Lightbox Wednesday #38 and a Rant

I'm the odd man out, I know that. I have an iPhone, but I mainly use it to take photos of my old cameras for this blog and for Flickr. Whenever I take a photo with my iPhone, the image automatically appears on all my Apple devices. It's convenient and I like that.

My iPhone is a 5. I got it in 2012 from a friend who worked at Apple and I paid $100 for it. I don't ask questions. It's unlocked, so I am not tethered to any one service provider. My previous phone was a 3 and I bought it new because, at the time, I was just starting to need readers too see up close and I liked the big, illuminated numbers on the key pad of that first iPhone. I'd still have it if I didn't forget that I had set it on the roof of my car one day at work while I was loading some stuff in the trunk. Last I heard of my iPhone 3 was the sound of it bouncing off the trunk as I accelerated southbound onto the 101 Freeway.

I rarely talk on my iPhone. The one I have now has a total of just over 7 hours of total talk time in the 5+ years I have had it. I've sent 11 text messages this month. I found a service provider who will sell me a minimum data plan, like 30MB and I think I use about 1.1MB of that each month. That's probably just the amount needed to keep the phone's heart beating...I don't know. I have cellular data mostly turned off and only use wi-fi.

My current phone looks like new because I never carry it with me. It used to be that cell phones were getting smaller and smaller. You could easily slip a Motorola Razr flip phone in your pocket. The latest smart phones are like the size of a piece of toast. I've never felt comfortable with an iPhone in my pocket, so I leave it, mostly, in my briefcase. From Friday afternoon to Monday morning, I rarely even look at my phone. If people need to get in touch with me, anyone who matters knows that email is best.

But I love the iPhone for taking photos of my old cameras and until recently, it's performed admirably. Lately though, the phone's camera seems to be consistently under-exposing images and they all look milky and hazy. I thought there might be a smudge on the lens, but cleaning it did not resolve the issue. On top of that, the battery will hardly last a day without charging. And that's a problem when the owner isn't even really using the darn thing.  I'll probably stop in at the Apple Store and see if a Genius can look at it. I'm sure it's coming to the end of its life and undoubtedly they'll ask why I don't upgrade to the 6, 7, 8 or X. I just looked at the price tag of the latest iPhones...OMG!

I'm thinking that I might just look for a digital point and shoot with built-in wi-fi capability, if such a thing exists. That would allow me to take photos of classic cameras, the only thing I am really using my current iPhone for anyway.

In the meantime, one of my favorite iPhone camera photos, an image of my first Nikon F2 from about 6 years ago.