Smartphone camera vs Canon 650D with shocking result

jebo1 wrote:

I really don't agree. It is shocking to see that a phone can produce similar and often better pictures than a dslr. You would at least expect the dslr to produce sharper pictures with it's infinte larger sensor and lens but even that is obviously not the case. Imagine this person going on a holiday carrying his/her dslr stuff around and coming home with less results than his partner using only the phone. So my summary would be that in 2017 a phone produces better pictures for the average person not needing wide angle or telelenses. Now we are taliking about dslrs but would it be far off to state that a phone produces better pictures than compact camera's like the coolpix or powershot?

As I already wrote in my post above, due to the larger sensor, you have an issue with DOF. In fact, many times it is desired that you can control DOF with a dSLR. With a small sensor, usually everything is within DOF, thus the image appears sharp throughout (see bushes in the front left where phone is clearly better). Thus, the dSLR would have to be stopped down further, which would improve DOF an probably overall sharpness. As we all know, pixel sharpness depends on the lens used, and not all lenses on dSLRs give maximal resolution. There is still room for improvement in post processing.

Where the smartphone clearly has the advantage is that it can use a lens that is optimised for the small sensor, and most likely, all kinds of corrections are done on the image (CA correction, vignetting correction, etc. etc.). These software corrections can of course be optimised for the phone, since it's a fixed lens/sensor combo, something you cannot do with a dSLR. To get optimal images you would have to take an image in RAW, expose properly, stop down more for DOF, probably use a tripod to remove any shake with slow shutter speeds, since you have a small aperture now. Then do post processing, first use a tool that removes lens aberrations, then process it is for optimal look.

And yes, compact cameras with fixed lenses should be able to achieve similar results, maybe the software is not as good.

But in the end, for a user that doesn't want to go into all the technicalities, a smartphone for a selfie/snapshot is probably the better choice.