Why? Because they're phones that you have in your pocket. That's why. Most people simply don't want to carry around a dedicated camera, and the image quality provoded by phones for both photo and video is generally good enough for almost everybody.
I'm not saying don't buy a phone, you obviously need one. I'm saying why buy an expensive flagship? Compared to a used pixel 7a or something, the improvement in photo quality is not even always tangible lol. And btw, this is coming from someone who has owned nothing but Galaxy notes/ultra since 2018. I think I'm done with flagships.
I mean, people buying flagship phones are the same that buy a Sony A1 to take pictures of their kids (not exactly, but you get the idea). They don't care about the "good enough", they want the best there is.
Also PS: no, phones aren't good enough for almost everybody. They are for some use cases, but not for others. If you're trying to take pics of action, animals, macro etc a phone will not produce good results.
Lots of people simply don't care about those genres. Also, macro is not as bad as you could think, most people that are casuals to photography will see a relatively close up 1:5 life size repro of a flower and think it has a pretty good macro lens.
Sports / action / wildlife shooting is today the main reason why people are buying cameras (and by that I mean entering the hobby, not upgrading their older camera kit)
Looking at the last iPhone for example, being able to shoot 4K ProRes RAW, have 48MP images with a pretty decent background blur (it's computational, but lots of people don't care), nice tele-ish lens with image stabilization... And it fits in your jeans pocket.
My S24 Ultra has a 200 mpix camera. C'mon man, I thought people here know better than to swear by megapixel count from a tiny sub 1 inch sensor.
That wasn't my point. I'm not touting the resolution here, but the computational features that are coming with it.
My phone has a 50MP sensor. When shooting RAW, the images suuuuuck, like super hard. Even my small Panny LX5 from 2018 is taking a steamy dump on it. However, when you're not shooting RAW, it doesn't take only one image. It takes dozens of them, compliles them and assembles that in something that actually looks pretty damn good, at least more than good enough for a small print or for social media posting.
In a vaccuum, yeah those sensors are really bad, but in the recent years smartphones manufacturers managed to drastically improve the performance of those cameras through software rather than hardware.
Phones are better for videography than they are for photography. They can still take good pics in the right conditions, but try challenging them and see how they flop. Like I said, for casual landscapes and selfies they're plenty. But you have to keep your expectations reasonable. A Dodge Ram is a mighty good truck, but if you expect it to best a tank in a tug of war you'll be very much disappointed.
My point was that for 99% of people, it's good enough.
Is it the best thing in the works for photo and video? Nope. Is it enough for people taht don't want to carry around a dedicated camera? Absolutely, and the convinience factor will sometimes be worth the price tag for some people.
We can agree on that. But I mean I don't wanna carry a dedicated camera if there's a more convenient alternative. The thing is, a compact APSC mirrorless is the most convenient thing that delivers good enough pics for me. It was the same for the person I mentioned in my post, she didn't want a camera purely for the fun of it, once she saw the huge improvement in quality, how professional the shots look, she decided to invest in one. It's also incredibly nice that good cameras are pretty affordable nowadays (and high end phone are overpriced af).
Eeeh, it depends.
Super high end phones are going to be 1300-1400 bucks in general. A decent APS-C camera + lens will easily get over that. And it can't go on the internet, it can't manage your emails, it can't take calls and send messages, it can't access the internet or GPS for travel.
On one hand I do agree that dedicated cameras are far from the image quality you're getting from a smartphone, on the other hand a lot of people simply don't care. They just want to take snaps of their life, not be artistically involved with photography. And generally, they want to share it on social media, so taking them with the device that will allow them to access those paltfoms makes sense.
We photographers need to accept the fact that dedicated cameras are going out of fashion, especially ILCs, and that we're now a niche within a niche. Some people do paid jobs with phones, or run entire youtube channels with millions of subscribers with only a phone. Sometiems absolute best performance for the price simply isn't the priority.
Some people also taunt moose with sticks, or get high as a kite and jump into lion enclosures at zoos. It's a hyperbole but just cause someone does it, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. Almost all professionals graduate to a real camera (YouTube or otherwise). Hell most of these big YouTube channels don't even use only one camera, they have multiple FF cameras with 1 or more APSCs for B roll or as a ceiling mounted cam to shoot unboxing etc. trust me they're not running the entire business off the back of an iPhone.
There are some that do. Typically youtube channels like DankPods run entirely off iPhones when it comes to video capture. That dude runs multiple channels, couple of them being over a million subs.
For casual use yeah, cameras are a niche. Although I wouldn't say it's ILCs that are the most uncommon, that would be point and shoot cameras.. which I kinda agree don't have a place in the smartphone era.
ILCs were already niche in 2008, their proportion in the market has grown since, the the absolute number of them has also decreased.
For pro work, of course ILCs aren't niche, but that's like saying race cars aren't niche on a race track : they will still be once you step on a normal road.
. And yet some people buy them FOR THE CAMERAS. Like why??