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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

can that mirrorless camera make a phone call, send a text, edit the photo it takes, browse the web, upload the picture to an app, run other apps, or any of the many many other things a phone does that a single function dedicated camera cannot?

what trade offs do you accept for that mirrorless camera to do all of the same functionality while still taking an above decent looking image for the vast majority of its users without all of those fancy lenses fixed or interchangeable? As the saying goes, the best came you have is the one you have on you. Only snooty photo/video types care about your comment. Most videos used by phone people are only ever viewed on that device or other similar devices of others viewing it on whatever app they shared it. To even consider them comparable is just not an honest take in the slightest. I say this as someone with several DSLRs and a couple of cinema camera bodies in the next room.

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This is a silly take. I’ve got an iPhone 15 Pro and quite frankly the camera on it is pretty good. But it has severe limitations both on reach and quality which you can’t get around without actually putting some real glass in front of it. A lot of people I speak to when travelling are quite disappointed in what comes out of their phones but naively assume it’s the status quo. And we’re talking flagships with the best cameras there as well. The digital crutch kills a lot of memories.

Show them one shot from a cheap modern mirrorless and the smartphone is over for them. You don’t even need a high end body. And yes you can do a lot on body and yes they integrate with the phone as well. So that doesn’t kill any of those use cases. They augment the situation.

Currently using a Nikon Z50ii + 18-140mm zoom. I don’t change the lens for ref. I shoot JPEG and edit on my phone. Most of the stuff goes on facebook or gets looked at on my Mac. I don’t use LR or shoot raw. The thing literally tethers to my phone.

> Show them one shot from a cheap modern mirrorless and the smartphone is over for them

IME this only lasts up to the point they have to lug that brick with them.

Don't get me wrong, I'm firmly in the "my 8 yo m4/3 kit wipes the floor with any phone it's not even funny". Which is all the more the case for a modern FF kit. But even my tiny Olympus is huge compared to my iPhone. Only my winter coat with fat pockets can fit it. It otherwise needs an actual bag (might work with some women's purses, I don't usually carry anything at all).

Guess which one I have 100% of the time with me? I've found that the iPhone in hand while outside takes 100% better pictures than the Olympus kit in the drawer at home.

It's always a question of compromise. Before my Olympus gear, I used to love my FF Canon gear. Built like tanks. Until it got old carrying all that junk around, and it started gathering dust somewhere. Now I'm happy with m4/3 when I'm relatively serious about my photography, and I'm happy enough with what my iPhone produces when I only feel like having a pair of jeans and a shirt on.

Would a new Sony something-or-other wipe the floor with the Olympus? Possibly. Enough for me to lug it around? No way.

No one seems to care about carrying another brick around on top of the 11 pairs of shoes.

The new stuff doesn't weigh a lot. It's not FF bricks any more. Nikon stuff is mostly magnesium and plastic.

When you’re just running out the door with your kids it’s hard to pick up the full frame behemoth.

I’ve been considering a m43 for that reason.

Yeah. I’ve got three kids.

I don't get the reference for the 11 pairs of shoes. I haven't handled new Nikon stuff (the last body I touched was a D80 a long time ago). But I doubt it's smaller and lighter than my olympus with a prime [0]. More power to you if you're OK carrying your kit, it means this works for you, which is absolutely great!

But, be that is it may, take a look around you. How many people do you see on any given day taking pictures with actual cameras, whatever the format? I live in Paris, a city flooded with tourists, whom you'd expect to be more likely to put up with carrying a somewhat inconvenient camera in exchange for better pictures. I can count on the fingers of one hand the people I've seen taking pictures with actual cameras in the last few months. And I walk or bike to/from work, along one of the most picturesque parts of the city. However, you can see people taking pictures with their phones all day, everyday.

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[0] Some of the bodies are actually surprisingly small. A sony A7C2 is "only" twice as thick as my Pen-F, the other dimensions being similar. But the body itself is useless without a lens. And while wide-angle offerings seem somewhat similar (though there's no equivalent to the 8-25/4), the tele end is much larger, even comparing a variable aperture to a fixed f/4 offering from Olympus. And primes are an absolute joke if size matters.

It's been ages since I've used my FF Canon system which is a couple generations old at this point. At some point, I'll have to make a call on my APS-C mirrorless Fujifilm which I've left at home on a couple trips now where I would always have brought a standalone camera in the past. Unfortunately they haven't replaced the exact form factor I really like and the camera is getting pretty long in the tooth about now.

> A lot of people I speak to when traveling are quite disappointed in what comes out of their phones but naively assume it’s the status quo.

Is that the case? I think it takes one to be a photography enthusiast/nerd to care enough to carry a camera with them. Most people I meet just want a phone "with a good camera". Phone cameras in this sense do not compete with real cameras, it is pretty obvious one can get a better camera if you remove the constraints that a smartphone's physical body brings. I think it is pretty illogical for one to think that smartphones have as good cameras as a good real camera, having all these space constrains and whatnot, so I doubt people really believe that the phone cameras are the status quo. Some people may be "disappointed" by their smartphone's photos (because they are able to objectively determine it) when they travel but most won't get a real camera because essentially they do not care that much as to buy/carry an additional object (or they do not have the money).

For me, I am just happy that my phone now takes photos "that look good" even if I have no idea or skill on how to take good photos really, though I can appreciate if there is somebody with me with a real camera who does. And even if I had a real camera, I doubt I have the skill to take something better than the software-modified one I get from my phone.

I don't disagree with most of this. The thoughts around it only come from that one day you will inevitably have where you take a really good photo on your phone. Then you get home and realise that it's actually trash.

This was my one https://imgur.com/a/rPCJwcR (thanks Google!)

Lots of people have this day and decide they'll keep that phone a couple more years and buy a camera with the upgrade cycle money. I think when I am travelling around 25% of people have mirrorless or DLSRs now compared to 5% a couple of years ago. A 10+ year old Nikon D3100 with kit lens is still a better camera then a 2024 iPhone Pro and doesn't cost a lot of money.

Across Europe at least people have a lot of distrust of their phones as well. I suspect some of that is driving adoption. I even see film cameras regularly now as well (!).

> This was my one https://imgur.com/a/rPCJwcR (thanks Google!)

Wow this is really bad. Was it zoomed? If this is the case, it is interesting that it is still 4k resolution and companies prioritize "4k" even with horrible processing or whatever artifacts are these, rather than reducing resolution eg when zooming. Similar with low light, where binning the pixels could increase light sensitivity.

If it is not zoomed in, it is much worse.

It's 2:1 zoom on a 64MP main camera on a Google Pixel 7A. It absolutely destroyed it. Wasn't low light either.

If that's really only 2x zoom then I don't know how you can possibly have gotten a result that bad. I don't have a Pixel 7A, but it's certainly not representative of what 2x zoom looks like in daylight on a recent iPhone Pro. (My Pixel 3a used to do a better job of 2x zoom than that, FWIW.)

Yeah I have no idea what the hell it was doing either. Had similar problems on a few other shots inconsistently. I did wonder if it was some artifact of image stabilisation.

I have an iPhone 15 Pro now which is ok if you are careful but has lots of other wierdness instead.

> Then you get home and realise that it's actually trash.

Most people take pictures on their phone and look at pictures on their phone only. They won't return home to realize the picture is trash because their viewing medium is only capable of displaying a little more than a million pixels.

No offence, but this is nonsense.

The average person isn't at all worried about photo quality and is happy with their 3-4 year old phone.

At best, they're smiling and enduring your diatribes about camera quality and then going back to their iPhone Instagram snaps.

I'm more concerned that I own an iPhone whose vibrate function - something mastered over 30 years ago in pagers - is now so pathetic I've missed phone calls with the phone literally right next to me. Older models you could hear from rooms away.

>without actually putting some real glass in front of it

What is not 'real' about an iPhone camera's lens? They're very sophisticated. (See e.g. here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30557578)

Zero aperture control, poor depth of field, internal reflections, chromatic aberrations on the 0.5x, barrel distortion on main lens, poorly corrected vignetting.

Lateral chromatic aberration, barrel distortion and vignetting are easily corrected in software, which is why modern lens designs for digital cameras tend not to prioritize these aspects of lens performance. It is possible to disable lens corrections in the iPhone camera settings, so maybe this is what you were seeing.

https://m.dpreview.com/articles/2128193923/a-distortion-of-t...

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