Smartphone camera vs Canon 650D with shocking result

I compared photos from my smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 5's camera against my Canon 650D with Tamron SP 17-50 mm F2.8 and was blown away by the smartphone doing significantly better.

First of all, the Note 5's camera on Auto seems to be able to get the correct exposure  the first time while I often have to fiddle with the Canon 650D's exposure compensation to prevent over-exposure.

Then, I notice that the Note 5's camera has a wider dynamic range than the Canon 650D. Its tiny lens also gives far better detail than my Sigma lens.

Compare the two photos I took of a morning scene. The sky was bright and I aimed just away from the sun. The Note 5 photo was taken on Auto. For the Canon 650D, I had to step down the exposure by -4/3 in P Mode to get some detail into the sky. If I step it down further, the rest of the scene will be too dark.

I am thinking of upgrading to the Canon 80D in the hope that it give me a big boost in picture quality but what do you guys think?

Image taken by Galaxy Note 5 smartphone on Auto

Image taken by Canon 650D with Tamron SP 17-50mm f2.8

Clara May wrote:

I compared photos from my smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 5's camera against my Canon 650D with Tamron SP 17-50 mm F2.8 and was blown away by the smartphone doing significantly better.

First of all, the Note 5's camera on Auto seems to be able to get the correct exposure the first time while I often have to fiddle with the Canon 650D's exposure compensation to prevent over-exposure.

Then, I notice that the Note 5's camera has a wider dynamic range than the Canon 650D. Its tiny lens also gives far better detail than my Sigma lens.

Compare the two photos I took of a morning scene. The sky was bright and I aimed just away from the sun. The Note 5 photo was taken on Auto. For the Canon 650D, I had to step down the exposure by -4/3 in P Mode to get some detail into the sky. If I step it down further, the rest of the scene will be too dark.

I am thinking of upgrading to the Canon 80D in the hope that it give me a big boost in picture quality but what do you guys think?

Image taken by Galaxy Note 5 smartphone on Auto

Image taken by Canon 650D with Tamron SP 17-50mm f2.8

no, I don't think you will get such a huge "boost" in IQ going to the 80D, though the 80D is better.

A direct comparison between smartphone and a dSLR is also comparing apples and oranges. The smartphone will apply a lot more processing than what you get from the Canon out of the camera.

First exposure: take the image with the 650D, adjust exposure for the sky, and lift shadows in PP. In fact, I don't know if the Galaxy even applies some kind of HDR to capture the dynamic range?  P&S cameras and smartphones in general also apply more sharpening and saturation than dSLRs to generate more pop in the images. Then there is the difference in optics. The smartphone has a small lens with a very short focal length. This gives it more DOF at the same angle of view than a dSLR lens. Hence, a lot more landscape will be within DOF and therefore sharp. This is of course part of using a dSLR, that you have more control over your DOF, and you can get nice background blur with fast and/or long lenses. In order to compare this better, you would have stop down and use, for example, f11 or 16. Of course, that would require a longer shutter time.

The results from the smartphone are indeed better! In the smartphone software, lens and camera are optimized to work together. In the Canon you have to do this all by yourself and the lens is not optimized for the camera. We life in times that you can get better or comparable results with small modern camera's compared to large old school dslr's. I have several Canon apsc dslr's and a panasonic fz 1000. The results from the panasonic are sometimes better! I use the dslr's more for the old school feeling than that I expect them to perform better.

I've used my iPhone for photos on many trips where I did not want to carry my dslr and lenses around with me.  The results are always excellent, because the in camera processing is optimized for these small cameras.  But, as good as the final image may look, they come with some serious limitations.

I have yet to see any smartphone camera that does very well in low light.  They also do not stand up well to cropping, and have very limited zoom options.  If you need a nice quality snapshot, these are great.  For any specialized work though, they leave a lot to be desired.

They have their "sweet spot," and if you stay there the output can be very impressive.  Get too far away from that, and they just won't cut it.

Ron777 wrote:

Stan in NH wrote:

I've used my iPhone for photos on many trips where I did not want to carry my dslr and lenses around with me. The results are always excellent, because the in camera processing is optimized for these small cameras. But, as good as the final image may look, they come with some serious limitations.

I have yet to see any smartphone camera that does very well in low light. They also do not stand up well to cropping, and have very limited zoom options. If you need a nice quality snapshot, these are great. For any specialized work though, they leave a lot to be desired.

They have their "sweet spot," and if you stay there the output can be very impressive. Get too far away from that, and they just won't cut it.

Good post, spot on.

No matter how good the processing is in a smart phone, it can't overcome the physics of super teeny sensor size and a super teeny little lens. And my biggest issue.... no nice shallow DOF for subject shots!

I know the iPhone 7 now has a "portrait " mode which introduces a narrow depth of field to produce a blurred background.  I'm not sure if this is real or simply a blur process added to the image.  My guess is that it's done with in camera processing.  Other smartphones may offer a similar feature since no feature goes uncopied too long.

Clara May wrote:

Image taken by Galaxy Note 5 smartphone on Auto

Image taken by Canon 650D with Tamron SP 17-50mm f2.8

Here's the Canon shot reprocessed a bit.

Sky is overexposed, but shadows are better exposed than in the iPhone photo.

This was very hastily done. Some parts of the image are improved, but some are made worse. Of course I could have done it more carefully to improve all or most parts.

The iPhone photo is very good, but the phone may be at its limit. The camera is not. The iPhone combined exposures to achieve the result. The camera did not.

The sky was badly overexposed by the camera, but note that the shadows were underexposed by the iPhone. Take a close look at the noise in the brick wall and the foreground bushes, etc. Note also the color. The iPhone combined exposures and somehow avoided overexposing the sky. The camera is also either misfocused or there is camera motion, or the lens is soft.

The overexposed sky is because the camera metered off the dark center of the photo (you have options). It's possible that the phone did better because it metered from the whole scene. If you combined photos, you could improve the camera photo a great deal. Still, there's no denying the convenience factor. Excellent performance by the phone overall, but maybe not a slam-dunk.

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?

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.

There should be no question that any modern dslr can outperform a smartphone or point and shoot under similar circumstances. The OP's original shots don't show this, in fact they weren't even taken at the same time  ... two minutes apart ... so the lighting may have  changed between shots.

A better comparison would be not only jpeg to jpeg, but one which used the dslr's built in presets, which let the camera optimize settings for a given situation. Then, shooting at the same time, we can see what the in camera processing does with each sensor. For a true comparison, we can then crop the images and do some pixel peeping to see what's really there. One should not have to shoot raw, then post process and convert to jpeg in order to replicate the apparent quality of an instant smartphone snapshot. I shoot both raw and jpeg, and the vast majority of my out of camera jpeg shots are much better than anything I can get from any of my p&s cameras or smartphones. Yes, I have done some excellent work with non-dslr cameras, but I recognize their limitations and sweet spots and adjust my work accordingly.

I also know that many people just take pictures, and have no interest in photography. They just want to document and share, and have absolutely no concept of the art of photography. That's fine, and those people are well served by their smartphones which, at this point, have become the compact camera of choice. The claim that a smartphone is somehow a "better" camera than a dslr, however, falls into that general category of alternate facts.

photonius wrote:

As I already wrote in my post above, due to the larger sensor, you have an issue with DOF. ...As we all know, pixel sharpness depends on the lens used, and not all lenses on dSLRs give maximal resolution....

An f stop of 7.5 would have given the same field of view. The f/5.6 that was set was probably adequate, but one more stop would have been more would have sufficed for sure. I think the problem is that nothing is really sharp in the photo. I think the problem is either camera motion or lens sharpness.  The phone used a very fast shutter speed, which is why it underexposed the picture.

Where the smartphone clearly has the advantage is that it can use a lens that is optimised for the small sensor....

The lens is shown as 17-50 mm, which is not a Canon lens as far as I know.  But it is probably an EF-S lens, which presumably is optimized for small sensor.