writing
summer 2025 love letter
my imovie exploration of last spring - march into april time.
The subject today is one I hold close to my heart. It involved some research, and not the shopping kind. There's no time to waste as I have a lot of gooch week activities to get to.
1. Zoom into already taken photos up to 40x, videos 24x etc etc
It’s unsurprising that with each new iPhone release, the creators hone in almost specifically on upgrading camera technology. Most people don’t know what tech terms mean once we enter the world of chips and bytes etc, but the camera is and always has been applicable to all. Just as well, we’re not anonymous beings carrying around our fun, novel little smartphones anymore – we’re Faces, we’re Names. The phones grew (in size) with us, our desiring eyes, our inclinations and scopes. The glass is heavy in our pockets and hands, and maybe is in part why we make it a point to spend what we think of as productive, or if not, then fun days and we desire to let everyone know. I’m not trying to say that everyone carries out their business online in this particular way, but we’re certainly all online in some capacity. This mainly implies an automatic connection to others who we want to talk to about our days and show them our findings, often through photos – that’s one rudimentary way to put it. It was always this way, this isn’t new, but the degree to which it is has shifted exponentially. To what does this lead, for the manufacturers of the devices we use for this ubiquitous activity? On the newest iPhone model (the 17 Pro Max), it means up to 40x zoom when looking at our photos, 24x for videos. Take the below screenshot (pulled from geeky-gadgets.com) for example. My thinking here is - why did you not just go to the site of the detail you wanted so badly to capture?, if you wanted to get so close to it anyway…
2. "Zoom Enthusiasm"
Or invest in a pair of nice binoculars. This sentiment could be the overarching thesis of most of the points in this post. Geeky-gadgets.com lists out the zoom capabilities of the newest iPhone variants including the iPhone Air, the iPhone 16 Max, and the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apparently on the 16 Max, you could/can zoom up to 15x on video and 25x for photos, but the “quality diminishes significantly” the more one zooms in. So, in conclusion, for “zoom enthusiasts”, the 17 Pro Max is your best bet. When did we all become zoom enthusiasts? When did 10x zoom (first introduced with the iPhone 12) become not enough? Still, seeing the numbers ramp up from 20 didn’t boggle my mind so much – I’m not surprised by our hunger for assessing the nitty gritty of our photos.
3. Zooming within the camera app
Again, it’s important to note that these big numbers like 25, 40, etc. are referring to the amount we are able to zoom into a photo or video after it’s been taken. Post-production, on the cutting room floor, so to speak. However, I noticed in my research (which included hand to screen contact with both the 17 Pro Max and the iPhone 11), that whilst taking a photo in the camera app, the 11 lets you zoom into the subject “5x”. With the newer models, like the 17, we can get up to 10x. These numbers aren’t as hefty and bloated as the staggering 40 or 24, but the effects that lie in the difference between 5 and 10 are great. When we get up to 10x zoom, the impressiveness of the resolution almost becomes distracting. The photo ends up looking like a painting… but we lose the qualities that once made iPhone photography somewhat singular. On the 11, the 5x zoom is already impressive, rendering zoomed in subjects as still lifes but with a fizzly, grainy quality. I would say its effect is close to a freshly opened, crisp can of Coke, whereas the newest phones now take zooming to an extreme, treating it as its own art form. The more heightened the zoom, the more slight, smoothing effects are put to use. This tastes more like a flat can of soda, left out, our tastebuds wanting more of a bygone product like Pepsi Blue or Tab.
4. Effects in the latest models
Now, we’re not zooming and zooming into an oblivion of pixels; rather, we zoom into clarity. Outlines, shadows, colors clear as day. Clearly, this topic has been on my mind for a while, so it continuously comes up in conversation… because of the following anecdote: While in London, a few iPhone 17 Pro Max photos were taken of me walking around the Barbican Centre. They were from a median distance, where ideally you should clearly see me, and know it’s me, but to a point. In the aftermath of a photo taken from that distance (on iPhones as new as the 12, 13, even 14), zooming in should introduce you to the world of general outlines of figures, complete with that soft aura in the place that sharp silhouettes normally would be, that can only be produced by organic movement captured. Instead of this, the 17 Pro Max caught the shadows on my face, the folds of my dress, even a hint of crumpled mascara.. blemishes on my skin. But for that last one, while of course my first thought was "do I actually look like that..", the thought that followed it was a suspicion that the camera is trying to do something but just hanging on by a thread in its attempt to catch these minute details.
5. Claritypilled
At this point Apple might as well be doing all this for pro photographers, but are they all going to opt for an iPhone over a DSLR? I’m not taking film into account here, as zoom isn’t so much factored in as the thing that’s going to determine a good shot. Shooting film, if I’ve learned anything at all, is about capturing Moments, mostly. As much as an iPhone lets you shoot On The Go while observing the surrounding elements of everyday life, I’m not sure that that means utter clarity through our lenses. As hinted at in item 3, utter clarity doesn’t even look that good with an iPhone, namely when we’re capturing people. And who wants that? I found in my confrontation with The Form through the lens of the iPhone 17 Pro Max that it just looked strange, even uncanny. We’re not capturing real life anymore because people don’t look like that, especially not while in movement.
to the right: movement captured on iphone 5s
6. Night Mode Interlude
People in front of an iPhone camera, whether posing for photos or not, usually find themselves on the spectrum of motion. From portraits/still lifes to blurry chaos, not because of the fact that they’re in front of a camera, but more so because this is what people do. More often than not, with friends out on the town, you’re more likely to fall on the organic end of the movement scale, which naturally lends itself to a certain blur on an iPhone’s camera. With the end goal being HD clarity, so many things (light/shadow, contrast, sharpness) get ramped up to a degree that divorces us from the experience itself – the experience of “capturing moments on the go”. Even when face to face with someone in the IRL, you’re not glimpsing every tiny shadow and fold and blemish; with the newer cameras, a new reality is coming into play and not in the same way we’ve all talked about with the Online merging with the IRL. It’s people in the hyperreal… again, not using that term to discuss AI or whatever. Hyperreal, where a moment gets captured in a way that you’d absolutely never see in real life. This started in its first pronounced way with the introduction of “Night Mode”, which surely you’re all familiar with. In case you’re not, it’s when your phone camera in certain light environments (perhaps best understood as after the dark:light ratio in a photo passes a certain threshold) will freeze the moment it’s trying to capture by amplifying light and shadow, usually increasing the pair. Night Mode can be turned off manually in the camera app, but it can be a real hassle especially for those who belong to a higher age demographic. Night Mode actually does the trick of getting a photo, especially taken at night, to look much more similar to the scene you’re viewing in real time, but our cameras automatically attempting to photograph people without messy blur and movement began here, and maybe it should have stopped here too. Below, see an example of when Night Mode works, and when it doesn't.
7. Universal Photographer Identity + "Lurker" Interlude
This acceleration exists because we’re all photographers now and have been for a while, and Apple is aware of this generally applicable identity to sell to. This is fine, and might be aligned with the greater good of humanity anyway. We’re observers, thus artists. It’s just gone a bit far. My query is about why being a photographer has to mean all of this. Were we not already fine photographers when the iPhone first dropped? Why is it being assumed that all of us want to “go Pro”? Or Max? Recently, I watched a movie called “Lurker” that I had been wanting to see since I saw ads for it on the Mubi instagram. The main character Matthew is essentially a fanboy (calculating stalker) of famous musician Oliver, who ends up weaseling his way into said musicians friend group by becoming somewhat of a PR manager/BTS capturer/bitch boy to the posse. Once “in”, he plays around with his personal Camcorder to catch BTS of Oliver frolicking about and skating, cast in grainy and analog glory, which Oliver absolutely loves. “This is SICK mate!!!” Oliver proceeds to calls him his best friend and hugs him. We like to be caught candidly more than anything – when we’re most uninhibited and ourselves. In another scene, when the condescending director “forgets” (Matthew hid it) to bring the nicer, more high def DSLR they’re to use to shoot Oliver’s music video, Oliver says “why don’t we just use Matty’s footage?”, directly bringing to mind all the music videos and promo for artists these days that hinge around a return to this scrappy, made-on-the-go mood and character, even if it is manufactured.
8. "Center Stage Front Camera"
Yet as interested as we are in the life around us, we’re ultimately more interested in ourselves. .5 zoom on the back camera gave way to playfulness and silliness when it first dropped, and there’s dregs of it still. It’s fun to capture ones surroundings through maximized fish eye lens, and of course funny to picture oneself or ones friends in that elongated way. Following this, front (selfie) camera optimization was always inevitable. On the iPhone 17, there is a new feature called “Center Stage Front Camera.” This is essentially what you press to make your selfie look like you’re on a Zoom call. When I tried it out, I enjoyed it for its novelty just as I did with the 0.5 lens, but some of these innovations are coming off weirder and weirder. At the same time, I’m not that person who’s opting to get a flip phone and encouraging others to do the same. I know I’m genuinely interested in whatever tech innovations come our way ... and I do mean through Apple. Maybe every innovation was at first weird and even off-putting, but 0.5 zoom hinged around an innate playfulness, whereas Center Stage Front Camera reeks of Freudian wish fulfillment. It's fine though because you can always put Aquaphor on your camera lens and call it a day.
9. A merit for newer models, not having to do with cameras.
The newer iPhones are encased in Ceramic instead of Glass. Or rather, the phones are still made of glass but there is now an added ceramic “shield” for them. From some research on the respective materials, it seems both are brittle, but maybe this is innovation geared in the right direction. If we look to philosopher of our times @sighswoon on "How Materials Break", the description hints at Ceramic being slightly less damaging (to surrounding environments, in after-effects) than Glass in the event of a break. I'll take it. To continue making newer, more advanced iPhones should ideally speak to the advanced ways we’ve begun to move through the world that don't have to scream excess. If this shield, regardless of material, is something that protects the glass we haphazardly wield around on the daily, that feels helpful in some respect. And I like that it's referred to in Capitals as officially a "Shield"; with increased durability for our devices, we can only hope we become tougher too. Like I stated in item 1, the tech has grown with us and our growing desires, but at this point it could be the other way around.
Above, via @sighswoon on IG
10. Obviously
The closer we inch towards the real, the faker it looks.
Even if I may have come off as a complainer and hater in this list, the genesis of the idea came from quite the opposite sentiment – my love for older versions of the iPhone, such as the 5s (one of the primary vessels for Ten Today’s content capture, as seen on our IG) and the 11, which I am experimenting with. So.. here's to experimentation and curiosity in the new year, see you then.
Ten Today 12/29/25:
10 thoughts on iphone cameras
Precursor: In the fall of 2021, I started wearing a slate-colored LL Bean vest that my college roommate neglected for a few months. This is where it started. I put that vest on over a black turtleneck I’d had for about a year already, paired with a black beanie. Sometimes a hoodie (black or brown, always zip up) under the vest if it was extra chilly. Plus, black wide leg jeans that became my favorite in this time period, and shoes that were probably the only visibly “cool” part of this ensemble. The zipper on those shoes has since broken. I didn’t think about this well-run machine of efficiency and sleekness that came in the form of repeatedly dressing in these specific clothes, at least for a few weeks. I just kept going. It was mainly just about dark colors, non-branded items, comfort on the way to mobility, and blending in. I made a routine out of running to the lake every morning, and (if you remember a past post of mine, at that point I did not enjoy cooking or being in the kitchen at all, but) I did start drinking smoothies and green drinks when I could. I enjoyed school and put more of myself into my schedule and assignments than I had in a while. On 1 December 2021, I synthesized this exploration into new territory (of routine, kickstarted by my clothing choices) into the term “hacker chic.” Now I want to share my findings with you:
Hacker chic is a term not everyone may be familiar with. (By the way, I wrote this prior to looking up the term on Google – to prove that it is not a real thing – and seeing that there was indeed an article on “retrofuturism in fashion” from 2022, which mentions hacker chic. I debated with myself, but ended up not reading it past one skim, nor anything else that may have come up in this Google search. As I said, this term came to me almost four years ago and I have wanted to write about it ever since.) In any case, maybe much explanation of what it exactly is, is not needed. It will become clear to you, dear reader, as the list goes on. Thus, this is the first argument for hacker chic - the power of the image that it conjures in one's mind without extensive information. You can see hacker chic, can’t you?
It is the recuperation of a tech x gorp aesthetic, but as something that is not only reserved for the likes of tech guys, or gorp guys, or just guys. Being interested in/simultaneously appalled and intrigued by the world of tech (which seems to get weirder and darker every day, but nonetheless provides a whole new domain of information about where our world is going, and where we’ve been before), can be signaled through clothing like anything else. Aligning oneself with one's interests, in the case of hacker chic, is not reserved for the people who are directly involved with these interests. Hacker chic is at least partially an argument for the intrigue that lies in the world of tech, minus the aesthetics and values of the men who rule it.
With hacker chic, there is no push towards the realm of Patagonia vests and grey-maxxing out of no other impulse than laziness. There are more subtle, and of course stylish ways to explore it. It is flexible. It molds itself to what you need it for, in that moment.
Watch how much easier it is to NoCal-pill yourself by drinking green smoothies and going on foggy runs in the morning. Your new gear will galvanize you to do so. Maybe you down 2 Red Bulls later in the day to get something done, but the argument still stands… Embody self sufficiency.
Listen to the Social Network soundtrack (or any Trent Reznor + Atticus Ross score) while doing any activity at all while assuming the identity of the hacker. Feel powerful. Maybe even learn to code to embody hacker chic in a more honest sense… but this is not necessary!
We’re talking Jesse Eisenberg as Zuck, not Zuck himself.
Interlude and counter: The thing about aesthetic “movements”, especially these days, is that through scrolling, you have access to not just That One Very Cool and Influential Image that lodges itself in your mind henceforth, thus changing your brain chemistry, but a whole host of similar images that do the same thing. Then you attempt to mimic the aesthetic presented, without doing so much as switching to different image-centric apps on your phone to verify your inspirations and gather them somewhere. You don’t learn where it came from or any of its significance. You recycle its significance in your own interpretation, watering it down through a shortened lifespan. So then why hacker chic?
Hacker chic feels like it has a short lifespan anyway. It is a way of dressing that could not have materialized any earlier than the dawn of technology. It is not a way of dressing that feels rooted in the world of fashion or even history, but rather in the world of recent affects and ideals. We as a society are quite entrenched in this world of technological ideals, so it doesn’t feel like there is much to “learn” about dressing like a hacker. It doesn’t feel like a flamboyant costume, just an archetype to embody.
And more on the archetype of the hacker. To hack the “system” is to reject it, as well as to think up smarter ways to use it. Especially as now that “system” is one that is indeed so ubiquitous and no longer as much of a hidden world to explore, the hacker archetype implies a more secret passageway. A hidden ideal. You are a spy performing a mission, hopefully for the good guys.
To dress like a hacker even amidst the current tyrannical, technocrat state of technology we find ourselves in is to refuse its orders and suggestions. You didn’t dress like a hacker because of the algorithm in any way. This way of dressing does not scream “cute”. It can be chic if you feel you are doing it correctly, but there’s no merit here and you won’t be given a gold star for dressing hacker chic.
To dress like a hacker but make it somehow look cool, chic, desirable at all, is a flex of style, without the visual correlation to styles or outfits that would connote you are “chronically online”.
As summed up in previous points, hacker chic is an argument for simplicity, for clarity of mind, and for physical well-being, fused into the choice to dress like a hacker. As stated above, it molds itself to what you use it for. It is a good option for when you do not know what to wear and feel at a loss for creativity. Then, the creativity sparks may just come through, as you imbue the uniform with power and clarity.
TenToday III: 10 Cases for Hacker Chic
1. You seriously start to consider bleaching your eyebrows again. The last time you did this was when you were a 19 year old on the precipice of “real” early twenties decadence and decay, living in your first apartment, during lockdown, with good friends in a city other than the one you grew up in. You were staring at a wide open, previously untouched space (on your forehead) that was begging for you to breathe vitality into it, or imply that vitality by taking it away! Obviously, this urged you towards upheaval of the personal aesthetic genre. Somehow, that year in lockdown generated more transformation and fun than even the first few novel months of college. You’ve now ordered the bleach.
2. You look closer at the fact that you don’t write long-form in your journal anymore. It’s been months and it’d be a stroke of naivety to keep telling yourself you’ve just been busy. You admit that you don’t get the same satisfaction out of it as you did just a couple of months ago.
3. But also, it’s true that you’ve been somewhat busier. Definitely compared to the first warmer months – a sprawl of days that blended into weeks. You just don’t feel the urge to put pen to paper, in long-form, in your journal at present. So you start to opt for laptop writing, at first out of curiosity of its efficacy (founded), and then as part of your routine. After all, another shift of the season is that you write for TenToday and post every Saturday.
4. For maybe the first time in your life, you give yourself time in your weekly schedule to cook meals. At least one per week. Addendum: you shop for groceries – real ones, not just the bits and bobs you end up with after you happen to walk into a deli to buy a Yerba Mate at 4 pm. You’d formerly exit with three different kinds of chocolate bar, some cheese that emitted a sophisticated aura, and a pack of mortadella slices (with no vision of the ultimate construction of these elements). Now, you may even leave with a bushel of greens, a meat that will eventually get cooked on a stove, and a plethora of seasonings. You don’t publicly pat yourself on the back for this development because you’ve kicked yourself secretly for years for your laziness. But hey, pat yourself on the back! Look at you!
5. You accidentally get your hair dyed the wrong shade (of red). Oops! Autumn is not the time to dwell, though, as all the leaves are falling. Worst time to hold onto a grudge, or hair color. So you let the new hair color slide. You were kind of bored of the old one anyway.
6. But you’re not bored in a general sense. Sure, it’s getting colder but that chill in the air is not yet the dry iciness that has you running to the confines of home to shake yourself into warmth and moisturize your hands. For now, you define the outside world by its crispness. You breathe it in deeply, you use the word “cozy” more often now, or at the very least think it. With the coziness comes a new TV show to watch, which you hype yourself up for when you get the time to indulge in it.
7. With this, your cigarette consumption has decreased to around one per day, probably because it is in fact a little harder to stew in the sun for hours now, but also because you enjoy breathing in crispness and fresh air more than smoke.
8. You’ve dropped your therapist after a relatively steady two years with her. It was almost too steady. This can be encapsulated by her admission to you, during your last session, that she had been let down that she didn’t feel a closeness between you two and kept herself wondering why that was. At some point, she began to sense a distance from you, and that “distance” plateaued and remained, never addressed. You felt it too, chalking it up to low compatibility because that’s sometimes how things go and waiting out some sessions before revealing your true desires. But also, wasn’t your relationship one of professionalism? It appeared you simultaneously craved a more spirited rapport while also continuing (quite unknowingly) to prevent it from happening. Again, it could just have been low compatibility. Or you’re just a stiff bitch.
9. Along with that honesty that came with admitting you were no longer (for now) a pen-to-paper journaller, came the realization that you weren’t as interested in… all the fretting that came with thinking (stewing, pondering, above all writing) about your life and issues. You’ve begun to embody, rather than plot and scheme. You never thought you’d totally be an embodier of your plans, at least not until you were a successful-person-in-your-thirties-making-it-look-easy-and-living-in-a-dream-house, naturally. But how do you get there anyway? Start. It happened without you realizing it. And it dawns on you on a weekend of looking at yourself too intensely in the mirror for more time than usual in different costumes and affects (halloweekend #1) that you’ve been walking out of the house with (only) the burden of your appearance weighing on you and your mind... But wasn’t there something else pressing that you needed to work out internally? … it appeared not. What about all those highly frustrating, testing, existential (but often inane) knots of worry about your life that made you question who you are and where you’re going once before ? Weren’t you a thinker? Weren’t you kind of… anxious ? Maybe once,,, but now all you were worried about was that you had suddenly become unattractive during a critical weekend of dressing up. You spend the rest of the weekend thanking god, thanking the universe, for that almost unnoticed change. When your biggest issue has changed from things that you can’t control into the fact that your stress-acne is flaring up (but will likely go away by next week), you’ve got it really good.
10. You start to favor your friends' apartments for parties and housewarmings over going to the club every weekend.