What I'm Focussed On - Smart Phonography vs Big Camera Photography

[klmall]

boBQuincy - Your post reminded me that DS and I ended up taking almost the same photos while on the Safari.

Google Pixel 7 - Straight from phone; no editing and he was happy with the result.

Big camera - Complete with slight brightness adjustment since I am rarely happy with straight from raw in LR.

 

[boBQuincy]

boBQuincy - Your post reminded me that DS and I ended up taking almost the same photos while on the Safari.

Google Pixel 7 - Straight from phone; no editing and he was happy with the result.

Big camera - Complete with slight brightness adjustment since I am rarely happy with straight from raw in LR.

Here is a good article on how the phones do so well: mostly lots of AI processing. It works and people like the results.
https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones-vs-cameras-closing-the-gap-on-image-quality/

 

[mom2rtk]

I'm watching all of this closely. How many of you are printing these and comparing the quality? I see lots of great shots from phones on a screen, but every time I print them, the difference in quality is astounding.

I don't have the latest model iphone. I have an 11 Pro. So several generations behind. But people have been saying the phones were just as good for some time now, since before the current models ever came out.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I'm watching all of this closely. How many of you are printing these and comparing the quality? I see lots of great shots from phones on a screen, but every time I print them, the difference in quality is astounding.

I don't have the latest model iphone. I have an 11 Pro. So several generations behind. But people have been saying the phones were just as good for some time now, since before the current models ever came out.

It depends. First, when people say that phones take pictures as good as real cameras, I think they generally mean that in conditions that are favorable to phones, they can take good pictures. If you are comparing a picture on a sunny day, with a lot of DOF, and no need to focus on a fast moving subject, the results can be very comparable. When you deviate from that, phones don't compare as well (although clever new techniques like night shot mode are helping them close the gap).

I have a lot of 11x14 prints around my house. Most are prints from pictures taken with "real" cameras, but some are pics taken with cell phones. If you get uncomfortably close to the pictures, you can probably tell the difference. But in most cases, people can't. Someone who knows photography could easily spot the pictures that were taken with a traditional camera, but they would do it less by things like resolution and more by things like shallow DOF, the use of external strobes, long exposures, smooth panning shots, and things like that.

In other words, for pictures that a phone is good at, they are easily good enough for relatively large prints. The main benefit of a traditional camera is for pictures that a cell phone isn't good at.

 

[boBQuincy]

I'm watching all of this closely. How many of you are printing these and comparing the quality? I see lots of great shots from phones on a screen, but every time I print them, the difference in quality is astounding.

I don't have the latest model iphone. I have an 11 Pro. So several generations behind. But people have been saying the phones were just as good for some time now, since before the current models ever came out.

We sent two phone photos to Mpix for aluminum prints, 11x14 from 3000 x 3800 and 3000 x 4000 pixels. They look good, minor differences from similar ones from a camera. The photos were taken with the standard lens and no digital zoom.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

We sent two phone photos to Mpix for aluminum prints, 11x14 from 3000 x 3800 and 3000 x 4000 pixels. They look good, minor differences from similar ones from a camera. The photos were taken with the standard lens and no digital zoom.

I think what Bob said about "no digital zoom" is important. I see people stretching images on their phone screens to zoom in. That works, but you are often better off taking the wider picture and cropping it later. If your phone has different lenses (mine has four extra wide, wide, telephoto, and "periscope" telephoto), it is better to pick a lens rather than zoom because you might zoom in just a skitch wider than the telephoto lens and so you'll get a heavily cropped picture taken with the wide lens.

I almost always pick the cellphone camera lens I want and take the picture without doing any additional zooming. I say "almost" because there are times you want a quick picture to show somebody something and don't care whether it is a good picture or not. In those cases, I just do whatever is easier.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I don't have many good options for showing pictures taken both ways, but here are some pictures taken on the same trip. Some were taken with a Canon 5D Mark IV (released in 2016) and some were taken with a Google Pixel (release in 2016).
Which pictures were taken by which camera? It can be really hard to tell reduced down to fit on this page, so you can download full resolution copies here if you want.

 

[mom2rtk]

It depends. First, when people say that phones take pictures as good as real cameras, I think they generally mean that in conditions that are favorable to phones, they can take good pictures. If you are comparing a picture on a sunny day, with a lot of DOF, and no need to focus on a fast moving subject, the results can be very comparable. When you deviate from that, phones don't compare as well (although clever new techniques like night shot mode are helping them close the gap).

I have a lot of 11x14 prints around my house. Most are prints from pictures taken with "real" cameras, but some are pics taken with cell phones. If you get uncomfortably close to the pictures, you can probably tell the difference. But in most cases, people can't. Someone who knows photography could easily spot the pictures that were taken with a traditional camera, but they would do it less by things like resolution and more by things like shallow DOF, the use of external strobes, long exposures, smooth panning shots, and things like that.

In other words, for pictures that a phone is good at, they are easily good enough for relatively large prints. The main benefit of a traditional camera is for pictures that a cell phone isn't good at.

Yes, that seems consistent with my experience. The ones I have had issue with are things like indoors in lower light. I'm not above pushing the replacement of my older model phone sooner rather than later, but not if the differences are only minor.

 

[mom2rtk]

We sent two phone photos to Mpix for aluminum prints, 11x14 from 3000 x 3800 and 3000 x 4000 pixels. They look good, minor differences from similar ones from a camera. The photos were taken with the standard lens and no digital zoom.

That's encouraging.

And I almost never use the digital zoom. I did go with the Pro version on my iphone so it would at least have at 2x optical zoom. It's still pretty limiting though.

 

[PrincessInOz]

I'm watching all of this closely. How many of you are printing these and comparing the quality? I see lots of great shots from phones on a screen, but every time I print them, the difference in quality is astounding.

I don't have the latest model iphone. I have an 11 Pro. So several generations behind. But people have been saying the phones were just as good for some time now, since before the current models ever came out.

I don't print or haven't printed a phone camera image.
I usually use images from the big camera for printing.

Side by side on social media, there isn't much difference in phone vs big camera for daytime shots.
For night time shots and for shots where I want to be able to control the exposure triangle, I will reach for the big camera any day.