Snow and Pogonip Ice Fog at Topaz Lake

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• Beautiful shots.

• It looks cold.

• Beautiful.

• looks great from an iPhone already!

• Great shots! I love these mornings when the hoar frost breaks away from  the trees and the sun sparkles through the falling ice crystals making it look like we live in a humongous snow globe. 

• magnificent album !thank you Jeff !!

• Great pics as always Jeff.  Amazing the 5S has such resolution quality. Thanks for photos

• Awesome images! Have you used any other camera phones other than an iPhone? Just curious.

• muy hermoso!!

• +John Sicat  Thre are three important factors in a complete answer to that question:
  1. Photography is my #1 application need, so iOS is key for access to a wide variety of useful apps, such as +PhotoPills for example.
  2. The camera itself is secondary, but because mobile phones have camera sensors with limited dynamic range, they often take horrible pictures with bright areas blown out to white.  The multi-exposure blending "HDR" functionality on iPhones has been useful for reducing that, an reducing the need for post-processing.
  3. After PDA phones like the Palm Treo, my first smartphone was the original Droid, but it became useless when Verizon stopped updating the OS about 3 months into my 2 year contract, at which point I lost access to current apps.  Sadly, with Google selling its smartphone business to Lenovo, Apple is once again the only smartphone vendor retaining end to end control over OS updates.  Even my 3 year old iPhone 4 had 100% access to current apps when I retired it in November, and I've printed photos from it up to 18" x 24".
  4. Hardware compatibility is a consideration as well.  I bought a set of +olloclip lenses which give me everything from 2X telephoto to wide, ultra-wide and fisheye capabilty, plus a circular polarizer.  I'm considering buying a waterproof case.  These are the sorts of things I wouldn't have access to if I didn't have a phone which sold 51 million units in its first 90 days on the market.  I can control my +GoPro 3+ from my iPhone, and via wi-fi use it as a real-time monitor of what's being shot.  Could I do that with another phone?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I'm a fairly aggressive adopter of new technology, and it's unlikely that I could possibly predict what new apps and useful hardware I might miss out on if I pick some obscure model.

  As far as the mobile phone cameras themselves, obviously I keep my eyes open  regarding what's on the market.  My family tends to have a variety of phones.  We used an HTC EVO for a while for Internet access, but while it had great resolution at the time, resolution is worthless without excellent dynamic range, optimal exposure.  For the times when I want to capture an image, high ISO capability and low noise are important. 

  So while there are some cameras on the market with nice specs, I just bought the iPhone5S 2.5 months ago.  I'm really happy with the picture quality, but would I buy the same phone today?  Given the latest rumors flying around, I'd probably wait for the iPhone 6.

  Don't get me wrong, there's no way I'm giving up my DSLRs, but for a quick representative snap to share a status update with friends, it's nice to have reasonable quality that, as a photographer, I won't find utterly embarrassing.