Great Crag (3/214)
Somehow we managed to do five fells in one small trip to The Lake District in April 2019. It’s almost like we knew what was to come the year after. By some miracle of added foresight I took photos of the same view on both my Canon Eos 7D Mark II and my iPhone 8 which gives the opportunity for some great side-by-side comparisons.
Looking back on the pictures I couldn’t believe my luck to find the same photo taken with my different cameras. Comparing them side-by-side it’s hard to believe it’s not the same photo. I’ve edited them both in Lightroom using exactly the same edit settings, starting off with editing the one taken with my Canon and then copy/pasting the editing settings to the iPhone 8 photo later. I should also mention that the Canon photo was taken in RAW, while the iPhone photo was taken in standard JPG. This will have consequences for the general quality of the photos, especially the JPG will suffer from the edits.
Though they look extremely similar at first sight, there are remarkable differences on closer inspection. Colours are brighter, shadows are crisper and the quality of the photo is generally better in the photo taken with the DSLR. This is to be expected as it’s the superior machine, though I must admit that the iPhone didn’t do a bad job at all. Colours might seem a bit duller and the details aren’t as crisp, but without the comparison it would have been a great photo of a good day out and perfectly instagrammable.
A photo of the cairn on top of Great Crag taken with my Canon EOS 7D Mark II
A photo of the cairn on top of Great Crag taken with my iPhone 8
Somehow the photo taken with the Canon EOS 7D Mark II looks more professional and it makes me wonder what exactly gives that impression, especially with the difference between the two photos being so minute. Is it the slightly blurred background, the colours that pop more or the general crispness of the image that makes the photo taken with the Canon look more professional? Is it that our collective consciousness of what photos are ‘supposed to look like’ after seeing so many of them in magazines and books has decided that the look of that picture is the superior one? I imagine it’s a combination of all the above. The fact of the matter is that -for now- photos taken with a DSLR still come out on top and I imagine this will be the case for quite some time.
The Western Aspect 1 - Alfred Wainwright - A Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells: The Central Fells [Book 3]
Seeing the photos taken by the new iPhone 15 Pro during the latest Apple Keynote I wonder if more professional photographers will start using iPhones for their work. Though the quality of the photos is astonishing for such a small machine, I don’t know if I would fully switch to an iPhone for something like headshots. Not only because the quality isn’t quite as good as photos taken by a DSLR, but also because it feels a bit unprofessional to take photos with an iPhone. Thinking about it, it sounds a bit elitist and silly, as if the camera you’re using automatically means you’re a good photographer, but at the same time how people perceive you as a photographer will influence the trust they have in you and their level of comfort when sitting for you during a photoshoot. Also, iPhones are doing everything they can to digitally emulate their DSLR big brother, if you have the opportunity, why not use the original which -for now- still delivers the superior quality. Also, as long as iPhone doesn’t provide the option to take photos in RAW its unlikely that photographers will use iPhones as their primary cameras, but that’s a subject for a different post. That being said, I am very excited to get my hands on the new iPhone 15 Pro Max in a couple of weeks.
Click the image to download the gpx file of the walk or click here to see the walk on Strava
distance: 8.99 km
moving time: 2:37:44
pace: 17:32/km
elevation: 448m
calories: 799
The weather was sunny during the few days we were in the Lakes and it made for some lovely walking. I bought The Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells by Alfred Wainwright after this trip, so we didn’t follow his suggested walk that starts from Stonethwaite, but we will follow this gold standard for future walks. Instead we started from our hotel at Hazel Bank and went up the hill from there.
The climb gives some great views over the valley in both directions. After the initial climb the landscape evens out and you end up on a plateau in between the tops of The Western Aspect. Wainwright says: “Great Crag never appears in view conspicuously on this route, and locating the highest point (which has a good cairn) amongst the several sundry undulations is an interesting problem.” which made me chuckle as it’s exactly how I remember this walk. The heather Wainwright mentions in his guide wasn’t quite out in early April, but we did manage to get sunshine and some lovely views on the green strath of upper Borrowdale with Great Gable and the Scafells in the background.
