For portraits, iPhone 12 Pro in okay lighting is the first one where I say, yeah good enough and often times better.
I don't care about DXOMark, I care about what humans think, and across mediums a photo from an iPhone 12 Pro absolutely is good and great enough.
But, my Nikon with my 50mm just takes noticeably better pictures in so many situations, particularly portraits. And if I expand my lens usage to my wide angle or my 300mm now we’re into types of pictures phones are completely incapable of taking.
Good enough? Maybe. Better than a much larger sensor and better lens? No way.
I’m only going to sound realistic
Even if I wasn’t, I love large prints and we always have some up in our house. Cell phone pictures are fine if you’re looking at them on your phone - not so much at 20x30”.
goalshifted into "it is ok enough for this single type of photo + light".
That's where we are today, and that's what "better" colloquially means.
In any case, good enough and better are two very different words. I really enjoy taking pictures on an ILC much more and the results I get are noticeably better even in portraits, including by people that don't know what I took it with. For example, good luck emulating the look of a 135mm f/2.8 (at night) with an iPhone if we're talking about portraits, or good luck doing better than a 50mm 1.4 for street, good luck doing better than a 70-200 2.8, and so on.
But yes, it has a much lower skill ceiling and often more consistent results, and it really does get close.
I think I’ll get a gimbal and some contraption to trigger flash and maybe some adapter lenses as they trickle out for this form factor
Yes, the consistency in such a wide range of lighting situations is what’s attractive. Along with the built in non-destructive editing. Soon, ProRAW for even more of that. Live Photos by default which “captures the moment” more than the composition itself, and a software and syncing pipeline that supports that seamlessly. With the nearest replacement being an entire tool-belt and bags of gear.
I think at this point we will see the market choose, and often times I ahead of the accepted trend on that. A daguerreotype was probably superior processing technology than film and paper but it wasn’t convenient enough to remain an option. Same went for film and dedicated digital cameras. I think this is where we are now with the iphone 12 pro and ProRAW, even for photo enthusiasts.
To start, you can actually crop. You can use lenses with a higher focal length than 70mm, which for many people makes all the difference in portraits. If you're using something like ProRAW, you're limited to 1/3 of an FPS vs 20FPS.
If you want to capture the moment on an ILC, you can also just hold the shutter. This would be the very first time we go from a platform that has higher image quality and more editing lattitude to a technology that has less of it. The replacement isn't an entire tool belt and bags of gear, for me it's an A7ii and a 28-75 2.8 (for a total cost lower than the iPhone 12 Pro + my current phone and will outlive it by four or five times).
As for sales, the iPhone has already gobbled up everything except the high end camera market, which is actually seeing increasing sales, so we'll see about that. I don't find it all that probable.
As for ProRAW, it's technically completely inferior to, say, an ARW file.