The Good Dinosaur Filmyzilla.com

[Denisha Simcoe]

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Sunday I decided to relax and take in a movie. The big release this weekend was Jurassic World and since I loved the first so much as a kid, I thought I'd enjoy the sequel. Little did I know I wasn't taking time off, but instead, watching a work related movie. I was floored that Jurassic World was really "Dinosaur care, training, and enrichment and what goes horribly wrong when you fail"- the movie.

I had a lot to say after seeing the movie, both good and bad, but I am glad I slept on it as my tone has softened. Instead of raves and rants, I choose instead to pen a letter to the "Dinosaur Whisperer" himself - Chris Pratt, on my thoughts of his methods, philosophy, as well as how the park cared for the behavioral health of its animals. Enjoy.

I wanted to start by telling you that I am very proud of your choice of methods in training your Velociraptors. Clicker training is at the forefront of the most effective forms of animal training. After watching your technique I would like to suggest you refine your timing and use of the clicker. Perhaps practice with Raptor cousins for a while by attending a Chicken Clicker Camp. From my observations, Raptors have profound hearing and don't require multiple clicks or clicking so close to them. I'm sure the skills and timing you would learn at this programs would help you turn your raptors into some amazingly well trained animals. But of course, don't let the military catch wind of this. I mean look what they did with the poor sweet dolphins.

I am very impressed with the facilities the dinosaurs are housed in. Most seem filled with enrichment and get lots of stimulation throughout the day. I agreed with your assessment that it was a poor choice to limit Indominus Rex's enrichment and stimulation. As we learned, bored animals get very creative and not always in the ways we would like. Especially when it comes to human interactions and shock type boundary containment systems. I was pleased though that even with limited access to enrichment, Indominus was very happy to interact with a treat ball when given the opportunity.

I was also pleased to see that you work to embrace a Raptor's natural instincts in capturing their tracking behaviors. It was nice to see all your hard work and proofing worked well when you did a real life test of their training. I don't consider the end result a failure. Not many trainers think to proof that outcome. I know a few tracking and Nose Work instructors who might be able to give you a few tips but otherwise I think you have a very good grasp on what you're doing.

In closing the only real concern I have is where the science is on Alpha/dominance/pack theory regarding Raptors. I know the this theory has been significantly changed with dogs as they don't actually pack or have a hierarchy like wolves. If Raptors do pack with a hierachy, are they really a species that would allow dominance or hierarchy from another species? Presumption of this might have been what got you in trouble at the end of your tracking exercises. Perhaps more research is needed. Anyway, thank you for your hard work and keep training those Raptors!

Last year, I did a fun comparison between my Canon R5 and iPhone 13 Pro. Those results were quite impressive, so much so that I ended up printing images from that test to see just how far we could push the iPhone 13 Pro image. While I was happy with the results, at no point did I inspect the images and feel comfortable saying I could shoot with the iPhone in place of my Canon R5 given the two options. I expected the same results this year, and midway through editing my images, I realized something was different.

Notice the areas in shadow compared to those snow-capped peaks getting hit by bright direct light. Both cameras were able to capture this amount of dynamic range without much trouble, a noted improvement from last year for the iPhone. This is where things get interesting and what completely blew my mind when editing the photos. Zooming in was always where the iPhone image fell apart to immediately give away which camera took each image. Brace yourself.

Low light is where all small sensors struggle, and phone sensors are the smallest of the bunch. Any review you read will continually mention low-light performance being directly correlated to how large the sensor is. This was the hardest test in this year's comparison for the iPhone 14 Pro.

This is how the image started, straight from the iPhone. Keeping in mind almost every raw photo from the iPhone looks like a black hole in scenes like this. This should provide some context in how far the image was pushed in the edit.

Another blue sky sunrise with a large dynamic range, so much, in fact, that many of the photographers around me were shooting bracketed shots, yet I was able to capture everything in a single exposure with both cameras.

In this final image, we test a more realistic time for those of you out there not waking up for sunrise or staying out for sunset. This was taken a few hours before sunset, giving us long shadows, a ton of contrast, and most of all testing just how much detail the iPhone 14 Pro can pick up in a busy scene.

Below is a gallery of all the images throughout this comparison so you can enlarge them a bit more. Also included are a few images straight out of camera from the iPhone 14 Pro, which are comically bad in comparison to their raw counterparts. I would love to know your thoughts in the comments, as this was an eye-opening experience for me.

Alex Armitage has traveled the world to photograph and film some of the most beautiful places it has to offer. No matter the location, perfecting it's presentation to those absent in the moment is always the goal; hopefully to transmute the feeling of being there into a visual medium.

If you think the larger photos are comparable, honestly you need to buy a new monitor. Not trying to be snarkey, but there's a pretty profound difference on my calibrated monitors - And they're not flash ones either.

you are shooting in great light. what happens when the light sucks and you need to composite? I've owned every iPhone in hopes it could replace my backup, but my canon EOS R and R5 do a far superior job in any situation. Sensor size, dynamic range, and pixel density are no match. This is relying on software computations from developers who are giving their own take on photography.

Nicely done video. Just one comment about the forest floor shots. The iPhone shows better detail in foreground, and I think that's because its camera gives you more depth of field. All other things being equal, DOF will be proportional to CoC / (FL * FL), where CoC is circle of confusion, and FL is the actual focal length of the lens (not the full frame equivalent). I did not do the calculations for your shots, but I suspect there will be a significant difference. I wrote about this issue in a post on the DPReview forum.

My phone will never replace my camera. I buy my phones as communication devices and my cameras as imaging devices.
Yes, I can a take good pictures with my phone. Sure. But is my phone as good as a dedicated imaging device as my camera is. NO.

It's funny, when this comes up people always leap from "can it compete with my camera" straight to "can it COMPLETELY replace my camera in everything?". I got an S22 Ultra with the intent on using it to supplement my professional work. I use it all the time. I use it to generate quick, easy & good looking videos for social and BTS of my shoots that I can now charge extra for. The HDR capabilities in video sometimes actually beat my Z6 & BMPCC for range. Beautiful blue skies where the proper cameras are blown out white.

You'd have to pry my Z6 and BMPCC4K and thousands of dollars of lenses, lighting and other tools out of my cold dead hands and obviously in most situations, you need the pro gear... but as an extra tool you're missing out if you sleep on camera capabilities of modern smartphones.

I think it could be good for herp photography (reptiles and amphibians) on a limited basis, but only the herp photography that is done in daylight, and only that which does not require a true macro magnification or tilt/shift capabilities or very shallow depth of field.

And this is why photography and art in general usually suffer. This doesn't have to be a divided topic. There is a place for everything. There is a place for camera phones and a place for professional gear. Why does it always have to be a new camera comes out the first thing we as a community does is try make a case for why we will never do something? So i'll say this and leave it. When your work and clients start to dry up, money slows and you fade into obscurity, just remember you had a choice. You had a choice to use every tool available to make great art/work. Instead you chose to cling to a specific system, or brand or whatever. Unless they are paying you there is no need for your undying allegiance to these brands and systems, If you're a photographer you're a photographer with a camera phone or a camera. Use the tools you have. If you're shooting a billboard of course bring out the big guns, but if you're shooting a social media campaign could you get away with an iphone for images and video? ABSOLUTELY. This world changes everyday with or without us. So be grateful that we all get to participate in this beautiful thing called photography because none of us own it. Adapt to the changes and stay true to your craft. Or you can cling to the stupidity of past photographers just like the ones who fought the change from film to digital. It's truly adapt or die. Either way, I'll still be here to extract the fossils of you dinosaurs that couldn't let go of the past. Oh and for those talking about ergonomics, there are cages made for your phone just like they make for your camera that make it very ergonomic. Come pout of your caves, there's a big world out here.

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