OpenPLUTO

Doing it different since 1981.

You Can Shoot RAW on iPhone

Some of the greatest things happen to me within those first thirty minutes of waking up. The coffee is at it’s peak performance, Folk Forward (and lately Sonic Universe) always delivers something perfect and things just seem to “click”. Even the keys on the keyboard are enjoyable to press.

So it was during this time this morning when I came to realize that you can shoot RAW files on your iPhone! It came about actually by way of Hipstamatic. I believe the default ratio for Hipstamatic is 1:1 and I wanted to change it to that of the iPhone’s default camera settings. I wasn’t actually sure what it was, and despite loving taking pictures I’m not too much of a shutterbug with my phone so I DuckDuckGoed:

iphone pictures what ratio are they 1:1, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9

First result was iPhone camera basics. This is the page you would have thought I’d read in the day after buying my first iPhone. But no. The day I had hard evidence my Android and my Google Home’s were spying on me, I turned my phone off, went to the closest Verizon store that had a newer iPhone and an Otterbox in stock at the store and switched from Android THAT DAY without really taking any time to learn about iOS outside of what I knew from my iPad owership. That is to say I know little to nothing about the camera and it’s features.

It was on this page however, iPhone camera basics that I was linked to another page that blew my head clean off my shoulders. Firstly that you could save your camera settings to whatever settings you had them set at last (exposure, etc) so they do not reset to full auto the next time you open your camera. This definitely makes your device feel more like an actual camera in a mode other than auto.

But then I was shown a link that shocked me: Take Apple ProRAW photos with your iPhone camera

This new ability changes things for me a very real way. I feel like I will be more intentional with my camera now on my iPhone and maybe not take so many pictures. One has to wonder if enabled, if you’re taking a photo from within Day One, if that captures a RAW file then, and say in Hipstamatic. I suppose I could just try and find out.

This discovery points something else out deeper about me that changed in a big way over the years. When I used to get something, whatever it was, I would try and master it’s system and deep dive settings before playing around with anything else. I’m the exact opposite of that nowadays. I will get something and just tell me myself “I’ll take some time in the future to sit down and learn this” and that never really happens. I learn how to do things in the heat of moment when I need something to happen. That’s not good. I don’t know why that is. Have I just sped myself up to the speed of the internet by way of overexposure. We’re light-years away from our first Macintosh Performa that didn’t have a modem.