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I accepted the "phones are so good that you don't need a separate camera" conventional wisdom by default. Then I tried a mirrorless aps-c. I'm shocked at how

I accepted the "phones are so good that you don't need a separate camera" conventional wisdom by default. Then I tried a mirrorless aps-c. I'm shocked at how much better its photos are. Yes, the phone is adequate for Instagram but if you view similar photos on a 4k monitor there is a much bigger difference than I expected, even for photos that aren't challenging for the phone (landscapes with plenty of light). Also, the selfie camera on your phone is probably MUCH lower quality than the main one on the back. Have someone else take your picture instead if you have the option.

jerf 7y ago
Cell phones are just great for having with you everywhere. You're out and about and kids are doing something cute at the playground you want to remember? You don't need a $5,000 camera back at home, you need something with you now. But almost any dedicated camera that isn't down in the complete crap price range will blow a cell phone out of the water, for two major reasons. First, optical zoom, the number one thing I miss with my cell phone. Second, it is at least somewhat more likely that your "12MP camera" really is 12 MP with your real camera, whereas it's fairly likely you "12MP" cell phone is a lie [1]. This is even in the $150/200 range, long before we get to the ability to change lenses or all those other pro features. My ~$200 camera from 10+ years ago still takes better pictures than my cell phone, because even though my cell phone nominally beats it on megapixels, my camera actually uses all of its pixels to obtain real information from the scene, instead of being a bullet-point feature on a device that isn't even primarily a camera. So, to anyone reading this, if this sounds interesting, you don't even have to go to the big, expensive stuff; my kid literally bought a camera at a garage sale for $5 that also takes better pictures than my cell because it had like 8x optical zoom. It cost me more to find a functional battery than the camera itself did. It's not hard or expensive. [1]: Test: Take a picture in broad daylight, the best possible lighting conditions. Move the picture to your computer. Zoom in until you can see all the pixels clearly. Can you see sharp edges, or do you see a whole bunch of multi-pixel blobs of the sameish color, even around sharp edges? If the latter, your "pixel count" is a lie; it doesn't actually have that much resolving power.
- snazz 7y ago
  The blobs appear to come from aggressive noise reduction on iOS. I think they’re better if you shoot RAW, which is an option with a third party camera app.
  - cynicalkane 7y ago
    It's not just that. The lens itself doesn't have enough resolving power. When light passes through a tiny aperture, it becomes irreversibly blurred, enough to be detected by the micron-scale pixels in the camera sensor. Camera phones will try to re-sharpen the image, but some information is always lost. It's especially obvious looking at things with fine detail and sharp edges, like tree leaves against a bright sky.
    - pdpi 7y ago
      "The lens is sufficiently prone to diffraction that you won't get the full value out of the sensor's resolution" is a very different statement from "the sensor's resolution is not really 12MP". Saying "The camera isn't true 12MP" suggests the latter, not the former.
      - jerf 7y ago
        I deliberately stayed away from claiming a cause in my post, because I don't know the cause. I only know the result of the system as a whole; every cell phone camera I've had in the last 10 years does not actually take pictures at its claimed resolution, even in broad daylight. (I can also say it can't solely be over-aggressive JPG-ification, because the result doesn't match that; the 'blobs' I refer to cross the JPEG DCT boundaries freely. I can't say bad JPEG-ification isn't part of the problem, though.) I tend to buy last year's midgrade phone because I don't really need the latest and greatest. Maybe the top end really does take the full photos they claim, but that still leaves a lot of cell phones that are lying. Most of the recent cell phones take perfectly adequate pictures, considering the amazing disadvantages they are laboring under. It's just that if you downsample the pictures to 2 or 4MP, you're basically losing no information. (There are similar effects with video. The aforementioned 10+ year-old camera I had suffers from this as well. It has a "720P" and a "1080P" video mode, but based on my experimentation, both modes get real video out at about 400-500 "real" lines of vertical quality. I can squeeze either video's source down to that size and when I compare the full screen result to the original, I can find no difference whatsoever. I imagine more modern real cameras probably do a better job here; this thing is pretty old now, obviously.)
josephdviviano 7y ago
> Yes, the phone is adequate for Instagram but... Maybe true, but I pretty much only post photos on instagram (using a 5 year old mirrorless camera I found for less than a new good smartphone), and non-experts consistently ask me how I am able to get such high picture quality. So non-photographers can detect the difference between modern smartphones and 5 year old mirrorless tech.
- abakker 7y ago
  my wife focused on her instagram for her jewelry business for a while. it took about 1 day for her to realize that phone photos were totally inadequate for the quality she wanted to deliver. I'd be surprised if any pro instagrammers really used phone photos for the majority of their work.
  - vr46 7y ago
    Ex-photoj here, I just bought a 2012 Fuji mirrorless for £110 with WiFi to instagram with. Even this area is becoming cheaper to get into. This camera spanks my iPhone XS for photo quality. Now. But give it a couple more generations...
    - josephdviviano 7y ago
      I don't really believe this. One of the major advantages of real cameras is the sensor size. More sensor size gives you more SNR / dynamic range. All of the tricks used in a smartphone could be used in a real camera. If they were, then real cameras will always have many stops of dynamic range advantage.
      - vr46 7y ago
        All technology has constraints, and pictures are made within them. Dynamic range may or may not be an advantage, because there are only so many levels that can be reproduced for the viewer. RGB, for example, only gives you 256 shades of grey. It might mean more options for the photographer, in that you end up with more information in the highlights and shadows, but ultimately the decision to compress one or the other needs to be made if making a black-and-white print (for example) and you end up with the same picture.
ubercow13 7y ago
I have an 8 or so year old APS-C and I honestly prefer my (new) phone’s pictures most of the time. It is just so much better at calculating exposure. With my camera I feel like I am constantly battling with blown out highlights and usually end up underexposing every picture and hoping I can fix exposure later. The dynamic range of a picture by default from my phone is just so much better. Of course when you zoom in or view on a large monitor the phone is going to lose out in other ways. I am sure newer cameras are better in this regard but it still goes to show how much phones have improved. Or maybe I just don’t know how to use my camera...
- kiseleon 7y ago
  Dynamic range has been increasing with each generation, as well as better metering. I bought a micro 4/3rds Olympus E-M10 3 years ago and it blew my APS-C Sony A330 that I had been using for years out of the water in every aspect. I love my phone camera (Pixel 1) but if I want to take professional quality pictures I pull out my E-M10.

jerf 7y ago

Cell phones are just great for having with you everywhere. You're out and about and kids are doing something cute at the playground you want to remember? You don't need a $5,000 camera back at home, you need something with you now. But almost any dedicated camera that isn't down in the complete crap price range will blow a cell phone out of the water, for two major reasons. First, optical zoom, the number one thing I miss with my cell phone. Second, it is at least somewhat more likely that your "12MP camera" really is 12 MP with your real camera, whereas it's fairly likely you "12MP" cell phone is a lie [1]. This is even in the $150/200 range, long before we get to the ability to change lenses or all those other pro features. My ~$200 camera from 10+ years ago still takes better pictures than my cell phone, because even though my cell phone nominally beats it on megapixels, my camera actually uses all of its pixels to obtain real information from the scene, instead of being a bullet-point feature on a device that isn't even primarily a camera. So, to anyone reading this, if this sounds interesting, you don't even have to go to the big, expensive stuff; my kid literally bought a camera at a garage sale for $5 that also takes better pictures than my cell because it had like 8x optical zoom. It cost me more to find a functional battery than the camera itself did. It's not hard or expensive. [1]: Test: Take a picture in broad daylight, the best possible lighting conditions. Move the picture to your computer. Zoom in until you can see all the pixels clearly. Can you see sharp edges, or do you see a whole bunch of multi-pixel blobs of the sameish color, even around sharp edges? If the latter, your "pixel count" is a lie; it doesn't actually have that much resolving power.

snazz 7y ago
The blobs appear to come from aggressive noise reduction on iOS. I think they’re better if you shoot RAW, which is an option with a third party camera app.
- cynicalkane 7y ago
  It's not just that. The lens itself doesn't have enough resolving power. When light passes through a tiny aperture, it becomes irreversibly blurred, enough to be detected by the micron-scale pixels in the camera sensor. Camera phones will try to re-sharpen the image, but some information is always lost. It's especially obvious looking at things with fine detail and sharp edges, like tree leaves against a bright sky.
  - pdpi 7y ago
    "The lens is sufficiently prone to diffraction that you won't get the full value out of the sensor's resolution" is a very different statement from "the sensor's resolution is not really 12MP". Saying "The camera isn't true 12MP" suggests the latter, not the former.
    - jerf 7y ago
      I deliberately stayed away from claiming a cause in my post, because I don't know the cause. I only know the result of the system as a whole; every cell phone camera I've had in the last 10 years does not actually take pictures at its claimed resolution, even in broad daylight. (I can also say it can't solely be over-aggressive JPG-ification, because the result doesn't match that; the 'blobs' I refer to cross the JPEG DCT boundaries freely. I can't say bad JPEG-ification isn't part of the problem, though.) I tend to buy last year's midgrade phone because I don't really need the latest and greatest. Maybe the top end really does take the full photos they claim, but that still leaves a lot of cell phones that are lying. Most of the recent cell phones take perfectly adequate pictures, considering the amazing disadvantages they are laboring under. It's just that if you downsample the pictures to 2 or 4MP, you're basically losing no information. (There are similar effects with video. The aforementioned 10+ year-old camera I had suffers from this as well. It has a "720P" and a "1080P" video mode, but based on my experimentation, both modes get real video out at about 400-500 "real" lines of vertical quality. I can squeeze either video's source down to that size and when I compare the full screen result to the original, I can find no difference whatsoever. I imagine more modern real cameras probably do a better job here; this thing is pretty old now, obviously.)

josephdviviano 7y ago

> Yes, the phone is adequate for Instagram but... Maybe true, but I pretty much only post photos on instagram (using a 5 year old mirrorless camera I found for less than a new good smartphone), and non-experts consistently ask me how I am able to get such high picture quality. So non-photographers can detect the difference between modern smartphones and 5 year old mirrorless tech.

abakker 7y ago
my wife focused on her instagram for her jewelry business for a while. it took about 1 day for her to realize that phone photos were totally inadequate for the quality she wanted to deliver. I'd be surprised if any pro instagrammers really used phone photos for the majority of their work.
- vr46 7y ago
  Ex-photoj here, I just bought a 2012 Fuji mirrorless for £110 with WiFi to instagram with. Even this area is becoming cheaper to get into. This camera spanks my iPhone XS for photo quality. Now. But give it a couple more generations...
  - josephdviviano 7y ago
    I don't really believe this. One of the major advantages of real cameras is the sensor size. More sensor size gives you more SNR / dynamic range. All of the tricks used in a smartphone could be used in a real camera. If they were, then real cameras will always have many stops of dynamic range advantage.
    - vr46 7y ago
      All technology has constraints, and pictures are made within them. Dynamic range may or may not be an advantage, because there are only so many levels that can be reproduced for the viewer. RGB, for example, only gives you 256 shades of grey. It might mean more options for the photographer, in that you end up with more information in the highlights and shadows, but ultimately the decision to compress one or the other needs to be made if making a black-and-white print (for example) and you end up with the same picture.

ubercow13 7y ago

I have an 8 or so year old APS-C and I honestly prefer my (new) phone’s pictures most of the time. It is just so much better at calculating exposure. With my camera I feel like I am constantly battling with blown out highlights and usually end up underexposing every picture and hoping I can fix exposure later. The dynamic range of a picture by default from my phone is just so much better. Of course when you zoom in or view on a large monitor the phone is going to lose out in other ways. I am sure newer cameras are better in this regard but it still goes to show how much phones have improved. Or maybe I just don’t know how to use my camera...

kiseleon 7y ago
Dynamic range has been increasing with each generation, as well as better metering. I bought a micro 4/3rds Olympus E-M10 3 years ago and it blew my APS-C Sony A330 that I had been using for years out of the water in every aspect. I love my phone camera (Pixel 1) but if I want to take professional quality pictures I pull out my E-M10.