25% off Accessories (applied at checkout). FREE 🇺🇸🇨🇦 Shipping on orders over $50

The Wow Factor: iPhone 8 Plus and Portrait Mode

October 11, 2017

If you're one of the many people who've been hawkishly following the developments at Apple, then you already know how amazing the many new features of the iPhone 8 Plus, none more exciting to us then the new camera.

It's true that the new iPhone 8 Plus portrait mode is an enhancement to iPhone 7, with the 8 Plus shooting more and more like a DSRL with studio lighting. We've been playing around with the various portrait features in the office and at home. The image below was edited with the 'Stage Light Mono' option, and the portrait is transformed into a professional studio-like shot, taken right in the comfort of your own kitchen.

man portrait man iphone portrait

The A11 Bionic processor is impressive, to say the least.

Even though Apple was already a leader in graphics architecture for smartphones with their first internally-designed GPU (graphics processing unit), the Imagination-based GPU in their iPhone 7, the A11 Bionic Application Processor, is even faster than that in the iPhone 8 Plus (up to 30% faster). In all reality, the new iPhone is closer in speed to a laptop vs any other Smartphone on the market.

Let's get back to portrait mode...

Portrait mode actually enhances objects in your background and gives them bokeh (Japanese for blur effect) in order to make you, the subject, stand out even more, as seen in the photo of Bowe eating a P+J sandwich below.

boy portrait boy iphone portrait

Facial landmarking searches for human features in the photo and gives you the ability to choose from five lighting options that play with shadows, highlights, and the background of your image: natural light, studio light, contour light, stage light and stage light mono. The below photo showcases the studio light setting (left) in comparison with contour light (right).

woman portrait woman iphone portrait

With the dual lens, your image contains more information in a single shot, through the iPhone 8 Plus' dual lens. One of the lenses shoots up to 2x zoom, creating a depth of field (or bokeh, Japanese for blur) like you've never seen before. With the right lighting, any portrait-style shot can be edited to look professional-grade, and that's something we can all get excited about.