Thinking about whether to buy a camera or to stick with a phone is alaways a tough choice. This is something I was thinking about yesterday. I already have cameras and phones and have no intention of being exclusive to one or the other. Having said that I went out the other day specifically to take some autumn photos.
That’s one I took with an Olympus PM1 with a 14-42 standard lens (I don’t own any other lenses for my Olympus). I’m sure you’ll agree it’s really quite a pleasant photo. I don’t think I could have improved on this by using a Canon DSLR.
This photo was taken with my $29 cheapo ZTE cellphone. Both photos show you clearly what you’re looking at. The cellphone image is a bit softer (which could be fixed with post processing). Neither images have had an after photo twiddling - they’re both straight from camera JPEGS.
Years ago when people actually wasted money on printing photos to put in physical albums and to hang on walls while the prints faded it actually made sense to go for a higher-end camera. These days though almost all booboos can be fixed with automatic software tools. The kicker is most photographs will only ever be displayed digitally which is pretty low resolution.
Do you really want to see my quick lunch from the other day printed to 16”x20” and hung on a wall somewhere? Of course not! Posted on social media though that would be fine and dandy. The point is that the only place 99.99% of images will ever be displayed is via social media. Aside from wedding photos (forget the “albums” nobody cares about those. They’re sold by “photographers” who’re more into a quick buck that anything else), nobody much cares about prints. In fact, most couples would rather have the digital images and simply press delete when their partnership breaks up.
The trade off is simple - a camera will provide an excessively high quality images while a phone will allow you to share an adequate quality image easily. There’s your choice. You can be anal and go for high quality - in which case you go for a Leica or practical and go for a cellphone. Anything between those two is just a distraction.
Most digital cameras (my PM1 included) can take excellent movies. Now the movie above was taken with a cellphone (my ZTE). The movie taken with my PM1 was obviously of higher quality but uploading a large file would have burned up too much bandwidth and taken up too much storage space. Having said that, the only difference was a slight increase in clarity. That was probably more due to my having a polarizer permanently mounted on the lens.
So, how important is uploadability to you? For me, it’s important. This is why 90% of my blog images these days are taken with a cellphone. This is why this blog gets so little attention these days. I like it to be mostly camera based. With a cellphone of limited speed and bandwidth as my sole internet connection, I can’t afford to waste the data. My cellphone uploads automatically without my having to press buttons. The images are instantly ready to share. The killer is - they’re good enough to use in publications. I’ve published several cellphone images in books I’ve written. A real camera makes the photos a bit better and a bit easier to take BUT is the convenience tradeoff worthwhile.
I’ll leave you with a question... If you’re walking down the street and suddenly Lady Gaga walks by naked aside from a leather collar and being lead on by an equally naked Bruce Willis who’s holding a leash attached to that collar, are you going to take a photo with your cellphone or with your camera? Will you even have your camera with you?
