Yep, I bought one.

Specifically for baby photos. (Which I’m not posting because this is the Internet, but goddamn, they are amazing. Bathtime steam is rendered! Instead of being blurred out! The result is what looks like a soft filter but is in fact a delighted baby in a toasty bathroom.) I know they’re redoing the design in 2020; I know iPhone 11 people are supposed to end up sad like iPhone 8 people in that regard, and I had no interest in upgrading from my 6S. But then I had a baby and took 2500 photos on my old-ass phone, and realized he’s only be this young once. So new phone focused on camera improvements it is.

I of course didn’t have portrait mode on my old phone so much of my early mucking around has been with that — though I know it’s an older feature not flagship for this phone. Mostly, beyond endless baby pictures, I wanted to test its effects on non-human subjects:

The results are mostly good, although there is a tendency with long-nosed dogs to put the nose in focus and let half or all of the rest of the face fall into that background blur effect that makes proper portraits look so good.

For shorter-nosed dogs with busier faces, the photos fare a little better. I don’t know if it’s because the software has been told to process facial hair specifically or what. I was curious though how what is essentially a filter works, as seen here:

Clearly the system drew a line around what it interpreted as flesh and said “here, this is what the portrait is supposed to be encompassing.” Hence that in-focus scrap of blanket between the thumb and forefinger. The chocolate chips, however, are out of focus — why? I asked, and it seems there are whole libraries just for parsing images, and that a line of code could conceivably read to humans like “if a given percentage of the image surrounding the focal point is within this range of color codes, do not blur. Otherwise, blur.” But that doesn’t apply to the chocolate chips here, because if the phone is reading the hand as a potential face, why would it decide not to leave dark things in the middle of the face (eyes, nostrils?) in focus? Possibly it could be some “don’t focus on people’s moles” directive gone awry, but there is a difference between not focusing and a deliberate blur effect. I suppose the lighting could just be poor, and the definition between the dark chips and their shadows could be too indistinct, as opposed to the ring…but anyway it’s all just speculation, since Apple is unlikely to share its secrets given its phone camera competition with Samsung and Huawei.

And I know, I know I am essentially praising visual effects that could easily be achieved in photoshop. That I’m praising the convenience. But…that’s what I bought. The convenience of not having to edit those 2500 photos to bring out the best in them. Because I have a baby! I don’t have time for that. Or rather, if I do, I’d rather spend that time with my baby. The iPhone 11 Pro lets you do all sorts of things I’ve not yet explored: f stop tweaking, long exposures, different aspect ratios. But most importantly for my amateur ass, it makes damn good photos attainable in a very short amount of time. And I will pay for that. I did.