Can you use a cellphone to take some impressive concert photos?
Well I Like to push the limits in photography and especially with a mobile phone. Those things can do amazing jobs and when you are on vacation you will see only mobile phones and almost no “normal” camera.
At concerts you see a lot of people photographing and filming. When you visit a venue or a festival there are some house rules. I’ve visit Complexity festival at Patronaat Haarlem. On the website you can read this:
“As a visitor you are allowed to bring and use compact cameras, GoPro video cameras or something similar as a phone.. You are not allowed to bring, DSLR cameras, larger video cameras, tripods and monopods, audio or any other kind of recording equipment into the venue if you are not accredited as press.”
I understand as a pro myself, that you cannot use a pro camera when you’re not accredited as press. It’s a job being press and it must be protected by rules. Nevertheless I think gear is underrated. A mobiel phone can capture really good audio and video, not even mention a compactcamera or GoPro.
Photographing in general
The most hard thing about photography is shutter speed. You only have a fraction of a second. So it’s very important you have good light or wide aperture or / and useful high ISO. (In a nutshell)
I came up with the idea of testing my iPhone 13mini at an indoor festival.
Here are some examples:
Setup
I’ve used an iPhone 13 mini and it has two lenses: Wide and Ultra-wide
Shoot only jpeg or heic with the default camera app.
Did some post-processing with the default Photo editing app and SnapSeed.
Conclusion
The quality of an iPhone is not even close to a DSLR. That’s very clear when you view the images on a big screen.
A lot of images were horrible especially the one with higher ISO than 200.
You will need great light and that’s very difficult at a venue.
Nowadays everybody uses social media, especially on a mobile phone. And when you watch it on a small screen it will looks professional.
So I think using a compactcamera (like Fuji and Canon has) the images are much better and more professional and a serious competition for press photographers.