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Man, I hate this phone analogy. Every shot I take with M43 looks nothing like anything taken with a phone. I just took these shots a couple days ago, for an example. There's no way you get anything close to this with a phone.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/TSFhhA5igk1iEfRbA

Every shot I take with M43 looks nothing like anything taken with a phone.

How much of that is an actual difference in the camera tech and how much of it is subjective perception?

I suspect for things like the two photos you linked to, even the best professional photographers would struggle to tell the type of camera was used to take them. By the time they've gone through a few apps and services and they're being viewed in Google Photos they could have come from a phone, or an M43 camera, or even a high-end medium format dSLR.

I do wildlife photography when I'm not building web stuff (https://www.instagram.com/onion4k/) - that's pretty much impossible with a phone camera simply because you need to a really long focal length for any animals that won't come close to you, but I still see people out in the countryside giving it a try. I often wonder if they're happy with the pictures they take. I suspect they are. For most people photography is about recording the moment more than producing a print quality picture.

> How much of that is an actual difference in the camera tech and how much of it is subjective perception?

The out of focus area is a dead giveaway for anyone who's even remotely into photography. Phones are very good at taking snapshots but they're extremely limited by the sensor size and the fact that the lens has a fixed aperture, no amount of computational photography will solve these physical constraints. You can't escape physics and optics laws

Which is true, but very few professionals would use a Micro four-thirds camera to take these type of photo over a DSLR.

No offence but I’m guessing you haven’t taken many photos with an iPhone 11 Pro.

Even 50mm isn't close enough for me. And fake bokeh looks terrible even when it works. Absolutely amazing for what it is, but it's not replacing my camera.

Yes, big lens means a lot. And today they have a nasty trend of using software enhancements and machine learning. I took an aerial photo from a small airplane using Sony smartphone built-in camera app. It postprocesed trees so badly that I never used this builtin app again. I am using OpenCamera and it is "ok enough for a smartphone". And funny thing is they are very proud of this postprocessing, saying you lose their secret keys after you unlock bootloader and this magic will stop working. Soon more and more of the photo will be fake, just computed/guessed by the software. Quite sad IMO.

> Photography is one of those areas where devices don't go obsolete very quickly.

True, and kudos to the photography industry for that. My fully mechanical, analog, 1992 Zenit camera has the same hot shoe flash system and tripod mount as current cameras coming out. With a cheap simple adapter I can also use its original lens on any digital camera.

The Canon EF mount was introduced in 1987 and new cameras are only now ditching it for a new standard to take advantage of new technology, and not for the sake of breaking backwards compatibility and forcing customers to buy the latest and greatest.

Moreover, EF is still supported through an R adaptor. They're completely backward compatible.

Yep. I throw 30-40 year old lenses on my 10 year old E-PL1 and go out and just have fun with photography. I never worry about taking it out on the beach, or on a boat, or any other place that cameras die. If it dies...I just pick up another one cheaply and continue having fun, and because I'm not as concerned about it, I take it places and get shots that others don't.

It's like having a beat up old 4x4 pickup. It gets the job done, and if you bang it up a bit in the process...oh well.

I'd argue that cameras don't really ever go obsolete, given the artistic nature of photography (as long as you can get the image out of the camera and onto a medium). Any great photo that you've ever admired was take on either previous or current generation gear.

In my eyes a camera is obsolete as soon as the average phone can take a photo as good. My parents got a $300 sony camera recently but other than zoom, I just can't see why you would carry it around when your phone takes the same photo.

15 years old camera with 50 years old glass: https://i.imgur.com/lcVh2dc.jpg

Pixel 3: https://i.imgur.com/Tl9Qjhj.jpg

Phones are good snapshoters but for everything else a dedicated camera will be superior in every way besides size.

I assume some $300 range cameras has sensor that same (or less) size to $600 smartphones.

They are almost entirely pointless in my opinion I'm not sure why they even sell low end cameras anymore. The only potential benefit I see is the software allows a lot more manual control but it also doesn't have as good automatic improvements that phone software has.

Even though a sensor is poor, it has better form factor, better zoom, and it's dedicated device.

The battery typically lasts for weeks. This is something we cannot say at all for phones...

Well I already have my phone charged at all times. I guess it might be a benefit if you have to take photos all day but in that case you would be investing in a much better camera than this consumer level one.

For video recording I found this sony one could only manage an hour on a full charge.

Panasonic pushed a ton of features to the G9 (my current top-end camera) that make it very competitive with the GH5 for video, so they seem to have gotten some religion on that front.

Five year old cameras are likely past the cliff of "too slow "for a lot of feature improvement, though. I have a GH3, a G7, and a GH4, and they all have the same sensor but even the UI on the GH3 runs slower and chunkier. Trying to wedge more stuff into it seems like a bad time.

Sony appears more like Apple supporting older bodies with firmware updates which is unfortunate for Canon and Nikon owners. The Canon R / RP are pretty much dead products after one year due to lack of upgrades, but pretty much the same attitude holds true for even there pro 1D bodies. I think few factor this in before buying since just don't know.

Yes, the older A7s getting eye autofocus and advanced PDAF for adapted lenses being trickled out was pretty cool.