They say the best camera is the one you have on you at the time. This holds true with my experience; even with a dedicated camera I have many more photos taken with my smartphone.
Yep, my travel photos are split between DSLR photos and phone photos, the phone photos are usually way more interesting because they were of things I was otherwise never going to capture.
Conversely I have a good DSLR with very good glass attached, as well as M4/3 pocket camera, and two phones. After the trip I dump everything into one Lightroom album and go through picking out the keepers without looking at the specific camera model used. My typical result is 80% DSLR, 10% pocket camera, 10% phones.
What do you think is the biggest "keeper" differentiator for you, between the three, that favors the DSLR? For me, it used to be dynamic range, but now I basically can't making my (older) DSLR pictures look as good as my iPhone pictures.
I'm not them, but I have a similar process. I've got a mirrorless instead of DSLR, and a supertelephoto zoom lens (Sony a7R4 with 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 lens). I've also got a superzoom (Tamron 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6) lens for closeup and occasional landscape images.
I'm mostly interested in taking pictures of birds, including in flight. So long focal length is the biggest benefit. High resolution (allowing for deep crops while still getting a decent sized output) is another benefit. Good tracking auto-focus is another.
I use my phone mostly if there's a pretty landscape or flower and I don't want to switch lenses. I'm also willing to use my phone in some situations I wouldn't risk the camera & lens, eg while kayaking (in a waterproof case with lanyard). And of course the phone is lighter, so in everyday situations I'll have it, if I want to take a picture.
The reason I bought my A7II is so that I can:
* Get more light in with massive full frame lenses (and hence less noise)
* Ability to use lens hoods, xenon flashes, easier to use tripods
* Have more lens options available (even though the prices make me cry) that use the same (main) sensor (as opposed to phones with multiple lenses, telephoto etc tend to use low res/smaller sensors)
* (the biggest point) so I can take a photo, have the RAW and know that the only thing applied to it is the colour profile; no AI photo magic, no Apple saturation boosting, etc
When I take a photo with my A7II I know what I have on the card is the photo _I_ took. With a phone who tf knows what the image processing chip has done to it to make it "look good".
I found a nice compromise in Fuji's crop system. The cameras are about as small as can be while still retaining reasonable handling (having tons of mechanical knobs helps). My experience was that outside of some extreme special cases I don't want to make use of the large apertures enabled by full frame, the depth of field is just too small. And if you don't need that light gathering capability you can get smaller lenses. It's pretty nice being able to fit camera with a normal zoom, tele-zoom, wide pancake and normal prime into a 3L sling bag.
Regarding processing vs. RAW, all images are processed, there really is no such thing as a "true" photo. If the on device processed photo looks good then life is so much easier. If you can't trust the device processing or want to tweak the last millimetre out of the photo, even Apple devices can give you the RAW sensor data these days.
The resolution and detail on a “real” camera is killer for me. I can save photos with the crop much more easily. Also, portrait mode is good, but nothing beats real bokeh.
There're compact cameras with decent quality and not overly big or heavy. I use Canon G9X Mark II. It produces photos of much better quality than the best smartphone camera I had (without software tricks that could be applied to Canon photos afterwards anyway), and it is small enough to carry it with me all the time in the pocket.
I've got a Powershot and the problem I find, compared with my phone, is the time it takes from "oh there's something" to actually being able to take a photo - for my phone, it's maybe 2-3s (if the Camera app isn't already open; more like 1-2s if it is.) For the Powershot, it's always 10s+.
Opposite experience for me. I can turn on my DSLR, zoom, focus on the subject, and get a shot in under two seconds, with no noticeable latency between pressing the shutter and taking the photo, and without having to take my eyes off the subject. Subsequent photos a half second or less.
(I used to own a Canon G11. It was not as fast as a DSLR, but I don't recall it being nearly as slow as you describe.)
Meanwhile on Android, I'm lucky if the stock camera app loads in that time. Plus another three seconds to muck with the focus circle, and another two seconds of latency while it actually takes the photo. The whole time I'll be starting at the screen trying to find the tiny circles for my fingers to tap. If I managed not to actually miss the moment (unlikely), I later get to go back and crop the photo, because pinch zoom while shooting is too slow to even consider using while shooting.
I have missed a lot of good shots when all I had was my cell phone.
(Yes, I could get an iPhone and it will probably perform better, and buy some contraption to give it physical buttons.)
> I can turn on my DSLR, zoom, focus on the subject, and get a shot in under two seconds
To be fair, I can probably do that on my DSLRs as well if they're left in standby mode -but- there's a certain amount of weight and bulkiness inherent here that moves it out of "why is a phone better than a compact" territory because I damn sure can't fit any of my DSLRs into my pockets.
I don't know if DSLRs changed while I wasn't looking, but my old Nikon D5100 turns on and takes photos without delay, i.e. as fast as my fingers can actuate the levers. My phone takes 5s to wake up, 5-15s for the camera app to wake up. It is actually kind of a travesty how slow it works (Android on Nexus 6P) given how modern the hardware and software is. Clearly you could run a lean BeOS style system on it that would rival the DSLR.
I just sang happy birthday at what I find a normal pace in 15 seconds. If you can't open your phone and camera app faster than you can sing that song then maybe you should look into upgrading your phone. My iPhone from the screen being off to the camera app finished with taking the first picture is easily under 2 seconds, probably about half that.
It's slightly slower with the mirrorless systems because you have to wait until the viewfinder is ready before looking through it. It's fast enough, but the viewfinder is black while the camera is off.
I just tested my Sony a7R4 mirrorless camera with a stopwatch. It takes about 0.6s for the viewfinder to be ready. If I flick the switch while raising the camera to my eye, it's up just as I look through.
There certainly are genres of photography where you absolutely have to take a picture of a fleeting moment in under two seconds, but I don't think it is a common scenario for most people. The things people photograph the most are people (incl. themselves), and landscapes/objects/things. And I say this as someone who recently dumped $6.5k on a camera for wildlife. I obviously do see the advantages of dedicated cameras, but for casual users I don't think they'd need more than a phone camera. $.02
What Android phone do you have? I've just tested on an S21 and the camera app loaded in less than 1 second. Felt more like 0.25 or 0.5 seconds at worst.
Don't forget to count time activating the phone itself. Admittedly I have a cruddy phone (Moto G4), but the phone app itself takes about 1.5 seconds to start, on top of 0.5-several seconds to come out of sleep mode (sometimes it takes 5-10 seconds). And if the lock screen is up, opening the camera takes longer due to the weird swiping motion needed which always takes me a few tries.
Contrast with my DSLR, the on switch is colocated with the shutter. I can turn it on and get a photo in 1.5 seconds.
I just leave my D5600 on all the time and let it go into standby. It can sit for months like that and still take hundreds of photos. It wakes up and focuses with a single half press.
Back in the olden days, cheap cameras had no latency at all. Just press the button and it takes the picture instantly. I've often tried to find something like that but things keep getting worse. Iphone tries to help with a camera on the lock screen but there's still a lot of tapping and swiping and waiting.
> Back in the olden days, cheap cameras had no latency at all.
Some of 'em, yeah. Others where the lens has to come out of the body before you can take a photo, somewhat different.
(And yes, I suppose you can leave them powered on to keep the lens out of the body but then you're risking scratches or mechanism damage when you put it away and they also aggressively auto-power off.)
IMO, phones should have a hardware shutter release button. Press it at any time to take a photo immediately, regardless of the software context. It's bizarre to me that our $1000 phones are still subject to the micro-optimization that leads to elimination of buttons as a primary design goal for very cheap devices.
It's frustrating to me that these are the exception. That may not be my absolute top priority in choosing a phone, and if it isn't, chances are I won't get it.
Ok, maybe "immediately" is too ambitious, the camera doesn't need to be powered on all the time. I just want a hardware button that gets you to camera-is-ready ASAP.
I find my mirrorless Sony 6700 to be pretty rapid, it's pretty much ready in the time it takes me to flip the switch and move my head to the viewfinder.
This reminds me of my wonderful 2013 Google Glass:
1) Say "OK Google, take a picture"
2) 2 seconds later, you see the picture it's taken in the little window
This is confusing to me. One of the main reasons I have a DSLR is because the time from "I want a photo" to pressing the shutter release button is still the shortest with a DSLR. Tactile buttons, very fast power-on, very fast shutter release response time.
Unfortunately the compact camera market is dying. We probably won't see many new models from Canon and their competitors. It's a classic case of disruptive innovation, where cell phone cameras are still technically worse than dedicated compact cameras, but still good enough for most people. Olympus just sold off their camera division.
> the compact camera market is dying.
> Olympus just sold off their camera division.
And someone _bought_ that camera division. With the intent to continue designing, manufacturing and selling cameras under the Olympus brand. Sure, Olympus wasn’t doing great, but someone paid money because they thought they could run the business better. And their consumer business is in selling compact cameras, right? There appears to be at least some faith in the market.
> We probably won't see many new models from Canon
Personally I sure hope so. Their less-than-full-frame offering has been pretty lackluster afaict, other companies are doing the job better. We’ve lately seen some surprisingly kickass tech innovation in the full frame market from Canon, though. I hope they continue to focus their efforts.
Smartphone cameras are getting better at an incredible pace, though. And they're probably a few generations (5, maybe 10 years?) of hardware and software away from being indistinguishable from pro photos for casual users, it seems.
They are still only collecting a limited number of photons. That's a fundamental limit to how good a camera can be, and size helps massively. They are also diffraction-limited, meaning that at the size of the lens they cannot be any more sharp. These are hard physical limits that we're getting really close to. A DSLR with a much bigger lens and much bigger sensor is always going to produce better pictures.
Yeah, but as Apple used to say: "it's not about speeds and feeds". At some point for the average human eye the "speeds and feeds" provided by smartphones, when coupled with smart combined lens usage and machine learning, will be enough.
Pixel peeping is really rare and photo accuracy doesn't matter as much for the average person seeing a photo on a small device. They're not going to print that photo on glossy paper for a posh magazine or put it on a huge billboard.
When I have a feeling that I would like to share the picture with my friends instantly, I also take it on my phone.
Also, Canon G9X has bluetooth and wifi interfaces and phone app that allows quick downloading and sharing of photos (although it is indeed slower and more cumbersome than sharing directly from the phone camera app).
the tricks with high dynamic range (software combine two shots), night photos (take loads of photos and pick the sharpest bits vs tripod) are way more work to do after the fact
