The thing is, there's another boom currently going on. The mirrorless boom, and this site is the gold standard for that one as well. Now there is no home, and its much harder to gleam the differences that are actually meaningful between these many mirrorless cameras (and new dslrs that do get made).
It isn't a boom. It is just a transition from DSRL/video cameras to mirrorless. Market is consolidating around mirrorless for everything from photography to video. Hire a wedding photography and a wedding videographer today, they may have the same equipment.
a "boom" is an overstatement. The camera industry overall is dying and struggling. We're down to something like 10% of camera sales from 2010. There is no boom. There is a transition from DSLR to mirrorless for the few existing dedicated camera photographers out there.
I have a $600 DSLR that I bought at Costco on a whim, fifteen years ago. Once in a blue moon I look at my old photos and realize they just look night and day better than anything I've taken in the last decade. Camera phone lenses do alright when it's sunny outside, but DSLRs kill it when it comes to medium and low light.
And of course, the dslr looks perfect in perfect light too. You can do things that make your images even better with dslrs since you have access to the raw files and complete control over exposure. You can underexpose for a night scene to not blow up highlights and shoot at lower noise or at a shutter speed you can hand hold without blur (depends on your current focal length), then pull up the exposure only on the shadows where you aren't liable to notice much noise anyway. You can get that shot on a bright blue day that looks like what you eyes see with this technique, where you can see the blue sky and shadows under trees just fine, by exposing for the sky to not blow it out, and then pulling up the shadows. For any pro digital camera built in the last 15 years, you can pull a lot before the noise gets too unruly. A camera like an old 5dmk1 is still great at this, and its almost 20.
Trying to expose for the highlights is annoying on the iphone at least. It doesn't hold exposure lock that reliably, and the slider needs to be a lot more sensitive to actually let me quickly stop down the exposure. Usually I miss click since you have to swipe several times, and it resets the exposure. Then you are left with a jpeg that's compressed with some aggressive de noising applied probably missing most of the color depth too.
You can easily shoot RAW with manual control over exposure (and even focus) on an iPhone with Halide or other third party apps. Aperture is fixed, of course.
IMO if a third party app has to bring the feature its not really a part of the phone. Apps come and go. Plus apps like halide are paid so you could think of it as a tax to get to actually use some of the hardware you purchased.
That seems like a rather academic distinction. The cost of the app is minuscule compared to the cost of any of the camera hardware that you’re referring to.
The built in app does give you focus lock and manual exposure control (with auto ISO). Only a very small number of people would want the additional control that Halide offers, so it wouldn’t really make sense for Apple to add those features to the built in app.
> The only people who think Smartphone Cameras take better pictures than SLRs are not photographers.
Amateur photographer here, currently have a Canon 80D and a 20-year collection of medium-quality lenses. You're completely right. The photos that this thing takes are miles ahead of my iPhone 12 Pro; you just can't beat a sensor with big pixels and an aperture that's 10-100x (? I don't know the actual ratio) larger than a smartphone lens. But the one nuance is the old saying "the best camera in the world is the one you've got with you"; I have some beautiful shots from this camera, and the 20D before it, and the Rebel XT before it, but some of my absolute favourites were shot on a smartphone because it was in my pocket at the right time and the DSLR was at home in the bag.
The final output isn’t the only criteria either. The file may look good, but when you really know your SLR, you can compose and shoot much much faster with more options. Aperture, shutter speed, even ISO, and you can create art.
On a phone it’s all kinda pre-canned. And you have to paw at the stupid thing like a monkey.
You might have an equally sharp or whatever JPG, but it’s the difference between watercolor and crayons.
SLRs don't take "better" photos, they take more detailed photos. The best photo is the one you actually took because you had the camera on you and didn't miss the shot.
And if you want the most detailed photo, SLRs are not the highest quality cameras either when you could rent a Fujifilm GFX 100.
> SLRs don't take "better" photos, they take more detailed photos. The best photo is the one you actually took because you had the camera on you and didn't miss the shot.
At this point I want to go back to using a pocket camera. I can turn it on and take a picture without having to look at the screen. There's no automatic cloud uploads. I don't have to worry about someone logging metrics or scanning the pictures or AI doing weird things like filling in moon textures. I take picture. I get picture. That's it. I don't have to worry about cloud subscriptions or "ecosystems" (GAH!) or whatever. I stick the SD card in my computer and there's the fucking pictures. Done.
Not to mention that almost all photo consumption happens on a phone as well.
Only when you open a phone photo on a big screen and compared to one taken by a real lens do you realize the big difference.
Despite all the incredible technology in phone cameras, there is no substitute for proper optics.
> Once in a blue moon I look at my old photos and realize they just look night and day better than anything I've taken in the last decade.
Exactly. I can't identify at all with comments saying phone cameras are good. Convenient, yes I get it (although personally I keep my phone in my backpack so pulling it out takes only slightly less effort than pulling out the camera, only because the phone is smaller, but I realize most people keep their phone glued to their hand).
But even my 15+ year old DSLR (a low-end Nikon D40) takes better photos than my 2022 smartphone. I have large (4ft wide) cropped prints on the wall from that camera which have great quality, the <1yr old smartphone camera can't do that.
Its enough of a boom for a small company like fujifilm to justify producing more cameras and lenses and even start up and grow a medium format mirrorless ecosystem. Fujifilm in particular struggles to keep up with demand which is probably not easy given global shortages, but it goes to show there is a market. It's not the market it was in 1995 or 2005, but its a market no less because there's always a demand for the best image technolgy can do.
Phone cameras will always look worse than their contemporary full size counterparts just due to physics, so the pros and prosumers will always be in demand of a dedicated rig even if their iphone looks like a spider on the back. Not to mention even today just from an OS standpoint, no phone has feature parity with even the first dslr released since phone manufacturers "childproof" camera features that pro camera manufacturers assume you don't need your hand held to use. Usually you have to resort to a third party app if you want to set a manual exposure, you know, something any photographer since 1860 could do that we now deem to be "too advanced" for modern humans.
Fujifilm is a twenty billion dollar company. Imaging is just a hobby for them.
Though I agree that if it were truly hemorrhaging them money, they'd have sold it (like Minolta or Pentax) or spun it out into its own entity (like Olympus).
The point-and-shoot market collapsed, but the dslr market is not nearly as dramatically affected with 2010 numbers not too far off 2018 numbers based on statista charts[1].
On the other hand, mirrorless is starting to show growth[2].
Looking at the overall camera-sales are misleading, especially considering that it largely shuffled numbers around within big companies: A Samsung point-and-shoot with a Samsung sensor became a Samsung smartphone with a Samsung sensor, selling even more units with the camera still being a primary selling point.
Also, certain camera brands are less affected than others. Fuji is probably doing better than its ever done these days and has trouble keeping inventory in stock from demand, whereas nikon is at a historic low.
And with good reason. While I like shooting with DSLM some software and hardware parts are just bad.
No GPS. The cheapest Android phone from 5 years ago has this. I don't want to use the shitty app to get geoinformation. Yes, battery lifetime - no need to enable it by default.
No embedded storage. With SSD prices cheap as now, add some 64 or 128GB storage. Keep the card slot.
More computational stuff, no need for enabling it by default, but stuff like taking 10 pictures, then selecting the best one automatically (or whatever the camera thinks is best). Additional: enable better tethering. On my Nikon Z7 I still can't set everything from the computer. Some settings depend on the mode (P,A,S,M) - why? Nobody knows.
They exist! My YN455 interchangeable-lens Android camera has all of those things. It uses the same 20MP MFT sensor as my PEN-F and I love it a lot: https://www.yongnuomall.com/product/detail/16254
It's picky about certain zooms, but it is fantastic with all of my primes (Lumix 20mm F1.7 ASPH and SIGMA 56mm F1.4 DC DN being my favs) and with any of my cine lenses. It's fine for stills as long as I can stand the e-shutter, but I love it for video. Unfortunately I can't seem to share an accurate video sample because Youtube's recompression is adding a ton of horrible choppiness that isn't in the actual camera output: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCbnbKvNZlg (Shot on LAOWA 6mm T2.1 Zero-D Cine. Warning: loud!!)
Point and shoot peaked in 2010, I think. Camera sales have dropped by something like 90% since 2010, if you exclude smartphones. Any “boom” is just consumers shuffling around within a collapsing market.
