Smart phone vs. digital camera

[Magna]

I saw the change from SLR to Digital cameras. When I was young I worked at a locally owned Camera shop. They had an on site repair technician who repaired anything from inexpensive SLRs to very expensive commercial cameras like Hasselblads, Leicas, Zeiss lenses, etc. Then digital cameras came along. Eventually the local camera store ended up having to close.

 

[velociraptor]

I've still got my Pentax K1000

Ditto. It is a fine piece of engineering.

For people that are more interested in photographic art the storage medium is not as important as the lenses, and that is where and why the phone will never completely take over the market

I've stopped worrying so much about which camera I capture the image with and am just happy I captured the image. It's wonderful if I have my rather heavy camera bag with me, but oft-times I'm out for a walk and all I have is my phone. It's a rather good phone (I selected it on the basis of its camera). I've done a lot of work with it over the past couple of years and I'm very happy with the prints and canvases I have produced. I mostly do landscape photography so I don't find a phone camera too limiting.

I do have good glass if I want to go birding, etc.

phones are a self-contained purchase, most cameras are not

My wife often compares owning a camera with interchangeable lens to having an addiction to heroin. I may have too many lenses.

Mirrorless are very good cameras...

Most of the camera upgrades I've made over the past decade have felt incremental. Yeah, more megapixels. Yeah, slightly faster in camera processing. Maybe 10% better at a 50% markup from the last generation. Canon's R5 mirrorless is the first camera they have released since the 5D Classic that feels revolutionary to me. It's so much fun to use and the autofocus is a thing of wonder.

Your Fuji is one of the trailblazers with mirrorless - still a fantastic camera today.

 

[WhitewaterWoman]

I’m still bemoaning the transition to digital. I have camera bodies and lenses I can’t bear to give up….

As for digital, I took a digital camera and an iPhone 6 on a canoe trip. The iPhone way out performed the camera. I don’t remember what it was, a mid-range digital.

 

[Lysholm]

an addiction to heroin

Pfft, heroin is for scrubs. Real addicts shoot Zeiss.

(see what I did there? pretty proud of it, ngl)

I have camera bodies and lenses I can’t bear to give up…

Film cameras have a cult following. Lots of people love the aesthetic and the challenge. Funny how people push for more and more megapixels, only to bail because digital sharpness has no character.

RN when you see a photo odds are you intuitively know about when it was taken, but future generations won't have that linearity looking back.

 

[Rodafina]

My wife often compares owning a camera with interchangeable lens to having an addiction to heroin. I may have too many lenses.

You should tell her lenses won’t slowly destroy your soul and then take your life.

Your camera with too many lenses is a wonderful thing.

 

[velociraptor]

Real addicts shoot Zeiss.

I have a bunch of the Zeiss Flektogon Zebras with adapters for both EOS EF and Pentax K-mount. Love them.

only to bail because digital sharpness has no character

Easy to have character, it's all about the post processing. You can also cheat and use a vintage lens.

I keep accumulating rolls of unused 35mm film - just about to order some C41 chem from B&H so I can use them. It sure has gotten a lot more expensive.

 

[Duncan74]

You should tell her lenses won’t slowly destroy your soul and then take your life.

Your camera with too many lenses is a wonderful thing.

In fairness one advantage to digital is it's saved a fortune on cokin filters..... ;-)
I must admit that I really don't enjoy the post processing. For me I still prefer to spend the time getting the composition and lighting 'right' at time of shooting, and then do bare minimum processing from Raw to TIFF.

We did a great challenge with a club once, which was the 36 shot roll. You needed to submit 36 shots, all taken in sequence with no gaps/deletions. I really started enjoying digital photography when I started reducing the number of shots I took - being more selective in the photos I took, taking more time on the composition and not scattergunning..

 

[velociraptor]

I tend to get lighting and composition right on the first try on 95% of my shots now. Been slinging cameras for a while. If you have to "fix" it in post it probably isn't fixable in the first place.

 

[Outdated]

For me I still prefer to spend the time getting the composition and lighting 'right' at time of shooting...

This is the key to good photos. Post processing is only good if you have a decent image to work with in the first place. I do convert processed images to jpg so I can share them but I prefer to work with raw image files.

I'm a minimalist when it comes to post processing, all I normally do is noise removal and sharpening, and perhaps a bit of a crop.

 

[velociraptor]

Sunset, May 05, 2020 (Mini-me Version) by Sean McCormick, on Flickr

Sunset, May 05, 2020 (Dr. Evil Version) by Sean McCormick, on Flickr

Top image from a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge. Bottom from a Canon EOS 5Ds with a 24-70mm EF L lens. The dSLR image is obviously much better, but I could turn out a decent print from the phone snap it if it was all I had to work with. Give me five minutes in Photoshop and I can fix the haloing and fringing around the trees plus ditch the noise. The phone image is pretty much straight off the camera.

 

[Judge]

One of those "if money was no object" daydreams for me:

https://www.digitalcamerawarehouse.com.au/canon-rf-400mm-fa28-l-is-usm-lens

Yep. Money is no object to my nephew. He has one....lol.

 

[Judge]

I saw the change from SLR to Digital cameras. When I was young I worked at a locally owned Camera shop. They had an on site repair technician who repaired anything from inexpensive SLRs to very expensive commercial cameras like Hasselblads, Leicas, Zeiss lenses, etc. Then digital cameras came along. Eventually the local camera store ended up having to close.

Yeah. Kind of sad. Reminds me of when me and my g/f used to go to Adolph Gasser's photography store in the city. Best kind of shop I had ever been in. A "Disneyland" of sorts for us shutterbugs. The end of an era, for sure.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/busines...oto-shop-Adolf-Gasser-to-shutter-11040079.php

 

[Neonatal RRT]

Awesome photos!

I don't have a lot of knowledge when it comes to cameras, but I generally use a phone camera for those "candid" shots, the sorts of images that stay on the camera. Any images that I might use for hanging up on a wall, something I am going "show off", anything that needs a serious zoom lens or a macro lens, then a "real" camera is needed.