Apple iPhone 7 Plus Camera Hands-on Review

It is probably the worst kept secret to anyone following the photographic industry but camera manufacturers have been experiencing declining sales for the last few years. The main reason is due to changing customer preference and the advancement in many smartphone cameras.

Canon, the largest photographic equipment manufacturer in the world has experienced drops in profits in the last few quarters. They are hardly alone and based on the most recent data published by CIPA, the Japan-based Camera & Imaging Products Association, sales have not improved much so far this year.

It seems mirrorless cameras offered the industry a bright spot for about two years but now sales are leveling off and the increase in sales may have been at the expense of the traditional DSLR market.
There is no question smartphones have taken away some sales from the low end point-and-shoot and DSLR camera segment, but the best way to keep a photographic company relevant is to come out with the state of the art product to convince serious photographers why it is still the traditional DSLR camera that takes the best photos. What is more important than the number of DSLR sold is the mix of the sales, since low end cameras like the Rebel and SL series bring considerably less profit than the higher end models like the EOS-5 and EOS-1 bodies.

My readers know, I am the Wildlife Ho-tographer using Canon equipment for over 25 years. Through the decades, I have used almost all of Canon's cropped and full frame, film and digital cameras and lenses. You can see my equipment bag and works on MichaelDanielHo.com. On my recently concluded Polar bear photo shoot in the Canadian sub Arctic, I have used both my smartphone and DSLR cameras to take photos and find the two types of photography perfectly compatible with each other.  I use the EOS-1D X Mk II and EOS-5Ds cameras as main bodies for my work.

The following video is a hands-on demo of what the Apple iPhone 7 Plus can do. It has a great walk around camera but I know no serious photographer specializing in landscape or wildlife photography use it for their main line of work. You can read my earlier post on how much the camera components in an Apple iPhone 7 costs.

Canon Announces 4 Free iOS Photo Apps for UK and Ireland

United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, 30th March – Canon Marketing Japan Inc. today announces the release of four free iOS applications*¹ in the UK and Ireland – BestShutter, Photo Log Map, TakeMyPic, and Easy Photo Sorter. These apps are designed to make taking photos more enjoyable and convenient.

BestShutter helps you capture your children and pet’s cutest moments

BestShutter app is designed to help take photos of children and pets who usually don’t pay attention to the camera. The app uses fun sounds to capture children or pet’s attention to help photograph their wonderful expressions and get great shots of your children during their cutest moments!

Plus if you are shooting movies you can select the best scenes and clip as still images, so you won’t miss any key moments.

Photo Log Map makes it easier to record your location information and shooting records 

Photo Log Map app is designed to meets the needs of people who want to record location information together with shooting records during various situations such as traveling, or mountain climbing.

Using data from your images, and a smartphone’s information service, it creates a shooting record maps. Even with data from photos shot on digital cameras not equipped with GPS, you can create a shooting record map linked to the smartphone’s GPS log. In addition to photos on the map, you can also add text memos and sound memos that record the location’s conditions. By writing the recorded log to a GPX file*², you can use the information in other apps.

TakeMyPic lets include yourself in a shot you envisage 

Have you ever asked a passer-by to take your picture, only to find it’s not the way you wanted it to look? TakeMyPic is a helpful app that lets you compose your shot before giving to someone else to take. The app lets you insert a human shape in your desire position, making it easier to show the person taking your photo how you would like the shot to look. The app helps you avoid mistakes when it comes to capturing those important commemorative photos on your travels.

Easy Photo Sorter makes it possible to easily organize the photo data on your smartphone 

Many smartphones end up having large amounts of photos saved on them and Easy Photo Sorter is an app to help organise them. By combining information such as date, time and day of the week, and setting your desired criteria to organise, you can create folders in your iPhone or iPad photo albums and automatically categorise photos based on this criteria when the app launches.

Last year, Canon Marketing Japan Inc. released PERSTEXT, a photo processing application that provides users with a new way of having fun with their photos by enabling the creation of images combined with text that convey messages with a touch of flare. In order to make photos even more enjoyable, the free iOS applications being released this time can be used in a variety of situations such as shooting, processing, viewing, showing, and organizing. These applications will provide even more opportunities to enjoy photos with digital cameras and smartphones.