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Usually people say the only advantage of a cell phone camera compared with a DSLR is that it's always with you. I think there are other advantages as well as disadvantages of cell phone cameras and I'll give my list below. I'm curious what people think of my list and what they would add to it. I'm also curious if people have suggestions for working around/dealing with the weaknesses of DSLRs that I've identified in the cell phone advantages list (especially 2 and 4). In many situations, I find that I actually come out with better pictures from my Galaxy S7 Edge than my Canon SL1 - both before and after editing in Lightroom. Below, I'm referring just to top of the line modern smart phones.
Cell phone advantages
Convenience. Obviously it often is the only camera with you.
Larger, more detailed preview screen. I can get a better sense while I'm shooting of what the picture will look like and adjust accordingly while taking a picture.
Better in-camera effects. Perhaps this depends on the look you're going for, but I often find that the HDR function gives better results than I get with my SL1. I shoot raw with the SL1 and it does give a lot of flexibility with editing. Often no matter how much editing I do, it doesn't achieve as nice a look as my Galaxy pictures.
Quicker focusing, processing. When I take pictures of dogs, I'm less likely to miss that critical moment with my cell phone than DSLR. It's easier to move into the right position and take many shots at once with the cell phone.
DSLR advantages
This has been written about extensively on the web already so I won't give much detail. But the low-light performance, optical zooming, and ability to manipulate depth of field are substantial advantages for DSLRs.
I don't use a cell phone for anything but phone calls (old flip phone, I went out of my way to buy one without a camera).
I don't know why anyone cares to be perfectly honest. It's 90% the user and 10% the tool. The most talented photographer will easily take better shots with a cell phone than anyone who posts these kinds of questions online could with the best equipment money could buy.
I don't use a cell phone for anything but phone calls (old flip phone, I went out of my way to buy one without a camera).
I don't know why anyone cares to be perfectly honest. It's 90% the user and 10% the tool. The most talented photographer will easily take better shots with a cell phone than anyone who posts these kinds of questions online could with the best equipment money could buy.
I think it's an interesting discussion and wanted to see if I would learn anything. I wasn't asking for advice on which to buy. But there are many instances where I have to decide if I want to actually carry around the SL1 or just use the Galaxy. I do agree that it's 90% the user, though. I was curious to see if other people shared my perceptions of the benefits of cell phones for photos or if they thought the convenience was the only benefit of them.
Maybe my questions did not come off as intelligent but I believe I take pretty good pictures with either my cell phone or DSLR. https://www.flickr.com/photos/67163551@N07/
I think you need to consider that DSLR cameras come in many sizes, shapes and qualities. Plus, your question isn't either/or as there are some other options besides the DSLR and cell phone--mirrorless, point-n-shoot, to name two.
Let's take your points--
1. Convenience--yes, definitely goes to the cell phone, although I recently wanted to take a photo of the battleship Iowa in San Pedro. Where I was, I could enlarge the view on my cell phone's (iPhone 6) camera to get a photo of the ship from where I was at, but it was very unsharp. Convenient? Well, I had the cell phone with me and not another camera so it was convenient, but certainly not the best image.
2. View Screen size (preview)--The DSLR has an optical viewer, the cell phone has an electronic view finder (EVF). The benefit of the EVF is that it's a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) view--the view changes to show you what the photo will look like after you take the photo. But the optical viewer allows you to see what is going on when you take the photo, for instance, if you swing your camera to take a photo of a bird flying, the optical viewer will allow you to keep the bird in the frame as you shoot and you will see exactly what is happening as you shoot a series of photos of the bird. The EVF will "lag" behind and you won't see exactly what you are shooting. As for viewing images after taking the image, the cell phone screen is indeed bigger, but in the case of my Olympus E-M1 (a 4/3 mirrorless camera with an EVF), I can hold the camera up to my eye and view the photos through the viewfinder itself, now that's as big as you can get as the image is full-screen (all my eye can see).
3. Better in-camera effects--This really depends on the camera. Some DSLRs and almost all mirrorless and point-n-shoots have impressive in-camera effects. The more high quality the DSLR, the less effects available. Most pro shooters do not want these features so the high end cameras do not include them.
4.--Quicker focus, processing--I'm really confused about this, as I've found that any DSLR or mirrorless camera focuses light years faster than a cell phone. And the processing of the image is as fast as I can push the shutter, in that all DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have a buffer to hold images while you shoot. The better cameras can hold up to 100 images to allow you to keep shooting.
One last thing about the differences in cell phones versus DSLRs. If all you are doing with your photos is putting them on Facebook or posting for family, a cell phone is great. If you want to put something on the wall, don't even bother with the cell phone, the quality isn't there, no matter how many pixels they tell you the camera can do.
All in all, in my experience as a professional photographer for 40 years (and an amateur shooter for 15 years before and in the four years since I retired), I will take the DSLR or mirrorless whenever possible. That said, I am more often found with my cell on me than any other camera so I tend to do a lot of photos with the cell. Basically it's "different strokes for different folks."
I think you need to consider that DSLR cameras come in many sizes, shapes and qualities. Plus, your question isn't either/or as there are some other options besides the DSLR and cell phone--mirrorless, point-n-shoot, to name two.
Let's take your points--
1. Convenience--yes, definitely goes to the cell phone, although I recently wanted to take a photo of the battleship Iowa in San Pedro. Where I was, I could enlarge the view on my cell phone's (iPhone 6) camera to get a photo of the ship from where I was at, but it was very unsharp. Convenient? Well, I had the cell phone with me and not another camera so it was convenient, but certainly not the best image.
2. View Screen size (preview)--The DSLR has an optical viewer, the cell phone has an electronic view finder (EVF). The benefit of the EVF is that it's a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) view--the view changes to show you what the photo will look like after you take the photo. But the optical viewer allows you to see what is going on when you take the photo, for instance, if you swing your camera to take a photo of a bird flying, the optical viewer will allow you to keep the bird in the frame as you shoot and you will see exactly what is happening as you shoot a series of photos of the bird. The EVF will "lag" behind and you won't see exactly what you are shooting. As for viewing images after taking the image, the cell phone screen is indeed bigger, but in the case of my Olympus E-M1 (a 4/3 mirrorless camera with an EVF), I can hold the camera up to my eye and view the photos through the viewfinder itself, now that's as big as you can get as the image is full-screen (all my eye can see).
3. Better in-camera effects--This really depends on the camera. Some DSLRs and almost all mirrorless and point-n-shoots have impressive in-camera effects. The more high quality the DSLR, the less effects available. Most pro shooters do not want these features so the high end cameras do not include them.
4.--Quicker focus, processing--I'm really confused about this, as I've found that any DSLR or mirrorless camera focuses light years faster than a cell phone. And the processing of the image is as fast as I can push the shutter, in that all DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have a buffer to hold images while you shoot. The better cameras can hold up to 100 images to allow you to keep shooting.
One last thing about the differences in cell phones versus DSLRs. If all you are doing with your photos is putting them on Facebook or posting for family, a cell phone is great. If you want to put something on the wall, don't even bother with the cell phone, the quality isn't there, no matter how many pixels they tell you the camera can do.
All in all, in my experience as a professional photographer for 40 years (and an amateur shooter for 15 years before and in the four years since I retired), I will take the DSLR or mirrorless whenever possible. That said, I am more often found with my cell on me than any other camera so I tend to do a lot of photos with the cell. Basically it's "different strokes for different folks."
Wow, this is great information. One thing that hit me is that I'm really overgeneralizing from a limited set of equipment (Galaxy S5 and S7 and only the Canon SL1 DSLR, which is entry level).
I wonder what I'm doing wrong regarding point #4 - the focusing and processing. Part of the issue might be that I use zoom lenses, not prime lenses and I'm not sure if the fact that I'm using a low-end DSLR is part of it too. But I definitely find that it takes a fraction of a second longer to focus than my Galaxy S7. With pet photography, this often means missing a critical moment. I also believe the lag between images is a fraction of a second longer with the SL1. If I try shooting in continuous mode with the SL1, I find many of the images don't have great focus. I'm not sure if that's because I have a mild hand tremor.
I've blown up my DSLR pictures into wall art but I've never tried to with my cell phone shots. I can easily imagine what you're saying about that not working. For the most part, I just post my pictures on Flickr, but I do like to occasionally make wall art. I also made a pillow collage as a gift for someone once.
Regarding the in-camera effects, the SL1 does have many options. But I just found they don't work as well as the ones in the Galaxy. That said, I may have given up on them too early. I think I will play around some more. I shoot raw with the SL1. That may also be part of why the lag time between pictures is long - it's such a large file? I'm going to play around more with my nifty-fifty for pet photography. That will probably focus faster.
Yesterday, I took about 30 pictures of a castle with my DSLR and then took 2 pictures in the HDR mode with my Samsung Galaxy. The SL1 raw took plane pictures that I would have to spend forever editing, although even then I'm not sure it would have come close to the look I got with the S7. I spent like 2 min editing this S7 HDR picture.
But I can imagine that the image quality would deteriorate if I tried to blow this up. I hadn't thought about that. If I spent a really long time editing the raw images with my DSLR, I'm not sure I could have gotten the same look but it would have been a picture that could be blown up much more.
Wow, this is great information. One thing that hit me is that I'm really overgeneralizing from a limited set of equipment (Galaxy S5 and S7 and only the Canon SL1 DSLR, which is entry level).
It appears I can get a Samsung Galaxy S7 from verizonwireless.com for about $576.00...
I have no clue what the other fees would be.
As I tell my wife, kids and grand-kids that I might be the only adult human they know who does not have a cell phone...
I have been taking pictures (on and off) for over 50 years...
It appears I can get a Samsung Galaxy S7 from verizonwireless.com for about $576.00...
I have no clue what the other fees would be.
As I tell my wife, kids and grand-kids that I might be the only adult human they know who does not have a cell phone...
I have been taking pictures (on and off) for over 50 years...
But it is an interesting thread, even for me.
That price sounds about right, although I would want a smart phone for all the other features even if it hypothetically didn't have a camera. So I don't think of it as spending $576 on a camera.
4.--Quicker focus, processing--I'm really confused about this, as I've found that any DSLR or mirrorless camera focuses light years faster than a cell phone. And the processing of the image is as fast as I can push the shutter, in that all DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have a buffer to hold images while you shoot. The better cameras can hold up to 100 images to allow you to keep shooting.
I've been playing around some more. I think the issue is not that the lag time between pictures is worse on my DSLR. I'm pretty sure the issue is just that the lag time on the optical view finder screen is worse than my Galaxy's electronic view finder screen.
Usually people say the only advantage of a cell phone camera compared with a DSLR is that it's always with you. I think there are other advantages as well as disadvantages of cell phone cameras and I'll give my list below. I'm curious what people think of my list and what they would add to it. I'm also curious if people have suggestions for working around/dealing with the weaknesses of DSLRs that I've identified in the cell phone advantages list (especially 2 and 4). In many situations, I find that I actually come out with better pictures from my Galaxy S7 Edge than my Canon SL1 - both before and after editing in Lightroom. Below, I'm referring just to top of the line modern smart phones.
Cell phone advantages
Convenience. Obviously it often is the only camera with you.
Larger, more detailed preview screen. I can get a better sense while I'm shooting of what the picture will look like and adjust accordingly while taking a picture.
Better in-camera effects. Perhaps this depends on the look you're going for, but I often find that the HDR function gives better results than I get with my SL1. I shoot raw with the SL1 and it does give a lot of flexibility with editing. Often no matter how much editing I do, it doesn't achieve as nice a look as my Galaxy pictures.
Quicker focusing, processing. When I take pictures of dogs, I'm less likely to miss that critical moment with my cell phone than DSLR. It's easier to move into the right position and take many shots at once with the cell phone.
DSLR advantages
This has been written about extensively on the web already so I won't give much detail. But the low-light performance, optical zooming, and ability to manipulate depth of field are substantial advantages for DSLRs.
Your thoughts?
The lug factor has to be a plus.
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