Is my smartphone replacing my system camera?

Hi Laura,
Interesting article!
What exactly do you mean by 'But as long as your images aren't printed at billboard size, the image quality is perfectly adequate.' ?
Are you referring to the number of pixels? or the lack thereof?

For comparison: My Nikon DSLR has 24Mpx and my iPhone 14 Pro has 48Mpx

When it comes to taking photos with my smartphone, I am very clear: I simply REFUSE to take photos with a smartphone. I only take photos with a DSLR or with my current mirrorless camera.
Those smartphones come with a ridiculously small sensor onto which as many pixels as possible are crammed. Those pixels are then so small and so close together that you lose detail. Besides, those little lenses are nothing to write home about either, and the photos have to be digitally enhanced by software to make them presentable.
As far as I am concerned, a smartphone does not need to have a camera, just as a mirrorless camera does not need to have the ability to record video. That's what good video cameras are for. As far as I am concerned, a CAMERA only needs to take PHOTOS and nothing more. A smartphone should be able to make calls, access the internet, use social media, use GPS and use various useful apps. Nothing more.

Nice for static photography and vacation snapshots, hopeless story with sports/wildlife or BIF

The moment you start editing in Lightroom, you see all the limitations of a smartphone. Making skies look better is almost impossible due to the compression applied by the smartphone. Nice contrast and depth in the colors, without having the HDR function turned on? Difficult. Taking good sunset photos? Virtually impossible (compared to my camera). I sometimes use the smartphone, but am confronted with its limitations time and time again.

In my opinion, the answer to the question whether a smartphone can replace a mirrorless camera is YES and NO. There are bad and very good mirrorless cameras and smartphones. A good smartphone camera can be better than a bad mirrorless camera. A good mirrorless camera is better than a bad smartphone camera. But generally speaking, in every respect, a good mirrorless camera with good lenses on it is of course always much better compared to a smartphone camera! When is it acceptable to start using a smartphone camera or precisely not! I can't imagine, for example, being allowed to make a high-quality wedding reportage with a smartphone camera, that won't be a good reportage anyway! Too bad the gist of this story lacks some depth regarding when or when not it is sensible to use a smartphone camera.

Hi Laura,

Thanks for the info & tips in advance, quite interesting!

What beautiful photos... Out of curiosity: in which region were these taken? (I'd quite like to go cycling & photographing there!) Could it happen to be somewhere in the Netherlands?

Lately, I have been using my smartphone as a supplement to my mirrorless camera.
This of course depends on the situation, but this time I was walking around with a large zoom lens (100-400 crop 2) on my mirrorless camera for details such as birds and animals, and then I took the "landscape photos" with my smartphone.
The advantage was that I had my mirrorless camera constantly ready to react quickly and didn't have to change lenses countless times

I read a lot of reactions from photographers who think this goes a bridge too far. I too recently bought a lens that costs 3x as much as my smartphone. What people do forget is what it is all about: taking a beautiful picture.

And modern phones are very good at that. Manual settings are also possible, allowing you to experiment with e.g. longer shutter speeds and flash....

Recently, a client delivered HDR photos to me from his iphone13, shot handheld. Beautiful dynamic range, perfectly sharp, for which I have to use a tripod and do a lot of post-processing to achieve the same effect with my 5D-III.

This did make me adjust my opinion somewhat, that the era of blurry pixels from your flip phone is really over, and you can take very acceptable pictures with your phone...

I partly agree with this article. I also take a lot of photos with my phone. But one thing remains with my phone, a Samsung s20fe, I can't hold it with one hand and take a picture, then that thing is guaranteed to end up on the ground and certainly in landscape mode. On the other hand, I can operate my heavy Nikon D500 with a battery grip underneath and a 24/120mm lens on it with one hand without the whole thing falling to the ground. In addition, there is also a very clear difference in speed between that phone and camera.

completely agree!!!!!!!!!!!!

PixelDude Raoul wrote on Tuesday 10 January 2023 at 13:53  | reply

In my opinion and judgment, using a smartphone to take photos and using a (system) camera are different.
If you want to take a beautiful photo as a professional or hobbyist, use a camera.
Use a smartphone that you usually have with you anyway for ‘personal’ travel memories, family outings or gatherings, or … to at least still have a photo of a (fantastic) coincidence when you don’t have your camera with you.
However, don’t try to convince anyone that a smartphone today can produce images of the same or even remotely comparable quality as a camera, that’s a bridge too far.
How things will evolve in the future is anyone’s guess. With that, I want to emphasize that the images from a smartphone in the near or distant future may well match the quality of a camera.

I said that I refuse to take photos with my smartphone. Literally speaking, that is also true. But....... I still use my smartphone to take photos; I use my smartphone namely as a remote control for my system camera to take my photos that way. 😃😉

@Piet Alberts, what exactly is difficult about connecting your iPhone to your computer with the USB cable? Open Windows Explorer and just copy away...
And how do you take a group photo with a DSLR then?

What about the (c) rights to the photo. When sharing on social media, it is not always clear who owns the rights.

I almost never use my smartphone to take photos, only in emergencies.
Such ugly images! On a small screen one would say wow but no, I stick to my system camera.

All those explanations mentioned here…….as said..! great for static photography and snapshots. But hopeless for sports wildlife or birds in flight or detailed macro. Also pretty cool, by the way, that the author joins in the discussion.

Somewhere, I am afraid that the smartphone will win out over the more expensive cameras.
If you own a fortune in lenses, the mobile phone can pretty much take all the lenses along at once.
Not to mention that it is becoming increasingly difficult for a photographer to carry out his work.
Everyone is pretty much a potential competitor.
The newspaper and press are a good example of that.

Hi Laura, that's not entirely true. Even people with an entry-level camera like a Nikon D3200 can take this kind of photo, your camera is of less importance, your glass, on the other hand, is not. But you know that yourself too

Hello Patrick van Zundert

Unfortunately, your link to your website doesn't work: https://ww.patrickopreis.nl. Just make a small change

@Heuschen, Then it's time for a new phone!
Don't get me wrong, I also photograph with a DSLR. But less and less, because the quality of the photos from my iPhone 14 Pro is really very good. And no, I don't do sports photography and I don't print billboard size.

The enormous depth of field and the use of a screen for both evaluating and focusing, as well as the lack of an aperture, do not allow me to achieve the same result with a smartphone.
That is not to say that someone who knows about photography cannot create gems with it. It does limit the kinds of photos you can take, though.

@smartzine: To put smartphone photography on the same level as André Rieu concerts really goes too far for me. You are doing smartphone photography an injustice by doing that. What André Rieu does is throw an uptempo sauce over a masterpiece, with which you teach no one to love classical music as it should be played.
Smartphone photography does not aim to throw sauces around to ruin a photo. That is a big difference from André Rieu.
I establish that the quality of photos coming from smartphones is getting better and better. You do have to buy a smartphone from the more expensive price range, and then you end up paying about as much as for a mid-range DSLR or a system camera. The results from a smartphone still cannot match the results from a DSLR or system camera. This has to do, among other things, with the difference in hardware and the extent to which a photo has to be digitally manipulated to obtain a comparable result.
That is why I advocate a purely technical study in which exactly the same photo of the same subject is taken on a tripod with a smartphone, a DSLR and a system camera, all with the same number of pixels, aperture, shutter speed, focal length and ISO values. Everything in RAW and all post-processed in the same way with the same software. View all the photos on the same screen at 100%. Finally, make a print of all of them at, for example, A4 size.
I expect that the photos will not look the same and will differ from each other in quality.
In any case, I do not want to claim that I am a good photographer, but not a hair on my head (there are fewer and fewer of them) is thinking of using a smartphone to take photos now.

@Jos, to compare a result, a photo, it nevertheless seems sensible to me to equalize a few things. The number of megapixels, for example, so that each photo has an equal number of pixels. Then comparing the different photos in terms of color, sharpness, details, etc. is nevertheless possible.
Of course, every device is different. But what matters to me is being able to compare whether the differences in the photos are so great that you can form an opinion on whether or not a photo is technically acceptable.

I think this is a very nice story, or actually a familiar consideration.
I have been photographing since I was 12, I am 80 now.
Every year I consider whether it isn't time to switch to taking photographs with a phone.
I still have a somewhat older Apple, but it actually takes remarkably good photos that can even be printed well on A4.
The photos taken with the phone are often, without editing, so good that I can barely replicate that with photos from my Fujifilm X-T3.
Yet I still haven't switched.
Why not? I still have the idea that photography is more than playing around with the phone.
Strange really, because the phone actually has everything that makes photography attractive at my age.
Quickly produces good images by using Ai, is easy to take along and actually much cheaper too.
Yet I didn't take that step this year either and even bought a new telephoto lens.
Still, I am convinced that the moment will come when I switch,
Donald.

martinphili wrote on Saturday 14 January 2023 at 12:16  | reply

For everyone who is still desperately clinging to their "real" camera: in a few years, you too will mostly have a smartphone in your hands.
When the first digital camera appeared on the scene, we had the same discussion and "real" photographers claimed that "real photos" could really only come from a "real" analogue camera.
And where are we now?
Guys, technology moves on. You might as well get used to it now.
And yes, of course. For some types of photography, a camera with a lens is still much better and will probably remain so for the time being. At the circuit, I can't get anywhere with my phone either. But that doesn't mean you should disqualify the smartphone outright.

@melina
If you can live without taking photographs, it probably isn't deep enough. In my case it actually doesn't matter, but with a camera with interchangeable lenses, I can feel at home. Moreover, I can't imagine that a system so deeply embedded in artistic photography could ever disappear. It is also an evolved system, which finds its origins in plate cameras.

Either you want to quickly take some photos or you want to have a tool in your hands that gives you control and allows you to fulfil your wishes. For the layperson or the less photography-savvy, the smartphone is therefore an excellent solution. Those who wish to pour their heart and soul into a photo know what they need to have in their hands.