What the iPhone has done to cameras is completely insane | Hacker News Reader

What the iPhone has done to cameras is completely insane

washingtonpost.com

30 pointsLibertatea21 comments

I don't think it is just the iphone the other thing that they don't talk about is that digital cameras were rapidly improving in image quality from the late 90's to the mid-00's. My digital camera from '02 takes total trash photos compared to the one I got in '05 but my '05 model is about on par with what I could buy today for a similar price so there is no reason to spend money on an upgrade unless it breaks.

Yes, there's a good chance the the spike and drop in high-end digital camera sales represented a one-off replacement of the high-end film camera fleet with digital.

There have been at least two game-changers since then.

The first is high-ISO: my Canon 40D can take a good picture at ISO 800, but my Sony NEX-5N can take a good picture at ISO 12,800, which is basically pitch black - think dark room by the light of a television. You can shoot available-light pretty much anywhere, particularly in combination with the image-stabilization tech and superfast lenses that are now available. Some of the newer sensors will get a good image up to 102,400 and can capture up to 409,600, which is just nuts. That's "dim moonlight" territory, basically night vision.

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/amazing-sony-a7s-low-light-te...

The other is phase-detect pixels on the sensors. Previously many cameras had to use contrast-detect autodetect, where the camera racks the lens and samples the image for peak contrast on the target. Only SLRs had phase-detect autofocus, which was much faster and more accurate but required a separate set of sensors. But now they put phase-detect pixels right on the sensor, so you can get small cameras with fast/accurate focus.

Not the camera itself, but lenses have also come a long way in the last 10 years. Superfast f/1.4 primes and f/1.8 to f/2.8 zooms are now faster, sharper, and cheaper (and the idea of a f/1.8 zoom was unthinkable 5 years ago). On the high end Sigma's Art series are simply fantastic, and Samyang is raising the bar on low-end lenses too.

While I do have multiple cameras (SLR with long lens for sports, inexpensive Canon for times I'd be worried about dropping my iPhone - e.g. ski lifts) the reality is that old saying that "the best camera is the one that's with you".

the best camera is the one that's with you

While certainly true, I hate those moments when all I have with me is a phone's camera, knowing my far-superior-photos-taking SLR one is at home, then taking the picture anyway and coming home staring at the noise and often subpar framing (never got used to holding the thing steady in front of me). That always hurts a bit. Especially in low light etc. Not that I never took brilliant pictures with a phone or similar, but knowing that the same scene could have been even captured better with other gear I have still hurts.

You mean what mobile phones have done to cameras, gps navigators, handheld gaming, personal music players and other things that required dedicated devices in the past?

Those are not all exactly the same comparisions though. Sure a phone can perfectly replace a gps, the sound quality is already hard (if not impossible) to distinguish from dedicated players (usability: not so much though) and sure it's good at playing games. But there's just no phone, under the circumstances I often take pictures, which will yield pictures which are good enough or even close for me. And my dedicated device for that isn't even top of the line.

Ok, but the vast majority of users are content with "good enough" pictures, so even if you are an outlier, it doesn't really matter. And sickbeard's right that that's exactly what happened with everything else that smartphones consumed in their march to rule the planet; they aren't the best at anything, but they do a little of everything and you always have them on you and it turns out that beats the hell out of something that does it better, but that you have to remember to bring all the time.

Apple and Sony? Doesnt Sony make ~$20 per iPhone because of their camera parts contribution. And Apple has 8pp engineers on the camera alone.

8pp?

800. Long press P is how you input the zero on android keyboards

Wat. Fuck the camera thing. that is insane.

Yeah wait, hold up, can we talk about this, that is bonkers.

Well, it is one of the ways - a way to get digits without having to switch between alpha and numerical keyboards. There are other options, some keyboards always show a numerical row (eg. Hacker's keyboard).

Can somebody change the title to be less clickbaity?

It was a really thin article anyways, I don't think it belongs here. The whole article can be summed as "smartphones have tanked camera sales because smartphones have cameras, here is one chart showing this".

A poorly planned chart at that. The x-axis is so tiny and hard to read

I don't understand the dislike for the article title. Wasn't the iPhone the most used camera on Flickr for multiple years running? And the article is based on 2007 being a major shift in buying habits. I do feel that he could have been clearer about how it is smartphones in general that helped the decline in sales of digital cameras. His closing paragraph makes it seem like the iPhone is the only phone with a camera.

smart phone displaced cheap camera market with image quality that is "good enough" for every day photos. especially those that will only be used digitally. they did the same thing to hand held voice recorders. how is this "completely insane" ?

The low-end camera market has always been dominated by "good enough" right from the beginning. Things like box cameras have always been enormously popular, see: the Kodak Brownie line. Disposable cameras were another "good enough" product, and actually remain extremely popular in less affluent parts of the world to this day.

And the thing to remember here is that the smartphone is displacing another "good-enough" product, the digital point-and-shoot, not high-end DSLRs. It's just a matter of convenience to have it in your smartphone instead of two separate devices.

Smartphones do not replace a high-end camera system - but those were never something that everyone owned/carried in the first place. The vast majority of cameras out there have always been the cheap variety that mom uses to snap pictures of her kids.

This is not an article, it's ad.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com