One big technical reason I’m pulling out images processed ten years ago is because of the quality of my iPhone 11 Pro Max’s OLED screen. These screen shots, from the last two Retrospective posts, match what I see when I view my work on my iPhone’s screen. It’s the same quality I see on my iPads and on my MacBook Pro screens. To me it’s something of a revelation and has helped to re-kindle my interest in creating new photography.

I remember when I struggled to hit the “right” balance on a much older Dell Windows 7 computer. Those screens were barely usable for photography. To compensate I had to carefully use Lightroom’s charts and curve editing, as well as just work with the camera. A digital camera is a wonderful tool for adjusting and trying different settings, which works well with good post-processing tools. And yes, all of these were done with RAW files from all the cameras.

It’s not just the OLED screen itself that you have to consider; I’ve looked on quite a few Android handsets with the same OLED technology and I’m not all that impressed with the results, even now.

Does this mean I like the iPhone camera? Not as much as I once did. I started to use the iPhone camera with my first iPhone, the 6 Plus. I continued to like and use it with the 7 Plus. Unfortunately I did not like the results with the 8 Plus (I skipped the iPhone X), and I’m still not impressed with the iPhone 11 Pro Max camera. Instead I prefer working with the dedicated Olympus cameras I currently own. The iPhone 11 is a great content viewer, but as a camera, not so much.