> the main difference between a camera with a proper lens and the tiny flat ones that you would find in any smartphone is a feature of a photo called depth of

> the main difference between a camera with a proper lens and the tiny flat ones that you would find in any smartphone is a feature of a photo called depth of field. This is highly reductionist and thus, misleading. Optical design of photography lenses is a very complex field whose main purpose is not "giving photos a DoF effect", but to provide control on aperture and focal length and boost the received light while keeping chromatic and geometrical aberrations to a minimum. The Wikipedia article on lens evolution is very interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_d...