Marco Nero wrote:
bgreg wrote:
I also have never owned a smartphone . I've never used a phone for photography and I'm not even sure I can relate to people who do. ...
*No idea why the text is all in Bold this week.... must be a glitch on DPreview.
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Smartphone photography is a simple affair. It's pretty cool to see what they can produce with those tiny little lenses.
It is amazing what those little lenses and sensors can do. That technological marvel doesn't hide the fact that the images are still pretty bad when compared to a crop or FF sensor. That level of quality is, of course, not necessary for every image nor for every photographer.
And if all you want is an oversaturated image right out of camera, smartphones are ideal. They excel at that. I took an image the other day of the sunset, which was stunning (because of the sunset....the image was mediocre compared to my FF R). The houses in this bright scene were extremely noisy as they were in shadow. And there's the rub: the shot looked great, but that was in spite of the camera not because it got any help from the camera.
The one thing people discovered during lockdown in Australia (and numerous other countries) was that without a smartphone you couldn't present your vaccination status to gain entry to a building or a business.
Huh? In the US we had printed cards. We could also present them on our phones if we needed to, but...I'm not sure what this has to do with photography.
For a while, people who didn't own a Digital Certificate that they could present were permitted to show a printed certificate from a doctor. But recently, even the local hospitals were blocking anyone from entering unless they had a Digital certificate on their phone.
I seriously doubt that as many people in this world, especially older people who were disproportionately affected, don't have smartphones.
The paper printouts were no longer acceptable. Too many people were printing fraudulent documents. Anyone caught with a fake digital version faced prison.
Or a fake paper version.
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What this did was force the members of the population to purchase a modern smartphone.
I'd like to see the law that would require a poor person purchase a phone in order to participate in society. Link please.
Those who already used one were probably fine. Public transport was now accepting payment by Smartphone and now we have Digital Driver's Licenses in place of the old plastic version.
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So now, the rest of society has come to embrace the smartphone.
Again, I keep up with COVID and with technology and haven't heard one whisper of all this. I'd love to read about it.
And modern smartphones like the Google PIXEL or the new iPhone 13 and 14 Pro models (just to name a few obvious models) can take a photograph that easily rivals those from an APS-C mirrorless camera - assuming extremes are not required.
That's simply not the case...depending on how you define "rival" or "extreme." In very undemanding situations my fairly new phone still couldn't come close to my older R. Crop sensors aren't that far behind FF.
In the last year, this technology was tweaked and polished even more. Now you can take a picture at night and the Smartphones can use computational methods to capture an image that looks like it was shot with a tripod.
Not that I've seen, unless you're displaying it on your phone exclusively. Maybe that's what's missing here -- are you only referring to viewing images on a phone? Yeah, they look GREAT on a tiny phone screen. Not great in any other context.
Now there's a Macro lens built into your camera. And a wide-angle lens. And they can produce an artificial Depth Of Field with flattering Bokeh for "Portrait shots" using the LIDAR device on the Smartphone to calculate which parts of the image to blur.
And that is all neat. And fake, in the case of the bokeh. And in the case of the various lenses, nice but still not anywhere near a real lens on a real camera. But great for phone photography.
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Every year this is improved upon.
As are ILC sensors.
Some smartphones and even the latest iPhones are now capable of high megapixels capability. 4K Video is a breeze. This is one of the last nails in the coffin for all camera manufactures. Their previous marketing methods and in-camera features are all going to be retired for what comes next. That this can all slide into your top pocket whilst holding and displaying tens of thousands of your photographs in an orderly manner - and at the same time offer internet communication and a digital wallet... means the smartphone of today is a small and slender thing that slides into your top pocket. They're waterproof and damage resistant and they cost a lot less than many DSLR and Mirrorless cameras. There's a lot in favor of the smartphone from 2022.
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Which is all great in the context of smartphones. But as soon as you get into crop and FF bodies with good lenses and amazing new AF tech that blows phones away...well, the phones get blown away. Suddenly the "extremes" aren't quite the edgecases one might have assumed.
What these smartphones do with their inbuilt cameras is "good enough" for the majority of users to use.
That's not much of a compliment, "good enough" I mean. The majority of users are those who would never have voluntarily picked up a camera before their smartphone existed.
That's the expression that so many use to describe their opinion when asked why they prefer their smartphone over a dedicated cameras. They aren't rushing out anymore to grab a decent camera from the stores. They don't have to borrow one from a friend or relative. Even Journalists are now shooting and filming with their smartphones, which is somewhat surprising since image integrity is important to them. I saw a travel catalogue and an article in National Geographic last year that were both shot using a smartphone.
Who cares what everyone else is doing? Again, this is not high praise for smartphones.
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Within another year we'll see the technology advance yet again with new types of high capacity batteries and new types of lens elements that will enable optical zooming using methods not yet seen by the general consumer. There's always going to be someone who needs more control, greater resolution, better optics etc... and those will be the photographers who will be forced to pay top dollar for the higher end dedicated gear.
Forced? I need better cameras because I WANT better cameras than the one glued to my phone. Nobody is forcing anything upon me.
And now that everyone has a smartphone with a half decent camera fitted to it, the market is going to start shrinking faster than ever before.
Half decent is pretty apt description. Which is great. Having a camera on you at all times is nothing to sneeze at.
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Now I enjoy my photography.
You didn't before? I think that is the root cause of the issue that motivated you to move to your phone so happily. And that's great, the tool shouldn't get in the way of your enjoyment.
So I have an interest in producing images that smartphones might struggle with (long zoom lenses for wildlife, astrophotography etc)... but I think the general public has drifted away from traditional photography
The general public has never cared about photography at all.
and that the distance increased during lockdown from 2020-2022. I decided against "upgrading" my iPhone 13 to the new iPhone 14 because I'm happy with the performance so far. And another year will give them a chance to overhaul the camera module for something a little more ambitious.
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The lack of interest in dedicated cameras this year reduces the relevancy of APS-C mirrorless cameras like the EOS M series. And that's why I suspect that any plans Canon have for (or against) the M-series will be accelerated now. I have no doubt that the other manufacturers will be making decisions of their own.
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These images were all shot in HEIF format and converted to JPEG. I've experimented with the ProRAW option and only use it if exposure is critical.
I think caring nothing about RAW is yet another indication that a phone camera might be a good tool for someone. Typically those who care about extracting as much from their images will shoot RAW and post process. Getting images straight out of the camera makes phones look especially appealing with their punchy processing. Others prefer fidelity to the original scene.
