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My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water. Add a nice lens and there's no comparison

My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water. Add a nice lens and there's no comparison. However: - The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone) - The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us - The iPhone picture quality, though worse, is still fine Looking back at travel and family pictures, it has been very much worth it for me to have a dedicated camera.

aosaigh 1y ago
I think these are good points. It boils down to: are you interested in photography or do you just want to have photographs? If it's the former, get a camera. If it's the latter, stick with the phone.
- datadrivenangel 1y ago
  I differentiate between photos for memory and records, and Photos for Photography as an art form.
  - Auracle 1y ago
    I get what you’re saying, but I was a wedding photographer for ten years and that’s a job where ideally you’re doing both. That carried over to my personal life. Not that I don’t ever take snapshots - I do - but instead of just taking a picture of your kid from eye level, you can get down on their level and wait until their head is turned so they’re shortlit from light from the window. Of course, in that job you also quickly learn that the moment trumps everything. A technically awful photo of a great genuine smile or someone falling in the lake or whatever is usually better than an incredibly composed and lit photo of a person just sitting there…usually.
- rainsford 1y ago
  I sort of agree, but I also think there is lot that goes into taking interesting photos as an art beyond the technical capabilities of the camera you are using. Certainly a good camera can produce a better end product and can enable dimensions of creative freedom that's more difficult with a smartphone. But the process of picking an interesting subject, figuring out the angle and composition of the frame, finding the right light and time of day, etc, are all independent of the camera you're using and something you can explore with just the smartphone you already have in your pocket.
- 1659447091 1y ago
  > are you interested in photography or do you just want to have photographs? If it's the former, take the time to understand not only your gear but also light and image processing (whether digital or film). If it's the latter, and you are a stickler for pixels get a digital camera, if not stick with the phone. I'm interested in photography, but I won't buy a digital camera. My last film camera was a Minolta 700si (in the 90's) and a camera bag full of lens and flashes and other gadgets (filters shades etc), but was a far cry from the $10k professional camera with professional studio film processing. If you understand your gear, light, and how the images are going to be output (film or digital processing) you can get great images from whatever you are woking with. Photography vs Photographs isn't about how many pixels a camera has or other limitations of a camera. It's what you do with it. Back in the day I preferred black & white film because I could control the entire processing cycle (I wasn't very good at color processing when the local camera shop could do it faster and better). Now I like the challenge of Photography with the limitations of a phone. Does that make it not "real" Photography? or not a real interest in Photography? To me that where the difference is for "photography", a phone and dedicated digital camera are still digital. They are still processed and captured with the same medium, so learn it and understand it. One might have greater ability to capture more light and thus not need the same amount of processing or setup, but it's still processed and produced from digital pixels. Both allow for any amount of post processing, but you have to know how to shoot with the device especially if there are more light capture limitations like a phone. If you just want photographs, put either in auto mode and you get what you get. Paying more for a dedicated camera just makes it easier to do, that doesn't make it "photography" over a more physically limited but still digital, phone camera.
crinkly 1y ago
100% agree. I went on holiday at the start of this year and took my iPhone 15 Pro with me. I bought a mirrorless camera and went back because I was that disappointed with it. No joke. I regret using a phone for most of my family photos for the last 10-15 years and should have just used my old D3100 instead.
- throwawaybob420 1y ago
  It’s really a night a day difference once you spend just a little amount of time learning your camera. I always show people the difference in quality with two photos of my wife and kids during Fourth of July. One shot is with my iphone15, the other with my Fujifilm xt5. It’s such a stark difference
  - Auracle 1y ago
    Do you show them on a monitor or large prints or on your phone? I’ve long thought the main “issue” with people not realizing the difference is that they’re just looking at photos on their phones, where the images are so small it’s harder to appreciate the difference. I rarely try to take photos apart from snapshots with my phone because I’ll invariably be really disappointed when I view them on my monitor.
    - throwawaybob420 1y ago
      Nah I do it on my phone, angle is slightly different but everything just looks much better when taken with a proper camera
- mirsadm 1y ago
  I think the processing is getting worse. I look at photos I took with my Nexus 6P and they look much nicer than my Pixel 7/9Pro photos. At some point everybody decided that the most important thing about photos is preserving as much dynamic range and having no noise. This makes the photos look fake and unpleasant.
  - 1y ago
dale_glass 1y ago
There's always micro four thirds. I think it's a bit of an underappreciated format, really. It can have really compact cameras, and also they tend to have quite a lot of fancy tech in them.
- piva00 1y ago
  Mirrorless APS-C platforms pushed micro 4/3 out, similar footprint with APS-C sensors is hard to beat.
  - dale_glass 1y ago
    True, but I think micro 4/3 still can be a good deal smaller. It's just that a fair amount of the cameras didn't make good use of that.
    - Retr0id 1y ago
      There are also great deals on used micro 4/3 lenses
    - necovek 1y ago
      If one compares body size of early Sony APS-C cameras (NEX-5, a5100, even a6000), to the newer models (a6400, to ignore OIS models), the difference is staggering. Size is approaching full frame models like 7M2. But yes, lens is where it baloons further, yet good all-purpose zooms are chunky for APS-C too. I sometimes carry multiple cheaper primes on several bodies because that's easier to pack. So really, body sizes have grown due to processing and cooling needs (and in-camera OIS), but lenses still bring more heft (even with FF: look at the size of A7C series).
  - tormeh 1y ago
    An APS-C lens is just going to be bigger than an M43 lens. That means you can carry more lenses for an M43 camera. I have an Olympus/OM camera plus three lenses and charger, and it all fits in my flight carry-on luggage together with a laptop, underwear, and an extra set of clothes. APS-C and full-frame are cool, but they're annoying to carry around. For travel, nothing beats M43.
markhalonen 1y ago
I've had passer-bys take group photos with a real camera, no problem. What issues do you run into?
- FredPret 1y ago
  "Which button do I press" comes up every time; other times it's focus or zoom level that's out. On the iPhone, ~everyone on the planet instinctively knows how to do it.
  - deathanatos 1y ago
    I usually just tell people. > "Which button do I press" The Big One. > focus It's automatic. (If I'm handing a stranger my camera.) > zoom level This is maybe the hardest one, I guess, … but I do think most people have seen enough TV cop dramas to instinctively know. Or, they can just take the photo at the zoom I've handed them, and it won't be a big deal. Walking forward a few steps is also like zooming.
    - necovek 1y ago
      Agreed: I usually compose a shot with everybody but me in it, stand until a passer-by walks nearby so they'd end up in roughly the same spot. It's not the same and composition is usually off, but they are passable for what I want them to be (full family photos, usually). Sometimes you get a stranger looking through a viewfinder and crouching and you know you've got yourself another hobbyist (or pro) as well :) Those compositions usually are better too!
      - deathanatos 1y ago
        > Sometimes you get a stranger looking through a viewfinder This happened the last time I gave my camera to someone and I was smacking myself, as I'd put the camera into "LCD screen is viewfinder mode", since then it is closer to a phone for most people. And I'd found someone who knew what a viewfinder was! Of course, it's just black. (The mirror being in the way.)
PaulHoule 1y ago
I put a 90mm prime [1] on my Sony, set it to aperture priority, put the strap over someone's head and deputize them to get headshots ("frame it up with the viewfinder and push the button") and they do OK so long as the light is predictable. I wish I could tell the auto mode to let the ISO go higher than it will because I do noise reduction in developing such that there is no real quality loss at 6400. [1] takes lovely portraits and no focus to deal with
- FredPret 1y ago
  I love the idea of that 90mm prime. But usually when I have passers-by take photos, the context is that we are posing in front of a church in Europe or something, and space can be limited. I can't very well ask people to take a photo and but first to take 20 paces back and then do a crouch! My wife wants to see our shoes as well as the church spires in the same photo. Maybe a 35mm or even 28mm would work well in our case.
  - PaulHoule 1y ago
    Definitely thinking of getting another prime but a ‘normal’ one with autofocus doesn’t really do anything I can’t with my zooms, I like 7artisans primes and might get one that is crazy wide but those are manual focus and take more skill —- I was so happy to get home and see I nailed this one https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114042752203552070 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114042752203552070
    - FredPret 1y ago
      I find that photos from a prime look better in some undefinable way. Maybe it's because there's more light coming through, or maybe it's just easier for them to make a prime with great optics than a zoom with great optics. I shoot on manual with auto-ISO straight to JPG (I don't have time for RAW editing), so my prime photos tend to have lower ISO's and I end up with a faster shutter.
      - scottapotamas 1y ago
eddd-ddde 1y ago
Curious what camera model you have. I've been meaning to get into photography and I'm looking for a decent starter camera.
- FredPret 1y ago
  I bought a Canon RP which came with a 24-105mm zoom. I think it was CAD 1000 a couple of years ago, but it looks like that has inflated to around double now. I went with the recommendation of Ken Rockwell who is both experienced and opinionated, and said to buy that one at the time. https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm He was right! - small, especially if you put a 50mm prime lens on it (which costs ~ CAD 150 by the way) - light - full frame sensor (fundamentally better photo quality, but need bigger lenses to zoom) - battery life is OK but not great. You can easily get through a full day of touristing with one spare battery though.
  - dnisbet 1y ago
    I have an RP and it's great, but I still reach for my M50 slightly more often, being a fair bit smaller with the 22mm ef-m on it and maybe more familiarity with it by me.
- nop_slide 1y ago
  Get a Fuji
  - throwawaybob420 1y ago
    Can’t go wrong with Fuji. It’s fucking expensive now though
- _tik_ 1y ago
  It depends on your budget and interests. In terms of sensor size, Micro Four Thirds (from Olympus and Panasonic) is generally the most affordable, but it comes with a smaller sensor. APS-C offers a middle ground, while Full Frame is the most popular and typically delivers the best image quality. Personally, I use Sony APS-C the most because of its smaller size, lighter weight, and more affordable lenses. Among APS-C systems, Sony and Fuji offer the widest lens selection. Fuji gear tends to be overpriced now, but it does have a stylish look. Micro Four Thirds lenses are usually cheaper and more lightweight. If you're shooting fast-moving subjects like birds or Formula 1 racing, Canon and Nikon are the most popular choices. They offer a wide range high performance lenses designed for demanding situations.
nomel 1y ago
Has the HDR workflow improved? I'm not talking about the ugly tone mapping, I mean proper bit-preserving HDR, out of the camera. All the displays I own are HDR, and something like a picture of a sunset, or even landscape, is so much better on my phone than my older Canon DSLR.
- kridsdale1 1y ago
  2025 Lightroom and Photoshop have a vastly better HDR workflow for working with RAW and exporting to AVIF or JPEG with embedded HDR luminance map that shows up correctly on iOS or in Chrome on MacOS with the display set to HDR. I don’t know about Android or windows. I have re-exported files that I took in 2007 with the Nikon D7 that I kept the raw files for. They are vastly improved with modern processing (and noise reduction) vs what I exported from the same negative back then. The bit depth was always high enough.
rainsford 1y ago
I agree with your iPhone camera advantages, but to that list I'd add that I'm already going to buy an iPhone, which means any comparison of value for the price is effectively between the price of a camera (which for even an entry-level mirrorless isn't exactly cheap) and literally zero dollars. You could argue that the phone would be cheaper without the nice camera to make for a fairer comparison, but such a product doesn't really exist.
- snicky 1y ago
  This applies only if you assume that you are not willing to spend more on a phone with a better camera and a lot of people do. I have friends who decided to buy an iPhone over way cheaper Android phones in the past, because "the iPhone camera was so much better". Funny enough, the differences were obviously negligible when compared with any actual camera.
  - snackernews 1y ago
    And upgrade frequency. You might give your old iPhone another year or two if the phone isn’t your limiting factor for photo quality.
- loeg 1y ago
  $200 for iphone pro vs regular (I only got Pro for the camera). But otherwise, yeah.
master_crab 1y ago
There’s a saying in the photography world: ”The best camera is the one you have on you”
- throw0101d 1y ago
  > ”The best camera is the one you have on you” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Jarvis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Jarvis
- dingaling 1y ago
  Which only holds true if you don't care much about the result. I've seen people trying to take photos at an airshow using their phone camera. A small black dot in the centre of frame, rendered as an Impressionist oil smudge by post-processing. Was that worth even trying? The best camera+lens combo is the one suited to the scene. Anything else isn't.
  - rafram 1y ago
    Not really, because the scene you want to capture is there at that moment and probably wouldn’t be there anymore if you went back to the apartment/hotel/camera store and swapped out for a technically better kit. That’s what the “best camera” saying is about.
  - amarshall 1y ago
    The point is: who cares what the “best” camera is if one doesn’t have it with them to take a photo of the fleeting moment anyway?
    - watwut 1y ago
      But if you snap that pic, but never use it for anything because it looks slightly weird ... then you as well might not have the camera.
      - bombcar 1y ago
        I always take a few snaps at events like that - not to capture the picture, but to capture the moment in my “digital memory” - if I’m on the ball, I later get some of the “official photos” and add those; but the phone camera snaps remind me that I was there, which turns out to be surprisingly useful.
scosman 1y ago
Also: - your entry level mirrorless is ~$300 of camera HW vs ~$80 of camera HW on the phone (very very rough estimate of sensor+lens BOM) - the mirrorless doesn't have any of the physical constraints of being tiny and fitting in a pocket, which directly impact image quality iPhones cameras are really amazing given the constraints.
- jpalawaga 1y ago
  i mean, he didn't say that the iphone camera was bad, just that it doesn't stand up to dedicated gear (which it doesn't, but a lot of people will tell you, especially apple's "shot on iphone" marketing campaign, that it will).
- grapesodaaaaa 1y ago
  I would add that part of the reason it’s ~$80 of hardware is absolutely economies of scale. It’s a lot easier to pump out quality parts for less money when you order 10 million of them and potentially helped finance a factory to build them.
- flkiwi 1y ago
  Phone cameras don't come close to any of my "real" cameras with my decades of experience shooting and composing ... but phone cameras absolutely obliterate anything I was shooting with a film camera as a beginner back when film was a thing. I have also arguably learned far more about photography with my phone, because of its portability and zero cost experimentation, than I have with ANY "real" camera. But, perhaps most importantly, along the lines of what others have noted: you know, my phone camera may not be as good, but I have zero complaints about the impromptu photos of my kid growing up that I could never have caught with anything else.
saaspirant 1y ago
Which camera do you have?
- FredPret 1y ago
  Canon RP https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725774
lambdasquirrel 1y ago
> but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in And so, the reasons why Fuji and point-and-shoots are popular. Lots of “serious” photography enthusiasts don’t really get this and call Fujis “hype” cameras but it’s like bashing Wordpress because most people don’t want to learn AWS to post cat pics. > The iPhone is always in my pocket Rationale for both point-and-shoots as well as Leica (also hated by lots of serious camera people ;)).
- SchemaLoad 1y ago
  They were popular. Are they still? Just observationally there are two groups left, phone users, and people with very expensive complex setups. Everyone who would have bought those simple cameras moved on to using phones.
  - lambdasquirrel 1y ago
    By the numbers, the casual cameras are having a quiet turnaround. Fuji and Ricoh can hardly keep their X100 and GR cameras stocked. Fuji added extra production capacity in China because it exceeded their expectations. I brought them up specifically because the serious camera people rag on them for being hype cameras, but I see plenty of everyday people with them. Go to places like the High Line in NY and there’s folks with A6700s and various X-mount cameras in addition to the serious full-frame mounts. Leica is doing financially well because of their Q series. I think five years ago you could say it was just two groups, but by the numbers and by what I see in the streets, the point and shoots have been prematurely declared dead. Fuji and Sony are meanwhile figuring out how to sell APS-C to a more casual crowd, after the other old players effectively left that market.
    - skhr0680 1y ago
      I'm a semi-retired pro and acting like Fujifilm are "hype" is really ignorant. They are a smart company who have a long history of making great pro-grade cameras and lenses.
  - ileonichwiesz 1y ago
SchemaLoad 1y ago
I get sent a lot of photos of me cosplaying at conventions, and something I've noticed is that the phone photos are almost always nicer in general. The people who do photography as a hobby seem to always edit the photo too extreme and you get whack HDR type effects or they just aren't as skilled at manually setting settings as the iphone auto mode. But, the dedicated camera photos are always massively higher resolution. You can zoom in on details and they look great, while phone photos seem to use AI upscailers and they look bad
- Espressosaurus 1y ago
  Wack HDR is usually the sign of a novice photographer, assuming it's not the phone (my experience is that phones go absolutely insane with the HDR and saturation). We all go through a period of abusing HDR and saturation, but we usually get over it.
al_borland 1y ago
Not only is the iPhone always in your pocket, but it’s easier to carry and deal with. I remember hearing a story from a well known photographer about a trip he took with a few others, including his wife. They woke up early to head out on a small boat in a lake or something. He was lugging all this gear and having to put a lot of focus into tuning the settings on his camera, he was pretty miserable. Meanwhile, his wife was enjoying morning with no baggage and snapping pics with her phone. She ended up having the best picture of the day, while actually enjoying herself, by not being bogged down by the gear. Dedicated cameras have their value, but it’s been decreasing for years, and requiring higher and higher levels of skill to make it worth it. Most people could improve their photos dramatically by learning about framing and light, while just using a phone. These things have a much bigger impact on the resulting photo. A professional with an iPhone will always take a better and more interesting picture than an amateur with a DSLR for this reason.
- kalaksi 1y ago
  Those sound like the 2 extremes, though. You don't have to take a lot of gear or tune a lot of settings manually with dedicated camera if you don't want to, but it's an option if you want to have more control or go for the ultimate quality.
wrboyce 1y ago
My 35mm SLR, which is older than me (and I’m pretty old!), takes better photos than my iPhone 16 Pro!
jiggawatts 1y ago
> Looking back at travel and family pictures, it has been very much worth it for me to have a dedicated camera. I got myself a Nikon D800 over a decade ago when they were first released, and left it in 14-bit RAW mode since then. Technically these are "SDR" photos, but the captured dynamic range is closer to 1000-nit HDR. For a decade, I had to crush these to fit into sRGB SDR JPGs, which is throwing away most of the goodness. A few months ago I took all of my 5-star pictures in Lightroom and used its new HDR processing mode to export them as 16-bit PNG files. I then turned those into a 2160p HDR video and played it on an OLED 75" television. It blew my tiny mind! The quality was simply jawdropping. It was like travelling back in time to all of those holidays and looking out through a window at reality itself. This is why I go on regular online rants about how frustrating it is that the only way to share the full output quality of a modern digital full-frame camera is by uploading a HDR "movie" of the pictures to YouTube.
WhyNotHugo 1y ago
iPhone's picture quality has degraded substantially in recent models. Photos with a newer model look cooler, but fake and unrealistic. There's so much post-processing that photos looks completely artificial. For example, take a photo of someone standing in front of a landscape. It looks like you took a photo on a green-screen and photoshopped the landscape behind the subject.
poulpy123 1y ago
> and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us Well, you don't need to teach photography to passerby, just to tell them to look there and push this button. It's not more complicated than on a phone, maybe even less. But it may look more intimidating to old a camera, it's true
- brianmcc 1y ago
  Then they half press the shutter button and achieve only a brief moment of auto focus :-D
brianmcc 1y ago
>> The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us This is why my Canon 80D sits and gathers dust. Too many family moments fluffed, vs my Android's basically 100% hit rate. Yes this is largely a skill issue on my part, which is sad, but modern phone photos are more than adequate these days.

aosaigh 1y ago

I think these are good points. It boils down to: are you interested in photography or do you just want to have photographs? If it's the former, get a camera. If it's the latter, stick with the phone.

datadrivenangel 1y ago
I differentiate between photos for memory and records, and Photos for Photography as an art form.
- Auracle 1y ago
  I get what you’re saying, but I was a wedding photographer for ten years and that’s a job where ideally you’re doing both. That carried over to my personal life. Not that I don’t ever take snapshots - I do - but instead of just taking a picture of your kid from eye level, you can get down on their level and wait until their head is turned so they’re shortlit from light from the window. Of course, in that job you also quickly learn that the moment trumps everything. A technically awful photo of a great genuine smile or someone falling in the lake or whatever is usually better than an incredibly composed and lit photo of a person just sitting there…usually.
rainsford 1y ago
I sort of agree, but I also think there is lot that goes into taking interesting photos as an art beyond the technical capabilities of the camera you are using. Certainly a good camera can produce a better end product and can enable dimensions of creative freedom that's more difficult with a smartphone. But the process of picking an interesting subject, figuring out the angle and composition of the frame, finding the right light and time of day, etc, are all independent of the camera you're using and something you can explore with just the smartphone you already have in your pocket.
1659447091 1y ago
> are you interested in photography or do you just want to have photographs? If it's the former, take the time to understand not only your gear but also light and image processing (whether digital or film). If it's the latter, and you are a stickler for pixels get a digital camera, if not stick with the phone. I'm interested in photography, but I won't buy a digital camera. My last film camera was a Minolta 700si (in the 90's) and a camera bag full of lens and flashes and other gadgets (filters shades etc), but was a far cry from the $10k professional camera with professional studio film processing. If you understand your gear, light, and how the images are going to be output (film or digital processing) you can get great images from whatever you are woking with. Photography vs Photographs isn't about how many pixels a camera has or other limitations of a camera. It's what you do with it. Back in the day I preferred black & white film because I could control the entire processing cycle (I wasn't very good at color processing when the local camera shop could do it faster and better). Now I like the challenge of Photography with the limitations of a phone. Does that make it not "real" Photography? or not a real interest in Photography? To me that where the difference is for "photography", a phone and dedicated digital camera are still digital. They are still processed and captured with the same medium, so learn it and understand it. One might have greater ability to capture more light and thus not need the same amount of processing or setup, but it's still processed and produced from digital pixels. Both allow for any amount of post processing, but you have to know how to shoot with the device especially if there are more light capture limitations like a phone. If you just want photographs, put either in auto mode and you get what you get. Paying more for a dedicated camera just makes it easier to do, that doesn't make it "photography" over a more physically limited but still digital, phone camera.

crinkly 1y ago

100% agree. I went on holiday at the start of this year and took my iPhone 15 Pro with me. I bought a mirrorless camera and went back because I was that disappointed with it. No joke. I regret using a phone for most of my family photos for the last 10-15 years and should have just used my old D3100 instead.

throwawaybob420 1y ago
It’s really a night a day difference once you spend just a little amount of time learning your camera. I always show people the difference in quality with two photos of my wife and kids during Fourth of July. One shot is with my iphone15, the other with my Fujifilm xt5. It’s such a stark difference
- Auracle 1y ago
  Do you show them on a monitor or large prints or on your phone? I’ve long thought the main “issue” with people not realizing the difference is that they’re just looking at photos on their phones, where the images are so small it’s harder to appreciate the difference. I rarely try to take photos apart from snapshots with my phone because I’ll invariably be really disappointed when I view them on my monitor.
  - throwawaybob420 1y ago
    Nah I do it on my phone, angle is slightly different but everything just looks much better when taken with a proper camera
mirsadm 1y ago
I think the processing is getting worse. I look at photos I took with my Nexus 6P and they look much nicer than my Pixel 7/9Pro photos. At some point everybody decided that the most important thing about photos is preserving as much dynamic range and having no noise. This makes the photos look fake and unpleasant.
- 1y ago

dale_glass 1y ago

There's always micro four thirds. I think it's a bit of an underappreciated format, really. It can have really compact cameras, and also they tend to have quite a lot of fancy tech in them.

piva00 1y ago
Mirrorless APS-C platforms pushed micro 4/3 out, similar footprint with APS-C sensors is hard to beat.
- dale_glass 1y ago
  True, but I think micro 4/3 still can be a good deal smaller. It's just that a fair amount of the cameras didn't make good use of that.
  - Retr0id 1y ago
    There are also great deals on used micro 4/3 lenses
  - necovek 1y ago
    If one compares body size of early Sony APS-C cameras (NEX-5, a5100, even a6000), to the newer models (a6400, to ignore OIS models), the difference is staggering. Size is approaching full frame models like 7M2. But yes, lens is where it baloons further, yet good all-purpose zooms are chunky for APS-C too. I sometimes carry multiple cheaper primes on several bodies because that's easier to pack. So really, body sizes have grown due to processing and cooling needs (and in-camera OIS), but lenses still bring more heft (even with FF: look at the size of A7C series).
- tormeh 1y ago
  An APS-C lens is just going to be bigger than an M43 lens. That means you can carry more lenses for an M43 camera. I have an Olympus/OM camera plus three lenses and charger, and it all fits in my flight carry-on luggage together with a laptop, underwear, and an extra set of clothes. APS-C and full-frame are cool, but they're annoying to carry around. For travel, nothing beats M43.

markhalonen 1y ago

I've had passer-bys take group photos with a real camera, no problem. What issues do you run into?

FredPret 1y ago
"Which button do I press" comes up every time; other times it's focus or zoom level that's out. On the iPhone, ~everyone on the planet instinctively knows how to do it.
- deathanatos 1y ago
  I usually just tell people. > "Which button do I press" The Big One. > focus It's automatic. (If I'm handing a stranger my camera.) > zoom level This is maybe the hardest one, I guess, … but I do think most people have seen enough TV cop dramas to instinctively know. Or, they can just take the photo at the zoom I've handed them, and it won't be a big deal. Walking forward a few steps is also like zooming.
  - necovek 1y ago
    Agreed: I usually compose a shot with everybody but me in it, stand until a passer-by walks nearby so they'd end up in roughly the same spot. It's not the same and composition is usually off, but they are passable for what I want them to be (full family photos, usually). Sometimes you get a stranger looking through a viewfinder and crouching and you know you've got yourself another hobbyist (or pro) as well :) Those compositions usually are better too!
    - deathanatos 1y ago
      > Sometimes you get a stranger looking through a viewfinder This happened the last time I gave my camera to someone and I was smacking myself, as I'd put the camera into "LCD screen is viewfinder mode", since then it is closer to a phone for most people. And I'd found someone who knew what a viewfinder was! Of course, it's just black. (The mirror being in the way.)

PaulHoule 1y ago

I put a 90mm prime [1] on my Sony, set it to aperture priority, put the strap over someone's head and deputize them to get headshots ("frame it up with the viewfinder and push the button") and they do OK so long as the light is predictable. I wish I could tell the auto mode to let the ISO go higher than it will because I do noise reduction in developing such that there is no real quality loss at 6400. [1] takes lovely portraits and no focus to deal with

FredPret 1y ago
I love the idea of that 90mm prime. But usually when I have passers-by take photos, the context is that we are posing in front of a church in Europe or something, and space can be limited. I can't very well ask people to take a photo and but first to take 20 paces back and then do a crouch! My wife wants to see our shoes as well as the church spires in the same photo. Maybe a 35mm or even 28mm would work well in our case.
- PaulHoule 1y ago
  Definitely thinking of getting another prime but a ‘normal’ one with autofocus doesn’t really do anything I can’t with my zooms, I like 7artisans primes and might get one that is crazy wide but those are manual focus and take more skill —- I was so happy to get home and see I nailed this one https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114042752203552070 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114042752203552070
  - FredPret 1y ago
    I find that photos from a prime look better in some undefinable way. Maybe it's because there's more light coming through, or maybe it's just easier for them to make a prime with great optics than a zoom with great optics. I shoot on manual with auto-ISO straight to JPG (I don't have time for RAW editing), so my prime photos tend to have lower ISO's and I end up with a faster shutter.
    - scottapotamas 1y ago

eddd-ddde 1y ago

Curious what camera model you have. I've been meaning to get into photography and I'm looking for a decent starter camera.

FredPret 1y ago
I bought a Canon RP which came with a 24-105mm zoom. I think it was CAD 1000 a couple of years ago, but it looks like that has inflated to around double now. I went with the recommendation of Ken Rockwell who is both experienced and opinionated, and said to buy that one at the time. https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm He was right! - small, especially if you put a 50mm prime lens on it (which costs ~ CAD 150 by the way) - light - full frame sensor (fundamentally better photo quality, but need bigger lenses to zoom) - battery life is OK but not great. You can easily get through a full day of touristing with one spare battery though.
- dnisbet 1y ago
  I have an RP and it's great, but I still reach for my M50 slightly more often, being a fair bit smaller with the 22mm ef-m on it and maybe more familiarity with it by me.
nop_slide 1y ago
Get a Fuji
- throwawaybob420 1y ago
  Can’t go wrong with Fuji. It’s fucking expensive now though
_tik_ 1y ago
It depends on your budget and interests. In terms of sensor size, Micro Four Thirds (from Olympus and Panasonic) is generally the most affordable, but it comes with a smaller sensor. APS-C offers a middle ground, while Full Frame is the most popular and typically delivers the best image quality. Personally, I use Sony APS-C the most because of its smaller size, lighter weight, and more affordable lenses. Among APS-C systems, Sony and Fuji offer the widest lens selection. Fuji gear tends to be overpriced now, but it does have a stylish look. Micro Four Thirds lenses are usually cheaper and more lightweight. If you're shooting fast-moving subjects like birds or Formula 1 racing, Canon and Nikon are the most popular choices. They offer a wide range high performance lenses designed for demanding situations.

nomel 1y ago

Has the HDR workflow improved? I'm not talking about the ugly tone mapping, I mean proper bit-preserving HDR, out of the camera. All the displays I own are HDR, and something like a picture of a sunset, or even landscape, is so much better on my phone than my older Canon DSLR.

kridsdale1 1y ago
2025 Lightroom and Photoshop have a vastly better HDR workflow for working with RAW and exporting to AVIF or JPEG with embedded HDR luminance map that shows up correctly on iOS or in Chrome on MacOS with the display set to HDR. I don’t know about Android or windows. I have re-exported files that I took in 2007 with the Nikon D7 that I kept the raw files for. They are vastly improved with modern processing (and noise reduction) vs what I exported from the same negative back then. The bit depth was always high enough.

rainsford 1y ago

I agree with your iPhone camera advantages, but to that list I'd add that I'm already going to buy an iPhone, which means any comparison of value for the price is effectively between the price of a camera (which for even an entry-level mirrorless isn't exactly cheap) and literally zero dollars. You could argue that the phone would be cheaper without the nice camera to make for a fairer comparison, but such a product doesn't really exist.

snicky 1y ago
This applies only if you assume that you are not willing to spend more on a phone with a better camera and a lot of people do. I have friends who decided to buy an iPhone over way cheaper Android phones in the past, because "the iPhone camera was so much better". Funny enough, the differences were obviously negligible when compared with any actual camera.
- snackernews 1y ago
  And upgrade frequency. You might give your old iPhone another year or two if the phone isn’t your limiting factor for photo quality.
loeg 1y ago
$200 for iphone pro vs regular (I only got Pro for the camera). But otherwise, yeah.

master_crab 1y ago

There’s a saying in the photography world: ”The best camera is the one you have on you”

throw0101d 1y ago
> ”The best camera is the one you have on you” — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Jarvis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Jarvis
dingaling 1y ago
Which only holds true if you don't care much about the result. I've seen people trying to take photos at an airshow using their phone camera. A small black dot in the centre of frame, rendered as an Impressionist oil smudge by post-processing. Was that worth even trying? The best camera+lens combo is the one suited to the scene. Anything else isn't.
- rafram 1y ago
  Not really, because the scene you want to capture is there at that moment and probably wouldn’t be there anymore if you went back to the apartment/hotel/camera store and swapped out for a technically better kit. That’s what the “best camera” saying is about.
- amarshall 1y ago
  The point is: who cares what the “best” camera is if one doesn’t have it with them to take a photo of the fleeting moment anyway?
  - watwut 1y ago
    But if you snap that pic, but never use it for anything because it looks slightly weird ... then you as well might not have the camera.
    - bombcar 1y ago
      I always take a few snaps at events like that - not to capture the picture, but to capture the moment in my “digital memory” - if I’m on the ball, I later get some of the “official photos” and add those; but the phone camera snaps remind me that I was there, which turns out to be surprisingly useful.

scosman 1y ago

Also: - your entry level mirrorless is ~$300 of camera HW vs ~$80 of camera HW on the phone (very very rough estimate of sensor+lens BOM) - the mirrorless doesn't have any of the physical constraints of being tiny and fitting in a pocket, which directly impact image quality iPhones cameras are really amazing given the constraints.

jpalawaga 1y ago
i mean, he didn't say that the iphone camera was bad, just that it doesn't stand up to dedicated gear (which it doesn't, but a lot of people will tell you, especially apple's "shot on iphone" marketing campaign, that it will).
grapesodaaaaa 1y ago
I would add that part of the reason it’s ~$80 of hardware is absolutely economies of scale. It’s a lot easier to pump out quality parts for less money when you order 10 million of them and potentially helped finance a factory to build them.
flkiwi 1y ago
Phone cameras don't come close to any of my "real" cameras with my decades of experience shooting and composing ... but phone cameras absolutely obliterate anything I was shooting with a film camera as a beginner back when film was a thing. I have also arguably learned far more about photography with my phone, because of its portability and zero cost experimentation, than I have with ANY "real" camera. But, perhaps most importantly, along the lines of what others have noted: you know, my phone camera may not be as good, but I have zero complaints about the impromptu photos of my kid growing up that I could never have caught with anything else.

saaspirant 1y ago

Which camera do you have?

FredPret 1y ago
Canon RP https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44725774

lambdasquirrel 1y ago

> but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in And so, the reasons why Fuji and point-and-shoots are popular. Lots of “serious” photography enthusiasts don’t really get this and call Fujis “hype” cameras but it’s like bashing Wordpress because most people don’t want to learn AWS to post cat pics. > The iPhone is always in my pocket Rationale for both point-and-shoots as well as Leica (also hated by lots of serious camera people ;)).

SchemaLoad 1y ago
They were popular. Are they still? Just observationally there are two groups left, phone users, and people with very expensive complex setups. Everyone who would have bought those simple cameras moved on to using phones.
- lambdasquirrel 1y ago
  By the numbers, the casual cameras are having a quiet turnaround. Fuji and Ricoh can hardly keep their X100 and GR cameras stocked. Fuji added extra production capacity in China because it exceeded their expectations. I brought them up specifically because the serious camera people rag on them for being hype cameras, but I see plenty of everyday people with them. Go to places like the High Line in NY and there’s folks with A6700s and various X-mount cameras in addition to the serious full-frame mounts. Leica is doing financially well because of their Q series. I think five years ago you could say it was just two groups, but by the numbers and by what I see in the streets, the point and shoots have been prematurely declared dead. Fuji and Sony are meanwhile figuring out how to sell APS-C to a more casual crowd, after the other old players effectively left that market.
  - skhr0680 1y ago
    I'm a semi-retired pro and acting like Fujifilm are "hype" is really ignorant. They are a smart company who have a long history of making great pro-grade cameras and lenses.
- ileonichwiesz 1y ago

SchemaLoad 1y ago

I get sent a lot of photos of me cosplaying at conventions, and something I've noticed is that the phone photos are almost always nicer in general. The people who do photography as a hobby seem to always edit the photo too extreme and you get whack HDR type effects or they just aren't as skilled at manually setting settings as the iphone auto mode. But, the dedicated camera photos are always massively higher resolution. You can zoom in on details and they look great, while phone photos seem to use AI upscailers and they look bad

Espressosaurus 1y ago
Wack HDR is usually the sign of a novice photographer, assuming it's not the phone (my experience is that phones go absolutely insane with the HDR and saturation). We all go through a period of abusing HDR and saturation, but we usually get over it.

al_borland 1y ago

Not only is the iPhone always in your pocket, but it’s easier to carry and deal with. I remember hearing a story from a well known photographer about a trip he took with a few others, including his wife. They woke up early to head out on a small boat in a lake or something. He was lugging all this gear and having to put a lot of focus into tuning the settings on his camera, he was pretty miserable. Meanwhile, his wife was enjoying morning with no baggage and snapping pics with her phone. She ended up having the best picture of the day, while actually enjoying herself, by not being bogged down by the gear. Dedicated cameras have their value, but it’s been decreasing for years, and requiring higher and higher levels of skill to make it worth it. Most people could improve their photos dramatically by learning about framing and light, while just using a phone. These things have a much bigger impact on the resulting photo. A professional with an iPhone will always take a better and more interesting picture than an amateur with a DSLR for this reason.

kalaksi 1y ago
Those sound like the 2 extremes, though. You don't have to take a lot of gear or tune a lot of settings manually with dedicated camera if you don't want to, but it's an option if you want to have more control or go for the ultimate quality.

wrboyce 1y ago

My 35mm SLR, which is older than me (and I’m pretty old!), takes better photos than my iPhone 16 Pro!

jiggawatts 1y ago

> Looking back at travel and family pictures, it has been very much worth it for me to have a dedicated camera. I got myself a Nikon D800 over a decade ago when they were first released, and left it in 14-bit RAW mode since then. Technically these are "SDR" photos, but the captured dynamic range is closer to 1000-nit HDR. For a decade, I had to crush these to fit into sRGB SDR JPGs, which is throwing away most of the goodness. A few months ago I took all of my 5-star pictures in Lightroom and used its new HDR processing mode to export them as 16-bit PNG files. I then turned those into a 2160p HDR video and played it on an OLED 75" television. It blew my tiny mind! The quality was simply jawdropping. It was like travelling back in time to all of those holidays and looking out through a window at reality itself. This is why I go on regular online rants about how frustrating it is that the only way to share the full output quality of a modern digital full-frame camera is by uploading a HDR "movie" of the pictures to YouTube.

WhyNotHugo 1y ago

iPhone's picture quality has degraded substantially in recent models. Photos with a newer model look cooler, but fake and unrealistic. There's so much post-processing that photos looks completely artificial. For example, take a photo of someone standing in front of a landscape. It looks like you took a photo on a green-screen and photoshopped the landscape behind the subject.

poulpy123 1y ago

> and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us Well, you don't need to teach photography to passerby, just to tell them to look there and push this button. It's not more complicated than on a phone, maybe even less. But it may look more intimidating to old a camera, it's true

brianmcc 1y ago
Then they half press the shutter button and achieve only a brief moment of auto focus :-D

brianmcc 1y ago

>> The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us This is why my Canon 80D sits and gathers dust. Too many family moments fluffed, vs my Android's basically 100% hit rate. Yes this is largely a skill issue on my part, which is sad, but modern phone photos are more than adequate these days.