Smartphones have long stopped on the heels of professional cameras - they are already trying to grab the scruff of their neck and throw them out of the market! Yes! Now smartphones have become so advanced in terms of photography that it gets a little scary for DSLR cameras. But on the other hand, is it worth it to be afraid of? Let's remember a little history.
Photographers used to carry around bulky boxes called a pinhole camera. You will say that this is completely antiquity! But after all, it was and then people could not imagine that once a piece of plastic could produce a high-quality picture. There was no talk of reporting: in order to take one photograph, one had to spend a lot of time on exposure. Some enthusiasts still shoot in large format, where a film plate serves as a photosensitive material. But this is still a different level than in the 19th century.
Film cameras introduced efficiency into photographic activities. It was then that such a genre as a photo essay appeared, the standard of which still serves as photographs of Cartier-Bresson. But these are still backward technologies today. It became possible to develop the film only in large cities or at home, but if you do it yourself, then chemical reagents will cost a lot of money. You can safely admit that the film is a thing of the past. Smartphones give a better picture than a film even at night. It should already be recognized.
Take a look at the dynamic range! All you need without overexposure!
But what if I say that smartphones began to shoot at the level of SLR digital cameras? The statement is quite harsh, but look at the market: literally in the last year, top-end smartphones have made a powerful leap in terms of photos.
Matrix sizes are already equated to compact class cameras. By the way, it should also be recognized that the digital dust boxes also moved away from the market, as they combined in parameters with the same smartphones of a budget class.
Imagine the near future: on a report or on a trip, you take with you only a smartphone and nothing more. Well, the maximum is still a powerbank to it. And that’s all. There are five lenses in your device, from full-scale to telephoto, the ability to take panoramas. Rate of fire 25 frames per second. Artificial blurring of the background is so perfect that it cannot be distinguished from the portrait lens of a SLR camera. The fastest shutter speed 1/24000 sec! Yes, what is the future, if these are the characteristics of the Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone, which is far from a novelty, I'm not talking about the iPhone 11 Pro! And here it becomes really scary...
An old Canon 350D is gathering dust in my closet at home, which has only 8 megapixels per huge matrix compared to a smartphone. I have not compared them yet, but my hands are itching to put the smartphone and the old DSLR in the same conditions - handheld shooting at night in low light. Both will do well in the afternoon, although I have doubts about shooting in the jpeg 350D - the old man will only have full-fledged RAWs, and it can’t good process jpeg inside the camera. With this, terrible chromatic aberrations and noises will come out even at low ISO. Comparison will show! I will definitely do it!
At the flea market, prices for very still modern full-frame SLR cameras have become very low. A Canon 6d with mileage can already be bought for $500, and the noisy and slow Canon 5d brick costs no one the price of a budget smartphone. The prices for lenses still hold, but all the same, all the bulky equipment becomes only more accessible, which can not be said about the top-end smartphones with powerful cameras.
There is another change in photography tools. Yes, there is a small merit of marketing, but it is supported by the results. SLR cameras with telephoto lenses will not disappear anywhere (as well as large-format cameras) - the physicist has not yet managed to deceive anyone (although there are doubts), they will only shoot a highly specialized circle of photographers (wildlife, sports, astrophotography, studio shooting). And everything about reporting, street, landscape, portrait and conceptual photo, it has long been able to replace even not the most top-end smartphone.
And I think that you should not be afraid of this change. You will always have a choice: be mobile, operational, free, or carry around a camera obscura for five frames.
The main result! And if you are an excellent reporting person shooting on a smartphone, then no one will condemn you, just as they will not condemn the brilliant photographer Alexander Gronsky, who shoots city landscapes in large format.
All photos were taken with hands (except for the first frame - it was taken from a tripod) on the Samsung Galaxy S10.
I have not tried RAW yet. It will be more interesting later when I carry out comparative tests.
