The Wall Street Journal:
Phone cameras have made photography everyone’s hobby. But even owners of the fanciest smartphones would recognize the many genres of disappointing phone-ography: The blurry runaway toddler. The lifeless landscape. The grainy candlelit dinner. The ghoulish flash portrait.
We need to save personal tech’s most endangered species, the stand-alone camera.
There’s no doubt that camera phones in general and the iPhone in particular are really good cameras – for phones. And while we’ve all seen or taken great shots with our iPhones, it’s definitely a “jack of all trades, master of none”.
A good camera provides a wider range of possibilities – from zoom to control over depth of field to capturing low light and a higher dynamic range. If you’re not satisfied with the shots coming out of your iPhone, I’d encourage you to learn more about photography in general by taking a class or reading books and web sites on it but don’t neglect the thing that actually takes the shot – the camera itself.
As an example, over the weekend, I went to a local track to take pics of one of my favourite subjects – motorcycles. Of the 15 shots, only two would have been possible with the iPhone.
This is a mostly nonsense argument, but understandable for those who dropped big money on cameras they now are questioning.
The most important photos in history were often blurry (at best). Technical ability (of the camera or photographer) means nothing in itself. If you’re an amateur photographer (like 99.999% of us), none of the traditional rules or goals apply. There’s only your personal goals (which are subjective, unlike what the article claims).
Statistically, a “real” camera is now a phone and a “real” photographer is someone who makes snapshots.
The article features photos that attempt to prove a point, but end up proving another point: they’re not interesting.
What separates photographers now is the ability to solve a creative problem. Buying stuff is not exactly creative. In fact, it’s the least creative way to solve your problems. For an art form such as photography, we should be consulting our brains first and our wallets last.
I wrote about a book this, so if you’re still interested, here’s the plug: A Lesser Photographer (available through Craft & Vision).
Only someone who has no idea what good photos are could make this argument. Good photography requires more than what phones offer. You can’t make a photo that requires a telephoto lens with a phone. And if you don’t see the value of that, well, that makes my point.
It is a good point that many people never got beyond the point-and-shoot cameras of bygone days with fixed wide angle lenses. And phones blow those cameras away in terms of quality and convenience.
But not everyone wants to settle for what is available to the masses. And that is what Shawn’s point was.
I find it a perfectly fine argument. I have a DSLR, and when I am going to go somewhere that I may potentially get some good photos I make a choice about whether or not to bring the camera. I can go somewhere and shoot, or I can go somewhere and experience the thing I’d otherwise be shooting, but I find if I try to do both I do neither very well. So I either bring the camera or don’t, and if I bring the camera it’s because the activity I’m preparing to enjoy is the shooting and not the experience being shot.
I sometimes wish it were not that way, that I could rely on my phone to be a reasonable stand-in, but I can’t. It very much IS a better stand-in than we’ve had in the past.
I think what you mean is that there is “photography,” which is its own activity, and there is “snapshots,” which are a record of some other activity. The phone (or similarly convenient and light camera) is sufficient for the latter. But for the former you’ll want a real camera.
A good camera provides a wider range of possibilities – from zoom to
control over depth of field to capturing low light and a higher dynamic
range.
Yeah, but before the phone camera, people simply didn’t take pictures very often.
Depth of field? Only Photographers-with-a-capital-P care about that*.
Zoom? Yeah, it’s nice if you’re deeply interested in something far away.
But again, the people using their phone to take normal pictures aren’t, and are not going to carry around a standalone camera Just In Case; only Photographers are.
(Remember, also, that for a very long time most consumer film cameras did not have any zoom capability, and many didn’t even have replaceable lenses either.)
(* I know whereof I speak; you should see the shelves of film cameras I have at home, from 35mm rangefinders to medium format in every form factor from folding to TLR to box SLR to 35mm-shaped-SLR to a Speed Graphic.
But Photographers are exceptions, not the norm.
For most people the alternative is a disposable or the equivalent of an old 110 stick camera; an iPhone is an immense improvement, not a step back.)
(And, full disclosure: I haven’t shot a single piece of film in years, because film is stupid and expensive.
I have several prosumer-ish DSLrs and actually only ever use my iPhone and my mini-4/3 mirrorless.
I have better things to do than carry around pounds of lenses to take a shot I can do just as well on my Pen.)
To clarify, I was mostly responding to the headline, and to the WSJ article’s content.
For almost everyone, “your phone” is the only camera you need, because it does what is desired of it; it records an interesting moment, and does it well.
Enthusiasts are, again, exceptions, and their market won’t be going away, just changing a little.
(It’s not like photojournalism or nature photography or landscape work or serious portraiture is going away, either, or can be done with phone cameras.)
There is also ergonomics. I like my phones to be naked, no case. Holding a good solid camera, framing using a viewfinder instead of an LCD screen, I find it more comfortable and more stable to use my DSLR than to use my iPhone. I find the whole experience more pleasurable.
First line of the article:
“Smartphone-makers, touting photos of models frolicking in the sun, have
been on a campaign to convince us they’ve got the only camera we need.”
When has this ever been true? Certainly they tout the photographic utility of their phones as a selling point and have engaged in a megapixel arms race to claim some immaterial numerical superiority, but even the most clueless phone maker knows that they are not competing against camera makers. Camera makers and sellers, however, ARE competing against phones.
This seems to be a classic “jobs to be done” scenario with phones fulfilling almost all of the diy photographic chores anymore.
While I don’t agree with many things the author at the WSJ said and showed in terms of examples, I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis Shawn.
I love always having a camera with me that is as capable as what the iPhone 6 has to offer. Two of my favourite shots—an possibly two of my best—have been made with the iPhone 4S (this one and this one).
Last year, though, I decided that I wanted more and bought into Fujifilm’s mirroless system. It was a great decision and even though I mostly use one of the lenses I have (a 35 mm equiv. prime), I happily carry my camera around almost everywhere I go.
The creative freedom I gain from having a large sensor and good optics is well worth it and I while I will never be anything but an amateur, the enjoyment I get from photography with my Fujifilm is hard to quantify.
“The creative freedom I gain from having a large sensor and good optics is well worth it and I while I will never be anything but an amateur, the enjoyment I get from photography with my Fujifilm is hard to quantify.”
The return of the argument against “speeds and feeds,” somewhat? It’s enjoyable to engage in photography with more sophisticated tools. A lot of comments on the WSJ article say you can achieve the effects he’s talking about with apps…while that may be true, I don’t think that’s as satisfying as capturing better images on the sensor to begin with.
I guess so.
To a certain degree my choice of camera was also a lucky one, because it was an utter and complete departure from shooting with a smartphone or a PoS (Fujifilm X-E1 and Fujifilm X-T1).
Stand alone cameras are dying. Crying about it isn’t going to change that fact.
I’m not sure there’s an issue. Enthusiast photography has always been a niche pursuit. In the past no one questioned that the little pocket cameras we used to take snapshots weren’t as good as the SLRs of the day, but they were fine for, well, snapshots. The family at holiday dinner. The kid playing baseball. The beach at sunset. A relative few wanted more and bought better cameras, mostly SLRs of some kind. But let’s not pretend that running around with an SLR was ever more than a fairly small niche, especially once you got past an entry level, used to take nice vacation pictures SLR.
Phones are the snapshot takers of the 21st century with the added benefit of being able to take video. They replace the low end box cameras and low end video cameras… but just as people went beyond those to SLRs in the past there are people who will got beyond phone cameras to more serious cameras now.
This is decreasing the number of photos taken using a real camera as a proportion, but I’m not sure how much its really decreasing the absolute number.
Very few people who drop big money on DSLRs (and are actually using them) are questioning their buying choice. If they are, it is not because of smartphones. There is no comparison between what a smartphone can do vs. what DSLRs do. This is not to say that smartphone photogs are not real photographers. But you are exaggerating your argument to pitch your book. Puuuleeeese ….
Very good observation/question.
Agree. The author of the article is setting up a straw point to make a flawed argument.
I didn’t read the article but regarding the clipped paragraph, a Kodak box camera taking 620 or 127 film was completely capable of producing those same disappointing results except that you had to wait a week for the pictures to come back from the drug store.
Every family had a camera like this and now every family has at least one smartphone. Mind you there are a lot more “enthusiasts” these days…in the old days it was a lot more work.
what absolute nonsense. i know a professional photographer who sells famous coffee table books. i asked him about one of the photos in it and he told me he took it w/ a cheap point-and-shoot.
the photographer makes the image — not the gear.
(btw, many fotogs conside prime lenses the only way to go and scoff at telephoto…so there ya go)
ive read plenty of posts from other DSLR owners who say they dont use them as often as they once did, because of the availability of their cellphone camera being pretty good (iphone), and being connected in a way their DSLRs arent.
neither they nor i are pitching books.
john gruber has said much the same.
whats a “real” camera? cuz when the 35mm came into popularity, the pros scoffed at it for not being a “real” camera (medium format).
i mean, really.
for DSLR sales, sure, and id bet they are up. but id also guess theyre down for the point-and-shoot sales.
A phone in your camera may be nice.
It is not a DSLR. It will not produce the same image quality.
While true that many great photos are taken with non-professional cameras, this does not equate to image quality.
Sorry, you need to study photography a little more. Photography has two components; technical and aesthetic. Solving a creative problem is nice. Solving a creative problem with tools that let you make substantial decisions about how to technically “make” a photo are two different things.
I don’t know who taught you that, but I’d demand my money back.
Let me nitpick for a moment:
I think you meant zoom lenses. I own a nice prime lens in the telephoto range.
And photographers who scoff at zoom lenses should get off their high horses because many zoom lenses that Nikon, Fujifilm and others have released in recent years are by no means worse than most primes.
I recognize this is personal/anecdotal, but I find myself more willing to shoot shots with my DSLR instead of my phone. My Canon fits nicely in my hands, viewing through the viewfinder makes it easier to look directly at what I’m shooting instead of at a second location (phone screen) for framing, and I feel I’m better in that position at keeping a steady hand. It’s not that I don’t take photos with my phone, or that they aren’t generally good photos, but I find the experience of photography more enjoyable with my DSLR than I do with my phone, and I think that that somehow shows in the quality of the photos.
In fact, I remember my last camera before my first DSLR, a Canon G1, which wasn’t a cheap point-and-shoot but wasn’t a DSLR, and I remember how much better it felt when I got my first Canon D-Rebel.
I recently was going through an old stash of print photos I took before I switched over to digital, and that was also with an SLR…and I think those photos are better, too, than the ones I take with my iPhone (if less convenient).
I have a series of bird feeders on my deck. Sometimes I will sit by the door, camera in hand, and wait as patiently as possible for visitors, and shoot. I’ve done this with my iPhone, and I’ve done this with my Canon DSLR, at roughly the same time of day (the first hour after I get home from work, more or less consistently between 6 and 7 pm). I get good photos out of both, but definitely better photos from my SLR. I’m not being scientific about it by any means, it wasn’t my goal to grade them against each other. It’s just an observation.
For video, it’s the opposite. My DSLR does take video, but the experience of that is inferior to the experience of taking it with my iPhone.
Oh probably. But face it, those mostly don’t differentiate themselves from good phone cameras anymore. However, the article linked and Shawn’s post both seem to be making the argument that phone cameras limit one and that it can be advantageous to go beyond them into more capable, serious cameras. This isn’t new with phones, though. It’s always been the case that if you go beyond fixed focal length point and shoot basic cameras you can do many more things.
The dedicated point and shoot cameras were a stopgap, a dead end niche much like dedicated MP3 players or entry level digital camcorders (remember the Flip?). Both served a purpose but when phones became capable enough the vast majority of people just decided to use their phone as a MP3 player and camera since the dedicated devices didn’t make a good case for themselves.
I’m sure other people will have different definitions, but from personal experience with a few cameras, what matters to me is the action: Holding it up, looking through a viewfinder, pressing a physical button.
If it doesn’t offer all those things, I’d just as soon use the iPhone. My options might be a bit more limited by it, but I don’t really care.
In any case, I’m quite happy with the iPhone and will take a photo with it sometimes even if I have my real camera with me. And there’s been a few cases where it’s got a nicer shot (technically nicer, not just a better moment). But generally, I like my Nikon’s shots more.
But my Nikon doesn’t fit in my pocket. 🙂
I think if you’re talking about the realm of professional photographers or advanced enthusiasts, that’s true. But I also believe that in the hands of infrequent enthusiasts (is that a thing?) more advanced equipment will yield a better photo. That there is a curve or a three-dimensional map of equipment vs. experience vs. output quality, and that some regions of that plot would show a strong correlation of quality to equipment, and other regions that wouldn’t.
I’ve posted a couple of times here about the experience of photography, and that I enjoy that experience more with my DSLR than I do with my iPhone. But there is another part to that experience, and that’s what happens afterwards. I don’t mean digital editing, but rather just getting the images into your storage system.
I would guess that most photographers (everyone here?) have had the experience with digital photography of shooting a living subject, one that is changing its orientation to the camera, and going click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click, getting a bunch of shots knowing that one or two of them will be the really good ones and that the rest can be disposed of. Sometimes there are ones that are clearly inferior and it’s obvious even on the little LCD screen on the back of my camera, but most of the time I’m going to wait to see them on my computer screen.
Since I switched to iCloud Photo Library (here’s where some of you go, “Aha! He’s not a real photographer or he’d be working in Aperture or in Lightroom!” Duh. I’m not a real photographer…but I very much enjoy photography. I also shoot in JPEG rather than Raw. Heathen!), that meant that in my previous workflow where I import all the photos into Photos (before that, iPhoto) before weeding through them is now significantly less effective, as ALL THE PHOTOS I SHOT ARE GOING TO BE UPLOADED TO iPL, even the ones I’m going to delete!
That may not be a big deal to some, but I find that when there’s a bunch of photos going up to iPL, and they’re larger photos from my Canon, that my internet connection gets completely hogged by the process. I’d rather just upload the ones I end up keeping.
Which means I now import with Image Capture and then weed through them and then import into Photos. An extra step that wasn’t necessary before. That bothers me more with my DSLR imports than with my iPhone imports because the iPhone does this automatically, as I take the photos: my Canon photos only go up in a group, all at once, when I connect my camera. Dozens and dozens and dozens.
So interestingly, though the DSLR shooting experience is more pleasurable than the iPhone shooting experience…the iPhone management experience is more pleasurable than the DSLR managing experience.
Coincidently, I just sold my last standalone camera this week on eBay. I’ve shot everything from a Kodak to Canon, to Hasselblad, to Mamiya, to Sinar, etc.
This is the first time in 30 years I have not owned “a real camera” to do “real photography”, whatever the f*** THAT means.
The iPhone has been my primary camera for a few years now and, for the shooting I do, is the only camera I need.
I’ve never owned a “really good” camera of any kind. But for several specialized features on my old Nikon point-and-shoot, my iPhone is the best camera I’ve ever owned.
Yes, I’ve always found myself in situations for which the camera in my hand was not ideal, and each one has had tradeoffs. I don’t begrudge anyone who wants the greater flexibility that comes along with more-complex DSLRs, and I wish I had the patience to learn to use one.
That’s the same old argument people use when they want to justify not invest in serious photo equipment.
Yes, a good photographer can make amazing photos with the simplest of cameras. In the end, the eye is what makes the photo. But when you combine the eye with better gear, the photo gets even better. It’s sharper ( when that is important) there’s less noise in shadows,mhighlights are in control, depth of field is exactly what the photographer wants, etc.
I’m a pro photographer/photo editor. I know many pro photographers, from National Geographic, Magnum, Balckstar, Sports Illustrated, on down. Some a great, some are good, a few are geniuses. And some are not so good. But the key to being a professional is knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your tools and utilizing that know,edge to get what you want.
Pretentious posers dismiss equipment as irrelevant.
The assumption they are mutually exclusive is the flaw in such arguments. Good gear helps anyone, from rank amateurs to the savants.