dustie Loc: Nose to the grindstone

Thanks.
Just a view through a dustie pane.

Artcameraman Loc: Springfield NH

Really? I print and always want lots of pixels from a big lens and sensor. How many people print cell phone photos or even print anymore?? But that's me. Cheers.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Coming?

The change was here by 2010. By 2020, it was highly refined. The great digital media convergence that occurred largely from 1990 to 2010 culminated in the disruption of HUGE swaths of the consumer goods and services industry. Now we are facing the next wave of disruption from "AI" technologies.

Smartphones are mature to the point of diminishing returns. There were HUGE annual improvements from 2007 to around 2011. After that, the rate of change continued, but at a slower *perceptible* pace. We used to upgrade smartphones every year or two. I kept my last phone for seven years, only trading it because it became unsafe on the Internet. The last version of iOS it ran was no longer supported.

I recently traded that iPhone 7 Plus for an iPhone 15 Pro Max. Although there are hundreds and hundreds of small refinements, my personal use of the device hasn't changed all that much. Many of the changes had already worked on my old phone, due to operating system updates. Maybe I'll use more and more of the new features over time.

The same is true of Windows and MacOS computers. A lot of what we see with each round of new computers and operating systems is subtle improvement, with a corresponding "rearrangement of the deck chairs" to put fresh faces on tired old motifs. But wait five years or so. WILL you see real differences?

The Mac I used in 1999 is remarkably similar to the Mac I use now. It's just a LOT simpler, runs far less sophisticated software, and it is several orders of magnitude slower. But if I need Microsoft Word, it gets the job done on either. I can WRITE just as well in AppleWorks 1.3 on a 1983 Apple //e or in Word, Pages, or TextEdit on a 2020 M1 MacBook Air. But the Apple //e is just a green screen text-based environment. Current computers converge all digital media on the same laptop — text, graphics, photos, audio, and video. They tie everything together with the Internet and cloud servers.

The wave of digital "point-and-shoot" cameras that replaced the 35mm and APS point-and-shoot consumer cameras from the 1990s started dying out as soon as "cellphone" cameras started to mature and smartphones took over most of the cellular market. Who wants two devices to carry, when one of them does largely what the other does, and a lot of what our desktop computers do, plus any of two million other things?

Consequently, cameras have gone upscale. Most of the new mirrorless cameras made today appeal to advanced enthusiasts and professionals, and to "content creators" — those producing media for local TV/cable news, for a few remaining hard-copy publications, for social media sites, for video sharing sites, for cable TV and Internet media networks, for churches, and for private businesses.

Now we can make feature films, TV sitcoms, commercials, training shows, video blogs, and evening news stories on laptop computers and smartphones. Our work can incorporate stills, audio, and video recorded with both smartphones and advanced digital cameras. We can do far more, in less time, at less expense, with less hassle, with better results.

The few troglodytes who complain about their cameras having video features they'll never use don't understand that (or why) their cameras would be a lot more expensive without those features. In the digital world, a still camera is a subset of a video camera.

I don't see dedicated interchangeable lens cameras going away any time soon. They have their places in serious users' tool kits. But smartphones are ubiquitous.

Today, Apple released its VisionPro virtual reality/spacial computing device.

https://www.apple.com/apple-vision-pro/

Few folks will rush out and buy version one, at $3500, but it's milestone product. We shall see a lot of energy and hype flow into that space over the coming months and years.

But chew on this prescient video commentary. Lyrics and music by three Mexican teens in 2017:

https://vimeo.com/210374020 (May take a minute or two to load. For best results, play VERY loud!)

We're the new generation
Lost our salvation

Another problem to be solved

We're the groundbreakers honey

Living for the money
21st century blood


Immortal souls dying
'Empires are falling

We are just waiting to be crushed

Politicians trying, but we know they're lying

Every truth has been sold






We make buildings
When what we need are bridges

We are stuck within these walls

Everyone with blank faces
Trying to fill the blank spaces
That we left a long time ago



Hey, yeah! What will our future hold?

Will we regret our addiction to the rush??!!

Hey, yeah! We've always been crazy so 
Let's fly away

And roam through the world that is slowly burning in the flames



Everyone's in depression
Because of an obsession

With stereotypes around the world

Worldwide starvation

But in this situation
No one seems to care at all


Our communication

Replaced by animation
Television has control

Every question answered

Internet demands us
To worship it like a god



Hey, yeah! What will our future hold?

Will we regret our addiction to the rush??!!

Hey Yeah! We've always been crazy so
Let's fly away

And roam through the world that is slowly burning in the flames



Hey, yeah! What will our future hold?

Will we regret our addiction to the rush??!!

Hey, yeah! We've always been crazy so
Let's fly away

And roam through the world that is slowly burning in the flames



Hey yeah, he he he he hey yeah, hey yeah, he he he he hey yeah

bkinnie Loc: Pennsylvannia, living in Florida

I have recently started using my Samsung Ultra Note 20 to take pictures I would normally take with my Nikon D3200. The pictures are very compatible.

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

I was fascinated by the words....

scoundrel Loc: Wytheville VA

Let's unpack this, shall we?

First, we all know that a Learjet and a Toro lawn mower are in no way interchangeable, unless you are proposing that your Toro can get you from Sacramento to Seattle, let alone in a reasonable amount of time, or that you can mow the grounds with your Learjet. Furthermore, if you own a Learjet, you can probably afford to hire someone to do your gardening. If you did try to mow the yard with your Learjet, you would most likely set the grass afire and probably your house as well. Your analogy, besides being ludicrous, misses the point. I also detect more than a whiff of straw men in your argument as well.

So far, I have heard no one claim that cell phones - smart phones, if you will; today's higher-end cell phones have full-blown computer capability as well - cannot produce decent photos under most conditions when people would be taking photographs.

That said, cellphone cameras generally have some limitations, though there may be individual exceptions, and any camera has some features or lacks them that can limit their utility for some specialized purposes. A large-format view camera, for example, can be awkward to handhold, often requires a tripod and is slow to operate. Despite these limitations, they were popular with press photographers for many years.

For higher-end cell phone cameras, auto color balance is standard but some models can be tweaked before exposure and all can be tweaked in post. True interchangeable lenses are not possible at present, though some models have two or three lenses of different focal length and some models allow clamp-on or magnetic supplementary lens attachments. The default is biased toward the wide angle end to allow longer focal lengths to be simulated with cropping. Focus is adjustable on some models, I think, but I have no idea how prevalent this feature is. Most, if not all, lenses have fixed apertures. Because of the short focal length of these lenses, these lenses can be fast without unduly restricting the depth of field, but this depth of field is nevertheless fixed for a given subject distance. None has a built-in tripod socket but can be attached to a tripod via an auxiliary piece of hardware.



This strikes me as unfair to most of the contributors to this thread, who do not have that attitude toward cell phone cameras.

Wingpilot Loc: Wasilla. Ak

I think your viewpoint is a fair one. I don’t think that anyone using a cellphone camera as their main camera would use it a main studio camera or for shooting sports (unless they use the video feature) or BIF’s, but for what most of us use our cellphone cameras for they are a good piece of equipment. And they keep getting better. To draw a parallel, it wasn’t too long ago that big camera fans poo pooed compact cameras with small sensors—the ubiquitous “point and shoot cameras. Then along came cameras such as the Sony RX100 series that blew them all out of the water, particularly the RX100 VII, which one professional reviewer remarked as it being none other than the A9 in a small body with a smaller sensor. That being said, I doubt any professional would use it as their main camera commercially, yet the quality of it’s images is amazing. And cellphone cameras are coming of age, becoming more and more capable every year.

dustie Loc: Nose to the grindstone

That's alright.
You have a lot in common and a lot of company in the large group that has 45, 50, 55, 60 years wonderful training and successful experience in all the finest points of photography -- I have so little to contribute, most wish I'd never been allowed to register and post here, most of the rest can't believe I've been allowed to overstay my squatting here.

OwlHarbor Loc: Pacific North West USA

For most of us having a camera with phone capability is probably not something we are looking for but having wi-fi, Bluetooth, an operating system, android, MS, OS, or other makes sense. The ability to transfer pictures from your camera to your or a friend's phone makes sense and the ability to speed it up. What bothers me is that the cell phone companies have done so much with so little while the camera companies seem to rest on their laurels.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

It's like the survey that was done 10 years or so ago, after most all smartphones included cameras. A group of teenage girls were interviewed about how they used their cell phones and one of the first questions asked was, as you'd expect, "What's the most important reason for having a cell phone?" And while the interviewers were expecting answers like "So that I can always be in touch with friends and family" the answer that they got most frequently was "So I can take pictures of my friends and share them with others."

I suspect that back when those first groups of engineers, at places like Nokia and Motorola, were brainstorming and trying to put together specifications and lists of functions that would define the usefulness of a cell phone, first for their management, to get funding for the R&D and production costs, and then later, for the marketing department, to help with how cell phones would be promoted and what sort of things would be mentioned in adverts and such, using them as your go-to camera for taking pictures of the world around you, probably was the last thing on their minds.

Note the our first cell phone was a Motorola 'flip-phone' for my wife, back in the late 90's, when my wife had to drive up to North Hollywood, across Los Angeles, several nights a week when her aunt (we were the only family within a thousand miles) was ill and she felt that she needed it for safety. A few years later, I got one as well. We got our first iPhone in 2012, an Apple iPhone 4S. We both traded in our flip-phones for iPhones and we thought we were really living the high-life. Currently, my wife uses an iPhone 13 Pro Max and I carry an iPhone 11 Pro.

And while I don't consider my iPhone as my day-to-day camera, my wife certainly does, and to that point, in our photo archive, which currently numbers 56,322 images, some 7,668 of those images were taken with an iPhone (we've never owned any other brand of cell phone equipped with a camera).

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The Warning are special people. Rock music, reborn, without the sex and drugs — and somehow, it works better that way. They see right through the bullshiza of modern techno-conformity, even as they exploit it (They are masters of social media).

MrBob Loc: lookout Mtn. NE Alabama

I REALLY like your last sentence...Resting on their laurels is a kind of resistance to the obvious emerging technologies... Just like the "Old Guard " resistance here on the Hog. Sure they do R&D, but ONLY within the context of a REAL camera...

BebuLamar

I got the Samsung S23 about a month ago. I started using its camera because it has the 3x lens and I can shoot raw.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Steve Jobs taught the whole industry about the power of convergence. The iPhone condensed all computing and communications media technologies into our pockets. The modern smartphone is a "Swiss Army knife" device — not perfect at everything, but damned handy when you need a feature and you're not at home or in your office. Android OS devices, of course, are similar.

It's great to be a specialist. But it's also valuable to be good at many tasks. That's why we need both sorts of people and both sorts of tools.

Latsok Loc: Recently moved to Washington State.

I just returned from a two week vacation to Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaysia. For the first time in my adult life, I didn't even take my trusty Nikon and array of lenses with me; I just shot with my new I-phone-15 pro max and came back with amazing pictures. There were only one or two times I wished I had the bulky camera along - mainly for telephoto options. To tell the truth; it felt like I was less constrained during my travels, freer in moving around, and less conspicuous as a "tourist" during the entire trip. It is true that my intent is not to professionally exhibit these photos in a high-end photo gallery or make a $$$ trying to sell photos (even though several of the shots could compete very well).
I will still travel with the heavier camera gear on my trips to the Sierras or the Pacific Northwest Coast, etc, but I no longer feel that need to own/use the latest exorbitantly expensive name-brand cameras and lenses pushed upon us by photographic magazines and literature. If my I-phone produces pictures that are pleasing and acceptable in quality, so much the better.