2023 had been another interesting year. In terms of travelling around the world, things have gotten almost back to the levels of pre-pandemic levels. This allowed me to visit many new places as well as revisit some old ones. But for watching the first sunrise of the year, nothing is more comfortable than doing it right at home. Thankfully, skies were almost totally clear, allowing my phone to capture the scene with clarity. Like the photo, I hope everyone has a bright year ahead of you.
I went to San Francisco to pick up my iPhone 15 Pro on the launch day, September 22, 2023. The primary advantages of this model over the previous ones are USB-C support and reduced weight. Unless you were getting a Pro Max version, the camera on the Pro series did not get much of a hardware improvement. So when I decided to do some comparison shots with the Harvest Moon photography during the Chuseok holidays, I chose some older models - iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro.
There were expectedly some notable quality differences between the three models. While iPhone 11 Pro does have a three-lens setup like the rest, the telephoto lens is only capable of 2x zoom. As a result, the size of the Moon in the photo was the smallest and least detailed. Both iPhone 13 Pro and 15 Pro have the 3x zoom lens on them, but for some reason the 15 Pro shot a consistently sharper image. Perhaps a slight hardware and software processing differences were at play. In the end, the latest was indeed the best.
Further details of the shooting sessions have been outlined in a separate video.