Young people.

[TheAnalogGuy]

It looks like the young people more and more use their cell phones for taking pictures! Are we SLR/DSLR photographers becoming an extinct race? But it is interesting seeing the youngsters faces when they discover that their. cell phone pictures turn out to be failures. Nothing beats a DSLR/SLR with a quality lens on it!
The cell phone cameras are getting better, but IMO they will never reach the quality level of a good DSLR!

 

[Capn Jack]

It looks like the young people more and more use their cell phones for taking pictures! Are we SLR photographers becoming an extinct race? But it is interesting seeing the youngsters faces when they discover that their. cell phone pictures turn out to be failures. Nothing beats a DSLR/SLR with a quality lens on it!
The cell phone cameras are getting better, but IMO they will never reach the quality level of a good DSLR!

They have already reached the quality of an interchangeable lens camera.
See the discussion starting here: https://focus-on-photography-forum.net/threads/pro-photography-doesnt-have-a-future.702/post-7891

As you read down the thread, you'll see that 80% of those bullet points were shown to be wrong on current phone cameras.

 

[TheAnalogGuy]

They have already reached the quality of an interchangeable lens camera.
See the discussion starting here: https://focus-on-photography-forum....hotography-doesnt-have-a-future.702/post-7891

As you read down the thread, you'll see that 80% of those bullet points were shown to be wrong on current phone cameras.

Well, I don’t agree with you there. I have a quite new iPhone with a fantastic camera on it, and it is OK for selfies! But for long distanse telephotos? Useless! Blurred and unsharp images. Not good at all!

 

[Skygod44]

The reason I started the linked-to thread above, was because more and more people are viewing photos only on their smartphone screens...
They are "OK" with what we consider poor quality, or limited in scope.

Manufactures, fundamentally, just care about profits.

So I envisage a truly sad day - hopefully a century of more from now - when there won't be enough customers wanting a real camera.
Add in AI, and younger people not even knowing that people used to go to places to take photos, and that'll be the end of this amazing thing we love to do.

I hope I'm wrong.
I truly do.
But the start of digital, and thereafter image manipulation at the pixel level was, I think, the death knell for photography.

 

[DavidWatts]

Young People. Don't get me started! Easy-peasy point the phone and presto! Upload instantly to all social media everywhere in the universe. They don't even know what they're missing. Nope. Way too easy. Spoiled brats is what they are!

Why, back in my day, we'd need to use something called a light meter to figure exposure possibilities and set the camera to correspond to that reading, manually, if you can believe that! But way before that, stand awkwardly in a completely dark closet hand-rolling bulk unexposed film into canisters that one would insert into the back of a camera , meaning we'd need to open the camera and close it back up again. We would do that again later to remove said film canister when done shooting with the measly short 36-exposure strip of chemical-laden plastic film . And not all of those pics were properly exposed no matter how we pre-calculated the exposure. Can you believe it? Frustrating? No! It built character is what it did! Oh, we weren't done. Far from it. Back into the room-that-was-without-light, maybe with a dim red lightbulb on in the corner to warm us and keep us company, to rip that film right out of the tiny canister (have your bottle opener with you?) and wrap that sucker around some steel spool, hoping it won't kink, and then into yet another larger canister and pour some most probable cancer-causing smelly and expensive caustic liquid at some exact temperature into that metal grenade-looking thing, do some sort of a dance that to anyone else would make you look stupid, stirring it up a bit for a while , pour that liquid out, hopefully into a sink, and then pour yet another temperature-controlled liquid into it and perform another dance , look at a glowing timer for a bit of time. Rinse with pure water. Rinse again. Ugh! Then pry that thing apart, hand the unruly plastic strip up on a clothes pin along a wire or a coat hanger. Put a weight on the bottom of all of them to keep them from curling back on themselves. At that point you could turn on a real light going completely blind for a few minutes from the abrupt change in lighting levels. Drink a beer or something congratulating yourself for making it this far into the photographic journey without going mad .

Done yet? Hell no! When recovered from the previous ordeal, back into the room-that-would-cause-claustrophobia to begin part two. Those strips of plastic are dry now. Unclip and scissor 8-inch pieces from those, place them carefully between a piece of glass and photo paper of a grade that by trial and error might work to judge which shots miraculously turned out and might work as a full-sized print . Flip those light switches back to red, and fidget with the enlarger tower, set the bigger timer for half a minute or so. Using pre-cleaned color-coded plastic trays that no one would ever use for anything else in their right mind, and then, you guessed it, pour into each yet more horrible pre-mixed and temperature-controlled chemicals . With rubber or wooden tongs (why tongs? Your fingers would be eaten to the bone instantly without them), play the moving game with that unwieldily piece of paper through all of them. Rinse. Keep those chemical in the tray for a while. You don't want to mix those twice in one day! Dry. Turn on real light and prepare to go blind again. Judge which shot(s) will make the cut. Surprise! Most won't!

Drink another beer . Go out on a walk . Then back for part three. Repeat most of the steps in the previous paragraph except this time will be even more complicated. Each and every one of those chosen few negatives that-might-be-appreciated-by-not-many-people will now be tortured into a miniature medieval rack press and placed carefully into the enlarger for some very precise and certainly eye-straining micro-focusing, again, in almost complete darkness. Red light is your buddy. By this time you've remembered to bring a radio in the room with you to pass the time with marginally less mental strain. The big glowing timer awaits your call. The tongs and trays also await your command. Don't get cocky. You'll still have no clue if this will even work at all or will result in happy prints . Thus, one by every single one, those prints will eventually dry for your inspection. You clean the room, tossing now unusable caustic chemicals down the sink hoping you won't be killing all the fish downstream once the pipes empty into the pond.

Oh, are you done now? Maybe. Wash the yellow chemical stains off your hands and take a shower . These much labored prints haven't even been looked at by anyone else yet. This is the fun and excitement those Young People are missing! They have no respect. We did it our way, and we liked it!

 

[TheAnalogGuy]

Quote:
«The reason I started the linked-to thread above, was because more and more people are viewing photos only on their smartphone screens...
They are "OK" with what we consider poor quality, or limited in scope.«


If your intent is to post your pics on social media, I guess a smart phone camera is OK! If you want more quality in your pics, get a SLR/DSLR!

 

[DavidWatts]

No, you're right. Phones are just another tool for us photogs. I use mine a lot. Of course, now there's RAW capture with them too. Nonetheless, they're inadequate for most important shots. The interface is still very poor with phones. The quality is closing the gap, that's for sure.

But I want control of every aspect of the shot, and the ergonomics of a real nice cam body and lens in my hand, heavy as they are, can't be beat. Amazing how many "young people" have never held a real camera. When I have my 5D3 at work (almost never) and someone holds it, they are in awe of the thing. Still, they don't really fathom the difference, or comprehend the reason we spend what we do on these rigs.

 

[Skygod44]

Young People. Don't get me started! Easy-peasy point the phone and presto! Upload instantly to all social media everywhere in the universe. They don't even know what they're missing. Nope. Way too easy. Spoiled brats is what they are!

Why, back in my day, we'd need to use something called a light meter to figure exposure possibilities and set the camera to correspond to that reading, manually, if you can believe that! But way before that, stand awkwardly in a completely dark closet hand-rolling bulk unexposed film into canisters that one would insert into the back of a camera , meaning we'd need to open the camera and close it back up again. We would do that again later to remove said film canister when done shooting with the measly short 36-exposure strip of chemical-laden plastic film . And not all of those pics were properly exposed no matter how we pre-calculated the exposure. Can you believe it? Frustrating? No! It built character is what it did! Oh, we weren't done. Far from it. Back into the room-that-was-without-light, maybe with a dim red lightbulb on in the corner to warm us and keep us company, to rip that film right out of the tiny canister (have your bottle opener with you?) and wrap that sucker around some steel spool, hoping it won't kink, and then into yet another larger canister and pour some most probable cancer-causing smelly and expensive caustic liquid at some exact temperature into that metal grenade-looking thing, do some sort of a dance that to anyone else would make you look stupid, stirring it up a bit for a while , pour that liquid out, hopefully into a sink, and then pour yet another temperature-controlled liquid into it and perform another dance , look at a glowing timer for a bit of time. Rinse with pure water. Rinse again. Ugh! Then pry that thing apart, hand the unruly plastic strip up on a clothes pin along a wire or a coat hanger. Put a weight on the bottom of all of them to keep them from curling back on themselves. At that point you could turn on a real light going completely blind for a few minutes from the abrupt change in lighting levels. Drink a beer or something congratulating yourself for making it this far into the photographic journey without going mad .

Done yet? Hell no! When recovered from the previous ordeal, back into the room-that-would-cause-claustrophobia to begin part two. Those strips of plastic are dry now. Unclip and scissor 8-inch pieces from those, place them carefully between a piece of glass and photo paper of a grade that by trial and error might work to judge which shots miraculously turned out and might work as a full-sized print . Flip those light switches back to red, and fidget with the enlarger tower, set the bigger timer for half a minute or so. Using pre-cleaned color-coded plastic trays that no one would ever use for anything else in their right mind, and then, you guessed it, pour into each yet more horrible pre-mixed and temperature-controlled chemicals . With rubber or wooden tongs (why tongs? Your fingers would be eaten to the bone instantly without them), play the moving game with that unwieldily piece of paper through all of them. Rinse. Keep those chemical in the tray for a while. You don't want to mix those twice in one day! Dry. Turn on real light and prepare to go blind again. Judge which shot(s) will make the cut. Surprise! Most won't!

Drink another beer . Go out on a walk . Then back for part three. Repeat most of the steps in the previous paragraph except this time will be even more complicated. Each and every one of those chosen few negatives that-might-be-appreciated-by-not-many-people will now be tortured into a miniature medieval rack press and placed carefully into the enlarger for some very precise and certainly eye-straining micro-focusing, again, in almost complete darkness. Red light is your buddy. By this time you've remembered to bring a radio in the room with you to pass the time with marginally less mental strain. The big glowing timer awaits your call. The tongs and trays also await your command. Don't get cocky. You'll still have no clue if this will even work at all or will result in happy prints . Thus, one by every single one, those prints will eventually dry for your inspection. You clean the room, tossing now unusable caustic chemicals down the sink hoping you won't be killing all the fish downstream once the pipes empty into the pond.

Oh, are you done now? Maybe. Wash the yellow chemical stains off your hands and take a shower . These much labored prints haven't even been looked at by anyone else yet. This is the fun and excitement those Young People are missing! They have no respect. We did it our way, and we liked it!

So much of that, I can relate to.
You actually had me laughing so many times, my son called upstairs to make sure I was OK.
I shot models in the mid- to late 1980s, so we had no choice in photographers' club...(which was on an RAF base!)...other than to build a full developing unit, attached to the studios.
Good and bad memories abound.
But I'm fearful that young people have become so soft, even the idea of putting film into a camera away from any bright lights would cause them to have a mini cardiac arrest.

But over here, it's almost bedtime for my two kiddies, so I'll catch you later

 

[Skygod44]

Quote:
«The reason I started the linked-to thread above, was because more and more people are viewing photos only on their smartphone screens...
They are "OK" with what we consider poor quality, or limited in scope.«


If your intent is to post your pics on social media, I guess a smart phone camera is OK! If you want more quality in your pics, get a SLR/DSLR!

tbh, apart from a thoroughly annoying little piece of spyware, I can't see where smartphones are going to take the younger generations...
There's even a phrase in Japanese which translates to "a walking smartphone [with human attached]", or something like that.
And anyone with more than two brain cells knows that limiting the use of those frustrating, addictive little super-computers is a guaranteed route to a happier, more fulfilling life.
But I think it's our life experience before even mobile phones were invented which allows us to put it all into perspective.

And don't get me started on 'social media'....
Otherwise you'll see a rant five times longer than David's

Right.
It really is time my two were in bed, so I should get out of FoP.
Cheers for now,
Simon

 

[Capn Jack]

Well, I don’t agree with you there. I have a quite new iPhone with a fantastic camera on it, and it is OK for selfies! But for long distanse telephotos? Useless! Blurred and unsharp images. Not good at all!

That statement sounds like a photography newbie with a good camera and a kit 18-50 mm lens complaining that their camera gives blurred and unsharp telephoto images. in both cases, to make an object l Of course the phone can't do that well, nor the 18-50 lens! Those sort of images constitute a niche of photography! If you need to image something, like a bear or deer, at a mile away, then buy and use the correct tools!

The cell phone manufacturers know, and have catered to, the focal length ranges that most people use and within those limits, phones work extremely well now. Just the same as point & shoot camera manufacturers did. Please tell me what's wrong with the pictures in this thread: https://focus-on-photography-forum....ellphones-post-your-best-shots.906/post-11685

 

[Capn Jack]

Quote:
«The reason I started the linked-to thread above, was because more and more people are viewing photos only on their smartphone screens...
They are "OK" with what we consider poor quality, or limited in scope.«


If your intent is to post your pics on social media, I guess a smart phone camera is OK! If you want more quality in your pics, get a SLR/DSLR!

Or learn how to use the cell phone camera.

 

[Jon]

I am in my sixties, and love I cameras. Years ago I did try photography with a mobile phone, not good. If I have to take a quick photo of something, such as my car registration or a document to show an official, then a photo from a mobile is fine for that.

 

[StephenM]

Ah, David, I'm left puzzled about your age! In my day, before motor drives started ripping cassettes apart unless they were really well crimped down, the top was held on by the paper label and only required a finger nail to remove. You must belong to the younger generation And I started using a daylight film loader in 1967, which only required me to put the bulk film in it in the dark.

Now, waving a dripping Paterson spiral around a photoflood bulb to make the reversal exposure with slide film was a little worrying to those of a nervous disposition (like me) but that was all. The nasty chemical smells for me were just the vinegar of an acetic acid stop bath, which you get in any fish and chip shop and many cafes.

I don't have the luxury of 36 exposures before reloading these days, and can only carry a small number of film holders where each exposure has to be individually loaded. Plus I don't have a meter on any of the film cameras I use, so it's my 1965 and still going Lunasix meter every time.

On a more serious note, if the purpose of photography is seen as a tangible work of art (or even a pleasing snapshot of the family for the wall) then I suggest the old ways will live on. Someone must be buying all the new large format cameras that are being made, after all. It's not just me, guv, honest!

 

[Capn Jack]

I am in my sixties, and love I cameras. Years ago I did try photography with a mobile phone, not good. If I have to take a quick photo of something, such as my car registration or a document to show an official, then a photo from a mobile is fine for that.

Please tell me why the images in this thread are bad?

https://focus-on-photography-forum....ellphones-post-your-best-shots.906/post-11685

 

[Jon]

Please tell me why the images in this thread are bad?

https://focus-on-photography-forum....ellphones-post-your-best-shots.906/post-11685

Sometimes I do get a pleasing image from a mobile phone. But if I wanted something to hang on my wall, then I prefer the better resolution from the superior sensor of my camera. But that is just me.

 

[Capn Jack]

Sometimes I do get a pleasing image from a mobile phone. But if I wanted something to hang on my wall, then I prefer the better resolution from the superior sensor of my camera. But that is just me.

You haven't explained what is wrong with those images in that other thread. If those images weren't in that thread, you couldn't tell which camera was used. Your statement implies that the camera in the cell phone isn't a camera. So what is it?
Cell phone camera sensors match the resolution in mirrorless or DSLR cameras, with current cell phone cameras having 50 megapixels (1).
They also use a "1 inch" sensor (1) similar to that used in some Sony and Nikon cameras (2).

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_camera_phones
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format

EDIT: Here are some cameras with the same sensor used in cell phones: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/buying-guide/cameras-with-1-inch-imaging-sensors

 

[Capn Jack]

But I want control of every aspect of the shot, and the ergonomics of a real nice cam body and lens in my hand, heavy as they are, can't be beat.

Cell phone cameras give you such control but you need to go beyond the basic mode which is like using the green square on dedicated cameras. The ergonomics are very different given the form factor and using a touch screen to set the focus position, exposure, and other aspects. One analogy is flying, where older aircraft have the analog gauges and newer planes have the information displayed on a screen. The information is the same, but the presentation is different and entering information is different. Professional pilots have to have training for the transition from the old to the new.

 

[TheAnalogGuy]

Or learn how to use the cell phone camera.

Well, you seem to be an expert on cellphone cameras so please tell me the secrets how to get just as good pics with my iPhones (12 and 15!) as I get with my 5D Mk IV and the EF 300/2.8L lens!

 

[gjl711]

Well, I don’t agree with you there. I have a quite new iPhone with a fantastic camera on it, and it is OK for selfies! But for long distanse telephotos? Useless! Blurred and unsharp images. Not good at all!

This is sort of cherry picking a scenario where call phones are not competing. Some offer zoom lenses but no where near the capability of a decent quality superzoom. Sort of like saying a DSLR is useless because it is so difficult to take a decent selfie. I mean, you have to set the timer, hold this big heavy camera out there hoping you keep yourself centered while waiting for it to take a picture. It's just another tool in the tool bag, no?

 

[gjl711]

Well, you seem to be an expert on cellphone cameras so please tell me the secrets how to get just as good pics with my iPhones (12 and 15!) as I get with my 5D Mk IV and the EF 300/2.8L lens!

You can't, It's not what it was designed to do.