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Re: The Smartphone Camera

In response to:

gemini://nytpu.com/gemlog/2021-06-17.gmi

gemini://alexschroeder.ch/page/2021-06-17_The_Smartphone_Camera

My fifteen years with camera

I bought my first camera in 2006. It was some Sony’s advanced compact camera. In 2007 I bought my first DSLR (Nikon D80, which I am using till today). In 2011 I bought my first SLR (Nikon FE2). In 2012 I bought my first medium format camera (Pentacon Six). About 2013 I started to take photos by mobile phones. In 2017 for my holidays I take only a mobile phone for taking photos. As can be seen above I came full path, sometimes in surprising order.

I’m still taking photos mainly by mobile phone (iPhone) because:

I can’t take my big camera with me
it’s quicker and easier to take photos
mobile phone isn’t a compromise in sense of quality of photo anymore
there are additional functionalities like geotagging, backup to cloud, easy photo sharing etc.

But I am aware of superiority of real cameras in comparison to mobile phones.

every advanced camera (professional series) provides ergonomics which can’t be done in mobile phone. Digital pro-cameras are very expensive, but film pro-cameras are cheaper, and can show that huge difference
every professional lenses will be better than mobile phone lenses
medium format cameras and its deep of field will be always better for portraits, and won’t be reproduced by mobile phone software processing

If it would be possible I will be taking photos by some professional camera. So maybe the camera industry “is done” (as Alex cited) in sense of consumer market (in this year, last Nikon’s Japan’s factory was moved to Asia). But not for artistic use of cameras. Consumers have chosen integration of camera and phone for easiness and price. It’s obvious.

And should be noticed that most of products for consumer market are… electronic garbage. In comparison to quality construction from past decades. They are built in aim of cutting costs and for marketing demand, not for quality, ergonomic etc.

What is more rather than special photo equipment people need some theoretical background for taking photos:

people can’t do a proper framing
nor aren’t aware of simplest rules (light and time, DOF etc.)
nor aren’t aware of focal lengths theory (why portraits by wide lenses could be strange)
etc.

So there is a standard problem that nobody wants to learn for a while, but everyone are tempted by marketing and advertisements “that something magical do a good photo for you”.

For some optimistic ending I must say that some of that technological progress is also a step into good direction. For example every street photographer were dreaming for such compact camera like mobile phone, which is so covered and hidden from others eyes, and have such great capabilities. They are using often automatic modes, so the mobile phones are new, and perfect solution for them.

And of course you can do a photo by “empty soup jar”. If photo is good, nobody will ask by what was made.

My ideal camera set

I like doing photos of city landscapes. I try to learn street photography, but I always was too shy to take photos from close distance of people. I have also some occasional photo-adventures like: two times in role of wedding photographer (family or friends only), some wild animals and safari photos. Now I’m trying to do many family portraits and as documentation of my child’s growing up (by mobile phone as I wrote above).

For my main semi-artistic purpose of city landscaping I will recommend equivalent of [Nikon FM2 Tropical Edition]. Of course It would be nice to have such set, but I think about equivalent of lenses focal lengths: 105mm, 55mm and 28mm.

I have that focal lengths for so called “full frame” film SLR, and “cropped” DSLR. What is fun that every person shooting mobile phone camera also has about 28mm focal length. So everybody has good start point for their “tropical set”.

P.S. Of course I was using also trendy zooms (like Nikkor 18-200mm and so on) but for me after a while, and with experience gained, that lenses are worse than we fought. Not good at 28mm, not good at 105mm, not perfect in the middle. And often useless at the both ends (this 200mm would working only in sunny days).

[Nikon FM2 Tropical Edition]

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@ Fri 18 Jun 2021 04:03:50 PM CEST

tags: #camera, #photography