Can we now use our smartphones as substitutes for our cameras?
Here are two comparisons with a 10-year gap to give smartphones a fair chance!
Sony Alpha 700 (2007) / iPhone X (2017)
www.flickr.com/photos/maoby/albums/72177720330947416/
Fujifilm X-Pro1 (2012) / iPhone SE (2022)
www.flickr.com/photos/maoby/albums/72177720306851990/
Where are you in your process?
For all the talk about the latest phone camera high MP wide angle shots, the dedicated camera still rules for shots like these
dprevived.com/t/macro-and-close-up-fortnightly-thread/7742/post/110711/
and the best the phone can do is keep the lens cap company in my pocket... 😀
By the way, It's a very bad idea to put a lens cover in the same pocket as your smartphone. 😵💫
My iPhone has long replaced a dedicated camera for pictures taken on site for my work. It fits in my pocket, I can share pictures almost instantly and I am not too worried about image quality. My contributions to the "Sunday Cat" are mostly iPhone shots too, as I always have it handy for those candid moments. It is also pretty good for street photography.
But I want a dedicated camera for my Architectural, Landscape and Travel photography.
For now, my iPhone camera only serves as a reminder.
But it is so useful for so many things, but not yet for me as a camera.
One day, perhaps 🤔
Care to enlighten me?
I have an iPhone 15 Pro and I rarely take photos with it. I do, however, have albums in the Photos app of stuff I have taken with my other cameras to show people.
Both have plateaued; especially in picture quality.
Phone makers still haven't taken that extra step, they all know what they have to do,
but they're making way too much money to capitulate now.
Until then, if you want a useful approximation, use your phone, if you want a photo .....
Ron
Simply to avoid scratching your phone screen 😉
Ahhh, I wasn't sure if that was your reason or something else.
I always make sure that the cap is at the back of the phone. I remember my first Nokia all those years ago with a small plastic screen. In the end it was so scratched / scuffed I could hardly read it...
My Sonim flip-phone does not have a camera, deliberately so ordered after I got sick of having to charge my Samsung twice a day.
The Samsung took nice pictures though:
Hi,
I have been using a cell phone camera as my most often used since the advent of the Ericsson CommuniCam which attached to the bottom of the T68i phone. That was, what now?, 25 years ago.
I keep an otherwise defunct BlackBerry Z10 in my electronics lab for quick shots of failed circuit boards and such. I also have an old Kodak 760c on a copy stand with macro lenses for wide field close up views. There is a Kodak 520c on a Leica microscop for those 'right down inside' shots. But it is the cell phone camera which gets the most use.
Outside work, I have a Fuji GFX-100 medium format and a Nikon Df small format and a Samsung S25 cell phone. And it is the cell phone camera which gets the most use.
Stan
Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer
Everyone is free to use their photographic equipment as they see fit (thankfully).
But for me, the pleasure (of the photographic act) plays a very important role in my photographic approach.
Using a smartphone is currently like eating a Nutribar to survive.The opposite of a meal in a fine dining restaurant!
Looking through the viewfinder of an SLR like the 645D and hearing the muffled sound of the shutter release is a real treat!
To each their own pleasures 😁
iPhone 4 (2010) / Pentax 645D (2010)
www.flickr.com/photos/maoby/albums/72177720321157234/with/54062017658/
Hi,
When it comes to photography for its own sake, I use my GFX-100. However, the number of photos that gets used for is a tiny percentage of my total. I think the count is 75 for 2025.
I would have preferred that Pentax had upped their 645 DSLR to the 100 MP Sony sensor. I waited several years for such. Alas, it was not to be so I wound up with a lightly used original GFX-100. The 50 MP sensor exhibits greater aliasing than I like regardless of what body it is installed into. So, that meant no 645Z to replace my 645D.
Stan
