Last year when the iPhone 5 was released, we got a couple of them and flew to Iceland to field test it's camera against the iPhone 4S. So this year, we decided to do it again.

Now, after a full week of testing the iPhone 5S in Patagonia I'm beyond impressed with what it can do. We had our hands on two iPhone 5S's just minutes after they were released… a couple days later, we were bound for Patagonia to field to test the iPhone 5S camera against it's predecessor the iPhone 5. All the fancy new features like fingerprint scan are nice and nifty but as a travel photographer, all I really care about is what this camera can do.

We climbed mountains, hiked to glaciers, slept in the wilderness… all the while documenting it with these two awesome little camera phones… can't wait to share the results!

Panorama Mode

Ever since Apple released the panorama feature w/ the iPhone 5, shooting them has been a blast. They are easy, look great and are an invaluable tool for capturing scenes wider than the built in 30mm lens.

The iPhone 5S meters panoramas dynamically, in a single exposure. Meaning, if I'm shooting a scene with a broad range of brightness (maybe dark mountains on my left and bright sunlight sky on the right) it will actually change exposure/capture settings within the same capture (not HDR) to better accommodate.

What it's doing here is really quite remarkable. Take a look at the 5 vs 5S comparison below.