I get asked ALL THE TIME, “what camera should I buy for my upcoming trip” and I always tell people to just bring their Iphone.
Ultimately the best camera is the one that you have with you.
Most images never get used for anything beyond social media so the image size/quality does not need to be great.  For people that do print images, an 8×10 is usually the biggest they will go.
But…WHAT IF you actually wanted to print larger.
I decided I needed to test it to see just how well the iphone can hold up so I partnered with Black River Imaging (www.blackriverimaging.com) to do an experiment.
I had a few images that were taken with both my Iphone XS and also my FUJI XT-3.

Watch the video to see the results:

At the end of the video I said “iphone Xr”, but I meant “iphone Xs”

Iphone XS
Pros:
-Small and always with you.
-Does incredible as long as the image is well lit and well exposed properly.
-Very easy to take photos and edit photos via apps.
-Motion blur photos can be captured hand held with no tripod using the live view mode.

Cons:
-Quality drops off significantly in low light. (still looks good for social media but not for print)
-The minimal zoom makes it nearly useless for wildlife photography.

Professional Gear
Pros
-You can get the best quality images in every situation.

Cons:
-You have to carry a camera and multiple lenses and often even a tripod.
-Editing the photos usually requires downloading and processing which is time consuming.
-Motion blur photos require a tripod and cable release to do properly.
-Much more difficult to learn the settings and features.

Keep in mind, that regardless of what camera you have, you still need to learn how to use it it to get the best results.  People think that phone cameras are just point and shoot but to really utilize them properly you still need to learn basic camera functionality and find the apps that can give you the best options and results.
If you do decide to print your photos, Jason, the lab manager at Black River, recommends to not change the resolution of your images unless you are an advanced editor and know how to properly sharpen images based on the image resolution.

What it really comes down to is that there are images that I’ve shot on my iphone XS that I could enlarge and sell and nobody would know they were taken with a phone. THAT’S IMPRESSIVE!!
I’m looking forward to printing more images now that I don’t feel hindered by the quality.

This is the iphone XS image

This is the FUJI XT-3 image

Here are some of the other images used in the video.

It’s amazing to me that this first image which captured the motion blur of the water was taken hand held with the iphone

The dynamic range here to be able to capture the detail in the highlights on the clouds to the detail on the backlit tree is amazing.

The color captured by the phone is so vibrant!

Here are a few other iphone captures. Just like anything I post and share, all my images were retouched. Most of these were done with Adobe Lightroom Mobile.