People who shoot photos with their lens hood on backwards

[Johnny Canuck3]

Proper photographers will get great photos, whatever the camera.

Here's a mobile phone pic shot by a pro.

And all mobiles are just so unusably shit in low light, aren't they? Oh, wait....

Both are nice scenes with not great IQ

 

[editor]

Not enough IQ for what, exactly? The top one is easily good enough for most print uses.

I think you're one of those people that is too concerned with macro-examining technical aspects that really aren't of much consideration in the real world.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

Not enough IQ for what, exactly? The top one is easily good enough for most print uses.

I think you're one of those people that is too concerned with macro-examining technical aspects that really aren't of much consideration in the real world.

I'd agree that either would probably be perfectly acceptable for journalism work. I've already agreed that camera phone photos can be good enough for an newspaper photo, for instance.

Doesn't change the fact that the quality attainable with a camera phone isn't comparable with that attainable with a good DSLR or SLR.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Because "most people" just want "a camera". An enthusiast interested in doing "proper" photography, or a pro, isn't going to purchase a camera phone (for their main work) are they? They're going to purchase a DSLR.

Edit: Or at least a mirrorless.

Most people wanting a camera tend to try to match the camera to the purposes for which they use it. In some cases that'll mean a fixed-lens compact (Roy Reed who posts on here, a pro, mentioned the other day that he habitually carries one - a Fuji F600EXR), for others a CSC (compact system camera, for others an SLR.
If a phone's camera is best suited to your needs as a photographer, then you may well wish to purchase one. It's all about horses for courses, not about features.

 

[kabbes]

My local paper needed a head and shoulders shot of me last week. I got someone at work to take one with my iPhone. The paper used it, it was fine. It was only something like a three inch square photo anyway; how much quality do they really need?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Ugh, someone on my Photography degree handed in camera phone photos as their final, the tutors lapped it up (well the lead tutor did and then overruled the others )

This was 2005 too so camera phones weren't a patch on what they are now.

I'm gonna bet they "sold" it to the tutor on the "art" angle. Something along the lines of "digital lomography".

 

[editor]

Doesn't change the fact that the quality attainable with a camera phone isn't comparable with that attainable with a good DSLR or SLR.

If shot under favourable conditions, you would find it very hard indeed to tell the difference between the output of a good quality camera phone like the Lumia and a regular dSLR on a 10" x 8" print.

And assuming that any dSLR is better than a new smartphone isn't too clever either. This review found that a Canon EOS10D compared very poorly against new phones when it came to image quality:

Yes it's comprehensively humbled by modern phones. The iPhone out-shoots it, and the Nokia out-resolves it, all by huge margins.
http://connect.dpreview.com/post/5533410947/smartphones-versus-dslr-versus-film?page=4

Of course, a dSLR is faster, gives you easier control over settings and performs better for sports/low light etc but in the real world, editors don't give a flying fuck what camera the image was taken on, or what it looks like zoomed in at 2000% in Photoshop.

All they care about is: is it a good photo and is the quality good enough for print? - and in many cases, a smartphone will pass those criteria easily. That's why such photos have ended up on front pages.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Does anyone have any words of wisdom regarding camera straps?

I'm worried that people will think I'm an amateur instead of a serious hobbiest

Neoprene. An Op-Tech or Chinese knock-off. If you're wearing your camera all day, the reduction of weight pressure is worth it.
If you want to look like a "serious hobbyist", though, you need one of those shoulder-harness double straps so you can carry two cameras.

 

[editor]

My local paper needed a head and shoulders shot of me last week. I got someone at work to take one with my iPhone. The paper used it, it was fine. It was only something like a three inch square photo anyway; how much quality do they really need?

Amateurs, clearly.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Can your photos be pro if they're shot in auto mode?

: )

I remember an interview with a war photographer (a South African bloke, Kevin Carter) who reckoned that cameras with aperture priority and shutter priority modes were the biggest boon to his kind of photography - that you could get fantastic photos with a fully-manual camera, but that in his experience he missed more shots.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Ok, have it your way. A phone can do everything a DSLR can do, sensor size makes no difference to image quality, and those of us that bought DSLRs wasted our money...especially those that bought Full Frame DSLRs. What fools, huh. We should have all bought smart phones.

I'll tell you what, go and ask Gavin Hoey if he wants to swap his 5D Mk II for a smart phone.

I'd have serious reservations about employing someone who claims to be a "pro photographer", yet doesn't understand the fundamental differences between a phone camera and a DSLR; and also one that is so disrespectful towards another extremely experienced photographer who probably knows a hell of a lot more about photography then they do.

Except that no-one has made any such claims, have they?
What the editor has said (to paraphrase) is "a photographer can take photographs good enough to sell, on a camera phone".

Now do stop being disingenuous. It makes you look childish and pathetic.

 

[editor]

I remember an interview with a war photographer (a South African bloke, Kevin Carter) who reckoned that cameras with aperture priority and shutter priority modes were the biggest boon to his kind of photography - that you could get fantastic photos with a fully-manual camera, but that in his experience he missed more shots.

I generally use aperture priority (shutter priority for football coverage), but given how damn clever some of the 'intelligent' auto modes can be on newer cameras, there's no shame in using them.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Just to throw my tuppence in, someone whos good with a camera will get a good photo regardless of what they're taking a photo with. Some of the best photos Ive taken have been with an empty beer can with a hole in it.

Yup. As I said earlier, Bert Hardy took up a challenge to prove that it's the photographer (and the photographer's "eye" for a shot) that matters, not their kit. He habitually used a Leica III with a 50mm/f.2 attached, but took a fantastic photograph (which Picture Post used as a cover shot) on a Box Brownie.

But phone cameras will never be a replacement for a good quality camera, they just dont have the ability to reproduce the quality, and will never have the physical shape or size to give you any real control over shutter speed or apertures, as real control over them needs them in their physciality, and by the nature of a camera phone, being predominantly a phone before a camera, means that being pocket sized will always be important.

I agree about the technical control, but in some circumstances (street photography, for example) how much control is actually necessary? Again, much of the time, it's about your "eye" for a picture. All the complex kit in the world can't make a duffer into a decent photographer, and a decent photographer can get a decent enough picture with a phone's camera.
That's not to say that DSLRs or mirrorless system cameras or digi-compacts are irrelevant or obsolete - far from it - or that phone cameras are a replacement for them, because they're not. All it means is that they're just another photographic tool in a photographer's armoury.

This isn't even an argument worth having, but in all honesty if i hired a photographer for a decent amount of money and they turned up with nothing but a phone, I'd be telling them to fuck off. That doesnt mean you can't take a great photo with a camera phone, its just that they dont suit a professional purpose.

It's not an argument that's actually been made, though, except in Bungle's febrile imagination.

 

[Greebo]

<snip> If you want to look like a "serious hobbyist", though, you need one of those shoulder-harness double straps so you can carry two cameras.

You forgot to mention that those who want to really look the part make sure that they're followed everywhere by an assistant carrying the rest of the kit, including at least one tripod and/or one ludicrously long lens.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I generally use aperture priority (shutter priority for football coverage), but given how damn clever some of the 'intelligent' auto modes can be on newer cameras, there's no shame in using them.

Absolutely.
Back when I was a teen, I used to love the shutter priority mode on my clunky Minolta Hi-Matic (my other camera at the time was a fully-manual Praktica SLR), because when I went to the stock car races at Wimbledon, you could easily take those "frozen in motion" shots of the cars hurtling about. Another case of "horses for courses", IMO.

 

[ViolentPanda]

You still get so many camera snobs. This one website used to compliment me on some great shots. One day someone said wow the quality on that is great, what camera are you using?

Reply: Kodak EasyShare

The compliments stopped coming.

The stupid thing was that the Kodak EasyShare (at that time) had a dynamite lens. One being used in cameras considerably more expensive. They never trumpeted the fact and so people just think pah cheap tourist camera when really it was an exceptional value for money quality camera.

Always the way. Chinon produced many 35mm compacts (rangefinder focus and scale focus) in the '60s and '70s. What people didn't tend to cotton onto, because Chinon were seen as a "cheapo" brand who produced "badge-engineered" cameras for the likes of Dixons (in the UK), Sears (in the US) and Porst (in West Germany), was that most of their compacts were Chinon-badged models of cameras they'd been contracted to produce for other, bigger companies, so you've still got Chinon compacts out there that are functional copies of Canon, Minolta, Fuji and Yashica models that sell for twice the price.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I'd agree that either would probably be perfectly acceptable for journalism work. I've already agreed that camera phone photos can be good enough for an newspaper photo, for instance.

Doesn't change the fact that the quality attainable with a camera phone isn't comparable with that attainable with a good DSLR or SLR.

Attainable by whom?

 

[Dr_Herbz]

Now try taking a picture in low light

then try a macro shot

then try taking one of something far away

then a sport's action shot

then a long exposure shot

then try getting a narrow DoF shot.

There's a reason people buy DSLRs.

Yeah, I see what you mean...

 

[Corax]

Yeah, I see what you mean...

Nice. How do you get the DoF with a phone camera? Is there an app that gives you that kind of control?

 

[Dr_Herbz]

Nice. How do you get the DoF with a phone camera? Is there an app that gives you that kind of control?

They're not my photos. They're the first ones I found on Flickr that matched the brief. There were plenty that were a lot better but weren't downloadable.

I haven't tried a macro shot with the S4 but I'll give it a go and see how it turns out and see if I can get a decent DoF shot.

 

[Gromit]

Always the way. Chinon produced many 35mm compacts (rangefinder focus and scale focus) in the '60s and '70s. What people didn't tend to cotton onto, because Chinon were seen as a "cheapo" brand who produced "badge-engineered" cameras for the likes of Dixons (in the UK), Sears (in the US) and Porst (in West Germany), was that most of their compacts were Chinon-badged models of cameras they'd been contracted to produce for other, bigger companies, so you've still got Chinon compacts out there that are functional copies of Canon, Minolta, Fuji and Yashica models that sell for twice the price.

Not forgetting when Leica and Panasonic were selling the exact same camera (made in the same factory to the same spec) and the Leica was £80 more because it had a Leica badge on it.

 

[Spymaster]

Not forgetting when Leica and Panasonic were selling the exact same camera (made in the same factory to the same spec) and the Leica was £80 more because it had a Leica badge on it.

I bought one of those.

 

[sim667]

Yup. As I said earlier, Bert Hardy took up a challenge to prove that it's the photographer (and the photographer's "eye" for a shot) that matters, not their kit. He habitually used a Leica III with a 50mm/f.2 attached, but took a fantastic photograph (which Picture Post used as a cover shot) on a Box Brownie.



I agree about the technical control, but in some circumstances (street photography, for example) how much control is actually necessary? Again, much of the time, it's about your "eye" for a picture. All the complex kit in the world can't make a duffer into a decent photographer, and a decent photographer can get a decent enough picture with a phone's camera.
That's not to say that DSLRs or mirrorless system cameras or digi-compacts are irrelevant or obsolete - far from it - or that phone cameras are a replacement for them, because they're not. All it means is that they're just another photographic tool in a photographer's armoury.



It's not an argument that's actually been made, though, except in Bungle's febrile imagination.

I regard street photography almost as a seperate thing from photography with its own requirements. In the same way you wouldn't use a rangefinder in a studio with flash (well I wouldn't) I'd use a dslr/slr/medium format or large formate.

Basically this whole thread is fucking bollocks in the first place. Lens hoods fit on backwards for storage, if your not taking the photo into the sun and you've just grabbed your camera out of your bag then most probably wouldn't bother turning the hood round when they're just going to put it back in the bag.

 

[Corax]

They're not my photos. They're the first ones I found on Flickr that matched the brief. There were plenty that were a lot better but weren't downloadable.

I haven't tried a macro shot with the S4 but I'll give it a go and see how it turns out and see if I can get a decent DoF shot.

Do you use the native app?

 

[Corax]

Not forgetting when Leica and Panasonic were selling the exact same camera (made in the same factory to the same spec) and the Leica was £80 more because it had a Leica badge on it.

Same thing happens with cars, tvs, loads of stuff. It's kinda depressing how much it succeeds tbh.

 

[Dr_Herbz]

Do you use the native app?

I haven't tried any of the other available camera apps. I've only taken a handful of pictures with it and they've all come out at least as good as I'd expected them to.

 

[neonwilderness]

Because of this thread I've just bought a new camera app (Camera+ for iOS) to try

 

[fractionMan]

The camera on this thing less than a hundred quid huawei phone is really awful yet I occasionally manage a decent shot. That one of the kids in a tree was done using this and I love it.

 

[Dr_Herbz]

Because of this thread I've just bought a new camera app (Camera+ for iOS) to try

Does it come with a virtual, reversible hood?

 

[neonwilderness]

Does it come with a virtual, reversible hood?

It's probably an in-app purchase for idiots