Look! A bear! Right over there! Can you believe it? What will you grab to take a picture of it? Your phone or your camera?
Do you tend to take more photos with your phone or a dedicated camera? Do you always have a camera glued to your hip, or do you rarely take photos? Curious minds are, well, curious…
And if you’re interested in taking better photos, just know it’s all about the lighting. Read Nanci Dixon’s article about lighting here. And if you want to take better photos with your phone, check these out. They’ll make your phone photography look professional!
I have a nice DSLR but it has been out paced by the camera on my cell phone which I always seem to have on me and the DSLR is still in the bag back at the camper.
Phone, phone, phone. Our digital camera is 20 years old and takes pictures at 8 megapixels. My phone has a camera with 108 megapixels. We also have a newer (only 15 years old) video camera and my phone similarly takes much better videos.
I know two things for sure. I have never dropped one of my SLR or mirror-less cameras in the 55 some-odd years of my photography hobby. When I take photos with a cursed cell phone the percentage of drops to photos is about 50%. I know that a cell phone feels like a slippery eel in my hands, with absolutely no reassuring design for fitting and sticking to anyone’s hands. Oh…and the number of my thumbs and fingers sharing in the photos I have taken is shockingly high! I do not carry a cell phone after having these experiences. I hope that I never have to. I never liked slippery eels, anyway.
Camera for pictures can’t beat the quality. The smart phone is us taking pictures of things I need to fix it to identify.
I did photography on the side for decades and have thousands of dollars in camera gear. However, with the improvement of cameras in cell phones, I can get nearly as good a picture with my phone as with my professional gear on every day stuff. Now doing photo shoots and wildlife/nature photos the quality isn’t even close, but most people aren’t looking for professional quality pictures.
I’ve often thought that a camera is for “pictures and photography” and a phone is for “snapshots”. I upload all my photos to Flickr and several years ago I started being contacted by people wanting to use some of my photos in their works (books, ads, booklets, web, etc). It wasn’t until I had a conversation with the editor of the Smithsonian, who was using some of my prints, that she explained that even though the “pictures” people were taking with their phones were nice, there just wasn’t enough pixels in them to use for printing – they needed the depth that comes from a camera. Now, with “newer” phones, they may have the pixels, I don’t know, but I still think cameras give you a better, deeper, clearer picture…but that might just be me. It took me a long time to get from using the “dark room” to using the computer, and it will take me even longer to go from using a camera to using a phone I’m afraid…;-)
I don’t take many individual photos. I mostly use a video camera and film while narrating. A card will store an entire season of travel memories. We enjoy time in the winter watching video of our travels.
When I do take still photos it is now with my cell phone vs a camera.
Kodak made a huge mistake when they invented the digital camera. The project was shelved because they thought people enjoyed waiting for their film to be developed. We all know how that worked out for them.
I use my phone most of the time simply because it’s handy. But if I plan to take some pictures I want to keep, I break out my Canon PowerShot or my Samsung Galaxy Camera 2. Both do things my aging Samsung S-10 phone can’t do. I think the time for stand-alone cameras is coming to an end – and to me, that’s sad. I hate the fact that we carry these &%@# phones with us everywhere!
Yes Tommy – I too use my Canon PowerShot SX170IS – it takes excellent pictures which I can manage and enhance for liting etc. I transfer them to my computer and can print the ones I want to archive in an acid free photo book. I sure hope the digital camera is around for several years yet. I too hate hauling that darn fone around – and usually forget to bring it along anyway – I always have my camera ready!! (PS: if years mean anything – you’ll be around a lot longer than I!).
I don’t use either one since I don’t have a camera or a I phone but my wife uses her phone occasionally.
And thus the demise of KODAK, and others in the camera, and film industry.
But that’s progress?
I always use my phone but my husband’s hobby is photography so he exclusively uses the canon.
I tend to use my phone’s camera either as throw away records of objects or because I don’t have my dSLR at hand. Both my phone camera and dSLR are good on full auto mode, but I can do better in most cases. Setting manual controls on my phone is slow work, whereas they are quickly set on my dSLR.
Got rid of our camera last year. iPhone camera is better.
I used my Olympus tough waterproof camera exclusively for many, many years while I had a flip phone. I only recently transitions to my first smart phone 2 years ago and I did not know how to use the camera feature on it (newbie to smart phone) plus it was not impact resistant and waterproof like my Olympus tough camera. I upgraded my smart phone 2 months ago and coincidentally my Olympus tough was starting to show its age and wear so I bit the bullet and transition to my new smart phone camera. I discovered that the picture quality is superior in the smart phone and now use it for all my pictures. However, I will save my Olympus tough for taking pictures when snorkeling and swimming as I have not figured out how to take my new smart phone out into the water safely. Any suggestions on that?
The only reason I use my cell phone camera is that my Nikon camera with the 70-200 lens is too heavy to carry most of the time
Would be interesting to see a graph on camera sales over the years since cell phones with cameras became so popular, especially for recent years with the high quality cell phone cameras and high megapixels