If you say high end phone cameras can take pictures with quality comparable to a high end M43 setup, it's because you've never owned a high end phone, otherwise you wouldn't come up with such a statement.
I think the problem is your somewhat naive opinion on professional photography.
First off, I'll say that I'm a fan of computational photography, and I think the phone manufacturers are doing really interesting things that are pushing photography further and faster than legitimate camera manufacturers. They have indeed replaced some of my MFT gear and I give no apologies for that.
Not what I said...you must firstly correctly comprehend my narrative before jumping to unsupported illogical conjecture.
See utilization parameters noted above.
Good enough?
IMHO..."Professionals" pride themselves in delivering to notch images relative to the intended purpose...so MFT can indeed produce top notch small media images but not top notch images beyond the small media format...but it is an excellent system for non professional casual shooters who do not require the best possible image quality.
Thats exactly what professionals do...for casual shooters MFT seems good enough...for small media such as a phone....your 11 jpegs seem good enough.
The main reason for buying specialist photographic gear is in most cases not image quality but shooting envelope - the range of photographs you can take and in which situations. As the available aperture size increases you gain the ability to use shallow depth of field, which you might use artistically just for the effect or you might trade off for more exposure at some given shutter speed - either to allow a usable shutter speed in low light or to allow fast shutter speeds to freeze action. Another thing that affects shooting envelope is the range of angles of view available. Phones don't have access to the very wide or very narrow. You might use this potential creatively, to enable the combination of perspective and framing you want, or you might simply use them to get the framing you want from the available camera location. Finally, mFT can collect more light overall than a phone, which means it can deliver photos which have a better pre-noise-reduction signal to noise ratio, which implies that you can use less noise reduction and get fewer NR artefacts.
Maybe you should also substitute your Fuji in above post ..since there is not much difference between aps-c stuff and MFT.....
Quote of the month... "setting the artistic aspects of photography aside" and spoken like a true DPR forum warrior.
Why the surprise?...can you really attain the paramount of your artistic potential with mediocre tools...lucky someone invented and paintbrush or we would still be viewing finger painting in the worlds most prominent art galleries.
The endless discussions about some sort of abstract "IQ" is crap with also talking about context. Try shooting sports with your iPhone. Try shooting birds in flight with your iPhone.
Your point is most valid but I bring your attention to "print and small screen media"...the intention was not to compare/contrast systems to which your reference to "context" is most relevant.
The output is irrelevant. It's the ability to get the shot that sets a "real" camera apart from a smartphone. For some of my work, using a smartphone is fine and the experience is pleasant - taking shots of my daughter, my girlfriend on vacation, etc. But for my other work shooting sports, concert photography, events, more formal portraiture then I don't want to be holding something at arm's length, tapping a screen to set a focal point, using an awkward button or the screen for releasing the shutter, etc. The ergonomics alone set a real camera apart.
Big surprise: Modern photography doesn't have a lot to do with finger painting or photography ten to twenty years ago. The sophisticated software programming in today's m4/3 gear is just eons above that of the past. Although I've shot for 50 years and specialized in mountain landscape for 40, I am a much better photographer today than I was even when very active with older gear. It is so much easier to get great results with modern gear. Take birding; in two weeks with the EM-I II matched with the 300 F4, I can get results I couldn't even have dreamed of until now. It is the gear, I've not changed - at least not much.
I get the feeling you mostly take indoor shots of the cat and can't see the need for gear......
