Smartphones Destroying High-End Camera Sales

For the past 5 years I’ve seen a lot of people who bought D-SLR cameras and used the automatic settings, exclusively. They didn’t even bother buying lenses that are better than the ones they bought with the camera. For example, Costco and Sam’s Club often bundled the second lens with the camera kit.

Now that a lot of smartphones have decent to great cameras, a large portion of consumers no longer care buying dedicated cameras, let alone the high-end ones.

Unfortunately huge portion of consumers still believed that Megapixel determins the qualoty of the cameras/photos. Many manufacturers and tech “journalists” are still touting the Megapixel as a measure of quality.

I’m assuming that HN crowd knows that optic and sensor are important components to determine the quality of digital cameras.

There are limits to physics that smartphones aren't overcoming anytime soon. Smartphone makers naturally want to make phones thinner and smaller, but this affects how good the cameras ever will be.

One of the issues that you almost see never talked about is how smartphone lenses degrade over time. Because people are putting cameras into pockets and bags, the lenses get smudged and damaged. Compare that to a normal camera lens that is always protected when not in use.

I started a photo of the day project and early on I decided not use my iPhone 5 for my photos because they stood out so much: http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/2013/08/21/why-i-am-so-happ...

Instead, I eventually got a EOS M mirrorless camera to supplement my DSLR. It's small, fits in a jacket pocket and takes photos substantially better than any smartphone.

If you can't get much better photos out of a DSLR or mirrorless, then, yes, stick with a smartphone. It's convenient, always with you and allows for quick Web uploads. But if you want to get more into photography, having better sensors, better lenses and more manual controls will allow you to take shots that you simply can't get with a smartphone.

Yes.