I think one of the things I struggle with in photography is how to deal with a beautiful blue sky. I just can’t stand to leave it there. Instead I’m compelled to desaturate it or obscure it somehow.

Here I opted to wash out the whole image and restrict it to black and white, so the saturated sky disappears. You still get the feeling of a sunny day, but it doesn’t look like a cartoon, which fits in more with the mood of the photo.

DJI Mini 3 Pro
f1.7 • 1/3000s

DJI Mini 3 Pro
f1.7 • 1/8000s

It’s really hard to take pictures of surfers because they don’t hold still.

Sony a6500
f13 • 105mm • 2.5s • Panorama

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f13 • 20mm • 13s

The first photo is an ~11-shot panorama with every shot taken fully zoomed in. This makes it super high resolution and a bit sharper than the second photo which is just a single shot.

DJI Mini 3 Pro
f1.7 • 1/400s

DJI Mini 3 Pro
f1.7 • 1/1250s

Some shots from a morning swim. Black and white to move away from the blue-and-orange that is typical of the Sydney coastline.

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f11 • 20s • Multi-shot composite

Arrived with about 2 minutes to get ready before the fireworks started. There was a huge crowd so nowhere to setup the tripod. I ended up perched on top of a wall with the tripod mostly collapsed and almost falling off the wall.

Sony a6500 with Sigma 30mm f1.4
f1.4 • 1/60s

Sony a6500 with Sigma 30mm f1.4
f1.4 • 1/60s

Walked up to the back of Mt Inari to avoid the crowds. Shot at f1.4 most of the time as it was late in the afternoon and overcast. I would have liked to have a bit more freedom in focal length.

Sony a6500 with Sigma 30mm f1.4
f2.5 • 1/400s

Sony a6500 with Sigma 30mm f1.4
f2.8 • 1/200s

Two shots from the end of the day in Nara. I liked the late afternoon sun on the water, it would be better either with a more pleasant background—I don’t particularly like the building behind—or with a longer lens looking across the water, to emphasise the reflection.

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f5.6 • 1/200s

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f6.3 • 1/125s

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f5.6 • 1/160s

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f6.3 • 1/125s

I could endlessly take pictures of the roofs of temples.

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f7.1 • 1/800s

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f7.1 • 1/160s

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f7.1 • 1/200s

Sony a6500 with Sony G 18-105mm f4
f7.1 • 1/400s

Views on a walk around the hills in Kyoto. A little cheeky with the colours here to make it seem like it’s autumn, when in actual fact everything was quite green—like the last photo.