Smartphone cameras vs semi pro cameras

[minicoop1985]

But are DSLRs as good as cell phones? Why has nobody asked THAT? I mean all the wedding photogs are using the iPhone 6+ now. That's a thing. DSLRs need to step up their game.





In all seriousness, I'm gonna say there's no phone as good as a decent MILC or DSLR for the myriad of reasons Scatterbrained posted and I don't feel like copying and pasting because I'm just that damned lazy.

 

[D-B-J]

Give me a D800 and 70-200 2.8VC, and I'll make a photo out of extremely low light with no tripod. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a beautifully black photo in the same scene. Similarly, give me a D800 and a wide angle and a big stopper and I'll give you an "epic" (quotes imply sarcasm. I don't want to seem pompous) long exposure. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a boring snap shot.


I could go on for hours. Should I?

Jake

 

[Scatterbrained]

Give me a D800 and 70-200 2.8VC, and I'll make a photo out of extremely low light with no tripod. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a beautifully black photo in the same scene. Similarly, give me a D800 and a wide angle and a big stopper and I'll give you an "epic" (quotes imply sarcasm. I don't want to seem pompous) long exposure. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a boring snap shot.


I could go on for hours. Should I?

Jake

If you were a good photographer you'd find a way to take a compelling shot within the limitations of the iPhone. Just sayin. . . .

 

[D-B-J]

Give me a D800 and 70-200 2.8VC, and I'll make a photo out of extremely low light with no tripod. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a beautifully black photo in the same scene. Similarly, give me a D800 and a wide angle and a big stopper and I'll give you an "epic" (quotes imply sarcasm. I don't want to seem pompous) long exposure. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a boring snap shot.


I could go on for hours. Should I?

Jake

If you were a good photographer you'd find a way to take a compelling shot within the limitations of the iPhone. Just sayin. . . .

Have you seen the high-end photoshoot shot solely with an IPhone 3G? Sure, they used a phone. Cool. But they also used thousands and thousands worth of lighting and grip gear. Sure, I can make an artsy fartsy iphone shot all day, but nothing I'd want to hang on the wall or sell to a customer.

Jake

 

[Scatterbrained]

Give me a D800 and 70-200 2.8VC, and I'll make a photo out of extremely low light with no tripod. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a beautifully black photo in the same scene. Similarly, give me a D800 and a wide angle and a big stopper and I'll give you an "epic" (quotes imply sarcasm. I don't want to seem pompous) long exposure. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a boring snap shot.


I could go on for hours. Should I?

Jake

If you were a good photographer you'd find a way to take a compelling shot within the limitations of the iPhone. Just sayin. . . .

Have you seen the high-end photoshoot shot solely with an IPhone 3G? Sure, they used a phone. Cool. But they also used thousands and thousands worth of lighting and grip gear. Sure, I can make an artsy fartsy iphone shot all day, but nothing I'd want to hang on the wall or sell to a customer.

Jake

First, I'm just poking at ya. Second, creativity trumps gear. Just look at the pro photog cheap camera videos that Digital Rev does, like this one:


Granted I say that despite having way too much camera gear myself and never using the camera in my phone. . . . . . .

 

[bribrius]

I would go for the phone. dslrs are over rated unless you want to post chit on flikr and go bankrupt trying to sell a hundred dollar prints.
I actually just bought a galaxy something or other phone last week, I should probably get it out of the box and see how it does.

 

[photoguy99]

And the beat goes on.

Will ignorance win this time, or will it be bigotry? Stay tuned, folks!

 

[bribrius]

And the beat goes on.

Will ignorance win this time, or will it be bigotry? Stay tuned, folks!

come on. you know no side every wins in this they are two different tools for different purposes. kind of like comparing a chainsaw and a miter saw.

 

[bribrius]

Give me a D800 and 70-200 2.8VC, and I'll make a photo out of extremely low light with no tripod. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a beautifully black photo in the same scene. Similarly, give me a D800 and a wide angle and a big stopper and I'll give you an "epic" (quotes imply sarcasm. I don't want to seem pompous) long exposure. Give me an iPhone or S5 and you'll get a boring snap shot.


I could go on for hours. Should I?

Jake

If you were a good photographer you'd find a way to take a compelling shot within the limitations of the iPhone. Just sayin. . . .

Have you seen the high-end photoshoot shot solely with an IPhone 3G? Sure, they used a phone. Cool. But they also used thousands and thousands worth of lighting and grip gear. Sure, I can make an artsy fartsy iphone shot all day, but nothing I'd want to hang on the wall or sell to a customer.

Jake

there is a art gallery near here that does a cellphone juried show once a year now. no really. Only requirement is you have to had take it from a cellphone.

 

[Village Idiot]

To everyone,

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my thread. I am glad to see from a point of view that the latest smart phones are getting better and better but at the same time, due to their limited physical size, they will never really equal a real optical zoom. Also, having different lenses for different jobs is another good point that Scatterbrained explained.
I also understand that lighting is extremely important part of the job during any kind of photoshoot sessions, especially on food. At least this thread gave me a better understanding of both technologies.

Thanks again to everyone,

Ben

I used to shoot reviews for a food and travel website. This picture was done with an Olympus OM-D and gives you phone-esque shots. It’s better quality than the phone, but for the shots I needed it was simple and effective.

The below photos are with a DSLR camera. They’re not something you could do with your phone without a lot more work. The plated photos were shot with an off camera flash triggered by a radio remote in the hotshoe. The photo of the iPad is even trickier. It was shot with at least one flash (it’s been a while since I’ve taken that one) and it’s a composite. The camera was on a tripod and shot one exposure with everything but the iPad screen exposed to get it right. The second photos was done to expose the screen of the iPad. They were then edited together in photoshop. Could it be done with a camera phone? Probably, but it would have been more work.

Point is, a phone camera can get the job done depending on your needs. To do a completely professional job easier and with better quality, a camera with the manual settings, lenses, and ability to use accessories like lights will be almost necessary.

 

[waday]

And the beat goes on.

Will ignorance win this time, or will it be bigotry? Stay tuned, folks!

come on. you know no side every wins in this they are two different tools for different purposes. kind of like comparing a chainsaw and a miter saw.

Chainsaw because it's more fun!

 

[TCampbell]

Here's a food photo I did a few years back (I've posted this same shot before... it's not new).

But before you look at the image (too late?) here's a bit of background on this. This was shot for a restaurant... so sure... while they're trying to "sell" the food, the photograph is also trying to "sell" you on the atmosphere. I didn't want an image of "just" the food ... I needed some context. Hence, ALSO appearing in the photo is a glass of wine (and the wine bottle), the napkin, a bud-vase with flowers, a bread-roll, etc. Through this you get the sense of what sort of atmosphere you might expect at this restaurant... not *just* the food. But we don't want you to specifically try to read the label on the wine bottle, and we want the background to create more of a feeling... a mental image rather than a visual image. As such, the background is de-focused (I think I shot this at f/4).

With all that in mind... here's the image:


Bistro 222's Sauteed Lake Perch by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

The point... you can't shoot this image with a camera... not any camera phone. The sensor and lens won't allow for this sort of control over the depth of field. Also... if you need to control lighting (and if you're a serious food photographer then you do), it's a bit of a challenge to connect a camera phone to off-camera lighting.

I do have ANOTER food photo...


Photoshop bokeh "after" (blur filter added to background only) by Tim Campbell1, on Flickr

In the above image... the background blur is actually fake. The plate was tilted at such an angle that I needed to increase the depth of field to f/8... in doing this, the degree of blur on the background was reduced and since the two images were going to appear together, I wanted them to match. So... I used photoshop to create two copies of the image (each on their own layer) and extracted just the plate of food to the top layer, use the Photoshop "lens blur" filter to blur out the background layer to a degree that reasonably matched my f/4 image... but this creates an awkward transition from the plate to the background (the blurred copy of the plate behind the focused copy of the plate will create a halo that looks really bad) so I needed a middle layer to create a better transition. The three layers are all stacked to create the final result.

BUT... that "fake" blur was a lot of work. Also ... not every photo lends itself to fake background blur (you need a way to hide the transition). I'd MUCH rather create the effect with a real lens that put in all the work to do it in Photoshop.

Can you take food photos with a camera phone? Sure!
Will those images be able to compete with the images taken by a DSLR? Nope.

 

[Braineack]

i dunno about that:

 

[astroNikon]

you guys are making me hungry.

 

[photoguy99]

Yesiree. Those things DSLRs are better at, they're definitely better at those things. Ayup.