Or for people shooting at night. The sensors are too small on phones to gather enough light to look decent.
The point being made is, if Apple/Google can do that with a tiny sensor, why hasn't one of the remaining pro camera companies thrown money into similar work to be done on their cameras? I have an olympus e-om10 (I can't even remember the name format) and it has some filter settings, but nothing with the usability and quick results of Apple and Google regarding night shoots, etc.
Newer cameras can even film video with nothing but moonlight.
But there's no world in which it's technically superior to a real camera, especially one with in-camera processing or in the hands of a professional with access to and skill with professional post-processing software.
A minor and pedantic point, but could we stop with the idea that smartphone cameras are somehow not 'real'? They are enormously sophisticated imaging devices that comprehensively outperform, for example, the 35mm film SLRs that many photographers were using in the 90s. An iPhone 14 enables you to take technically superior photos to the photos that professional photographers were taking only a couple of decades ago.
I really don’t agree, and honestly it depends on what categories you’re judging it on.
Film cameras from 20 years ago probably have better dynamic range than your phone. They probably have comparable resolution. You have a lot of options with lenses, so you can get lots of different looks.
Full frame size lets in lots of light. Photography is all about light - no amount of processing is going to make up for the size of a sensor on an iPhone. Let’s not even bring medium format into the discussion.
Hell, I’d say they could take photos that were technically superior to iphones over 100 years ago with tintypes and such. (Film was actually lower resolution than what came before it. ) There are lots of stunning portraiture, with a lot of clarity, from the start of photography that would be impossible to replicate with modern cameras.
I'm not so sure about that. I'm impressed by what smartphone cameras do these days, but the Nikon F100 snuck into the 90s and beats the pants off my iPhone 14 Pro's camera, while still being very much in the hobbyist/prosumer price range.
1.) My old Canon 80D. One time purchase, decently compact, short battery. Produces an okay-ish image with moderate effort.
2.) Renting something nicer than my Canon 80D. Bulky, requires lots of know-how to operate, expensive if I break it. Have to use special cords, cards, lenses, mounts, etc. Produces a top-of-the-line image with high effort.
3.) My iPhone 12 Mini. One time purchase, very compact, multi-hour-battery. Works indoors, outdoors, day or night. Plug-n-play, extremely user friendly. Produces a darn-good image with minimal effort.
I fully understand that it's not the best camera out there—but it seriously competes with everything up to fairly expensive professional cameras. I would not hesitate to use my iPhone for professional photography and videography if the client never found out about it (or was okay with it). At the end of the day, the ratio of quality to convenience it provides is simply higher than any other offering.
If I zoom out from parsing word by word...
...feels like I'm saying a Keurig "rivals and surpasses espresso machines" because it can produce a better espresso than an arbitrary espresso machine in arbitrary hands.
Yeah, true. Not very meaningful though.
There's probably a McDonald's hamburger analogy here that's better, but, here we are.
My challenge to an ambituous reader looking to comment: make that one work too.
