Phone Camera Vs Dslr Camera

Your camera is nothing more tool to capture light and like any tool there are good and bad ones, versatile ones, tools that are better for specific tasks etc. And photography like any other trade has professionals, enthusiasts and amateurs many of whom spend years of study in order to understand how to use this tool to get the very best from it.

If you think of a professional photographer, you would never use a smartphone for client work, for many reasons, since your livelihood depends on it, you have to have equipment that is reliable, robust and will (sometimes under the most extreme) conditions “get the shot”, by this I don’t mean the camera takes a “great” photo, that’s the photographers job, I mean take the photo without missing the focus, failing to fire, captures a vast number of shots quickly, all without crashing or getting a Facebook message or phone call in the middle of it

So assuming you don’t mean professional photographers then the question becomes why would anyone bother with a dedicated camera? (When when I refer to a dedicated camera I am referring to a camera that has full manual control and a quality lens – so a DSLR, mirrorless or even a high-end point and shoot)

A current decent smartphone camera, let’s say the LG G5, shares a lot in common with many mirrorless cameras, It’s compact, portable, you can control shutter speed, ISO and white balance and shoot in RAW. It will do long exposures, does a great job of HDR, has image stabilisation and has a 16 megapixel sensor. All in all, a fine camera to have in your pocket and just to prove it’s like a mirrorless the battery life also sucks ;-) Yet the owner still chooses to have multiple DSLR, mirrorless and film bodies and a collection of gear and lenses to go with each and the reason is simply photography not snapshots :-

Type of photography :If all you ever do is take are street photos, landscapes, selfies, plane wings and hot dog legs, your smartphone will do a pretty decent job, however this represents a tiny fraction of the types of photography youcando.

In conclusion
It’s hard to deny that today's smartphone cameras are amazing, really they should be rubbish especially when you consider things like sensor size, pixel density, controls, and optics but the manufacturers have done and continue to make incredible strides with them. Of course if all the conditions favour them and the photographer is competent they take beautiful photos, however in comparison to a decent camera they are still lousy and good for only a very limited number of the many types of photography. However they will always be this way since, design, size, weight,cost,heat and physics mean compromise and different use cases. Just because they are popular does not make them superior.

Like everyone else I suspect, I love them, even as limited as they are. The fact that they here and have opened up photography and allowed us to capture life as never before is something we should all smile about. I know however my trusty collection of cameras, lenses have nothing to fear