Austin Mann reviews iPhone 13 Pro cameras on the AppleInsider Podcast
On a special episode of the AppleInsider Podcast, travel photographer Austin Mann shares his experience reviewing iPhone 13 Pro camera on a journey through Tanzania.
Every year, renowned photographer Austin Mann takes the latest iPhone to exotic locations and provides an in-depth review. Mann headed to Tanzania with iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max testing the new Cinematic mode, macro capabilities, and 3x telephoto lens.
In regards to the macro mode on the new iPhone 13 Pro, Mann describes it as a "fourth lens in your pocket." Typically, shooting macro photography and video requires expensive lenses with a steep learning curve. Macro on the iPhone 13 Pro may be limited, but in many situations can take the place of a dedicated lens.
Austin Mann also comments on the incredible video quality captured by iPhone 13 Pro's new Ultra Wide camera, and the impressive battery life even when recording 4K video. Plus we discuss Cinematic mode, Photographic Styles, and iPhone durability in the field.
Austin Mann: Hey, thanks Stephen. I'm glad to be here.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. I mean, I love reading your reviews of the iPhone cameras every year. The last time you were actually on, we talked about the M1 iPad Pro. I'm curious, are you still using that in the field as you do your travel photography?
Austin Mann: Yeah, I use it a lot. It's got kind of a special place in my workflow and still lightning fast and Lightroom has gotten even better since last time we were talking about it, and a lot of new features rolling out in there. Really exciting new masking features that they have coming out this fall. And yeah I love using the iPad Pro.
Stephen Robles: Well, you're here because we have got to talk about the iPhone 13 camera system. They've been significantly upgraded across the entire lineup. But my first question for you is this, you did your review of the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max in Tanzania this year. How do you choose the locations for your iPhone reviews?
Is your schedule such where you just always have like an exotic locale that you're traveling to regularly? And so it just works into wherever you're going or do you plan it specifically?
Austin Mann: Yeah. In this case, I have a five-year project that I'm working, a conservation project in Southern Tanzania with some partners there. Just as part of a continuation of kind of telling the story of the protection of some of these wild savannas down there in Southern Tanzania.
I decided to take the iPhone along and, and test it while I was, uh, shooting content for other clients and partners.
Stephen Robles: Oh, that's pretty cool. With the new 13 Pro and Pro Max. Again, obviously you've done these annual iPhone reviews for a long time. Did you feel like it was already a noticeable difference as soon as you started the new 13 Pro camera system, as you're using it in the field, did it feels significantly better than the iPhone 12 Pro before it?
Austin Mann: The biggest difference that I noticed definitely was with the 77 millimeter, the 3x lens.
I use the non Max iPhones, I just prefer the size. The 12 Pro was a 2x zoom or a 56 millimeter, I believe. And then from there, the 12 Pro Max was a 65 and then this year it's 77. But yeah, since, since I used a smaller device, the 12 Pro I had a 52 millimeter or so lens. And then, so jumping up to 77 was a pretty substantial you know, 33% increase. So I immediately noticed how different that was and just appreciated the naturally cinematic field that, that longer lens has combined with the larger sensor.
Stephen Robles: And obviously with a phone, the constraint you have as far as depth makes telephoto lenses and telephoto photography difficult.
One of the things Apple did with the new 3x lens is it actually has a higher aperture number. I believe it's 2.8 f-stops as opposed to the 2.4 over the 12 Pro Max. Did you notice that that difference in aperture setting effect low-light performance or anything noticeable?
Austin Mann: You know, I actually, I didn't really get to test that extensively.
I expected to see a difference and I can't say that I noticed a significant difference either way. I think that with the larger sensor, just the improved light collection ability that they talked about, I think that helps compensate for the slightly slower lens. But there's a couple of times where I could see it kind of kick in to kind of like a lower quality preview when using the 3x, like a digital zoom.
And that's particularly when you're shooting with subjects that are closer or in lower light scenarios. But for the most part, I didn't have a big problem in low light scenarios with the, with the 3x. I kind of expected that I might have some challenges with it. And I did have some, but certainly not so much that it was not tolerable
Stephen Robles: Yeah. As you were basically on a safari, as you were testing these phones, how was the performance and trying to capture fast moving objects and animals? Did you feel like you were able to capture those? Did you use burst mode or were you just kind of quick on the trigger?
Austin Mann: I love burst mode and I use it a ton, because I think timing is really underrated in great photography. I think what makes a great image is more the millisecond that you capture versus having the, the perfect lighting or, or whatnot. An image that is the perfect moment in bad lighting can be a great image, but if you invert that, if you have perfect lighting in a bad moment, it's not worth anything. So I use burst mode all the time, but the downside of burst mode is that I can't shoot ProRAW.
So it's really a trade-off. And so, uh, there's an image that I have in this year's article of a leopard, that leopard was very still for very long, about two hours, uh, that we waited for it to just as it lounge around in that tree. And when it finally did kind of come running down the tree, The light conditions were quite difficult.
It was backlit and there's almost no light like falling into the shade. It was kind of running on down the backside of this tree. And so kind of in that moment, instead of thinking, all right, I'm going to burst and capture the perfect moment. I knew that I really needed maximum image quality and, and kind of the dynamic range.
So I instead just tapped the shutter as quickly as possible. So I could get that ProRAW data to be able to edit and kind of pull up those shadows and recover those highlights.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. I was gonna ask about that photo specifically because the photo of the leopard and the tree is very evocative as a beautiful photo.
And so it looks like you shot most of the photos in your review with the telephoto lens and being with these kinds of animals, you probably can't get very close to pack of lions per se.
Austin Mann: Yeah. I try to try to maintain a safe distance that's for sure.
Stephen Robles: And it looks it's like you ended a lot of these in Lightroom right on the iPhone. How did it feel performance wise with the A15 Bionic now in the new phones?
Austin Mann: Most of the time when I'm shooting a review like this, I'm not editing the images. I like to just kind of go straight out of camera and maybe have one or two in there that have some color adjustments. But now that we're shooting ProRAW, it's kind of mandatory that I edit them.
So that was a little bit different this year versus last year and previous years was shooting in ProRAW and editing. So I process all of my raw photos, my ProRAW photos on iPhone using Lightroom. A great tool. And there's a tight integration between the Adobe and Apple camera teams to make everything work well together.
And I never feel held back by the power and the speed when I'm editing on my iPhone. And I think that's really important, you know, I'm processing these substantially larger ProRAW files and it's never, I'm not ever getting any sort of lag or hang ups. It's just, it moves exactly as fast as, as I can move, which is kind of a telltale sign of the right hardware in your hands.
Stephen Robles: Right. So the big change in the 13 Pro non Max iPhone is their sensor shift stabilization is now available on both of those phones. Last year with the 12, only the Pro Max got that sensor shift stabilization, but now both 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max both has that on the wide angle lens or the default camera lens when you open the camera app. Have you noticed any difference since the smaller Pro sizes would you use in your day-to-day use, have you noticed any difference there with the sensor shift?
Austin Mann: I did do a couple of side by side tests between the 12 Pro and the 13 Pro handheld low light. And I saw some that that's probably where I saw the biggest difference, but again, I didn't really get to analyze those images a ton.
I just looked on the screens in out when I was out in the field. And so I look forward to testing that more for sure because I think it, it, it should make a pretty notable difference.
Stephen Robles: Now, one of the brand new features on a 13 Pro and Pro Max is the new macro mode. That's using the new ultra wide camera lens and it's allowing to focus at very close distances.
You had a bunch of pictures in your review about it, and frankly, it seems to be almost the most underrated feature. I mean, it's pretty incredible what that lens is capable of capturing as far as macro, what was your experience like that in the field, using the macro lens?
Austin Mann: I've always been a big fan of macro and I have a couple of macro lenses and I carry one with me pretty much all the time. I think that when you're telling a story of the natural world, you know, we tend to think about these big sweeping landscapes, sunsets, and things like that. Or maybe large mammals and lions and bears and all that.
But an equal part of the entire, the biodiversity in an ecosystem is also the insects and the tiny little flowers and all of the different fauna. And so I think macro opens up this kind of new perspective on a kind of a different side of a biodiverse natural ecosystem. And I'm excited to see what people capture with macro.
They kind of, especially people that maybe haven't played with it before, now that they have a macro lens in there. You know, I think it kind of trains you to see differently as a photographer, as an artist, and kind of appreciate different details in the world around you. So I enjoyed using the macro, you know, in order to get pretty a decent magnification, you've got to be quite close to the subject.
So that's worth considering it's not the macro lens that I travel with for my mirrorless cameras, 100mm. And so it allows you to keep a little bit of distance from the subject and sometimes advantageous so you don't block the light of the subject or, you know, disturb the subject. So I think that that would be one of the limitations of the macro inside of the iPhone 13 Pro.
But especially if you're dealing with static, inanimate objects, um, like flower or whatever, you can get some really, really strong ultra close focus images.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. Panasonic Lumix camera and I've recently purchased a macro lens. It was the Sigma 105mm macro, and I was playing around with it and, you know, being a prosumer photographer, it is very difficult to get a good macro shot, especially if you're handheld and trying to like, that's such a huge focal length.
Sometimes it's just hard to find the subject even. And I actually just returned the lens because I was like, I can do it on the iPhone now. And it just seems way easier. When you have to make a decision now with the 13 Pro between just using the iPhone and using the lens, are there times where you're just like, well, I'll just use the iPhone now?
Austin Mann: Yeah. I mean, you know, the iPhone definitely covers those kind of in a pinch micro macro shots. I think if you were doing a full story on macro, uh, the involved macro photography on insects or something, I think you might want a more robust system, like macro style lighting and/or a longer tele, a longer millimeter of a macro lens. But I think, you know, and what you're talking about too, is macro photography is just inherently quite challenging because your depth of field gets extremely shallow the closer that you are to the subject.
And those are all kind of factors that you have to consider. The more light that you have, the deeper you can, that your depth of field can be. And your focus is a lot easier to nail when you've got more light available and you're not shooting super, super, super shallow.
So the bottom line is though, is that the macro that's built in to the iPhones now is a really capable macro lens. It can focus super close. And, you know, I was looking at the back of it feeling a little bit like I was in *Honey, I Shrunk the Kids* at times, you know, just like looking a little Cheerio or something and you can see all of these details and it's really fun to see the world through that new perspective.
Stephen Robles: For sure. Now there's been some improvements with portrait mode as well. You can do it with both the wide angle and the telephoto lens now on the 13 Pro and Pro Max. How's your experience been with portrait mode? Do you even use that or how did that function while you were in the field?
Austin Mann: Well for starters, thanks to the large sensor and the 77mm 3x lens, even those shots, even from a purely hardware perspective have showered up the field than we're used to on, on smart and smartphone photography. And so that's not even factoring in the software of portrait mode. So I've enjoyed using just the natural hardware for portraits. Portrait mode just continues to get better, the algorithms and the edge detection and all of the above, the semantic rendering and recognition of what's in each of the images.
All of the above. It's gotten so much better since we first saw portrait mode launch. So that's, you know, it has been fun to play with and I've used it for a bunch of different things. And especially again, kind of in a pinch, it's just amazing the images that you can create of somebody that you're traveling with, or like Anderson my guide, shooting a portrait mode image of him and having the control of the focus later.
Like sometimes I just back out and realize what a dream it is to be operating with such powerful camera and as subscribed to an entirely new set of rules, like, think about how nuts it is that we can change the focus after the fact that's just bonkers. That's like nothing we could have ever imagined.
Stephen Robles: Exactly. And now we're able to do that on the 13s with the cinematic mode, which you can think of it as portrait mode for video, but does the same thing captures all that depth information as you shoot previewing it live on screen, which just has to be a crazy amount of computational effort on the phone's part.
Which is one of the reasons why it's only 1080p right now and not 4k, but you had a video in your review at the top with some incredible, incredible video footage. And I believe that you strapped an iPhone to a helicopter. Is that right?
Austin Mann: Yeah. You know, I've got to find out where the limit is. We strapped a iPhone 13 Pro Max onto the nose of a helicopter, full collaboration of the pilot, just ensuring safety.
And I think we had three different safety straps on it, every different way that it was possible and all of the different screws or anything that could potentially vibrate the shot we had gaff taped closed, and just, it was a lot of precaution.
In fact, actually the very first flight that we did, I hooked it all up and then I didn't even put a phone in there. We went ahead and did a one hour flight or so, hitting a maximum speed without a phone and it just to make sure it was nice and sturdy and we landed.
Yeah. Still there. So we decided to throw a phone in there and see what came out of it. Yeah, so we, we did some kind of scenic flying where we shot from the cabin of the helicopter, with the doors off and also, uh, recorded some video off the nose that was surprisingly, surprisingly stable and, and cinematic.
Stephen Robles: Yeah, I'm watching clips of your video right now and you're hanging out the helicopter, just hand holding the iPhone, with no strap or anything around your wrist. Just bare grasping this type of thing.
Austin Mann: Yeah, I used all my strapping stuff for the, the nose mount. I was like, well, I'll just hold on real tight to this one in my hands and hope that we're good.
Stephen Robles: So the footage looks incredible. These herds of animals in the plains and some of the closeup video you also got like of the lions and such, how close were you to those lions in that one video shot?
Austin Mann: Uh, we were quite close. So we had brought a monopod, basically a single extending pole that's about six feet long and we put the DJI Osmo 4 on the end of that monopod and then inverted it, under slung it, kind of held it next to the ground while staying in the land cruiser. So that motion shot that you see that's super tight on that lion, that's with a 3x lens and then the underslung stabilized iPhone being held down by the monopod.
Stephen Robles: Ready to gun it just in case.
Austin Mann: Yeah. There was one point where the lion kind of looked at us and licked his lips and we're like, it's probably a good time to go.
Stephen Robles: Well, he did the one shot with the lion's laying on the ground. It looks like it's staring right at you.
Austin Mann: Yeah. He was very curious. She was in that shot. She was very curious about whatever this thing was sticking out of the land cruiser.
Stephen Robles: That's amazing. Now when you had it strapped to the helicopter, what lens did you leave it on to film that?
Austin Mann: Yeah, so I kind of was thinking about potentially controlling it with my watch, but that phone was not the one that I had hooked up to my watch and I didn't want to switch them all around and all that stuff. So I instead I did some testing and first I shot with a 1x lens and, you know, historically there's been some challenges with shooting smartphones from highly, like a platform that's vibrating a lot like a helicopter.
Fortunately, we were in a beautiful aircraft that a Bell 407, that's a pretty stable platform. The rotors on that machine are, just the whole platform runs really stable, very stable. And so that's a good kind of baseline, but then first we shot with a 1x and then we shot some more with the ultra wide and just the ultra wide footage especially looked incredibly clean, more clean than I expected for sure.
So then we just started rolling anytime we would get up in the air, we'd just hit record on the ultra wide. And at one point I think we had a flight that was two hours and 12 minutes or two hours and 23 minutes, something like that. And I had a full battery at the beginning of it and hit record. We were shooting 4k at 60 frames a second.
And when we landed after the two hours and change, uh, I still had 57% battery life. So I was pretty surprised to see, I thought it was going to be dead for sure. And then when I saw the screen was on, I thought, oh, it must be an its last moments. And then I looked at the percentage and I was like really? 57%?
Stephen Robles: No, it's pretty amazing because if you ever want to kill an iPhone battery, it's put it in 4k 60 and just hit record. You know, full brightness on the screen. So, and that's one of the improvements Apple said that the 13 line has, is that larger battery. And the A15 gives a better battery life being a stronger processor. So that's pretty incredible to hear about that. Goodness.
Austin Mann: Yeah. I had the screen brightness down a good bit just to try to preserve the battery, but yeah, it was impressive, nonetheless.
Stephen Robles: Now with cinematic mode for video, did you use that in the field at all? What was your experience there?
Austin Mann: Yeah, we did. We used it for some of the interview content that you see in the video up at the top of my review, but then also there's a longer interview that's uh, in the video on Dr. Ernest and the conservation work he's doing down in Ruaha National Park. We used a lot of cinematic mode there and experimented with it a good bit throughout so there's definitely some clips in the video that are purely cinematic mode, there's some that kind of look like they might be cinematic mode that are actually just shot with the 3x lens and no cinematic mode.
But the interview in that second video, if you scroll down about halfway through the review, that one is all cinematic and we had fun experimenting with changing those focus points later on. And it's not, it's not perfect. There's definitely some challenges with it, and it kind of made some decisions as I looked back and forth, uh, between the camera and talking to Dr. Earnest.
And we were mostly able to get all the focus points back where we wanted them. Yeah. There's still some kind of wrinkles to iron out. But overall I think that, I think it turned out pretty nice.
Stephen Robles: Also new to the iPhone 13s is these new photographic styles. And this is more than just putting a filter on a photograph, deciding on a photographic style on your iPhone will actually get locked in and the iPhone will capture images based on that photographic style that you choose. And it will stay in that mode until you go back in there and manually change it again. You have contrast and vivid warm and cool. And so my question is for your work, and maybe just in your day-to-day use, do you use any of the photographic styles and if so, which one?
Austin Mann: Yeah. So not really because I shoot ProRAW all the time and those styles don't apply ProRAW. However, you know, I did mess around with them a good bit and I do like how they work. I love the idea of kind of set, set it and forget it type setting that changes all the images that come through the image pipeline that aren't shot in RAW.
Yeah. When I turn, if I turn off RAW and I'm one to just do something that maybe is just a quicker turnaround, I don't want to have to deal with the process and the images now, maybe I don't need full control. Uh, I made kind of a modification of the rich warm, uh, photographic style. I ended up, I think taking my tone down to -30 and warmth to +15.
That is just kind of the look and feel that, that I enjoy the most. I love the idea of just being able to kind of tweak how the iPhone is rendering images at the pipeline level versus a reactive kind of over the top preset later on.
Stephen Robles: Right. Now one of the other things you talk about is the use of Focus Modes, which is a new feature in iOS 15 that can put on do not disturb features. You can stop certain notifications from coming through when all of these modes are enabled. How have you been using those Focus Modes and has it made a difference in your shooting?
Austin Mann: I like Focus Modes. I like the idea of them and the ability to trigger these different areas of focus. And so for me, when I'm thinking about shooting on iPhone, I really want my iPhone to behave like a camera.
I don't need it to be an internet communication device. I don't need to get, I don't want to get phone calls on it. I don't want notifications.
Stephen Robles: You don't want it to be an iPod, an internet communicator.
Austin Mann: I don't want it to be an iPod. Yeah, it doesn't, I don't need it to be anything but the image right in front of me.
And so that is one of the challenges of working the iPhone from a professional perspective is it can offer plenty of distractions from kind of what the task at hand of creating a powerful image. What that shakes down to practically, as you can be, you know, framing a photo and waiting for the perfect moment of this leper to jump out of a tree and at that moment you get a phone call that's from whoever and interrupts that moment and you missed the shot. Or you've got a time-lapse shooting and somewhere in the middle of that, you get a phone call and it interrupts the time-lapse and, or even just, you know, you're shooting, you get a notification and accidentally tap it or get distracted and get kind of sucked out of the camera.
These aren't challenges that you have with traditional cameras because they're not connected and they're not like multifunctional. So for me, I made a focus mode that automatically triggers as soon as I open up my camera and it automatically allows zero notifications and zero phone calls, as long as my camera is open.
So whether I'm shooting a time lapse or, um, you know, just looking at my view finder, waiting for a shot, uh, both in the native camera app and also in Halide camera and also Lightroom, if I'm shooting in there. I won't get any sort of interruptions at all. And that's been super nice to not have to think about. I don't like putting the phone in airplane mode because then I don't get my GPS data and other things like that.
So it's really nice to not have to manually tweak anything or turn on do not disturb. Instead it just automatically happens when my camera opens up and it automatically goes off when I close my camera and it's back to a regular phone. It's been a cool way to use focus mode. So far it's been really effective for me.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. And you actually just taught me something. I didn't realize you could trigger a focus mode on an app opening. I knew you could do a series shortcut triggered when you opened an app. But like, I do that for rotation locks. So whenever I open the photos app on my phone.
Rotation lock turns off and I can rotate it horizontally and then it will turn off when I close the app.
Austin Mann: That's a good thought too. Yeah. You can trigger them on the opening and closing of an app. That's how I have it set up.
Stephen Robles: And the focus mode disables, when you exit the app?
Austin Mann: Yep. Well, it tells you at the top, it says, "shoot mode off."
Stephen Robles: Interesting.
Austin Mann: I would like an icon however. When I made shoot mode, I looked for a camera icon to go next to it, to show up in my menu bar. They don't have a camera. So my small request is to get a little camera icon for my shoot mode. Cause right now it's a light bulb.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. They just need to use the icon library from the shortcuts in the focus mode icon library, because it is very limited right now.
Austin Mann: Yeah, I would love to see that. I'd love to see more options on that, for sure.
Stephen Robles: As you were in the field, you know, the last couple of iPhones Apple's really been touting durability, the ceramic shield on the glass. Have you ever been to drop them? Maybe not out of the helicopter, but just dropping them while you're filming and shooting around? And how's the durability been in those experiences?
Austin Mann: Yeah. So we had to drop it from 10,000 feet. We went ahead and took the helicopter up at 10,000 feet. And no
Stephen Robles: Uh, I was like, I don't know if this was a test you did or not. I didn't see this in the review
Austin Mann: I view my iPhone like I view all of the rest of my equipment, which is it's there to get the job done and there's no time to, to necessarily baby it. Right? Like it needs to be able to keep up with me and keep up with whatever pace. And if that's means it's getting wet because it's getting rained on because I'm shooting out in the elements or, you know, if it gets dropped or whatever it may happen, you know.
I always try to take care of my gear, but when things get crazy and the light's right, and you're moving around quickly, it's easy to get some scuffs and hopefully not more than that on gear. And so far, especially over the last couple of years, I haven't had any major damage on any of my iPhones that I can recall in the moment. You know, there's definitely been times where they've been dropped in the water.
A friend of mine, actually the filmmaker Taylor McKay that, uh, was with me on this last project, he dropped his 12 Pro Max in the river earlier this year and his kayak inverted because he was out in the water trying to help us get a canoe with my dog through a rapid. And, uh, it ended up that we were searching all for it. And then I used the, um, the access go underwater case to like, kind of stick the lens under the water, but still see the screen above the water.
So we started searching the bottom of the river bed that way, cause we didn't have goggles or anything like that. So the screen was above the water. We could see it in the lens was under the water. So we kind of use that as it's like searching device. And we ended up finding it like 15 to 20 feet away from where the kayak flipped and, uh, you know, it was perfectly fine.
And it had been under the water there for at least 30 minutes. And so that's been a huge improvement just over the last few years. That's the device has gotten more and more waterproof, but you know they get dropped every once in a while. Hopefully not too hard. And I haven't seen, you know, in the early days of the iPhone, I feel like everybody was pretty familiar with shattered screens.
Stephen Robles: Bags of rice.
Austin Mann: All that stuff. And it's like, no, it can't, it can't be salted rice. It has to be plain rice. I've like been in that situation in villages, in the middle of nowhere, multiple times. Like, "Can you guys give me some rice?" I haven't said those words for a long time. Uh, so that's really nice, but yeah, overall I think that the devices are getting quite a bit more durable.
I think they're handling heat better. It used to be a period there where the phones would get quite hot, they would overheat more often, which still does happen if you leave it out in the sun for a while and you're trying to shoot. Um, but it happens less than it used to. I don't know if that's because the efficiency of the A15 bionic or also other improvements.
I was just talking to someone recently that had an iPhone, I think it was an 8, and I think it was rated at maybe IP 66 or 67. I don't remember what it was, but it had some level of waterproofing and he had drop ped it in the water and pulled it out and it was fine. But then he went to try to charge it and fried it. One of the cool features of the recent iPhones is they automatically detect if there's any water in the lighting port.
So it goes one layer, it goes one step further. And if it not enough for it just to come out of the water and be okay, it also needs to know if there's water in that lightning port. And so now if you, if you drop it in the water and then you try to charge it, it'll warn you. And it'll say, "Hey, we've detected moisture in the lightning port, so we're not going to let you charge it right now," which is a cool feature to have that little detection and just protect the device from being fried when wet.
Stephen Robles: Well, you've now told me two things. I did not know there was a liquid detection alert on the iPhone for the charger.
Austin Mann: I've seen it myself. Yeah. It's a pretty cool little feature.
Stephen Robles: Wow. Now, do you ever buy AppleCare with all your traveling that you do?
Austin Mann: Yeah. I'm a fan of AppleCare. I definitely buy it and I definitely advise most everybody to buy it. It's just, especially for me, I'm putting my devices through so much and so much travel. And for me, it kind of liberates me to be a little bit more free with my devices, knowing that I've got them covered if something does happen,
Stephen Robles: I have ongoing debates at an AppleInsider staff and so I was just curious, but yeah, good to know. I'm also an AppleCare user for sure. I've made use of it in the past.
Austin Mann: Yeah. Right. It does the job so I'm personally a fan and I'm a, I'm a fan of the monthly payment model that in that includes, that includes AppleCare as well.
Stephen Robles: Right. Right. Well, thank you so much, Austin. And we'll link to your review of course, in the show description. Everyone should check it out. Where else would you like to point people to look at your photography and work?
Austin Mann: Oh yeah. I appreciate that. Just my Instagram, which is just my name, instagram.com/austinmann, M A N N.
And then just my website, same thing, austinmann.com. I am a working on releasing some prints of some of my iPhone images from over the years, some limited edition, fine art pieces. And I'm excited to be launching that soon and in partnership with the Pro DPI, who I worked with on last year's iPhone review.
So keep an eye out for that. Yeah. I really appreciate being on the show with you and looking forward to next time.
Stephen Robles: Of course. Thanks again, Austin Mann for being here.
Read on AppleInsider
Every year, renowned photographer Austin Mann takes the latest iPhone to exotic locations and provides an in-depth review. Mann headed to Tanzania with iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max testing the new Cinematic mode, macro capabilities, and 3x telephoto lens.
In regards to the macro mode on the new iPhone 13 Pro, Mann describes it as a "fourth lens in your pocket." Typically, shooting macro photography and video requires expensive lenses with a steep learning curve. Macro on the iPhone 13 Pro may be limited, but in many situations can take the place of a dedicated lens.
Austin Mann also comments on the incredible video quality captured by iPhone 13 Pro's new Ultra Wide camera, and the impressive battery life even when recording 4K video. Plus we discuss Cinematic mode, Photographic Styles, and iPhone durability in the field.
Follow our hosts
- @austinmann on Instagram
- @austinmann on Twitter
- @stephenrobles on Twitter
- @Hillitech on Twitter
Austin Mann reviews iPhone 13 Pro - Interview Transcript
Stephen Robles: Welcome to the AppleInsider Podcast. This is your host, Stephen Robles and today we have a special episode with a returning guest. This is his second time on the podcast, travel photographer extraordinaire Austin Mann. Thanks so much for joining us.Austin Mann: Hey, thanks Stephen. I'm glad to be here.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. I mean, I love reading your reviews of the iPhone cameras every year. The last time you were actually on, we talked about the M1 iPad Pro. I'm curious, are you still using that in the field as you do your travel photography?
Austin Mann: Yeah, I use it a lot. It's got kind of a special place in my workflow and still lightning fast and Lightroom has gotten even better since last time we were talking about it, and a lot of new features rolling out in there. Really exciting new masking features that they have coming out this fall. And yeah I love using the iPad Pro.
Stephen Robles: Well, you're here because we have got to talk about the iPhone 13 camera system. They've been significantly upgraded across the entire lineup. But my first question for you is this, you did your review of the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max in Tanzania this year. How do you choose the locations for your iPhone reviews?
Is your schedule such where you just always have like an exotic locale that you're traveling to regularly? And so it just works into wherever you're going or do you plan it specifically?
Austin Mann: Yeah. In this case, I have a five-year project that I'm working, a conservation project in Southern Tanzania with some partners there. Just as part of a continuation of kind of telling the story of the protection of some of these wild savannas down there in Southern Tanzania.
I decided to take the iPhone along and, and test it while I was, uh, shooting content for other clients and partners.
Stephen Robles: Oh, that's pretty cool. With the new 13 Pro and Pro Max. Again, obviously you've done these annual iPhone reviews for a long time. Did you feel like it was already a noticeable difference as soon as you started the new 13 Pro camera system, as you're using it in the field, did it feels significantly better than the iPhone 12 Pro before it?
Austin Mann: The biggest difference that I noticed definitely was with the 77 millimeter, the 3x lens.
I use the non Max iPhones, I just prefer the size. The 12 Pro was a 2x zoom or a 56 millimeter, I believe. And then from there, the 12 Pro Max was a 65 and then this year it's 77. But yeah, since, since I used a smaller device, the 12 Pro I had a 52 millimeter or so lens. And then, so jumping up to 77 was a pretty substantial you know, 33% increase. So I immediately noticed how different that was and just appreciated the naturally cinematic field that, that longer lens has combined with the larger sensor.
Stephen Robles: And obviously with a phone, the constraint you have as far as depth makes telephoto lenses and telephoto photography difficult.
One of the things Apple did with the new 3x lens is it actually has a higher aperture number. I believe it's 2.8 f-stops as opposed to the 2.4 over the 12 Pro Max. Did you notice that that difference in aperture setting effect low-light performance or anything noticeable?
Austin Mann: You know, I actually, I didn't really get to test that extensively.
I expected to see a difference and I can't say that I noticed a significant difference either way. I think that with the larger sensor, just the improved light collection ability that they talked about, I think that helps compensate for the slightly slower lens. But there's a couple of times where I could see it kind of kick in to kind of like a lower quality preview when using the 3x, like a digital zoom.
And that's particularly when you're shooting with subjects that are closer or in lower light scenarios. But for the most part, I didn't have a big problem in low light scenarios with the, with the 3x. I kind of expected that I might have some challenges with it. And I did have some, but certainly not so much that it was not tolerable
Stephen Robles: Yeah. As you were basically on a safari, as you were testing these phones, how was the performance and trying to capture fast moving objects and animals? Did you feel like you were able to capture those? Did you use burst mode or were you just kind of quick on the trigger?
Austin Mann: I love burst mode and I use it a ton, because I think timing is really underrated in great photography. I think what makes a great image is more the millisecond that you capture versus having the, the perfect lighting or, or whatnot. An image that is the perfect moment in bad lighting can be a great image, but if you invert that, if you have perfect lighting in a bad moment, it's not worth anything. So I use burst mode all the time, but the downside of burst mode is that I can't shoot ProRAW.
So it's really a trade-off. And so, uh, there's an image that I have in this year's article of a leopard, that leopard was very still for very long, about two hours, uh, that we waited for it to just as it lounge around in that tree. And when it finally did kind of come running down the tree, The light conditions were quite difficult.
It was backlit and there's almost no light like falling into the shade. It was kind of running on down the backside of this tree. And so kind of in that moment, instead of thinking, all right, I'm going to burst and capture the perfect moment. I knew that I really needed maximum image quality and, and kind of the dynamic range.
So I instead just tapped the shutter as quickly as possible. So I could get that ProRAW data to be able to edit and kind of pull up those shadows and recover those highlights.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. I was gonna ask about that photo specifically because the photo of the leopard and the tree is very evocative as a beautiful photo.
And so it looks like you shot most of the photos in your review with the telephoto lens and being with these kinds of animals, you probably can't get very close to pack of lions per se.
Austin Mann: Yeah. I try to try to maintain a safe distance that's for sure.
Stephen Robles: And it looks it's like you ended a lot of these in Lightroom right on the iPhone. How did it feel performance wise with the A15 Bionic now in the new phones?
Austin Mann: Most of the time when I'm shooting a review like this, I'm not editing the images. I like to just kind of go straight out of camera and maybe have one or two in there that have some color adjustments. But now that we're shooting ProRAW, it's kind of mandatory that I edit them.
So that was a little bit different this year versus last year and previous years was shooting in ProRAW and editing. So I process all of my raw photos, my ProRAW photos on iPhone using Lightroom. A great tool. And there's a tight integration between the Adobe and Apple camera teams to make everything work well together.
And I never feel held back by the power and the speed when I'm editing on my iPhone. And I think that's really important, you know, I'm processing these substantially larger ProRAW files and it's never, I'm not ever getting any sort of lag or hang ups. It's just, it moves exactly as fast as, as I can move, which is kind of a telltale sign of the right hardware in your hands.
Stephen Robles: Right. So the big change in the 13 Pro non Max iPhone is their sensor shift stabilization is now available on both of those phones. Last year with the 12, only the Pro Max got that sensor shift stabilization, but now both 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max both has that on the wide angle lens or the default camera lens when you open the camera app. Have you noticed any difference since the smaller Pro sizes would you use in your day-to-day use, have you noticed any difference there with the sensor shift?
Austin Mann: I did do a couple of side by side tests between the 12 Pro and the 13 Pro handheld low light. And I saw some that that's probably where I saw the biggest difference, but again, I didn't really get to analyze those images a ton.
I just looked on the screens in out when I was out in the field. And so I look forward to testing that more for sure because I think it, it, it should make a pretty notable difference.
Stephen Robles: Now, one of the brand new features on a 13 Pro and Pro Max is the new macro mode. That's using the new ultra wide camera lens and it's allowing to focus at very close distances.
You had a bunch of pictures in your review about it, and frankly, it seems to be almost the most underrated feature. I mean, it's pretty incredible what that lens is capable of capturing as far as macro, what was your experience like that in the field, using the macro lens?
Austin Mann: I've always been a big fan of macro and I have a couple of macro lenses and I carry one with me pretty much all the time. I think that when you're telling a story of the natural world, you know, we tend to think about these big sweeping landscapes, sunsets, and things like that. Or maybe large mammals and lions and bears and all that.
But an equal part of the entire, the biodiversity in an ecosystem is also the insects and the tiny little flowers and all of the different fauna. And so I think macro opens up this kind of new perspective on a kind of a different side of a biodiverse natural ecosystem. And I'm excited to see what people capture with macro.
They kind of, especially people that maybe haven't played with it before, now that they have a macro lens in there. You know, I think it kind of trains you to see differently as a photographer, as an artist, and kind of appreciate different details in the world around you. So I enjoyed using the macro, you know, in order to get pretty a decent magnification, you've got to be quite close to the subject.
So that's worth considering it's not the macro lens that I travel with for my mirrorless cameras, 100mm. And so it allows you to keep a little bit of distance from the subject and sometimes advantageous so you don't block the light of the subject or, you know, disturb the subject. So I think that that would be one of the limitations of the macro inside of the iPhone 13 Pro.
But especially if you're dealing with static, inanimate objects, um, like flower or whatever, you can get some really, really strong ultra close focus images.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. Panasonic Lumix camera and I've recently purchased a macro lens. It was the Sigma 105mm macro, and I was playing around with it and, you know, being a prosumer photographer, it is very difficult to get a good macro shot, especially if you're handheld and trying to like, that's such a huge focal length.
Sometimes it's just hard to find the subject even. And I actually just returned the lens because I was like, I can do it on the iPhone now. And it just seems way easier. When you have to make a decision now with the 13 Pro between just using the iPhone and using the lens, are there times where you're just like, well, I'll just use the iPhone now?
Austin Mann: Yeah. I mean, you know, the iPhone definitely covers those kind of in a pinch micro macro shots. I think if you were doing a full story on macro, uh, the involved macro photography on insects or something, I think you might want a more robust system, like macro style lighting and/or a longer tele, a longer millimeter of a macro lens. But I think, you know, and what you're talking about too, is macro photography is just inherently quite challenging because your depth of field gets extremely shallow the closer that you are to the subject.
And those are all kind of factors that you have to consider. The more light that you have, the deeper you can, that your depth of field can be. And your focus is a lot easier to nail when you've got more light available and you're not shooting super, super, super shallow.
So the bottom line is though, is that the macro that's built in to the iPhones now is a really capable macro lens. It can focus super close. And, you know, I was looking at the back of it feeling a little bit like I was in *Honey, I Shrunk the Kids* at times, you know, just like looking a little Cheerio or something and you can see all of these details and it's really fun to see the world through that new perspective.
Stephen Robles: For sure. Now there's been some improvements with portrait mode as well. You can do it with both the wide angle and the telephoto lens now on the 13 Pro and Pro Max. How's your experience been with portrait mode? Do you even use that or how did that function while you were in the field?
Austin Mann: Well for starters, thanks to the large sensor and the 77mm 3x lens, even those shots, even from a purely hardware perspective have showered up the field than we're used to on, on smart and smartphone photography. And so that's not even factoring in the software of portrait mode. So I've enjoyed using just the natural hardware for portraits. Portrait mode just continues to get better, the algorithms and the edge detection and all of the above, the semantic rendering and recognition of what's in each of the images.
All of the above. It's gotten so much better since we first saw portrait mode launch. So that's, you know, it has been fun to play with and I've used it for a bunch of different things. And especially again, kind of in a pinch, it's just amazing the images that you can create of somebody that you're traveling with, or like Anderson my guide, shooting a portrait mode image of him and having the control of the focus later.
Like sometimes I just back out and realize what a dream it is to be operating with such powerful camera and as subscribed to an entirely new set of rules, like, think about how nuts it is that we can change the focus after the fact that's just bonkers. That's like nothing we could have ever imagined.
Stephen Robles: Exactly. And now we're able to do that on the 13s with the cinematic mode, which you can think of it as portrait mode for video, but does the same thing captures all that depth information as you shoot previewing it live on screen, which just has to be a crazy amount of computational effort on the phone's part.
Which is one of the reasons why it's only 1080p right now and not 4k, but you had a video in your review at the top with some incredible, incredible video footage. And I believe that you strapped an iPhone to a helicopter. Is that right?
Austin Mann: Yeah. You know, I've got to find out where the limit is. We strapped a iPhone 13 Pro Max onto the nose of a helicopter, full collaboration of the pilot, just ensuring safety.
And I think we had three different safety straps on it, every different way that it was possible and all of the different screws or anything that could potentially vibrate the shot we had gaff taped closed, and just, it was a lot of precaution.
In fact, actually the very first flight that we did, I hooked it all up and then I didn't even put a phone in there. We went ahead and did a one hour flight or so, hitting a maximum speed without a phone and it just to make sure it was nice and sturdy and we landed.
Yeah. Still there. So we decided to throw a phone in there and see what came out of it. Yeah, so we, we did some kind of scenic flying where we shot from the cabin of the helicopter, with the doors off and also, uh, recorded some video off the nose that was surprisingly, surprisingly stable and, and cinematic.
Stephen Robles: Yeah, I'm watching clips of your video right now and you're hanging out the helicopter, just hand holding the iPhone, with no strap or anything around your wrist. Just bare grasping this type of thing.
Austin Mann: Yeah, I used all my strapping stuff for the, the nose mount. I was like, well, I'll just hold on real tight to this one in my hands and hope that we're good.
Stephen Robles: So the footage looks incredible. These herds of animals in the plains and some of the closeup video you also got like of the lions and such, how close were you to those lions in that one video shot?
Austin Mann: Uh, we were quite close. So we had brought a monopod, basically a single extending pole that's about six feet long and we put the DJI Osmo 4 on the end of that monopod and then inverted it, under slung it, kind of held it next to the ground while staying in the land cruiser. So that motion shot that you see that's super tight on that lion, that's with a 3x lens and then the underslung stabilized iPhone being held down by the monopod.
Stephen Robles: Ready to gun it just in case.
Austin Mann: Yeah. There was one point where the lion kind of looked at us and licked his lips and we're like, it's probably a good time to go.
Stephen Robles: Well, he did the one shot with the lion's laying on the ground. It looks like it's staring right at you.
Austin Mann: Yeah. He was very curious. She was in that shot. She was very curious about whatever this thing was sticking out of the land cruiser.
Stephen Robles: That's amazing. Now when you had it strapped to the helicopter, what lens did you leave it on to film that?
Austin Mann: Yeah, so I kind of was thinking about potentially controlling it with my watch, but that phone was not the one that I had hooked up to my watch and I didn't want to switch them all around and all that stuff. So I instead I did some testing and first I shot with a 1x lens and, you know, historically there's been some challenges with shooting smartphones from highly, like a platform that's vibrating a lot like a helicopter.
Fortunately, we were in a beautiful aircraft that a Bell 407, that's a pretty stable platform. The rotors on that machine are, just the whole platform runs really stable, very stable. And so that's a good kind of baseline, but then first we shot with a 1x and then we shot some more with the ultra wide and just the ultra wide footage especially looked incredibly clean, more clean than I expected for sure.
So then we just started rolling anytime we would get up in the air, we'd just hit record on the ultra wide. And at one point I think we had a flight that was two hours and 12 minutes or two hours and 23 minutes, something like that. And I had a full battery at the beginning of it and hit record. We were shooting 4k at 60 frames a second.
And when we landed after the two hours and change, uh, I still had 57% battery life. So I was pretty surprised to see, I thought it was going to be dead for sure. And then when I saw the screen was on, I thought, oh, it must be an its last moments. And then I looked at the percentage and I was like really? 57%?
Stephen Robles: No, it's pretty amazing because if you ever want to kill an iPhone battery, it's put it in 4k 60 and just hit record. You know, full brightness on the screen. So, and that's one of the improvements Apple said that the 13 line has, is that larger battery. And the A15 gives a better battery life being a stronger processor. So that's pretty incredible to hear about that. Goodness.
Austin Mann: Yeah. I had the screen brightness down a good bit just to try to preserve the battery, but yeah, it was impressive, nonetheless.
Stephen Robles: Now with cinematic mode for video, did you use that in the field at all? What was your experience there?
Austin Mann: Yeah, we did. We used it for some of the interview content that you see in the video up at the top of my review, but then also there's a longer interview that's uh, in the video on Dr. Ernest and the conservation work he's doing down in Ruaha National Park. We used a lot of cinematic mode there and experimented with it a good bit throughout so there's definitely some clips in the video that are purely cinematic mode, there's some that kind of look like they might be cinematic mode that are actually just shot with the 3x lens and no cinematic mode.
But the interview in that second video, if you scroll down about halfway through the review, that one is all cinematic and we had fun experimenting with changing those focus points later on. And it's not, it's not perfect. There's definitely some challenges with it, and it kind of made some decisions as I looked back and forth, uh, between the camera and talking to Dr. Earnest.
And we were mostly able to get all the focus points back where we wanted them. Yeah. There's still some kind of wrinkles to iron out. But overall I think that, I think it turned out pretty nice.
Stephen Robles: Also new to the iPhone 13s is these new photographic styles. And this is more than just putting a filter on a photograph, deciding on a photographic style on your iPhone will actually get locked in and the iPhone will capture images based on that photographic style that you choose. And it will stay in that mode until you go back in there and manually change it again. You have contrast and vivid warm and cool. And so my question is for your work, and maybe just in your day-to-day use, do you use any of the photographic styles and if so, which one?
Austin Mann: Yeah. So not really because I shoot ProRAW all the time and those styles don't apply ProRAW. However, you know, I did mess around with them a good bit and I do like how they work. I love the idea of kind of set, set it and forget it type setting that changes all the images that come through the image pipeline that aren't shot in RAW.
Yeah. When I turn, if I turn off RAW and I'm one to just do something that maybe is just a quicker turnaround, I don't want to have to deal with the process and the images now, maybe I don't need full control. Uh, I made kind of a modification of the rich warm, uh, photographic style. I ended up, I think taking my tone down to -30 and warmth to +15.
That is just kind of the look and feel that, that I enjoy the most. I love the idea of just being able to kind of tweak how the iPhone is rendering images at the pipeline level versus a reactive kind of over the top preset later on.
Stephen Robles: Right. Now one of the other things you talk about is the use of Focus Modes, which is a new feature in iOS 15 that can put on do not disturb features. You can stop certain notifications from coming through when all of these modes are enabled. How have you been using those Focus Modes and has it made a difference in your shooting?
Austin Mann: I like Focus Modes. I like the idea of them and the ability to trigger these different areas of focus. And so for me, when I'm thinking about shooting on iPhone, I really want my iPhone to behave like a camera.
I don't need it to be an internet communication device. I don't need to get, I don't want to get phone calls on it. I don't want notifications.
Stephen Robles: You don't want it to be an iPod, an internet communicator.
Austin Mann: I don't want it to be an iPod. Yeah, it doesn't, I don't need it to be anything but the image right in front of me.
And so that is one of the challenges of working the iPhone from a professional perspective is it can offer plenty of distractions from kind of what the task at hand of creating a powerful image. What that shakes down to practically, as you can be, you know, framing a photo and waiting for the perfect moment of this leper to jump out of a tree and at that moment you get a phone call that's from whoever and interrupts that moment and you missed the shot. Or you've got a time-lapse shooting and somewhere in the middle of that, you get a phone call and it interrupts the time-lapse and, or even just, you know, you're shooting, you get a notification and accidentally tap it or get distracted and get kind of sucked out of the camera.
These aren't challenges that you have with traditional cameras because they're not connected and they're not like multifunctional. So for me, I made a focus mode that automatically triggers as soon as I open up my camera and it automatically allows zero notifications and zero phone calls, as long as my camera is open.
So whether I'm shooting a time lapse or, um, you know, just looking at my view finder, waiting for a shot, uh, both in the native camera app and also in Halide camera and also Lightroom, if I'm shooting in there. I won't get any sort of interruptions at all. And that's been super nice to not have to think about. I don't like putting the phone in airplane mode because then I don't get my GPS data and other things like that.
So it's really nice to not have to manually tweak anything or turn on do not disturb. Instead it just automatically happens when my camera opens up and it automatically goes off when I close my camera and it's back to a regular phone. It's been a cool way to use focus mode. So far it's been really effective for me.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. And you actually just taught me something. I didn't realize you could trigger a focus mode on an app opening. I knew you could do a series shortcut triggered when you opened an app. But like, I do that for rotation locks. So whenever I open the photos app on my phone.
Rotation lock turns off and I can rotate it horizontally and then it will turn off when I close the app.
Austin Mann: That's a good thought too. Yeah. You can trigger them on the opening and closing of an app. That's how I have it set up.
Stephen Robles: And the focus mode disables, when you exit the app?
Austin Mann: Yep. Well, it tells you at the top, it says, "shoot mode off."
Stephen Robles: Interesting.
Austin Mann: I would like an icon however. When I made shoot mode, I looked for a camera icon to go next to it, to show up in my menu bar. They don't have a camera. So my small request is to get a little camera icon for my shoot mode. Cause right now it's a light bulb.
Stephen Robles: Yeah. They just need to use the icon library from the shortcuts in the focus mode icon library, because it is very limited right now.
Austin Mann: Yeah, I would love to see that. I'd love to see more options on that, for sure.
Stephen Robles: As you were in the field, you know, the last couple of iPhones Apple's really been touting durability, the ceramic shield on the glass. Have you ever been to drop them? Maybe not out of the helicopter, but just dropping them while you're filming and shooting around? And how's the durability been in those experiences?
Austin Mann: Yeah. So we had to drop it from 10,000 feet. We went ahead and took the helicopter up at 10,000 feet. And no
Stephen Robles: Uh, I was like, I don't know if this was a test you did or not. I didn't see this in the review
Austin Mann: I view my iPhone like I view all of the rest of my equipment, which is it's there to get the job done and there's no time to, to necessarily baby it. Right? Like it needs to be able to keep up with me and keep up with whatever pace. And if that's means it's getting wet because it's getting rained on because I'm shooting out in the elements or, you know, if it gets dropped or whatever it may happen, you know.
I always try to take care of my gear, but when things get crazy and the light's right, and you're moving around quickly, it's easy to get some scuffs and hopefully not more than that on gear. And so far, especially over the last couple of years, I haven't had any major damage on any of my iPhones that I can recall in the moment. You know, there's definitely been times where they've been dropped in the water.
A friend of mine, actually the filmmaker Taylor McKay that, uh, was with me on this last project, he dropped his 12 Pro Max in the river earlier this year and his kayak inverted because he was out in the water trying to help us get a canoe with my dog through a rapid. And, uh, it ended up that we were searching all for it. And then I used the, um, the access go underwater case to like, kind of stick the lens under the water, but still see the screen above the water.
So we started searching the bottom of the river bed that way, cause we didn't have goggles or anything like that. So the screen was above the water. We could see it in the lens was under the water. So we kind of use that as it's like searching device. And we ended up finding it like 15 to 20 feet away from where the kayak flipped and, uh, you know, it was perfectly fine.
And it had been under the water there for at least 30 minutes. And so that's been a huge improvement just over the last few years. That's the device has gotten more and more waterproof, but you know they get dropped every once in a while. Hopefully not too hard. And I haven't seen, you know, in the early days of the iPhone, I feel like everybody was pretty familiar with shattered screens.
Stephen Robles: Bags of rice.
Austin Mann: All that stuff. And it's like, no, it can't, it can't be salted rice. It has to be plain rice. I've like been in that situation in villages, in the middle of nowhere, multiple times. Like, "Can you guys give me some rice?" I haven't said those words for a long time. Uh, so that's really nice, but yeah, overall I think that the devices are getting quite a bit more durable.
I think they're handling heat better. It used to be a period there where the phones would get quite hot, they would overheat more often, which still does happen if you leave it out in the sun for a while and you're trying to shoot. Um, but it happens less than it used to. I don't know if that's because the efficiency of the A15 bionic or also other improvements.
I was just talking to someone recently that had an iPhone, I think it was an 8, and I think it was rated at maybe IP 66 or 67. I don't remember what it was, but it had some level of waterproofing and he had drop ped it in the water and pulled it out and it was fine. But then he went to try to charge it and fried it. One of the cool features of the recent iPhones is they automatically detect if there's any water in the lighting port.
So it goes one layer, it goes one step further. And if it not enough for it just to come out of the water and be okay, it also needs to know if there's water in that lightning port. And so now if you, if you drop it in the water and then you try to charge it, it'll warn you. And it'll say, "Hey, we've detected moisture in the lightning port, so we're not going to let you charge it right now," which is a cool feature to have that little detection and just protect the device from being fried when wet.
Stephen Robles: Well, you've now told me two things. I did not know there was a liquid detection alert on the iPhone for the charger.
Austin Mann: I've seen it myself. Yeah. It's a pretty cool little feature.
Stephen Robles: Wow. Now, do you ever buy AppleCare with all your traveling that you do?
Austin Mann: Yeah. I'm a fan of AppleCare. I definitely buy it and I definitely advise most everybody to buy it. It's just, especially for me, I'm putting my devices through so much and so much travel. And for me, it kind of liberates me to be a little bit more free with my devices, knowing that I've got them covered if something does happen,
Stephen Robles: I have ongoing debates at an AppleInsider staff and so I was just curious, but yeah, good to know. I'm also an AppleCare user for sure. I've made use of it in the past.
Austin Mann: Yeah. Right. It does the job so I'm personally a fan and I'm a, I'm a fan of the monthly payment model that in that includes, that includes AppleCare as well.
Stephen Robles: Right. Right. Well, thank you so much, Austin. And we'll link to your review of course, in the show description. Everyone should check it out. Where else would you like to point people to look at your photography and work?
Austin Mann: Oh yeah. I appreciate that. Just my Instagram, which is just my name, instagram.com/austinmann, M A N N.
And then just my website, same thing, austinmann.com. I am a working on releasing some prints of some of my iPhone images from over the years, some limited edition, fine art pieces. And I'm excited to be launching that soon and in partnership with the Pro DPI, who I worked with on last year's iPhone review.
So keep an eye out for that. Yeah. I really appreciate being on the show with you and looking forward to next time.
Stephen Robles: Of course. Thanks again, Austin Mann for being here.
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Links from the show
- iPhone 13 Pro Camera Review: Tanzania -- Austin Mann
- iPhone 13 Pro macro photography selling point for upgraders, says Austin Mann
- Exclusive interview: Austin Mann on photography with the M1 iPad Pro
- iPhone 13 Pro & iPhone 13 Pro Max review: Exceptional phones but the Pro Max underwhelms
- How to take macro photos and video on iPhone 13 Pro
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