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My kids started asking for vintage digicams about five years ago. At first I wrote it off as a fad. And it is definitely partially that. But when my kids start

My kids started asking for vintage digicams about five years ago. At first I wrote it off as a fad. And it is definitely partially that. But when my kids started taking pictures with these cameras, I realized that the pictures were, subjectively at least, better. We were in the Rockies and the pictures taken on their iPhones are sharper, more vibrant, but those photos lack perspective. It’s not just aesthetic. The mountains feel more like massive objects on these older cameras than they do on modern iPhone cameras. Something else happens with digital cameras. My kids think more intentionally about the framing of the shot. They move into better positions. They think about light and shadows. With the iPhone it’s click and forget. So that contributes to better photos too. Even with the point and click models that my kids bring to social gatherings, there’s clearly a sense of posture and special-ness about the photos that changes the dynamic more than everyone posing for a phone selfie or photo. There are obvious limitations. My kids didn’t fully understand why older cameras perform so poorly in darker light without the flash. But otherwise they really love their digital cameras. My eldest is studying abroad in France and it’s a real treat to get a batch of digital camera shots of life in Paris. I now buy digital cameras in bulk and repair them slowly as a hobby and then resell them on eBay. It gives me a little spending money. I avoid the TikTok trend cameras - they’re too expensive to buy - but I make some nice pocket money on selling the in between models that perform really well. And my kids get to pick their favorite models now and then.

crazygringo 2y ago
> It’s not just aesthetic. The mountains feel more like massive objects on these older cameras than they do on modern iPhone cameras. Can you post a representative mountain photo from each camera? I'm very curious what generates this feeling for you.
- SirFatty 2y ago
  It's probably along the same line as how vinyl records supposedly sound better.
  - superultra 2y ago
    I get that you're saying this as if to point out the hipster-ness of vinyl. I work in the music industry and have personally overseen the manufacturing of 100's of thousands of records, so I'm as much an expert as anyone on this topic. Yes, vinyl is technically an inferior sound quality to FLACs. I'm happy to rant all day about the flaws of vinyl. I personally prefer high quality digital. However on a good pressing there is an undeniable difference to a good vinyl pressing. It's not dissimilar from why I said that my kids frame the shots on digital cameras in ways that are different using an iphone. The processes that surround vinyl are different (better?) than those we use for digital mastering. Engineers pay more attention to vinyl mastering than they do digital. While there's a lot of shitty USB turntables, even those are often far better than how most people listen to music digitally which is often on iphones and shitty laptop speakers. The physicality of vinyl manufacturing incurs requisite different attention and processes that sometimes (emphasis on sometimes) results in a "better" listening experience. Could you get the same "better" listening experience with lossless digital? Yes. but most don't. So vinyl is "better."
    - tekla 2y ago
      > The processes that surround vinyl are different (better?) than those we use for digital mastering. Engineers pay more attention to vinyl mastering than they do digital. I call BS. I know people who work in music mastering, and I've asked about this. They use the same digital masters for the digital release and for vinyl. They know people will buy vinyls if they want to no matter what if they want to, so it doesn't matter if the digital master isn't perfectly attuned to the vinyl medium
      - superultra 2y ago
        > They use the same digital masters for the digital release and for vinyl. With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. If the engineers you know do that, you don't know good engineers. edit: I can't reply to tekla's comment, so I'm editing here. It's frustrating on Hacker News for an expert - like myself, who has sat in on dozens of mastering sessions - to be disputed by someone who "knows some people." I'll clarify further. Do some engineers use the same mixes for vinyl as they do for digital? Sure. They're not good engineers. Or the customer hasn't paid enough (it's usually about $60-$100 per song to master per format). Vinyl is a drastically different medium than digital - of course - and any decent engineer will 100% mix differently and accordingly. If there are artists reading this and your engineer is using the same mix, fire them. You're paying a lot to press to vinyl so do the followthrough and get vinyl-specific mastering. Here's a good article from an engineer I have worked with many times on why mastering for vinyl is different: https://www.oregonlive.com/music/2014/11/does_vinyl_really_sound_better.html https://www.oregonlive.com/music/2014/11/does_vinyl_really_s...
- superultra 2y ago
  Here are two examples: https://postimg.cc/gallery/g8kzGHB https://postimg.cc/gallery/g8kzGHB https://postimg.cc/gallery/ChSgbdd https://postimg.cc/gallery/ChSgbdd
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    Thanks! Which is which? Are you saying you prefer the bottom ones?
    - superultra 2y ago
      In the mountain photos, IMG_1187 and IMAGE 2024-12-03 08:31:09 are the iphone photos. I think they're fine. But the alternate images (which are by a Canon PowerShot S50) convey better the lighting of how the scene actually looked IRL.
      - bitcurious 2y ago
        The Canon shots are also more zoomed in, shot with a longer focal length on the lens. The obvious effect of focal length is zoom, but it’s the change in foreground-background distortion that makes the photos look weird or good. Flat, wide lenses like the one used for the iPhone photo exaggerate the foreground and shrink the background. As you lengthen the lens you shrink the distortion and pretty soon you hit a point where it matches the distortion of your eyes’ lenses. That’s when photos look most natural.
      - pdpi 2y ago
        The iPhone photo of the mountain has a really nicely balanced dynamic range. The Canon one has blown out highlights where the clouds meet the peaks, and really dark shadows with almost no discernible detail. From a purely technical point of view, the iPhone picture is a "better" photo, but this serves as a perfect example of how "technically better" and "artistically better" are not the same thing. Ultimately, photography is less about the quality of the equipment, and more about what you do with it (cliché, I know), and phone cameras are pretty high quality but clip your wings by taking all control away from you. Your kids might benefit from an entry-level Sony a6000 or a6100 (the a6000 is ancient but shockingly capable) or equivalent, and some practice with raw processing software (Lightroom Classic is the default choice here, but Darktable is great if you don't want to give Adobe your money. Apple Photos is a pretty damn decent beginner option too).
bux93 2y ago
You should teach them to also move into better positions and think about light and shadows when they take phone pictures. A big difference between smartphones and cameras is the focal lengths. On an iphone, a 48mm focal length is considered tele, and the main cam is 24mm. That will surely take away the perspective from the Rocky mountains, if not your nose.
- davidgay 2y ago
  Perspective depends on distance to subject only. Focal length decides framing. They get confused, because one tends to / has to adjust one's position to obtain the framing one wants given one's focal length choices...
maurits 2y ago
> It’s not just aesthetic. The mountains feel more like massive objects on these older cameras than they do on modern iPhone cameras. Might be due to a combination of sensor size, focal length on the older camera, and the distance to the subject.
AlanYx 2y ago
Assuming you're not talking about lens effects (which definitely has a huge effect), you might be reacting to the use of tone mapping in iPhone photos, which tends to make things look "flat". There's a slider called "Brilliance" in the iPhone photos app that you can play around with to get a sense of how this type of processing tends to flatten images. I'm not sure how or whether it's possible to disable this in the default camera app.
barnabee 2y ago
Every digital camera I've ever owned takes "better" pictures than my iPhone 15 Pro. The iPhone is fantastic for taking a few snaps to remember a trip or event, or recording an ephemeral "story", but when I am actually trying to take photos there's no comparison to my ~10 year old digital camera. It's partly about sensor size and tech., partly down the the limitations of tiny smartphone lenses, and partly down to what's added (or should that be taken away) by the "computational photography" software in modern smartphones.
Spawnzer 2y ago
It's partly the ccd sensor, it's unfortunate we moved on past these as no modern digital camera can quite match the best of those color-wise imo
- davidgay 2y ago
  CCD or CMOS sensors count photons. They presumably have some natural frequency response curve, but the actual colour discrimination comes from the filters (usually some flavours of RGB, but has been other choices too). It's those filters, and the colour reconstruction algorithms that change colour response, not the underlying sensor.
jrowen 2y ago
the pictures were, subjectively at least, better. I'm in love with this phrasing.

crazygringo 2y ago

> It’s not just aesthetic. The mountains feel more like massive objects on these older cameras than they do on modern iPhone cameras. Can you post a representative mountain photo from each camera? I'm very curious what generates this feeling for you.

SirFatty 2y ago
It's probably along the same line as how vinyl records supposedly sound better.
- superultra 2y ago
  I get that you're saying this as if to point out the hipster-ness of vinyl. I work in the music industry and have personally overseen the manufacturing of 100's of thousands of records, so I'm as much an expert as anyone on this topic. Yes, vinyl is technically an inferior sound quality to FLACs. I'm happy to rant all day about the flaws of vinyl. I personally prefer high quality digital. However on a good pressing there is an undeniable difference to a good vinyl pressing. It's not dissimilar from why I said that my kids frame the shots on digital cameras in ways that are different using an iphone. The processes that surround vinyl are different (better?) than those we use for digital mastering. Engineers pay more attention to vinyl mastering than they do digital. While there's a lot of shitty USB turntables, even those are often far better than how most people listen to music digitally which is often on iphones and shitty laptop speakers. The physicality of vinyl manufacturing incurs requisite different attention and processes that sometimes (emphasis on sometimes) results in a "better" listening experience. Could you get the same "better" listening experience with lossless digital? Yes. but most don't. So vinyl is "better."
  - tekla 2y ago
    > The processes that surround vinyl are different (better?) than those we use for digital mastering. Engineers pay more attention to vinyl mastering than they do digital. I call BS. I know people who work in music mastering, and I've asked about this. They use the same digital masters for the digital release and for vinyl. They know people will buy vinyls if they want to no matter what if they want to, so it doesn't matter if the digital master isn't perfectly attuned to the vinyl medium
    - superultra 2y ago
      > They use the same digital masters for the digital release and for vinyl. With all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. If the engineers you know do that, you don't know good engineers. edit: I can't reply to tekla's comment, so I'm editing here. It's frustrating on Hacker News for an expert - like myself, who has sat in on dozens of mastering sessions - to be disputed by someone who "knows some people." I'll clarify further. Do some engineers use the same mixes for vinyl as they do for digital? Sure. They're not good engineers. Or the customer hasn't paid enough (it's usually about $60-$100 per song to master per format). Vinyl is a drastically different medium than digital - of course - and any decent engineer will 100% mix differently and accordingly. If there are artists reading this and your engineer is using the same mix, fire them. You're paying a lot to press to vinyl so do the followthrough and get vinyl-specific mastering. Here's a good article from an engineer I have worked with many times on why mastering for vinyl is different: https://www.oregonlive.com/music/2014/11/does_vinyl_really_sound_better.html https://www.oregonlive.com/music/2014/11/does_vinyl_really_s...
superultra 2y ago
Here are two examples: https://postimg.cc/gallery/g8kzGHB https://postimg.cc/gallery/g8kzGHB https://postimg.cc/gallery/ChSgbdd https://postimg.cc/gallery/ChSgbdd
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Thanks! Which is which? Are you saying you prefer the bottom ones?
  - superultra 2y ago
    In the mountain photos, IMG_1187 and IMAGE 2024-12-03 08:31:09 are the iphone photos. I think they're fine. But the alternate images (which are by a Canon PowerShot S50) convey better the lighting of how the scene actually looked IRL.
    - bitcurious 2y ago
      The Canon shots are also more zoomed in, shot with a longer focal length on the lens. The obvious effect of focal length is zoom, but it’s the change in foreground-background distortion that makes the photos look weird or good. Flat, wide lenses like the one used for the iPhone photo exaggerate the foreground and shrink the background. As you lengthen the lens you shrink the distortion and pretty soon you hit a point where it matches the distortion of your eyes’ lenses. That’s when photos look most natural.
    - pdpi 2y ago
      The iPhone photo of the mountain has a really nicely balanced dynamic range. The Canon one has blown out highlights where the clouds meet the peaks, and really dark shadows with almost no discernible detail. From a purely technical point of view, the iPhone picture is a "better" photo, but this serves as a perfect example of how "technically better" and "artistically better" are not the same thing. Ultimately, photography is less about the quality of the equipment, and more about what you do with it (cliché, I know), and phone cameras are pretty high quality but clip your wings by taking all control away from you. Your kids might benefit from an entry-level Sony a6000 or a6100 (the a6000 is ancient but shockingly capable) or equivalent, and some practice with raw processing software (Lightroom Classic is the default choice here, but Darktable is great if you don't want to give Adobe your money. Apple Photos is a pretty damn decent beginner option too).

bux93 2y ago

You should teach them to also move into better positions and think about light and shadows when they take phone pictures. A big difference between smartphones and cameras is the focal lengths. On an iphone, a 48mm focal length is considered tele, and the main cam is 24mm. That will surely take away the perspective from the Rocky mountains, if not your nose.

davidgay 2y ago
Perspective depends on distance to subject only. Focal length decides framing. They get confused, because one tends to / has to adjust one's position to obtain the framing one wants given one's focal length choices...

maurits 2y ago

> It’s not just aesthetic. The mountains feel more like massive objects on these older cameras than they do on modern iPhone cameras. Might be due to a combination of sensor size, focal length on the older camera, and the distance to the subject.

AlanYx 2y ago

Assuming you're not talking about lens effects (which definitely has a huge effect), you might be reacting to the use of tone mapping in iPhone photos, which tends to make things look "flat". There's a slider called "Brilliance" in the iPhone photos app that you can play around with to get a sense of how this type of processing tends to flatten images. I'm not sure how or whether it's possible to disable this in the default camera app.

barnabee 2y ago

Every digital camera I've ever owned takes "better" pictures than my iPhone 15 Pro. The iPhone is fantastic for taking a few snaps to remember a trip or event, or recording an ephemeral "story", but when I am actually trying to take photos there's no comparison to my ~10 year old digital camera. It's partly about sensor size and tech., partly down the the limitations of tiny smartphone lenses, and partly down to what's added (or should that be taken away) by the "computational photography" software in modern smartphones.

Spawnzer 2y ago

It's partly the ccd sensor, it's unfortunate we moved on past these as no modern digital camera can quite match the best of those color-wise imo

davidgay 2y ago
CCD or CMOS sensors count photons. They presumably have some natural frequency response curve, but the actual colour discrimination comes from the filters (usually some flavours of RGB, but has been other choices too). It's those filters, and the colour reconstruction algorithms that change colour response, not the underlying sensor.

jrowen 2y ago

the pictures were, subjectively at least, better. I'm in love with this phrasing.