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It would give a sense of how far they still have to go.

by smackfu 11y ago

jlarocco 11y ago
TBH, the image quality isn't the limiting factor. The lack of interchangeable lenses, manual control, and RAW files will always limit the appeal of camera phones for pros and more advanced amateurs.
- andor 11y ago
  Will always limit? Android supports manual control and DNG raw files. Also, plenty of enthusiast cameras don't have interchangeable lenses.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    _Those_ cameras are doomed because the iPhone does what they do, in many cases the iPhone does it better, and the iPhone is cheaper and smaller. At least an interchangeable lens camera will always have the feature that you can put a different lens on it. On the other hand people do make optics for the iPhone, too, so it's certainly not impossible for an "interchangeable lens iPhone" to exist in some way at some point.
    - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
      I dunno, my non-interchangeable-lens camera (Canon SX40) has a whole range of features which are important to me and that the iPhone doesn't (and will never) have: * 30x optical zoom * optical image stabilization * tripod mount * flash hot shoe * 58mm filter mount * good ergonomics & no touchscreen * RAW files * scriptability of shooting e.g. for thunderstorms (camera triggered by lightning) * replaceable battery * removable storage
      - arrrg 11y ago
        6S Plus has OIS.
- jeffmk 11y ago
  True in general but I disagree on specifics and magnitude. While those -- and other factors, such as exposure -- are limiting factors, and very important, THE primary limiting factor, for me -- who has used multiple dSLRs, POSes, and Androids- and iPhones-as-cameras -- and I suspect many others, has been one thing: time-to-capture. The time it takes between me pressing the shutter button until the camera records the shot as usable data -- this is the important factor. This is what is holding phones back. On phones, I have to wait sometimes up to 0.25-0.5 seconds or even infuriatingly more between the time when I tap the software "capture" reticle and it records the image. This is what is unacceptable in modern phone cameras. By that time the cat has moved, the play is over, my hand has shaken. On dSLRs this is refreshingly fast. I half-press to focus, complete-press and now I have the image, nearly instantly from a human perception of time, even given the mechanical slowness of the mirror movement. I know the limiting factor is for all practical purposes my own reflexes. For the phone, I know it's crap hardware/software.
  - tspike 11y ago
    On the flipside, the phone is what you always have with you, in a given moment, and reaching for a device in your pocket is much faster than going back to the car to dig through your camera bag for your massive SLR. I say this as someone who has used and loved SLRs since the film days. I'd love to see the time to capture on the phone approach that satisfying threshold you mention on SLRs, because they already help me capture so many moments I'd otherwise miss.
- balls187 11y ago
  As an advanced amateur photographer (http://photos.aballs.com/ http://photos.aballs.com/), the iphone getting better and better and better has tremendous appeal. My photos are instantly geotagged, and I can immediately upload them to twitters, IG, and share them directly with people via WhatsApp and SMS. Every year I get a new camera (along with new features) from Apple for the cost of $200-300 (New Contract Free Price - Selling my old phone used). That is nearly impossible to do with my SLRs. For serious travel photography, I enjoy using my 5D2, but there really is no comparison between using my full kit, and using my iphone. I prefer my iphone.
arrrg 11y ago
There is nowhere to go, not with the available physical space. I expect noise to get lower and lower and low light performance to increase, leading to sharper (due to less noise reduction) and less noisier images in the coming years, though, due to the small available physical space and small sensor probably always a step behind larger sensors (like the ones one would find in larger cameras). Maybe it will be possible to close that gap? For many situations that gap is already quite small when, e.g. comparing many typical image viewing situations with images made under good lighting conditions. On close examination images from cameras with larger sensors would typically still be sharper, though, mostly due to them being able to have a higher resolution with lower noise (though, as I said, in many typical viewing applications those differences are, always depending on the photos and in which context it was made, sometimes imperceptible). What will not be possible are zoom lenses, interchangeable lenses or, really, any kind of freedom with the lenses at all. Probably also unrealistic is a variable aperture and a sensor size that would allow one to play with depth of field in the first place. That is a fundamental difference that cannot be overcome within the physical envelope of a smartphone that is still recognizable a smartphone and not something else, some weird smartphone camera hybrid. All that DSLR wankery is kind of pointless, though. The goal here is to make the very goddamn best camera that the physical envelope allows for and smartphones have done an astonishingly great job at that. Those are awesome cameras, no ifs and buts about it. Given what they have to work with they are unabashedly awesome. DSLRs and other large-sensor cameras are fundamentally different beasts. Comparing them or even holding them up as some sort of great goal for smartphone cameras seems kinda … dumb? … I don’t know, pointless? … short-sighted? to me.
- iridium127 11y ago
  There is somewhere to go, the way technology is going. Phones have done lot's of catching up even if they have long ways to go... Many people that haven't ditched traditional cameras yet could possibly do it now. But either way it's always nice to compare good cameras with convenient cameras.
- dasil003 11y ago
  > Comparing them or even holding them up as some sort of great goal for smartphone cameras seems kinda … dumb? … I don’t know, pointless? … short-sighted? It seems like the opposite of short-sighted to me; to look beyond the limitations of today's technology and find ways to make the impossible incrementally more achievable over time.

It would give a sense of how far they still have to go.

by smackfu 11y ago

It would give a sense of how far they still have to go.

TBH, the image quality isn't the limiting factor. The lack of interchangeable lenses, manual control, and RAW files will always limit the appeal of camera phones for pros and more advanced amateurs.

andor 11y ago
Will always limit? Android supports manual control and DNG raw files. Also, plenty of enthusiast cameras don't have interchangeable lenses.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  _Those_ cameras are doomed because the iPhone does what they do, in many cases the iPhone does it better, and the iPhone is cheaper and smaller. At least an interchangeable lens camera will always have the feature that you can put a different lens on it. On the other hand people do make optics for the iPhone, too, so it's certainly not impossible for an "interchangeable lens iPhone" to exist in some way at some point.
  - semi-extrinsic 11y ago
    I dunno, my non-interchangeable-lens camera (Canon SX40) has a whole range of features which are important to me and that the iPhone doesn't (and will never) have: * 30x optical zoom * optical image stabilization * tripod mount * flash hot shoe * 58mm filter mount * good ergonomics & no touchscreen * RAW files * scriptability of shooting e.g. for thunderstorms (camera triggered by lightning) * replaceable battery * removable storage
    - arrrg 11y ago
      6S Plus has OIS.
jeffmk 11y ago
True in general but I disagree on specifics and magnitude. While those -- and other factors, such as exposure -- are limiting factors, and very important, THE primary limiting factor, for me -- who has used multiple dSLRs, POSes, and Androids- and iPhones-as-cameras -- and I suspect many others, has been one thing: time-to-capture. The time it takes between me pressing the shutter button until the camera records the shot as usable data -- this is the important factor. This is what is holding phones back. On phones, I have to wait sometimes up to 0.25-0.5 seconds or even infuriatingly more between the time when I tap the software "capture" reticle and it records the image. This is what is unacceptable in modern phone cameras. By that time the cat has moved, the play is over, my hand has shaken. On dSLRs this is refreshingly fast. I half-press to focus, complete-press and now I have the image, nearly instantly from a human perception of time, even given the mechanical slowness of the mirror movement. I know the limiting factor is for all practical purposes my own reflexes. For the phone, I know it's crap hardware/software.
- tspike 11y ago
  On the flipside, the phone is what you always have with you, in a given moment, and reaching for a device in your pocket is much faster than going back to the car to dig through your camera bag for your massive SLR. I say this as someone who has used and loved SLRs since the film days. I'd love to see the time to capture on the phone approach that satisfying threshold you mention on SLRs, because they already help me capture so many moments I'd otherwise miss.
balls187 11y ago
As an advanced amateur photographer (http://photos.aballs.com/ http://photos.aballs.com/), the iphone getting better and better and better has tremendous appeal. My photos are instantly geotagged, and I can immediately upload them to twitters, IG, and share them directly with people via WhatsApp and SMS. Every year I get a new camera (along with new features) from Apple for the cost of $200-300 (New Contract Free Price - Selling my old phone used). That is nearly impossible to do with my SLRs. For serious travel photography, I enjoy using my 5D2, but there really is no comparison between using my full kit, and using my iphone. I prefer my iphone.

arrrg 11y ago

There is nowhere to go, not with the available physical space. I expect noise to get lower and lower and low light performance to increase, leading to sharper (due to less noise reduction) and less noisier images in the coming years, though, due to the small available physical space and small sensor probably always a step behind larger sensors (like the ones one would find in larger cameras). Maybe it will be possible to close that gap? For many situations that gap is already quite small when, e.g. comparing many typical image viewing situations with images made under good lighting conditions. On close examination images from cameras with larger sensors would typically still be sharper, though, mostly due to them being able to have a higher resolution with lower noise (though, as I said, in many typical viewing applications those differences are, always depending on the photos and in which context it was made, sometimes imperceptible). What will not be possible are zoom lenses, interchangeable lenses or, really, any kind of freedom with the lenses at all. Probably also unrealistic is a variable aperture and a sensor size that would allow one to play with depth of field in the first place. That is a fundamental difference that cannot be overcome within the physical envelope of a smartphone that is still recognizable a smartphone and not something else, some weird smartphone camera hybrid. All that DSLR wankery is kind of pointless, though. The goal here is to make the very goddamn best camera that the physical envelope allows for and smartphones have done an astonishingly great job at that. Those are awesome cameras, no ifs and buts about it. Given what they have to work with they are unabashedly awesome. DSLRs and other large-sensor cameras are fundamentally different beasts. Comparing them or even holding them up as some sort of great goal for smartphone cameras seems kinda … dumb? … I don’t know, pointless? … short-sighted? to me.

iridium127 11y ago
There is somewhere to go, the way technology is going. Phones have done lot's of catching up even if they have long ways to go... Many people that haven't ditched traditional cameras yet could possibly do it now. But either way it's always nice to compare good cameras with convenient cameras.
dasil003 11y ago
> Comparing them or even holding them up as some sort of great goal for smartphone cameras seems kinda … dumb? … I don’t know, pointless? … short-sighted? It seems like the opposite of short-sighted to me; to look beyond the limitations of today's technology and find ways to make the impossible incrementally more achievable over time.