Yes, you really can swim with an iPhone. Really!
Yes, you really can swim with an iPhone. Really!
Apple says not to, but it works
I’m Jeff, a Los Angeles writer-photographer, host of the PhotowalksTV series and former USA TODAY columnist, with my photo meets tech meets travel newsletter. Get access to our full archive of posts with a paid subscription.
Apple touts how “water resistant” the iPhone is, good for droplets falling on the device without ruining it. But in its fine print, it cautions against taking the iPhone for a swim, a bath or anything like that.
I’ve taken the iPhone 14 Pro Max into fountains and under rainfalls, dunked it in a river during a rafting trip and in the water on the Narrows hike in Zion National Park without any issues.
I filmed my friends Zadie, Maia and Esme Kruglov swimming with their dad’s iPhone. I’ve shown the footage. People chalked it up to AI, or something like that. They didn’t believe it was real.
So I met up with the girls and their parents again recently at a Los Angeles backyard pool (more on that in a minute,) and gave them my iPhone 14 Pro Max to work with, to see how it would fare for a more extended time in the pool.
Would the iPhone recharge afterwards, or would the charging port fall victim to water damage? Were there any other issues that would come up?
The answers, dear readers, are all revealed in the latest video. And yes, the downsides are addressed as well. (Click the link to find out how we fared!)
Swimply
For this shoot, I tried getting into a public pool first, but in my area of Los Angeles, they all tended to be closed on the weekend (!$#@!!!) for swim meets.
That they were closed was probably for the better, as I needed to find a pool I could bring the girls to, without someone screaming at me to put the phones away—i.e., a no photography rule.
Luckily, there was an app for this. Swimply is an AirBNB of sorts for local pool rentals. I found one near the Kruglov’s home and was able to nab it for an hour, which is all I needed. For the purposes of this project, $50 an hour was rather pricey, but having the pool to ourselves made it a lot easier for me to have my subjects photographed without worry of getting other people in the shot or lifeguards yelling at us.
For the $50, we got private use of the pool, beach chairs and inflatables and private area to change. The service is available in hundreds of locations—way too numerous for me to even list highlights. Fees are set by the local pool owner.
SmugMug and Swimming
After the pool shoot, I came home and had all the photos and videos ready to work with for the edit—SmugMug’s app automatically uploads everything shot. In the case of my iPhone 14, it’s a wifi phone—I only have service on my iPhone 15 Pro Max—so everything uploaded when I got home, put the phone down and sat down to work a little later.
Unlike Big Tech, SmugMug doesn’t have storage limits on the uploads or send me nag messages that I’ve run out of room. I use the site as a virtual hard drive to back up everything, run my photo centric website and sell prints to clients. (Not the Kruglovs though—they get prints for free, for life!)
New Macs in the works
This shouldn’t exactly be a surprise, but Apple has some new, even more powerful Macintosh laptops in the works, per Bloomberg. The current flavor of the chip maxes at M3, but a new breed of AI-powered M4 chips are coming later this year to new 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros, an iMac and the Mac Mini.
NAB!
Hey I’ll be speaking over the next few days at the NAB convention in Las Vegas. NAB (the National Association of Broadcasters) was always a place where local stations used to come every year to shop for new, huge TV cameras.
Now, reflecting the changes in the world, the show seems more tailored towards the “creator,” as in someone who runs around with their small cameras and films stuff for YouTube. (I think I know someone like that.)
Creator companies are out in force at NAB. I’ll be meeting with Insta360, which makes the tiny cool point of view cameras I use regularly (most prominently in my San Francisco Cable Car video) Black Magic, which has the best video app for the iPhone and software giant Adobe. And of course, who knows what will jump out at me as I walk the floor? You know I’ll fill you in!
If interested, here’s my speaking schedule:
Sunday, 9 a.m. All about using the iPhone for professional productions.
Tuesday: 12:25. Jim Louderback, the editor/publisher of the Creator Economy newsletter (and my recent PhotowalksTV guest for the Pacifica, California episode) will interview me about the Photowalks series, and what it’s like to be a solo creator.
Wednesday: 10:15 a.m. The art of making solo productions around the world. As someone who filmed episodes in Japan, Spain, France, Portugal, Mexico and Canada, as well as 16 US states ( only 34 to go!) I certainly have a few thoughts on the subject.
NAB bound? Please come say hi.
Yes, this really happened
Dan Martland, a New York photographer, got this amazing shot of lightning striking Lady Liberty this week. He said on X that he was simply “lucky” in being at the right place at the right time.
O’side and Carlsbad
As many of you know, I really enjoyed exploring the North San Diego beach cities of Oceanside and Carlsbad recently. I penned a piece for the Visit Oceanside blog about the experience, which you can read here. And in case you missed it, the Carlsbad episode. Note—to see the amazing Flower Fields of Carlsbad, you only have a few weeks left. They’ll close for the season on Mother’s Day.
Pearla app promises more realistic iPhone photos
A new app, Pearla, touts a way for a more pro look than the sometimes oversaturated, over-processed iPhone image. You get manual exposure control, film simulations, custom buttons, The app offers a free 3 day trial, or rates of $2.99 monthly ot $14.99 for the year.
Microphone question
I just got a question from a teacher who wants to interview her students on an iPhone for a graduation project and needs a microphone for clearer sound. My recommendation: at $129, a handheld microphone from IK Multimedia called the iRig. Or lapel mics by Rode, the Wireless Go, $199. Both will be a massive improvement over the standard mic on the iPhone, which would pick up the student, other students, people walking by, a bus driving down the street—in other words, everything, while the dedicated mic will just get the subject.
Eclipse!
After all the words uttered about how easy it was to photograph the Eclipse on a phone, I’ve got to admit—it was very tough. Composing an image with the glasses on and a filter over the iPhone made it hard to see anything. And then once I did—meh? A bite out of the sun. Nice, but NASA and all the photographers with big lenses on their cameras did it way better.
I contend again that the best images from my phone, and that I saw on my social media feed, were the timelapses, videos and scene. Like this amazing video from Indianapolis, below.
We’ll try again in 2044!
Thanks as always to everyone for reading, watching and listening. Let me know what you thought of today’s edition with a reply. Have questions? I’m all ears.
Jeff