It isn’t the first iPhone shot I’ve seen sent directly from the line-up but it’s an interesting one, taken by photographer (and Quiksilver Marketing guy) Nic Dazet from the channel at Belharra (French big wave spot):
http://stabmag.com/a-brief-update-from-the-channel-of-belharra/
It’s a shot of the back of a Canon 5D Mark III, that’s a £2200 camera body and most likely something like a 70-200mm L lens too, he’s shooting from a boat at one of the highest profile spots in Europe during a historically big swell, my point is, he’s not messing about with the gear, but it’s the fact that he can get a photo in front of a magazine editor within minutes of it happening that means his shot gets used (rather than matey in the foreground who may well have a better angle).
Not being a professional myself, I mostly see this from a consumer of surf content’s point of view, and I like it, but I can see how it might make any photographers who want to sell shots of this session a bit miffed.
The latest generation of DSLR’s and mirrorless cameras have WiFi built in allowing you to send the full quality file to your phone instantly, give it a couple more generations and they will have 4G data connections streaming directly to the internet as soon as you take the shot.
This is the best recent image I had of mine that fit in here, taken with my GoPro not my phone, but at least it’s got the back of my camera in it. The footage will form part of a tutorial video on how to use a water housing that I’m working on.
In case you were wondering, the thing around the LCD in Nic’s shot above is to mount a loupe style LCD viewfinder, making it much easier to shoot video in bright sunlight, I think this one’s for one of the Zacuto Z-finder range.