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Comment by noahtallen | Hacker News Reader

Ehhhhhhh. The same thing applies to every camera. You could say “shot on Sony A7iv,” and you’d still need very expensive lenses, lighting, and other gear. Sure, it’s more impressive to say “shot with the kit lens,” but a lot of the point here is that the device’s camera system is fully capable of advanced shoots. That means you can do a lot with it with AND without expensive gear.

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The difference is expectations - people buying professional cameras expect and are used to needing to buy additional gear. In this case, "shot on iPhone" is obviously intended to deceive consumers into believing something that isn't true.

The difference is in who they are selling the product to. The iPhone has a very broad audience, some of whom may want to do photography with very little understanding of the field. They see the product. They see the results. They don't see the context. Someone buying an A7iv probably has a stronger understanding of the field to start with. They are likely looking for a specific product for a specific reason. If they don't or aren't, they almost certainly would have a better idea of what they are getting into by the time they actually make the purchase. (Perhaps through their own research, if not the up-sell would clue them in).

A Sony A7iv has threads for attaching lenses. An iPhone does not.

It's like if I feed you a six-course gourmet meal and tell you "I made it on a camping stove", when in fact the camping stove was just used to keep one of the sauces warm while everything else was made in a professional kitchen. That's what is happening here; there are some shots that the iPhone is physically incapable of making, so they used something that is capable of it and filmed that on the iPhone.

"Shot on iPhone" is implicitly promising that you can make what you're seeing if you have an iPhone. NOT that you could make it if you have an iPhone plus some additional equipment that is capable of making those shots, that nobody would even imagine using. For the most part, none of us even knew such a thing existed, although it's not hard to imagine theoretically.

"Shot on Sony A7iv", on the other hand, is pretty obvious to anyone at all familiar with photography that it is only telling you what camera body was used. In fact, people with any level of familiarity would respond with "ok, what's your point?" because the model of camera body is a relatively small detail if you're trying to describe what you used to make an image. What lens, exposure, postprocessing, etc? It's like admiring someone's work in a gallery and asking "what did you use to make this landscape scene?" and getting back "paint."

> You could say “shot on Sony A7iv,” and you’d still need very expensive lenses, lighting, and other gear

Not really. A very cinematic look is fairly achievable on any recent DSLR with a pretty run-of-the-mill 'holy trinity' set of lenses—14-24 ƒ/2.8, 24-70mm ƒ/2.8, 70-200mm ƒ/2.8—and a cloudy day.

Of course, each of these lenses are still a couple thousand each (less so if bought used), but they're workhorses and nearly every semi-pro photographer probably has at least one. I own a 70-200 ƒ/2.8 myself.

But compared to real cine gear, they're about an order of magnitude less costly.

Not necessarily wrong, but also still a deflection. If the defense is purely that "advertising misleads," sure. But that is why I say you should at least be honest with the defense here.

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