SalvageDiver wrote:
After reading thru this thread, it sounds like a bunch of craggy old men sitting around arguing that "my tool is bigger and longer than your tool." When in reality and looking at some of the posts, most could have done equally well (or not so well) using their little tiny tool, their smartphone.
Over the last couple of years, the same arguments on this site have been about DSLR's vs mirrorless, with heated arguments how mirrorless cameras were just toys, not real cameras. Well the market is currently answering that questions and the mirrorless isn't the abandoned step-child any more. It's estimated that there are about 4.6M DSLR's and 4M mirrorless cameras shipped in 2019. Almost equal. But the market for all these cameras are shrinking. In 2012, there were about 20M ILC cameras shipped and that has consistently dropped to 8.6M in 2019 and 2020 looks 'significantly' worse than 2019. The market is shrinking because most people don't buy the value argument some hoggers are trying to make here.
Computational photography IS the future of photography and smartphones are way ahead in this field. And the technological advancements in smartphone camera's are much much greater than in the big cameras. To give a comparison of the user base, there were about 1.5 billion smartphones shipped in 2019 with an annual growth rate of about 10%. Technology is going to go to where the money is.
So is the iPhone capable of producing a good 11x16 print. You bet it is. Can you inspect a print made with a 12Mpx camera to a 24Mpx (or even a 50Mpx) camera and see a difference. Yes you can, but that's true even with the high end ILC cameras. But is it good enough for most? The market says yes. Will CPU photography get better, you bet it will.
It would be interesting to know just how many 11x16 or larger prints are actually made with ILC cameras vs smartphone cameras. I'll bet we would be surprised.
When all us craggy old men have faded into history, the old technology we hang on to will be relegated to history, just like the Edsel. Are there Edsel's out there? Yea, but not many.
For me, I play with both. And my iPhone is the camera I always have with me. So I want that to be as good as it can get. And my big cameras nor my iPhone are the limiting factors in my photography skills. It's still my eyes behind the camera.
That's my rant. Now I'm exhausted and time for a nap.
After reading thru this thread, it sounds like a b... (
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Well said. The only thing I would add is its not just the I-Phone...the top end Android phones are at least equal if not better.