iPhone portrait with auxiliary lenses

[Dennis Bishop]

My iPhone photography adventures continue. Once I convinced myself that the iPhone could produce an adequate photo, I wondered what adding auxiliary lenses to the mix would do. Although I strongly believe in choosing a focal length for the effect it will give and walking to the right position for the shot (rather than zooming to save steps), there are times when that's not possible. Also, with the iPhone, I felt constrained with a single focal length. So I perused the websites of a number of auxiliary lens companies, made a best guess, and put a three-lens set by iPro on my Amazon wishlist. It's a nifty set that comes with a macro lens, a 2X telephoto, and what they call a super-wide angle lens.



iPhone 5S, PureShot camera app, iPro macro lens for the background, iPro 2X telephoto lens for the foreground

processing highlights​

• foreground shot cropped a small amount from the top and masked to exclude the background
• background shot re-sized and placed below the foreground layer
• Topaz Simplify -- saved watercolor preset, masked
• Nik Silver Efex -- conversion to black & white
• Nik Color Efex -- Glamour Glow and Classical Soft Focus (no masking)
• Alien Skin Snap Art -- saved black & white Line Art preset, Multiply and Divide blend modes, masked, various opacities
• Simplify -- saved black & white edges preset, Multiply and Divide, masked, various opacities

The macro lens does a good job with close-ups. It turned out that it also produces a nice round bokeh from bright lights that are farther away than it can focus. (The background shot was of a lighted Christmas tree about 12 or 15 feet away.) It was good to be able to use the telephoto lens for the portrait part of the composite because it allowed me to get the shot without affecting what was happening by being too close. I'm extremely happy with the quality of the lenses and the design of the components. The regular wide angle lens and the fisheye lens are now on my wishlist.

[Kerry Perkins]

Very nice Dennis and what a cute portrait. I am amazed at the cameras in phones today, truly useful at last! The small size and weight of the phone allows you to have it at the ready almost any time. Nicely captured and processed!

[Anita Bower]

Cute, cute, cute!
Looks very nice in these tones of brown. Beautiful catchlights in her eyes. Love how the circles of bokeh surround her head like a halo.
I assume you were hand-holding this iPhone. How did you get the bg to mesh with the foreground? Or didn't it matter since you masked.
The only thing that bothers me a bit is the very light right side (from the viewer's perspective) of her face--maybe tone it down just a touch?
I like seeing your creativity at work with the iPhone.

[Hazel Grant]

ok, now I've got to get out my iPhone and practice. All I do now with it is truly utilitarian stuff. Obviously there is more to it than that. What about size of the photo? Print size, etc. from the phone.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Dennis, I was waiting to see your new Christmas present Looks like you got a good one. It's amazing to me what you can do with an iPhone and you can print decent size images which I was really impressed with. I love the bokeh and your choice of toning.

[Kerry Perkins]

Just a note regarding cell phone cameras - Apple seems to be stuck on 8MP cameras while others have gone beyond. My Samsung Galaxy S5 has a 15MP camera, which is a big difference.

[Judy Howle]

Very nice work and a good blend with the background, love the bokeh! I have a 5s and it is pretty amazing what it can do!

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . Looks very nice in these tones of brown. Beautiful catchlights in her eyes. Love how the circles of bokeh surround her head like a halo.
I assume you were hand-holding this iPhone. How did you get the bg to mesh with the foreground? Or didn't it matter since you masked.
The only thing that bothers me a bit is the very light right side (from the viewer's perspective) of her face--maybe tone it down just a touch? . . .

Thanks, Anita. I was hand-holding the phone for both shots. Nearly all my shots are with a tripod, and I have a useful little Joby Gorillapod that works nicely with the phone, but these were grab and shoot.

I went back to check the bottom layers in the development of the image to see if some of the later processing helped in blending the foreground and background, but it was the masking that did it. I probably feathered the mask a bit.

I did back off the brightness you're talking about and kept wondering if it should be even less bright. Perhaps it should be. I even darkened the catchlights.

[Dennis Bishop]

. . . What about size of the photo? Print size, etc. from the phone.

Your question lead me to the discovery that I'd actually added to the height of the photo used for the foreground instead of cropping some away. The camera app I use allows a variety of aspect ratios. My real camera is big enough that I don't accidentally hit any controls but not so with my compact camera or the smartphone. By mistake, I hit that button and ended up with square shots. Three quality settings are available in the app: two jpgs and a tiff. The tiff is the highest quality, so I go with that. The metadata in Adobe Camera Raw for the foreground shot show 2448 x 2448 pixels at 300 ppi and a file size of 5.33 MB without any processing. The background shot had the same dimensions, but it was 3.98 MB. If I printed the final image without changing the size, it'd be a bit more than 6 1/2 inches high and a bit less than that wide.