I’ve had my Iphone 11 for several months now, but this is the first photo I’ve taken in the phone’s new “Night Mode,” and I was impressed, this is not a shot I could have taken with any other camera that I have used.

Night mode is an automatic setting that uses the phone’s new wide-angle lens, which is equipped with a larger sensor that enables the camera to let in more light. When Night Mode is engaged – it comes on automatically in low and dark light – the three cameras in the iPhone analyze the available amount of light and then the phone analyzes the number of frames needed to create a suitable image.

The camera then takes a series for a set amount of time, such as one second, three seconds, or in some situations even longer.

I need a tripod or very steady hands to take night photos, but the phone also has an optical image stabilizer that reduces shaking or movement.

The chip in the phone analyzes each photo taken, aligns them or re-aligns them to account for movement, eliminates blurry images and then fuses the sharpest images into one image.

I heard a lot of clicking and whirring when I took this photo, but I was surprised by the depth and clarity of this image, taken through our big apple tree at 8 p.m. Saturday night as the moon rose up through the clouds on a very cold night.

When people tell me they are “traditionalists,” I’m afraid to say I’m not sure what the even means any longer. I’m using my Iphone 11 for about 40 percent of the photos I’m taking.

The Canon  5 D, a revered full-frame digital camera, can still do many things even the smartest phone can’t do. But the gap is sure narrowing. My phone and the two or three photo editing programs I’m not using have opened up all kinds of creative possibilities for me.

Go figure. When I lost Aperture, I thought I was in deep trouble. But it was really just a beginning, not an end.