DPReview Going Downhill Fast

There are also short telephoto lenses which are completely left out in this statement. It should be obvious that a smartphone shouldn’t be the first choice for BIF.

Might be OK with a really big bird.

Since the discussion seems to be detouring to be about smartphones, when I was only mentioning that as an example (vs intending the thread to be about that), I will comment.

That is exactly much of what bothers me, the cheapening of the art form to where any Joe Blow from Kokomo can use a toy-ish camera more commonly associated with sorority girls using them to make "duck-lips" faces and then applying some lame-tacky Snapchat filter, and voila--"I'm a photographer."

Just, no.

I celebrate DiGorno making frozen pizza taste better than the old itinerations of frozen pizza that tasted like the cardboard box, but I never claim that making one means I'm a chef. On a good day I tell jokes at work that makes tons of people die laughing and they even say that I should leave my job and be a comedian, but I know I'm not a comedian just the same--and I have respect for the REAL ones as being the REAL DEAL. I have a rosebush in my yard, but I don't call myself a botanist. I can cut my grass pretty well, I don't call myself a landscaper. I can clean my house, but I'm not a housekeeper. I keep my car good and clean, but I don't call myself a car detailer. I know how to change the oil in my car, but I don't call myself a car mechanic. I can fix simple plumbing around my house, I don't call myself a plumber.

In photography, instead, people are forever trying to be a "photographer" by taking shortcuts rather than showing respect for the art form by educating themselves about f-stops and ISO etc as has always been the case for so long. Worse, "photographers" use these toys meant more for college frat boys to document their strip club exploits when much better gear is right there, much of it (like the RX100) very portable (and it can pair with a smartphone for easy posting too).

In the past, yes snapshooters used such cameras without any judgment, and that was absolutely fine, but a serious photographer (even on the hobbyist level) wouldn't have been caught dead using something of the sort (like a Kodak 126 of years ago, which one poster admitted that such cameras are what the smartphone is now). Now, I'm being told that "the tool doesn't matter."

For me, I find that kind of tacky. Yes, "things change," but that doesn't mean I need to embrace them. (Then again, people have been trying since the days of the Kodak Brownie, if you think about it.) I mean no disrespect to anyone personally, I'm fine with all of you guys (mostly anyway I'd say) and I don't mean to sling mud and start a flame-war or such, but that's my opinion and you're not changing it.

Let's not forget that the vast majority of smartphone "photographers" don't actually aspire to the title. They're just in it to take snaps of their lives that they can post for their friends (who may be no more discerning than they are) and to save as memories.

The other thing to bear in mind is that it is completely possible to make serious art with amateur tools. You could probably make an argument that says it requires more creativity and artistic vision than using professional tools.

IMHO it's best to judge the result, not how it was obtained.

For myself, struggling with creativity and vision, I stick with equipment much better than what the average person has and tell myself that it makes a difference. 😉

I think the better term is "the right tool for the right job."

Yeah, if you're satisfied with the prime focal length equivalents, you can treat 'em that way. (I've got a range of primes from 24mm-200mm and a 500mm mirror lens, so I admit I'm not exactly normal there. ^^;;)

I admit, I lost pretty much any respect for Samsung's smartphone tele lenses after the 'Moon AI' issue came out. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/samsung-says-it-adds-fake-detail-to-moon-photos-via-reference-photos/ (tl;dr: Redditor deliberately blurred a moon photo, took a shot of it with a Galaxy S23, and the S23 added a bunch of detail that wasn't in the original image.)

Yeah, my iPhone 13 mini will get some DoF when you get right up to the subject, but that's not what I was talking about. When I said 'control', I meant 'able to control DoF by adjusting aperture.' The default camera app on iOS doesn't do it, and from what I've heard Android's camera app doesn't either; not sure about third-party apps like Halide.

DP REVIEW was too heavy handed in this respect

The aperture in iPhone cameras is fixed. The only control you have over DOF is managing the camera-subject-background distances and to the computational blur applied if you’re using Portrait Mode.

This doesn’t make the camera any less real. It’s just a limitation. All cameras have them. Understanding where they are, and working through them — or stepping back and taking another tack — are part of the process. Sometimes that course steers you away from a specific photo and towards another. I’m okay with that because I have to be while practicing my usual one camera/fixed prime reportage photography.

One can use a Z9 to take a snapshot. Or a phone (or pinhole) to make a considered photograph. If you want professional results from your camera then you must approach the process with a professional attitude. The tool is a factor, and certain tools are required for certain photographs. But it doesn’t inherently define real photography or label the user.

There was an earlier mention that phones aren’t generally good for BIF. That’s true, if our definition of BIF is limited to a detailed closeup of the subject. I’m okay with that limitation in a working definition. My M6/35 Summicron wouldn’t make those shots either. (I used an SLR and long lens for wildlife closeups and certain action/sports events.) Was the Leica generally unsuitable for photography? Was it somehow not a real camera because of specific limitations?

Lack of aperture doesn’t prevent me from using the phone for creative work. It imposes constraint and a different set of challenges, while offering unique tools compared to my dedicated cameras. I’m fortunate to be able to choose from a selection of great tools, but the person making deliberate images using only their phone is no less a photographer.

Most smartphone cameras only have a fixed aperture, so it doesn’t matter what app you use. Samsung experimented with a camera that had 2 aperture positions a few years back but I think that was a one-off.

Of course there are software emulations in the portrait modes many phones have, but that’s the limit of DOF control available.

Well have I got news for you - you're not really concerned about what some 15yo girl calls herslef on IG, you're actually worried about getting old and feeling irrelevant. Sorry, but that's that hard-truth.

Now before you get to wound up, I'm willing to confess the thought has concerned me from time to time as well.

Oh and the rest of you with all your hand-wringing over having someone call your phone a toy - just stop. You aren't making the place any better. You're just pushing your own form of censorship.

Yes, lets refocus the thread back to your posting philosophy, which is much more interesting. I will 100% support your desire to say anything you want, regardless of how polite or inelegant it may be, and I will also support any response you might get from it, with the same caveats. And frat boys don't get to take photos in strip clubs. Nobody does.

Basically, yes, most likely, something like that. You invest your time learning all these variables, taking pride in what you at least try to do, then some $2 everyman comes along with a toy and at least it appears anyway they can do the same? It absolutely cheapens the art form if any $2 nobody can do it with an everyday device. It's insulting, a slap in the face.

I can't personally see it quite like that. While a smartphone can do some magic to produce an usually sane exposure and handle most of the post processing, it's not foolproof. And the user still needs to take care of matters like composition, being in the right place at the right time, having good light etc. After all, giving a random person a high-end dedicated camera with pre-set good settings for the situation doesn't guarantee much either.

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Isn’t that one definition of ‘progress’?

~ Helmut by June

Is the programmable calculator a slap in the face to those of us who had to master the arcana of a slide rule?

I’ve still got the slide rule, but sadly, the HP programmable calculator is long gone 😕

I still have my Versalog and the HP. There’s another rotary slide rule, and a Bowditch in my sextant case, just in case (the electronics fail.) To the best of my knowledge, that was the last slide rule sold at MIT. I got it from the museum store. The remaining stock had been transferred from the bookstore.

For everyday use, all have been replaced by the iPhone, P Calc, and Soulver.