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Comment by lm28469 | Hacker News Reader

> a cellphone can beat all but the absolute top end dedicated cameras and even then only for niches.

In what aspect ? Artistically a 2010 dslr would shit on any single phone on the market

If your goal is to take pictures to document your life then yes use your phone, 100% the better choice here, but if your job or passion is to make pictures a proper camera will always be better, even my 1965 leica produce better pictures than the current top end iphone.

The problem with DSLRs/mirrorless is that they're proper tools and just like with a brush and a canvas you have to put time and effort to master them. No amount of computational photography will make you a good photographer and if a modern 2k$ camera is the bottleneck it certainly is more of your fault than the camera.

I also think the cross section between casual users who want an iphone like experience X people who drop 2k$ on a camera is extremely small. Different tools for different jobs

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> The problem with DSLRs/mirrorless is that they're proper tools and just like with a brush and a canvas you have to put time and effort to master them. No amount of computational photography will make you a good photographer and if a modern 2k$ camera is the bottleneck it certainly is more of your fault than the camera.

This is a good analogy, I will have to borrow it.

I got friends who ended up buying expensive DSLRs after they saw my photos taken with f/1.8 lens. But they had kit lens and were complaining that their cameras. I told them to get f/1.8 lens. Then they were complaining about zoom. Also they could not use maximum aperture outside. I helped them get ND filters. Now they are complaining about that. And forget to take ND filters indoors, get way too many photos incorrectly focused etc.

Most people expect pro cameras to just act just like cell phone cameras.

What's a good resource to learn how to use cameras correctly?

"Understanding Exposure" is good on the absolute basics. However I don't remember if it covers more philosophical stuff like "zoom with your feet", and it probably won't help someone who just straight up keeps forgetting to take off / put on a filter.

The best resource is probably your local community college or art center. Nothing beats a class with assignments to force you to practice.

And the internet. Just search for whatever questions you have and you’ll get tons of results. Now that it’s all digital, you can try a bit of everything and see what you like (and ignore what you don’t).

Tony & Chelsea Northrup's Youtube channel and their book(s) is something I could recommend. (Not affiliated with them in any way.)

I think by far the most distracting feature is zoom. It gives false sense of being able to virtually move around like a drone would. Prime lenses used in aperture priority mode and all automatics off helped me a lot.

I did take photography classes in college that helped me understand basics.

But I learned a lot more by joining a local photography meetup. They would hire models to practice portrait shoots with and the main people were very helpful. They charged $50-$60 per shoot though.

Fair warning, back then I ran into a lot of photographers who did photography for living and were pretty grumpy about dwindling incomes. Don't let their snarky comments discourage you from going to meetups.

> but if your job or passion is to make pictures a proper camera will always be better

The camera you have with you is better than the camera you don't. A smartphone camera which delivers 90% of the results while being on your person 100% of the time is therefore a strong contender.

> No amount of computational photography will make you a good photographer and if a modern 2k$ camera is the bottleneck it certainly is more of your fault than the camera.

- Posts about trade-offs and the loss of competitive advantage between DSLRs/mirrorless Vs. smartphones.

- Replies that they aren't a "good photographer" because they hold this opinion. And are therefore clearly the "bottleneck" in quality photographs. QED?

This is exactly why photography never evolves (see also film). The community is actually the problem. More specs! More specs! Ignore technological advancement! The camera market shrinks 10% YoY, but no changes, no listening to the market, those who point out the flaws in the strategy aren't "good photographers" who are just bads "bottleneck[ed]" by their lack of skill.

CPU and GPU power has doubled, and power consumption has halved, computer vision has had a Renaissance, use it onboard? Na, that's only what 95% of the consumer and prosumer market wants, let's just continue to serve the 5% and keep the training rolling towards bankruptcy.

If your equipment need RAW, you've just shrunk your market share by 80%. If you cannot post instantly you've just shrunk it by 90%. So fight to be the King of the tiny kingdom that is the remaining 5-10%. RAW is a great facility to have, but it is just that, a facility. When it picks up the slack for the antiquated onboard abilities it is just a crutch at that point.

> A smartphone camera which delivers 90% of the results while being on your person 100%

It delivers 0% of what I, and many, want. It's like saying a renault twingo is 90% of a porsche 911 because it can go from A to B, it's not and people who say it is simply don't know what they're talking about or don't have the perspective to understand the need for such tools.

> This is exactly why photography never evolves (see also film)... More specs! More specs! Ignore technological advancement!

Photography _never_ evolves ? Er ok, well if that's what you truly believe I don't see much room for argumentation

> If your equipment need RAW, you've just shrunk your market share by 80%. If you cannot post instantly you've just shrunk it by 90%.

> The camera market shrinks 10% YoY

It's fine, DVD don't sell much anymore either, people move to what's best for them, a dedicated camera isn't and if a phone does 90% of what they perceive is enough then let it be. Nobody's going to buy a sony a7rIV to take snapshots of their lunch and post it as a 480p image on instagram.

People use phones because they have phones with them anyways, not because they have computation photography assistances. If it was as easy as you imply don't you think we'd see viable products already ? There is no market for camera oriented phones nor for phone like cameras

> It's like saying a renault twingo is 90% of a porsche 911 because it can go from A to B,

Well, it generally is, given 90% or more of a typical 911's driving is probably not on the track or strip. Think of how many rich retirees have them simply for the build quality and status that comes with it.

What everyone's missing is that smartphone cameras are a completely different use case than dedicated cameras; whether it be your hobby or profession, a DSLR/other standalone camera is something you take because you're trying to take stunning pictures and you're willing to tinker with the photo before and after it's shot. A phone camera is designed to look stunning, and while you can shoot in RAW, it's designed to get shots for people that only take pictures to later remember the time they spent in a place - these are the same people that would've instead purchased a cheap pocket camera for their road trip and would only see those photos again when they were scrapbooking.

> In what aspect ? Artistically a 2010 dslr would shit on any single phone on the market

I can 100% guarantee that it won't when I'm holding it.

Sure, you can invest time to get good at it and the money into the tools to apply those skills. I have other priorities so I don't and the very best option is a smartphone camera.

It makes no sense that point and shoots aren't attacking this. Even "cheap" ones have a massive edge in terms of (imaging) hardware over phones.

Someone like Apple or Google should create a dedicated camera and just knock that entire segment out from under the dinosaurs.

I would have expected that by now Nikon/Canon/Fuji would employ hundreds of ML engineers. Does anybody know whether that's going to happen, eventually? Or are they going to sit on their laurels?

Sony don’t make a multi-lens parallel processing computational camera. I think that’s telling.

DSLRs take amazing pictures easily. they collect a lot of light, which obviates the need for a lot of comluter magix, they have autofocus and autoexposure and simple basic adjustments you can play with.

what they won't do is pre apply filters to make the colors super poppy and generically "artsy" like the phone will.

Do they also take good pictures in low-light with shaky hands? Surely there is a point where work smarter not harder actually pays off - your own eyes likely has better capabilities than any camera, yet hardware-wise the latter is surely better than your slightly incorrect bio-lenses. It just has a huge NN attached to it

You're definitely going to get a better shot from a f/1.8 lens in low light than a cellphone camera, even vs night mode on iPhone. If you just set it on a stable surface you can take exposures >10" and have it come out crystal clear. (Or carry a gorrilapod)

An f/1.8 lens never comes out crystal clear if you want the entire scene to be in focus. Though since you mentioned long exposures you probably meant closing it to f/4+, but then it doesn't matter what the top spec is.

I didn't mean the entire image would be in focus, just that your subject would be clear.

A faster aperture will let in more light, so you will not need as long an exposure to get the same amount of detail. It can make a meaningful difference in low light shots.

Adjust your aperture to get the appropriate amount of bokeh, of course; but generally I prefer as wide an aperture as possible in most situations, as long as the focus is appropriate.

This is amazingly far away from the point that point-and-shoots are terrible at their job compared to smartphones.

That statement is completely dependent on what you think the job of the camera is.

A high-quality P&S (like the Sony RX, Fuji X100, or Ricoh GR) is going to outperform a phone camera in just about any edge-case (low light, motion, natural bokeh). Even more so if you shoot raw.

Somebody said it best in a sibling comment - a high-end camera is a tool, like canvas and brush, and you need to know how to use it, practice with it, and get in the zone when using it.

Nobody is arguing that cell phone cameras aren't amazing. They are, no question. And they're almost always in your pocket/purse, so even better. They're great for generic snaps of life.

But there are things they simply can't do - wildlife photography and outdoor sports (not enough zoom), low light - toddlers playing inside or indoor sports (sensor too small, stacking exposures with night mode doesn't work with fast moving subjects), natural feeling bokeh (portrait mode has some odd edge cases). If you don't care about any of those, then a cell phone camera is likely all you need. If you do care about those, then a high-end super zoom, mirrorless, or DSLR is going to make a massive difference.

Human eyes are better than cameras at a lot of things - that's one of the main problems with self-driving cars. We can see at 240fps, see light polarization, we have different "pixel wells" for low- and high-luminance environments, etc. Even the latest HDTV color system omits a lot of colors (electric greens) people can see.

Well, no, human eyes are way worse in low light compared to modern DSLR sensors.

With a monochrome sensor you can get already exceed 50% quantum efficiency, requiring only a few hundred photons per pixel to get decent quality, and around 10000 in the bright spots to reasonably match what a TV can reproduce (dynamic range and perceived noise).

But with a color sensor you can get recognizable/useful colors down to about 100 photons per pixel. Yes, it will be noisy, but at that light level (assuming a remotely-fast lens) your eyes will give you a hard time when you even try to read normal text. Should be enough to walk without tripping, though.

what they won't do is pre apply filters to make the colors super poppy and generically "artsy" like the phone will.

Of course they do. Fuji’s X100 line has a whole slate of film simulations (mimicking old 35mm film). My Olympus bodies have 10-15 art filters built in. They just don’t have fancy names like Instagram - they tend to be more descriptive.

I am not at all talking about filters or "artsy" output.

Look at the discussions about low light below. Why the heck should I know about f stops when my camera could just measure and adjust accordingly (including giving instructions to hold) like the phone does?

Smartphones rely on stacking multiple exposures in very quick succession. They can do that because a smartphone sensor can scans extremely quickly. In a smartphone, it doesn't make a difference whether you take one long exposure, or several short ones and add them up.

But the bigger the sensor, the slower it scans. Scan & stack is not yet feasible for bigger sensors.

Besides, smartphone sensors need to do this to overcome their limited dynamic range. Bigger sensors are not typically limited by dynamic range, and hence don't need this.

You're talking about the technical implementation. I'm talking about the experience of "point at thing, click button"

There is a massive gulf between smartphones and standalone cameras there in the outcome.

My point is that there is literally a product segment called "point and click" that is terrible (relatively speaking) at doing that thing.

All the replies here are focusing on how cameras can produce better results. The difference is my phone will in my unskilled hands.

Your 1965 Leica takes better pictures than a current camera!

Btw, why do people keep saying "DSLR" to mean "real camera"? "DSLRs" are not at all the ideal of picture quality, actually they're worse than mirrorless but when they were "SLRs" they were worse than rangefinder and view cameras.

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