Sun Microsystems used to have a tagline: "The network is the computer," now it's starting to look like the network is the camera. Basically photography is abou

Sun Microsystems used to have a tagline: "The network is the computer," now it's starting to look like the network is the camera. Basically photography is about Pentagram, Twatter and Faceborg more than it is about the photo itself. The medium is starting to alter the aesthetics of the images themselves¹. Joking aside, a professional photographer needs to be able to get reproducible results. Because the algorithms in the phones are mostly black box, with few parameters, they can't be used in a professional setting. Even if you have the control over the algorithm, they are still really weak. Portrait mode for example can't reliably separate the subjects hair from the background properly. Doing this optically does not suffer from these problems at all. 1: For example, vertical videos.