Photographer extensively tests new iPhone cameras in Iceland, praises low light improvements
iPhone 6 Plus Camera Review: Iceland — v — This year I had the opportunity to be at Apple's Keynote where they announced the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and the Watch.
Context & Ripple Effects
This review lands three days after Apple's September 2014 Keynote introduced the iPhone 6, 6 Plus and the Watch, and in the same week iOS 8 shipped — the update reviewers called a huge, developer-centric completion of the iOS 7 overhaul. With no units broadly in reviewers' hands yet, a working photographer's field samples are doing the validating that bench tests usually do.
The pickup is unusually broad for a single independent test: TechCrunch, The Verge, Daring Fireball, MacRumors, BGR, Cult of Mac and Laughing Squid all carried it on or about launch weekend, which says less about the images themselves than about how starved the Apple press corps was for real-world camera evidence at launch.
First-order effects
- Launch-weekend buyers deciding between the iPhone 6 and the larger 6 Plus get practitioner-grade low-light evidence instead of spec-sheet claims, right as the upgrade decision is being made.
- Apple gains third-party confirmation of its headline camera improvement from a named professional, not its own marketing — the strongest form of launch-messaging support available to it.
Second-order effects
- Every rival handset shipping this fall will have its camera measured against these Iceland frames in comparison coverage, since the field test sets the reference imagery other outlets reuse.
- The wide syndication turns one photographer's shoot into de facto launch collateral across the Apple press, compressing the distance between Apple's keynote narrative and independent editorial endorsement.
Third-order effects
- If each fall launch produces an independent location-based camera test that outlets treat as required reading, the phone camera hardens into the primary differentiator of a maturing smartphone market — with the annual review ritual, not raw specs, framing how capability is judged.
The trend: Smartphone launches are increasingly adjudicated by independent photographers' field tests, making the camera the durable center of gravity in iPhone coverage.