No creative art can thrive in a vacuum. There has to be:
* demand for its works
* funding (patrons)
* legal protection for creators/performers/artists
* education (a young dancer doesn't get to be a prima ballerna by buying a copy of Ballet for Dummies
* facilities, materials and tools
* a "scene" -- people who know about and appreciate the art form

It's rather like sports: it takes 12 million American kids playing basketball to create 300 NBA players.
And that's assuming there are enough coaches, scouts and college teams to develop these players.
Kids don't have to pay for the coaching they receive in school or in college--or to rent the court.

By the college level, coaching is pretty good. But who trains photographers? Get your Four Thirds
camera and your copy of PhotoShop and you're on your way to being Ansel Adams....uh, not quite.

Wedding photography can exist as business as long as their are brides who want photos of their wedding,
but fine art photography requires galleries, collectors, and museums. Portrait photography requires
sitters willing to pay for portraits.

Dorothea Lange didn't pay out of her own pocket to photograph migrant workers--the FSA paid.
Ansel Adams didn't pay out of his own pocket to phtograph the National Parks--the Park Service paid.
Alfred Stieglitz's phorotraphic work was supported by his gallery, An American Place, in NYC.

Money has dried up, many galleries have closed, sitters have become scarce.

Ask yourself: what is the most I ever paid for a photographic print? Now consider: Andreas Gursky's original
photograph "Rhein II " (1999 -- a chromogenic color print, measuring 73" x 102", mounted on clear acrylic).
It sold at auction at Christie's in NYC in 2011 for $4,338,500 -- the most ever paid for a photograph.
What would it have fetched at your local photo gallery (if there is one)?

Finally, technology is not neutral: some technologies provide a unique, permanent original , others
do not. You're lucky to get more than $400 for an ink-jet print, unless it has already been sold several times
and has unimpeachable provinance.

Manufactuers just want to sell gear. They don't care whether or not its capable of producing valuable prints.
Most buyers don't care either: they think with a Four Thirds camera, a copy of PhotoShop, and one of
Bryan Peterson's books they are all set to be the next Ansel Adams. They don't realize that they would have
a better chance with a camera made from a shoe box.

Automation prevents new photographers from learning the very things that are most important to photograph.
Subminaiture format (almost the same size as 110 cartridge film!) limits quality print size (for straight photography).

If you want to paint a ceiling like Michaelangelo did in the Sistine Chapel, you better not be using a roller
on a pole. Sure that's "higher tech" than a brush, and it's more efficient and conveneint (no lying on your back
on a scaffold for hours and hours). But it just won't look the same.

Each person chooses his priorities as a photographer: is your top priority print quality and value, or camera convenience
and compactness? Do you want "bells & whistles" or image quality? Joe Consumer has made his choice: tiny,
"high-tech", convenient and cheap!

According to Bureau of Labor Statitics estimates, there are only 49,320 people employed as professional
photographers in the US as of 2017 -- out of a population of 326 million. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes274021.htm

Even if every pro in America bought a new camera every year, it would have nelgibible impact on the sales the big
Japanese camera makers. From a marketing standpoint, pros don't matter (except as paid endorsers),

The future of photography is in the hands of consumers--and since 2011 they have been deserting in droves for
smart phone cameras. The market trends say that the future of photogrphy is smart phones -- which means it has no
future except as a consumer passtime: creating images so that they can be deleted within a short time.

No other artist has to compete with consumers for the attention of suppliers. Nike does not make ballet slippers.
Crayola does not make artists' crayons. Sherwin Williams does not make artists oil paints. First Act does not make
violins for concertmasters.

What camera manufactuers do not sell primarily to consumers? Off hand, I can only think of Hasselblad, Sinar
and Phase One/Leaf. Yashica is gone, Zeiss hasn't made a Zeiss Ikon camera since 2004 (and the Zeiss brand for
lenses is licensed to Sony), Voitlander is a zombie brand, and the Mamiya brand is controlled in the USA by a
different company than the camera manufacturer,

Photography only became accepted as fine art around 1900-1930 thanks to the efforts of Alfred Steiglitz
and a three generations of brilliant photographers. Pictorialism began the process of getting photography
taken seriously, but it could not have survived modernism. The "straight photography" got photography
accepted as modern art. But there is no guarantee it will retain that status.

Older works will continue to appreciate and new works by established photographers will command high
prices, but it has gotten very difficult for younger photographers to break into the fine art market, and soon
it may be nearly impossible.

If you want to feel young, check out the ages of the living photographers whose work commands the top prices.
None of them is under the age of 50. Thomas Demand is 55. Andreas Gursky is 64. Sally Mann is (a lovely) 67.
Annie Liebovitz is (a very young) 69. Bruce Barnbaum is 76. Don McCullin is 84.

Photography (the art form) is probably entering a "dark age". But fauxtography (what people do with smart phones
and "selfie sticks") is bigger than ever!

How much are you willing to pay for a stranger's "selfie"?

If a smartphone had a sensor that had an aperture of f11 it would be useless.
however they use quite large fixed apertures such as f1.7, f2.0
iphone has a 1/3" sensor

Pixel Size:
1.2 µm
Maximum Circle of Confusion:
3 µm
Diameter of Airy Disk:
2.7 µm
Diffraction Limited? No

F2.8 would be Diffraction limited but that camera doesn't have an F2.8 aperture to be diffraction limited! It is a single aperture lens.
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm

http://photoseek.com/wp-content/uploads/Camera-sensor-sizes-2018-PhotoSeek.jpg

There is confusion here over the term "limited by diffraction".

From an optical engineering standpoint, all optical systems are limited by diffraciton, but most are also
limited by aberrations. A perfect system is one that is only "diffraction-limited". Saying a optical
system is "diffraction-limited" is the highest compliment one can pay.

Now, a digital camera is not a pure optical system: it has an image sensor. As it is also limited by
the pixel density of the sensor. But this is not a good thing. Reducing the pixel density (low res
sensor) can make diffraciton invsibille -- but it also makes fine detail invisble.

Increaseing the format size means you get more resolution with the same pixel density.

But there is another consideration: all camera lenses are sharper if stopped down a bit from their
maximum aperture. But smart phone designers have no choice but to use those big apertures--
because of the high diffraction caused by short physical focal length.

So Smart phone photos have very shallow depth-of-field.

Even worse, it means the (plastic lens) are not as sharp as they would be at a larger format--
where you could stop-down a bit without too much diffraction.

Your Canon EF or Nikon FX lens is probably sharpest at f/4 or f/5.6. A plastic lens the same
size would probably be sharpest at f/8. So would the smart phone's lenses--were it not for
its dinky size and consequent high diffraction. But it can't use f/8, so it has to use to use f/2.8,
at which is is not sharp.

I doubt you'd buy a plastic lens for your Canon ES-mount or Nikon F-mount body.. But it would
be so much better than the plastic lens in a smart phone. for the simple reason that you can shoot
at a smaller f-number (making the lens sharper!)

So tiny format results not only in more diffraction but also in more lens aberrations and fewer
total pixels. Bad + bad + bad = very bad.

The benefit is compactness: a camera with a fast lens will fit in your pocket. The price you pay
is low resolution and lots of aberrations.

Diffraction is unavoidable, pixel density is limited by current fab technology, and lenses can only
be made so good (especially plastic ones!). But all these problems are improved by making the
format larger.

what plastic lens the iphones cameras are sapphire glass, maybe not the greatest
https://bgr.com/2016/10/04/iphone-7-camera-sapphire-lens-scratches/

Shallow depth of field? f1.7 lens, 3mm focal length the hyperfocal distance is 1.61 feet

Subject distance 1.61 ft

Depth of field
Near limit 0.8 ft
Far limit Infinity
Total Infinite

In front of subject 0.8 ft
Behind subject Infinite

Hyperfocal distance 1.61 ft
Circle of confusion 0.011 mm

Without doubt there are limitations, if you use base iso 25 then hand held shooting of photos with an iphone become difficult, using higher iso limits dynamic range and the hvec format is 10 bit not 12 or 14 like a DSLR.

I am pretty impressed with what an iPhone can manage, I know my DSLRs can do better than an iPhone but the iphone is still pretty impressive. I'd love to get moondogs 1.33x anamorphic lens for mine. unfortunately it's about twice its American price of $175 to buy it here. Still cheap compared to anamorphic lens prices for DSLR's.

These are cameras not christmas cracker toys. Apple is a very big company and the iPhone is a large part of its product line up, it's cameras are an important aspect of the iPhones design and not an afterthought.

"Sapphire glass" is a misnomer: synthetic sapphire is not glass (silica), it's sapphire
(aluminum oxide α-Al2O3). It is used for transparent windows in some optical instruments
(even some high-end bar code scanners).

Ir can only be used for the window, not the lens elements. Sapphire much to hard (9.0 on the
Mohs scale--same as corundum!) to grind into a lens commercially. Also, it takes at least two
different materials having different refractive indexes to make a modern lens.

And it sounds like the window on Apple's iPhone isn't even sapphire. The link you provide
states that he measured the hardness as 6 on the Moh's scale: softer than Quartz (7), the same
as orthoclase feldspear (6), and harder than apatite (5). As I mentioned, if it were a sapphire
window, the hardness would be 9.0 -- and nothing would scratch it except diamond.

So if the link is correct, then "sapphire glass" is just marketing talk: like "digital antenna" or
"jeweler's silver"---it's a way for Apple to fool people into thinking they are getting something
that they aren't. High-tech should really be called "hype-tech".

If you'll explain how you got those numbers for hyperfocal distance and circle of confusion,
I'll be happy to respond to them.

Good enough for whom?

Maybe you recorded the IPPA awards show with a Sony Walkman and that sounds good to you.
So studios can all throw out their Neumann mics.... It don't follow. Listening with ear buds,
it may sound the same. But that's not the standard by which one judges recordings.

The consumer can't believe there's a difference between industrial and professional equipment
and the crud he buys. He thinks his ear buds are studio monitors. He thinks his post hold digger
is a Hughes rock bit. He think smart phone image captures are "good enough".

A dinky little image on a computer monitor (probably an LCD/LED screen) is hardly the true test of
photographic quality. Just keep lowering your expectations, and pretty soon you'll be raving over
the food at McDonald's.

Let me be clear: the Apple iPhone 5 is a good smart phone with image-capture capability---but that's
not the same thing as a good camera. A smart phone is simply too small to be good.. For that matter,
McDonald's is a well-run fast food restaurant with consistent quality--but that's not the same thing as
a good restaurant.

Chefs are supposed to know the difference between quality and convenience--and so are photographers.

As the late Karl Langerfeld once said, "Sweat pants are an admission of defeat."

BTW, Canon is very happy to tell you what material each element in a Canon lens is made from--
and give you a cross-sectional view of the lens design. Plus test resuls and MTF graphs.

That's because Canon is proud of its materials and designs. It has nothing to hide.
In fact, Canon publishes an excellent book, Canon Lens Work III: The Eyes of EOS
that contains all this and more.

And the specs for every Canon camera include the preceise dimensions of the sensor.
If it's FF it says so; if it's APS-C it says so.

But technopolies like Apple and Google can't seem to make a single statement without
engaging in marketing hype