I got to thinking today about the experiences we had with photography in Egypt. It was a little weird because you had to get a permit to use your standard camera in the tombs, but you could use your iPhone all you want without hassle. We really got lots of nice pictures that way.

So I decided to have a go this evening after dark to compare results with the iPhone with my trusty Canon G5X MKII. I shut off the lights with only a ceiling light illuminated across the other side of the house. Very dark in the living room. The iPhone has a feature called "night mode." It gets turned on when light is low. You have some control over it. I think what it does is take a large number of shots and adds them together. There is image stabilization applied. Right out of the box you get nice photos.

Both photos are right out of the camera with only a little cropping to make it look right. The top is the iPhone which looks well exposed. The histogram is OK, but I would use a little more exposure it I were to do it again. The camera data shows up in Lightroom as 1/4 sec. f/1.6 and ISO 2000. If you look closely (400%) there is quite a bit of noise. The white balance looks pretty good to me.

The bottom photo is right out of my G5X MkII. The histogram could benefit from a longer exposure. The camera data show up as 0.5 sec, f/1.8 and ISO 2000. It is quite a bit more noisy than the iPhone. I had the white balance set to incandescent but it is clearly way off. Simple fix in Lightroom.

We got hundreds of photos in tombs in Egypt with our iPhones. Some of them are quite stunning. I still need to do a bit of practicing with the iPhone which is more and more becoming my go-to camera for just snapshotting around. As long as you keep in mind the limitations of your camera (regardless which one) and how to cope with them, you are much better off.

Here is a good article about using night mode.