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Comment by ageitgey | Hacker News Reader

I'm a camera enthusiast and I collect some fancy/expensive old cameras and lenses. I'm the last person who you think would settle for a camera phone as a camera replacement. But they are just getting so good and they are so easy to use!

I'm finding it harder and harder to justify bringing along a camera unless I'm doing special like a specific photo shoot. Obviously phone cameras are no where near as good as a 40 megapixel full frame camera with a good prime lens shooting in raw. But 99% of the time I'm just going to post a photo of my kid in Instagram and it doesn't matter.

It is a tough time to be a camera maker.

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There are philosophies in many hobbies that are pretty close to what you were getting at. With firearms when asked what the best gun is the answer is "the one you shoot well". With astronomy they say it's better to have a small cheap telescope you use all the time rather than a big expensive telescope you barely use. And with cars/motorcycles you hear how it's more fun to drive a slow vehicle fast than a fast vehicle slow.

Everywhere there's a fixation on expensive equipment. People use it to try to replace skill. Also it serves as a way to elevate their status within their hobbies community. And man it happens in every hobby I've seen. But in the end all it really does it weigh them down. Their equipment is too bulky to use all the time. So much more gizmos to keep track of. Things are so much more expensive that you don't really take it out as much and enjoy it out of fear of breaking it. Even if there's some sort of insurance in place to cover the cost of damage, you still don't want to risk scratching your new baby.

Anyways there's this series on youtube called "Pro Photographer, Cheap Camera Challenge" that I adore. I'm not even a photography buff but it's super interesting to see these professional photographers take the cheapest cameras available, in some cases they're actually toys, and turn out some amazing pictures.

Pointless digression:

"And with cars/motorcycles you hear how it's more fun to drive a slow vehicle fast than a fast vehicle slow."

I know this is just your third comparator in your statement, but I never thought I'd see it pop up on HN. :)

It's one of those clichés you see all the time in Jalopnik comment sections...I always want to say "but have actually done that, driven the slow car fast and the fast car slow?" Because...I've got a slow car and a very very fast car. The fast car is fun to drive even when you're going 0 miles an hour at a stoplight. The slow car is fun to drive slow but awful to drive fast.

Maybe this statement works if the "slow" car is an E30/Miata/Fiat or similar but in my book, fast car going any speed is always way more fun. :)

I haven't heard it about cars but it applies to motorcycles. Generalizing, a maintained bike with good brakes and tires is probably more capable than most riders and faster than public roads so a 1990's or later 400-600cc motorcycle ("slow"?) is more fun whirring the engine and stirring the gearbox than loping along in second gear on a liter-class bike.

One of the most fun rides I ever had was after swapping my bike for a riding buddy's 250 Ninja for the Friday lunch ride. I flogged that thing like a rented mule trying to keep up with the bigger bikes. Riding that thing close to the 14K redline in every gear. Give the handlebars the slightest nudge, and that <400lb. bike just lays on its side, hammer the throttle at the apex because that tiny engine isn't going to spin the rear tire up.

Try that on a ZX-1X on public roads, and they'll be pulling dental records to identify your body.

I was just going to say this!

I have a slower Mazda 3 (although its fairly peppy at low speeds, similar to a Prius) and a very fast Tesla -- the Mazda is most fun to drive around town under 45, while the Tesla is basically very fun to drive anywhere, anytime at any speed.

I don't even understand the original statement tbh..

That doesn't really make much sense. Are you really having a blast in stop and go traffic in your Tesla? It doesn't even make sound - so you can't say you're enjoying the sound of revving the engine.

I think the point of the saying is that if you're going the same speed in both cars, you're likely going to be at a different driving "x/10" effort in the slow car and "y/10" effort in the fast car. And the point is that x >> y. So, you'll be pushing yourself and the car much harder in the slow car than the fast car.

I've found that my enjoyment is somewhat correlated to how hard I am pushing myself and the car. The slower the car, the harder I have and it have to work to go the same speed. Thus, sometimes, the more enjoyment.

>Are you really having a blast in stop and go traffic in your Tesla?

For sure. For one thing, the car looks flashy and draws a decent amount of attention where I live, so it's fun just driving around town.

For another, I accelerate pretty fast at lights, so that never really gets old.

And in stop and go traffic on the freeway, it's fun because I just set autopilot on.

> For sure. For one thing, the car looks flashy and draws a decent amount of attention where I live, so it's fun just driving around town.

It doesn't really look like a flashy car to me unless you've wrapped it..? Where I live (SV) they're about as common as a toyota corolla. Maybe you've done something to it but I don't feel like it's flashy like a Viper ACR is flashy.

> For another, I accelerate pretty fast at lights, so that never really gets old.

I guess but that's, again, not really driving a fast car slow then is it?

> And in stop and go traffic on the freeway, it's fun because I just set autopilot on.

So, you're saying that not driving and watching someone/something else is.

For me, a camera with exchangeable lenses and controls for everything relevant, with buttons and dials that are mapped to functions 1:1 and can be committed to muscle memory and used blindly, and to a degree without thinking, while you look through the viewfinder or the screen, is to a smartphones what being a fish is to driving a giant boat where you have the steering wheel on one end, the engine controls on another, and the anchor controlled by a genie you have to beat in rock paper scissors three times every time you want to come to a halt.

> With astronomy they say it's better to have a small cheap telescope you use all the time rather than a big expensive telescope you barely use.

True, but a camera bag also holds a book and other things, to me it's like a purse but better.

> it's super interesting to see these professional photographers take the cheapest cameras available, in some cases they're actually toys, and turn out some amazing pictures.

Compare it to the quality and the rate at which they produce amazing photos with their preferred gear. You can make amazing photos with anything, especially if you only show the keepers, but that doesn't really tell us much.

I remember one businessman telling me in the very early days of digital photography something like this: people do not really care about quality, they just want to recognize their own faces in photos. These times were when digital cameras barely made couple megapixel photos. Current smartphones can do even better making digital cameras obsolete. Cycle goes on.

high performance =/= high quality. There's a threshold that something is decently good enough, no point in maximising everything. The same can be said about music (320 kbps vs flac), operating systems (8gb vs 32gb), wifi (4g vs 5g). Like how greedy do you need to be, to not be content?

There are other driving forces, though. A typical person may not need to shoot photos at more than 2 megapixels, given a half-decent sensor underneath. But they like their 4k TV programs, and to shoot those, there need to be high-end cameras available. Then some people might want to go into business of shooting stuff that ends up viewed on 4k displays, and suddenly you have a market for semi-pro equipment. Regular people for which good enough is good enough are the ones not in a market for a camera - they use the one in their phone.

Similarly with RAM. 8 GB sounds fine until you change jobs and have to use Slack. I'd argue that web developers are the drivers for more powerful hardware now. And with 5G, more and more people like to watch Netflix in decent quality on the go, so now you have to push more data through the network.

Also, out of all things to pick on about the economy, this is one of the least problematic. Personally, I think companies can and should shoot for triple digit megapixels on phones, terabyte of RAM and streaming 8k videos to contact lenses. These technologies are enablers - the more power and performance you make available, the more previously impossible use cases will show up.

> 8 GB sounds fine until you change jobs and have to use Slack

That comparison is getting old these days. Slack takes ~60MB in my FF now. That's a rounding error even under 8GB.

It's a proxy for a wider point about website obesity crisis. In the past 2 years, I upgraded from 8GB to 12GB and now 32GB, in big part driven by whatever it is my browsers (both Chrome and Firefox) are doing while running Slack, Messenger, GMail and HN.

(I honestly don't care much whether Slack has made performance improvements in the past few months, because I recently switched to the combination of not keeping it active in the browser, using the Android app, and using Ripcord client on desktop, which has sane system requirements.)

> Slack takes ~60MB in my FF now.

400MB for the standalone application last I checked, and that was after the newest upgrades that should make it better IIRC.

That is about 5% on a 8GB machine, and typically a much larger procent of the available RAM once you realize that a lot of those 8GBs are used by the OS and possibly other necessary processes.

Tell me if it stays at 400MB after a day of use.

EDIT: Thanks for the data points. It's better than I expected.

Mine is 118.8 + 125.6 + 182.5 MB = 426.9 MB after about a day and a half.

My Slack app on MacOS has been up for awhile. Current usage is 197+183+132 = 512MB. Much better than before, but still not small.

400MB is still a lot IMO.

You obviously know this but for youngest people on HN: Back in the 90ies we could run Autocad on PCs with 512 MB.

It was slow but it was possible.

> And with 5G, more and more people like to watch Netflix in decent quality on the go, so now you have to push more data through the network.

4G is fine for video, it’s really fast! Even 3G was quite fast with HSDPA and all that. What I lack is cheap data on my phone otherwise I would watch Netflix on it right now.

> 4G is fine for video, it’s really fast!

From what I understand, it's fine when it's just you doing it, but not when 20 other people standing next to you do it at the same time. 5G is supposed to improve on that.

> What I lack is cheap data on my phone otherwise I would watch Netflix on it right now.

That's, unfortunately, the problem with telco business shenanigans. Where I live, I managed to extend my contract from ~3GB to 22GB for something around $10-$15 monthly. I have plenty of LTE to burn on Netflix now.

The best camera is the one you have with you. I also usually don't carry my DSLR with me unless I have something very specific in mind.

I sold all my digital cameras after I bought an iPhone 7 plus and I am not the only one I know personally that has done so.

Other than instant film, which ironically feels more magical than ever, I exclusively use the smartphone.

I used to shoot wedding video as a side-gig, and I had a range of cameras from the T2i to the 6D. I also owned a few P&S just for fun. Since the 7 Plus I have sold all my P&S cameras. The only advantage they have now is the longer reach, but I rarely actually need a zoom lens for a random shot. If I am doing anything serious I bring a DSLR.

The main problem is I always have my phone on me, and carrying around something like an RX100 is a pain because of how thick the body is. It is not really pocketable, meaning it goes into a larger bag. Then if I have a larger bag, I might as well bring a better camera.

I have the opposite feeling, the RX100 is small enough that I can just stick it in my suitcase/bag and go. If I bring my 5D with I feel obligated to get all the lenses/flash and associated crap and then I'm stuck with a huge 10kg backpack.

A phone can't beat the picture quality off my d7100 with a 50mm prime (no need for a 40mp full frame), but typically I don't need that level of quality. Where phones really fall down though is anything requiring zoom. Now when I go on vacation I use my phone for most snapshot like pictures and keep my zoom/ultra wide lens on the dslr. That works but I do start to wonder why I am lugging all this extra weight around for very specific picture purposes.

The phone quality is fine for most people. The most they are going to do with it is upload selfies to facebook.

I agree. I was just pointing out that my old d7100 + 50mm prime is better than a phone camera, but as you say it doesn't matter for most use cases.

Part of me wants to sell all my dslr gear and the other part wants to get a mirrorless z6. It's a weird spot to be in because I have plenty of pics that would have been very hard, if not impossible to capture with a phone. But, I want to lighten my load when traveling.

It sounds like a mirrorless setup might for you. I have basically the same use cases... I use my Olympus u4/3 gear on vacation or specific things, but for everyday carry, it's just my iPhone 7.

Of course, I now own so much u4/3 stuff that it probably weighs more than a single DSLR and a single nice zoom. Two bodies, a pro level zoom, a handful of 1.8 primes, and moderately priced super-wide and telephoto zooms. Deciding what to bring on any given trip is getting to be a "problem". lol.

A serious 50 or the nifty fifty?

Then nifty 50. I rarely need to go as wide as the 'serious' one.

It's a fantastic lens, even with its minor limitations. I also can't recommend enough trying a 28-30mm, as it replicates the FOV you'd get with a 50 on a full-frame.

Your post actually shows what camera maker's need to do to compete smartphones.

Make camera bodies as small as possible so that that they can be brought everywhere without much hassle.

The big problem are lenses. So I think they should make cameras that make lens swapping as easy as possible.

I just carry an old Ricoh GRD III when I do carry a camera. It has great ergonomics and the image isn't deformed at the ends. Otherwise I just put up with my phone camera than nerver seems to do what I want. The GRD was perhaps my best investment into camera gear.

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