Only one dedicated camera at the county fair today

[Lightpath48]

And it was mine. Literally no one else had a camera hanging around their neck or on their shoulder, over the ninety minutes I was there among literally thousands of people. Everyone was using phones. I'm posting this because it seemed a milestone. I've been hanging cameras around my neck at fairs, since 1958. Maybe it's time to bite the bullet and try a phone camera. Are these Nikon Coolpix A photos of better image quality than from a phone, or am I just not up-to-date on where phone image quality has gone?


The quality I'm used to getting.

 

[digitallollygag]

I see little reason to lug an SLR camera around any county fair, opting more for a compact camera or the smartphone. Most people won't even take the compact camera along anymore because their smartphone is good enough and they can instantly share to social media.

It is a changing world

 

[Mark S Abeln]

i love my iPhone, except when I make large prints or when it's dark.

 

[howardfuhrman]

Nice set of photos - well done.

--
Howard

http://www.photo.net/photos/howardfuhrman

 

[Lightpath48]

I see little reason to lug an SLR camera around any county fair, opting more for a compact camera or the smartphone. Most people won't even take the compact camera along anymore because their smartphone is good enough and they can instantly share to social media.

It is a changing world

My Coolpix A is as small as many phone cams. Just not as connected. And all I do with a phone is ... phone.

 

[Lightpath48]

[No message]

 

[Corkcampbell]

And all I do with a phone is ... phone.

You must be the last one...what's the expression? "Turn out the lights..."

As for your other comments, I have a good compact (Sony RX100M3) to complement my other cameras which yields very good stills and nice videos. My iPhone can't compare. However, and this is a big "however," I don't pack it daily any more and the phone will document most of what unplanned situations come along adequately. A couple of years ago "adequately" would have been unacceptable, but I've lightened up...in more ways than one...

 

[Doc Argonian]

I haven't been at a fair for quite some time, but recently went to an airshow and saw literally thousands of cameras, from dslr to mirrorless to bridge and compacts, everything was present.

 

[Lightpath48]

And all I do with a phone is ... phone.

You must be the last one...what's the expression? "Turn out the lights..."

As for your other comments, I have a good compact (Sony RX100M3) to complement my other cameras which yields very good stills and nice videos. My iPhone can't compare. However, and this is a big "however," I don't pack it daily any more and the phone will document most of what unplanned situations come along adequately. A couple of years ago "adequately" would have been unacceptable, but I've lightened up...in more ways than one...

 

[Lightpath48]

I haven't been at a fair for quite some time, but recently went to an airshow and saw literally thousands of cameras, from dslr to mirrorless to bridge and compacts, everything was present.

So the nature of the event has a lot to do with the kind of gear that records it. That makes perfect sense at a fair. I had to have someone else in our family hold the camera when I rode the tilt-a-whirl. :-|

 

[nopix]

I'm not sure that fairs are "camera places". I would suspect that you probably didn't see anyone or very few people taking photos with their phones either. Perhaps I am wrong.

In other venues I do see people with cameras but still very few. I am not sure that I am seeing fewer now than some years ago before phones developed cameras.

 

[Lightpath48]

I'm not sure that fairs are "camera places". I would suspect that you probably didn't see anyone or very few people taking photos with their phones either. Perhaps I am wrong.

People were doing quite a bit of photography with phones. We were jockeying around the rides to catch photos of the kids, mostly.

 

[digitallollygag]

I haven't been at a fair for quite some time, but recently went to an airshow and saw literally thousands of cameras, from dslr to mirrorless to bridge and compacts, everything was present.

So the nature of the event has a lot to do with the kind of gear that records it. That makes perfect sense at a fair. I had to have someone else in our family hold the camera when I rode the tilt-a-whirl. :-|

The Grand Canyon is a three-hour drive from here. On our day trip there two months ago I observed the usual smartphone majority. But I also noticed that many of the tourists from Europe and Asia apparently thought that traveling thousands of miles to see the Grand Canyon was too important for the smartphone to document. Most women who were toting around DSLRs had Canon Rebels, most men the Nikons.

Keep your Coolpix A. You may see great advantages in just carrying a smartphone, but your little Nikon will come in handy in situations where the smartphone isn't up to the task.

 

[mgd43]

The camera phone is today's instamatic or low end P&S. It's fine for casual snapshots as long as it's used within it's limits. Those limits, IMO, include a small sensor, no optical zoom, and no viewfinder. When I don't want to bring a DSLR I bring my Nikon P7800, Panasonic LF-1, or Panasonic ZS50. They have small sensors but they have lenses that go to telephoto focal lengths and they have a viewfinder. I carry one of them all the time.

 

[ywjrh]

Most people just want to take snapshots, and for that purpose a phone camera is perfect. It's especially convenient because most people have a phone with them all the time, so they don't have to make a point of carrying around a camera. It also allows people to instantly send pictures and videos to all their friends and relatives. Those of us who enjoy photography for its own sake are the weirdos ;-)

 

[Lightpath48]

I haven't been at a fair for quite some time, but recently went to an airshow and saw literally thousands of cameras, from dslr to mirrorless to bridge and compacts, everything was present.

So the nature of the event has a lot to do with the kind of gear that records it. That makes perfect sense at a fair. I had to have someone else in our family hold the camera when I rode the tilt-a-whirl. :-|

The Grand Canyon is a three-hour drive from here. On our day trip there two months ago I observed the usual smartphone majority. But I also noticed that many of the tourists from Europe and Asia apparently thought that traveling thousands of miles to see the Grand Canyon was too important for the smartphone to document. Most women who were toting around DSLRs had Canon Rebels, most men the Nikons.

Keep your Coolpix A. You may see great advantages in just carrying a smartphone, but your little Nikon will come in handy in situations where the smartphone isn't up to the task.

Yes, I have the Coolpix A in a discreet belt pouch, and there it will stay!

 

[Corkcampbell]

Sometimes the type of camera can match the event/situation. Someone wrote that a fair/carnival is not the kind of place people would take cameras to (or something like that).

However, I sneaked a GoPro (luckily thrown into the bag that day as an afterthought) onto a roller coaster (sitting in a seat directly behind my group so I could include them) a couple of years ago and got some entertaining video from it - had to adjust the audio (screaming) and speed later, but it came out really good. That was a perfect match of hardware with situation/opportunity. Only negative was that I had only one hand (or no hands) with which to hold the rail, and I was so nervous about losing the GoPro (it flying out of my hand and killing some person far below) that I really gripped it, causing me to have to crop out the end of my finger from some clips. But, worth it overall, and very pleasing - it's (the final) clip the part of the video, which included stills, that everyone liked and watched over and over. No one cared about seeing themselves ride a horse on a carousel or at the archery booth aiming at each other...where I used a "decent" camera.

--
"Knowledge is good." Emil Faber

 

[Lightpath48]

Most people just want to take snapshots, and for that purpose a phone camera is perfect. It's especially convenient because most people have a phone with them all the time, so they don't have to make a point of carrying around a camera. It also allows people to instantly send pictures and videos to all their friends and relatives. Those of us who enjoy photography for its own sake are the weirdos ;-)

Yeah, I've always been one. When I joined our camera club, I felt like I'd come home!

 

[D Cox]

Your Coolpix photos are OK, but nowhere near as good as you would have got from a Sigma DP2M in similar conditions.

++++++++++++++++++

I think the situation is much as it was in the 1960s. When I look at my photos of markets, fairs, street scenes, etc from the 60s and 70s, I don't see anyone else with a camera.

A photo I took at the gates of Buckingham Palace, on the other hand, does have a couple of tourists with cameras.

What is new is that now everyone has a camera with them. But I think they will soon get bored with taking photos. Or at least, the images will be just a moment in a phone call, to be glanced at and forgotten.

Phones do give better quality than Box Brownies or Instamatics.

 

[ywjrh]

the images will be just a moment in a phone call, to be glanced at and forgotten.

That's the way most photos have always been. How many snapshot prints were looked at more than once before being stuffed in a box and eventually lost or thrown out?