Are phones making cameras obsolescent?

[AndrewFlannigan]

I suggest we start a thread comparing farm tractors and sports cars.

• My farm tractor can pull a ten ton load across a ploughed field.
• But my sports car can do 215 mph on a specially built road.
• It's no good if it can't take a seed drill attachment.
• Your tractor only has one seat.
• Does your sports car have a power take off, eh?
• Your tractor can't get from Frankfurt to Cologne in an hour, huh!

 

[AZ6]

Your tractor can't get from Frankfurt to Cologne in an hour, huh!

This one can...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8QIyVQ29-Y&feature=emb_logo

 

[stickytape]

Show me an image from a phone cam above ISO 400 in a dark setting that isn't a smudged mess.

Especially when you zoom in a little...

 

[Paule23]

For years average holiday camera, point and shoot compact I think the answer is yes. For hoobyists and up, no. There is still a market for higher quality cameras with greater flexibility,. Also camera phone even now are quite general and not great for specialist areas (macro, sports etc.).

 

[Simplythebeast]

Quite happy with my Huawae P30 pro and no longer take a travel camera when out and about. My Em1ii is used for serious stuff but the phone is more than capable of decent snaps and even some creative stuff too....

 

[PaddyODawes]

The vast majority of phones are fixed aperture, so the only thing they have available to them is a faster shutter speed

Well that's one thing I've learned today! Interesting. Funnily enough I was saying to my daughter just t'other day that when I was getting into photography most cameras went up to 1/1000, but really top end ones could sometimes manage 1/2000, whereas a photo I'd taken on my phone recently had apparently been taken at 1/24000. Now I know why...

 

[Raymond Lin]

These are straight out of the phone camera, no editing except the A.I. detecting the subject and letting it do it's thing. I expect most people would be happy with results like these out of their phone.

Resize for forum

 

[Raymond Lin]

I have the same shots with my A73 on most of those too.

 

[Faldrax]

These are straight out of the phone camera, no editing except the A.I. detecting the subject and letting it do it's thing. I expect most people would be happy with results like these out of their phone....

You must have a nice phone...

Great shots, BTW, particularly like the last two of My Fuji (I recognize the first of these from the Sony thread)

 

[Brazo]

To answer the op, they are slowly yes! Remember phone cams from 2008 (if you can bear!) or even before?

And as Raymond shows in the right hands they can produce high quality pics using computational photography and lots of cpu intensive tricks and bangs that even the latest Sony cams can only dream of.

Of course there’s no replacement for displacement.

But you can turbo charge and whilst phones may only have a 1l engine and your full frame camera has an 8l engine there is a turbo charger strapped to your phone camera that can go some way to evening the odds and this will only get better with time unless of course they decide to strap a turbo to that big old 8L.

Am I still in the right thread?

 

[Raymond Lin]

You must have a nice phone...

Great shots, BTW, particularly like the last two of My Fuji (I recognize the first of these from the Sony thread)

It's my spare phone that I use when I go to a country where i buy a local sim, the Huawei P20 Pro. It's better than the iPhone XR that I have i think.

Here are the Sony images processed to compare. Click to compare.

Spoiler

 

[Cagey75]

The scene makes more of a difference than the gadget used tbh, especially on here with the Godawful compression. Someone needs to do a side by side with a compact camera and phone in s***ty lighting

 

[RichardC27]

Well that's one thing I've learned today! Interesting. Funnily enough I was saying to my daughter just t'other day that when I was getting into photography most cameras went up to 1/1000, but really top end ones could sometimes manage 1/2000, whereas a photo I'd taken on my phone recently had apparently been taken at 1/24000. Now I know why...

They're actually very simple cameras with a huge amount of software processing done automatically to make the photos look good. And different manufacturers make different processing decisions. The same scene shot on, say, an iPhone 11, a Samsung Galaxy S20, a OnePlus 8 and a Google Pixel would look very different due to the built in processing in each phone.

Phone photos compare well to DSLR/Mirrorless photos in good light and at web image sizes. It does all fall apart a little if you start pixel peeping or viewing the phone images on a large monitor. But for snapshots, holiday snaps etc most modern midrange or high end phones will easily do the job. I never take my actual camera on holiday and I don't feel I miss out on anything photographically

 

[AZ6]

Those 'phone pics are fantastic. Shows how far technology has come, in just a few years.

'Phone cams are obviously fine for many people's needs. A snapshot cam in yer pocket, always. Some people want/need something a bit more versatile/sophisticated/better quality. It is worth bearing in mind that the top end 'phones, which produce the best quality 'phone cam images, tend to cost a tad more than even a basic entry level DSLR or ML kit. I bought a refurbed Samsung S7 a few years ago, mainly for the camera in it, but I'd never be paying the eight hundred and seventy two thousand pounds or whatever it is the latest iPhone XR4i costs. You can buy a proper camera for that!

 

[AndrewFlannigan]

if you start pixel peeping

I worry about that phrase. Perhaps it's the next thing that some MP looking to make a name for themselves will introduce a short bill against...

 

[PaddyODawes]

The same scene shot on, say, an iPhone 11, a Samsung Galaxy S20, a OnePlus 8 and a Google Pixel would look very different due to the built in processing in each phone

Or, for that matter, on a phone or a camera...



Subject to the massive caveat that it's basically screen-grabs, but the difference, interestingly enough - to me at least - has less to do with clarity than with colour. The phone shot (on the right) looks great, until you compare the richness of colour/tone in the camera version.

 

[AZ6]

Or, for that matter, on a phone or a camera...

Subject to the massive caveat that it's basically screen-grabs, but the difference, interestingly enough - to me at least - has less to do with clarity than with colour. The phone shot (on the right) looks great, until you compare the richness of colour/tone in the camera version.

I'd wager the camera pic might have a bit more potential for post processing, too. Higher DR, more detail in shadows, etc etc. The 'phone pic still looks great on a screen though.

 

[woof woof]

I'm old enough to remember when portable phones came in a case you carried around with you. I also remember being sat at my desk opening a letter from HQ (remember letters?) saying I was being issued with a phone and requesting some details or signature or other, I threw it in the bin. Later when everyone except me had one I'd be at meetings and everyones phone was constantly going off. When teased about why mine never went off (er... I haven't got one) and it being suggested that I wasn't important enough for anyone to call me my reply was that my staff new what they were doing and my contracts were so well run that no one needed to call me with serious problems only I could sort out. Why weren't their areas similarly well run? To be fair to them they each had an area of London to look after whilst I only had the rest of the country outside London.

I do carry a smartphone now for use in emergencies and calling taxis etc but the thought of using one for fun just doesn't cross my mind. They're hateful things. imo.

Sorry for that. Carry on.

 

[Faldrax]

It's my spare phone that I use when I go to a country where i buy a local sim, the Huawei P20 Pro. It's better than the iPhone XR that I have i think....

The Sony images have the edge, and I suspect that would be more obvious if viewing side by side prints of both, but it does show what a good phone camera is capable of in the right hands.
It's obvious why, for many people who just want 'nice holiday snaps' - who would previously have bought a compact camera, now are happy to just use their phone.

 

[Raymond Lin]

The Sony images have the edge, and I suspect that would be more obvious if viewing side by side prints of both, but it does show what a good phone camera is capable of in the right hands.
It's obvious why, for many people who just want 'nice holiday snaps' - who would previously have bought a compact camera, now are happy to just use their phone.

If I process the phone photos in LR, I bet I could get it so close to the camera it would be hard to tell, especially if you are just going to look at it on the screen.

 

[HoppyUK]

This question has already been emphatically answered by the market, with serious and sustained declines of all camera sales worldwide going back several years now. And it's not just compacts. The only questions really are how far will sales decline, and will all the major brands survive? It's that serious. A glance at the graphs in this link to DPReview are stark evidence https://www.dpreview.com/news/05553...st-year-of-the-decade-for-the-camera-industry

 

[HoppyUK]

Here's another one, showing that camera sales have fallen 87% over the last ten years https://www.statista.com/chart/5782/digital-camera-shipments/

It's hard to see any upside there at all, other than to say that broadly speaking the first half shows compact sales falling off a cliff in line with the dramatic improvements to image quality from smartphones. Then things start to level off a bit as enthusiast cameras, ie DSLRs and mirrorless, prove more resistant - but they're still declining and reasons why that trend will not continue are hard to see.

The only glimmer of hope is that recent evidence shows sales of high-end mirrorless cameras (mainly full-frame from CaNikSon) are declining less rapidly. There will always be an enthusiast market for these things, ie you and me, but prices are likely to rise and technological development will slow. And heck knows what the post-Covid19 world will look like - right now, nobody is buying cameras, or anything else really apart from food, and some markets will simply not recover.

 

[woof woof]

I suppose one bright spark is that using smartphones does lead some to use a more traditional camera when they see the shortcomings of smartphone photography. I've seen this in my own little world.

I think the worst case scenario for us is that the photography with a camera thing could become a either a used market thing or a new market Leica like thing using technology that doesn't really advance at anything like a rapid rate but provides an experience and appeal beyond that provided by other things, smartphones, video, lightfield or whatever becomes the mass market norm.

At the moment some companies are in the camera/lens business at least in part to shop window other things and I could imagine a scaling back if they decided that shop window wasn't needed as much.

Whatever happens there's probably enough camera gear floating around now to keep many of us happy even if the new gear making and selling business stops tomorrow,

 

[davholla]

Mobile phones produce results that far exceed the expectations of the average person and they make sharing pictures so easy. No traditional camera manufacturer has gone anywhere near mastering that feature. This is why compact camera sales have fallen off a cliff.

If camera manufactures spend as much R&D money on getting DSLR's to easily share images as they do on making sure user cannot use 3rd party batteries they may crack that nut.

I know people who even with really rubbish phones 5+ years ago would only use a phone because of the ease of sharing it.
For some people ease of sharing is 1000x more important than quality.

 

[DG Phototraining]

The only glimmer of hope is that recent evidence shows sales of high-end mirrorless cameras (mainly full-frame from CaNikSon) are declining less rapidly. There will always be an enthusiast market for these things, ie you and me, but prices are likely to rise and technological development will slow. And heck knows what the post-Covid19 world will look like - right now, nobody is buying cameras, or anything else really apart from food, and some markets will simply not recover.

Too true - sadly, despite there (always?) being perhaps millions of serious 'camera' enthusiasts there will be a point where it's not economical to do any R&D or even produce them for us super-keenies

Dave

 

[DG Phototraining]

For some people ease of sharing is 1000x more important than quality.

I'd swap 'some' for 'the VAST majority'

I have about 1500 Facebook 'Friends' and many post something daily if not weekly, but less than 50 are using a non-phone camera and many are awful photos, but importantly capture what they wanted to share

Dave

 

[Cagey75]

Is it not the case with just about every product? cars, laptops, tvs etc ... the general consumer won't look far into the spec sheet, they just want the plain, ready to go, practical option. The market is much smaller for sports cars, gaming laptops or high end 4k tvs. It doesn't make them obsolete

 

[Dangerous]

I have the Samsung A70 phone and it is supposed to be a good front and back camera.

For me a phone camera will never replace a DSLR.

If I go out with my DSLR I will take more photos in 30 mins than I do with my phone camera in 1 year. I will take more photos in 1 shot on the back camera than I will on the 'selfie' camera in 1 year.

I did use a bridge camera for several years basically as a good point & shoot camera rather than getting a compact. I knew from the outset that it would not be good enough for me if I ever wanted to 'take proper' photos again.

Any photos I take with the phone are in a shop of the price/information ticket or to upload an image for reference purposes only.

 

[DG Phototraining]

Is it not the case with just about every product? cars, laptops, tvs etc ... the general consumer won't look far into the spec sheet, they just want the plain, ready to go, practical option. The market is much smaller for sports cars, gaming laptops or high end 4k tvs. It doesn't make them obsolete

Using sports cars as an example though, they are far fewer suppliers than there once was, and many of them use parts from the huge corporate bins available meaning they are far from unique. Then there's Ferrari etc. who make relatively few but for huge money, well above the usual enthusiast's affordability

There's no comparison to cameras I can see

Dave

 

[Cagey75]

Using sports cars as an example though, they are far fewer suppliers than there once was, and many of them use parts from the huge corporate bins available meaning they are far from unique. Then there's Ferrari etc. who make relatively few but for huge money, well above the usual enthusiast's affordability

There's no comparison to cameras I can see

Dave

laptops would be a closer comparison. Anyone I know that owns one has your bare bones, basic Dell or Acer that they saw advertised somewhere or they got it because their mate has one and it 'works well' - if you asked them what graphic card was in there or cpu, they won't have a clue but they'll tell you Facebook and Word run nicely on it. Just as they'll tell you the camera on their phone takes nice pics and does the job.

 

[woof woof]

Using sports cars as an example though, they are far fewer suppliers than there once was, and many of them use parts from the huge corporate bins available meaning they are far from unique. Then there's Ferrari etc. who make relatively few but for huge money, well above the usual enthusiast's affordability

There's no comparison to cameras I can see

Dave

There is that many of them have gone out of business due to either competition using newer tech and manufacturing techniques or a falling market making it not worth while. There's a very long list of British sports car builders who are gone and maybe even almost forgotten, depending on your age and interest in cars.

Also of course sports cars are bought not so much for their functionality but for the experience, among other reasons.

I have two cars, a Hyundai Getz and an MX5. They're both cars. The Getz is very functional and I guess few people would really need anything else for going to work and back and to the shops etc. The MX5 is for the experience but it can also go to work and even to the shops too.

I think it's very comparable to watches, pens, mechanical typewriters, binoculars and whisper it... cameras and lenses and lots of other things we may be interested in.

 

[HoppyUK]

I suppose one bright spark is that using smartphones does lead some to use a more traditional camera when they see the shortcomings of smartphone photography. I've seen this in my own little world.

I think the worst case scenario for us is that the photography with a camera thing could become a either a used market thing or a new market Leica like thing using technology that doesn't really advance at anything like a rapid rate but provides an experience and appeal beyond that provided by other things, smartphones, video, lightfield or whatever becomes the mass market norm.

At the moment some companies are in the camera/lens business at least in part to shop window other things and I could imagine a scaling back if they decided that shop window wasn't needed as much.

Whatever happens there's probably enough camera gear floating around now to keep many of us happy even if the new gear making and selling business stops tomorrow,

I think the opposite is true - you get a new smartphone, are amazed by the quality of the photos, and the camera that used to come out on special occasions now gathers dust. The only thing that's changing is smartphones are getting better at an astonishing rate.

One glimmer of hope is that smartphone technology (the R&D investment of smartphone manufacturers is colossal) will migrate upwards and so-called computational image enhancements will start to appear in standalone cameras. It's already with us in a small way (in-camera HDR, focus-stacking etc) but there's way more that could come our way. And 'connectivity' of course - easy image sharing. On the other hand, we may reject all that nonsense!

Other things have changed over the years, too. Like most folks around here, I'm grey and balding and come from a film background. Back in the day (say the 'David Bailey era' from the sixties to the noughties) a good camera was a status symbol and I could do cool magic with it. Now I'm a nerdy old geek (or worse) and anyone can take very decent photos very easily. The world is awash with billions of images and the value of photographs has fallen dramatically. Professional photography hardly exists as a viable career option.

All pretty gloomy, but there are still lots of good reasons why I still enjoy photography immensely, it's just that they're not the same as they used to be

 

[Dangerous]

Years ago a sports car was the only way to drive fast, some diesels today will beat or hold their own with those sports cars.

These days even a modest 4/5 seater car is fast enough for the majority considering the amount of traffic (normally) and the standard of some peoples driving.

Most people get the tool they need to do the job they want to do.

 

[Dangerous]

I think the opposite is true - you get a new smartphone, are amazed by the quality of the photos, and the camera that used to come out on special occasions now gathers dust. The only thing that's changing is smartphones are getting better at an astonishing rate.

One glimmer of hope is that smartphone technology (the R&D investment of smartphone manufacturers is colossal) will migrate upwards and so-called computational image enhancements will start to appear in standalone cameras.

That has been the case for 30 years or more. I used to install CCTV in the days of the (absolutely crap) tubed cameras but they did a job that needed doing at the time. The needs of CCTV to advance helped photography cameras to advance which in turn helped CCTV cameras to advance which in turn helped photography cameras to advance which ................ Get the drift?

Then the camera phones joined the mix each spuring the other on and advancement seems to speed up. At the moment it seems technical advance don't seem to be advancing quite as fast but software/firmware is still moving forward.

When/if they crack the sensor issue there will no doubt be a leap forward.

 

[woof woof]

I think the opposite is true - you get a new smartphone, are amazed by the quality of the photos, and the camera that used to come out on special occasions now gathers dust. The only thing that's changing is smartphones are getting better at an astonishing rate.

I've seen both. I've seen someone with a DSLR move to a Sony A6xxx (or Nex, I don't know) and now to some Chinese smartphone or other but I've also seen someone go from a smartphone to an A6xxx because the smarphone was rubbish at indoor friends and family gatherings. This ties in with what I've seen from people using smartphones, some of the end result looks good on screen but do the finger stretch thing or God forbid look at it closely on a pc and you see it's a motion blur ruined noisy mushy mess. That's fine if you don't look closely or don't care but some seem to care enough to move to a camera.

 

[AZ6]

Other things have changed over the years, too. Like most folks around here, I'm grey and balding and come from a film background. Back in the day (say the 'David Bailey era' from the sixties to the noughties) a good camera was a status symbol and I could do cool magic with it. Now I'm a nerdy old geek (or worse) and anyone can take very decent photos very easily. The world is awash with billions of images and the value of photographs has fallen dramatically. Professional photography hardly exists as a viable career option.

All pretty gloomy, but there are still lots of good reasons why I still enjoy photography immensely, it's just that they're not the same as they used to be

That's interesting, regarding the 'value' of images. It is true that 'professional photography' isn't the career option it once was, that's for sure. You can bust your gut learning about exposure, technique etc, spend many tens of thousands on equipment, then some kid with a 'phone comes and grabs THE photo that the media all want. Or someone's nephew with a 'fancy DSLR' can more than easily shoot that wedding. And a cheesy Instagram filter will get you more 'likes' than any amount of expert technique. But I think this actually helps to define the 'art' of photography more. As evidenced in something like the BP or Taylor Wessing portrait awards. 'Proper' photography definitely ain't dead just yet.

 

[Ed Sutton]

I've seen both. I've seen someone with a DSLR move to a Sony A6xxx (or Nex, I don't know) and now to some Chinese smartphone or other but I've also seen someone go from a smartphone to an A6xxx because the smarphone was rubbish at indoor friends and family gatherings. This ties in with what I've seen from people using smartphones, some of the end result looks good on screen but do the finger stretch thing or God forbid look at it closely on a pc and you see it's a motion blur ruined noisy mushy mess.

Most people never take their photos off their phones. Just as most people never had prints larger than 6x4 made. The majority of people don't give a toss about the technical qualities of their pictures.

Cameras are going to get more expensive. Maybe even to the point where Leicas look reasonably priced!

 

[HoppyUK]

Is it not the case with just about every product? cars, laptops, tvs etc ... the general consumer won't look far into the spec sheet, they just want the plain, ready to go, practical option. The market is much smaller for sports cars, gaming laptops or high end 4k tvs. It doesn't make them obsolete

True, everything has a life but doesn't always disappear completely - it just becomes niche and expensive. Film is still with us, kind of. And the vinyl music market refuses to go away and is even growing (like it's gone from 1% of the market to 1.1% LOL). They're both interesting examples I can relate to in that whatever is driving them has little to do with image or sound quality. There's some other emotional involvement that keeps us hooked. I believe photography is the same, it's not just about the image. And it never has been IMHO.

 

[Dangerous]

In all the years (about 18) I've had a camera phone I have taken some really good photos (3 or maybe 4) and they have all been at a distance of less than 6".

Of the 15-20 landscapes I have had 15-20 that were good, until as @woof woof says they were viewed on a computer monitor where it was obvious just how bad the actually were.

As for the rest, well as long as I could read the shelf label or others could see the image and understand what I was trying to explain they were good enough.

 

[LG9K]

I'm one of those who's added a Sony A6500 and RX100 to my phone camera, which is now a Pixel 4.

The processing on the phone is very clever indeed, the attached photo was taken using its "Night mode" and using a tripod.

However, I take photos of people salsa dancing (not right now of course!) where they are moving quickly and the lighting is bad. The Pixel really can't do these very well, but the "proper" cameras do much better.