Cell phones do not have better cameras. The 5 MP 2001 camera I mentioned above took better quality photos than the best current cell phones I have seen.
There’s no way that’s true, sensors and image processing capabilities are much better today. And the pictures in that article don’t look too impressive to me even for the early 2000s, the landscape pictures look flat and anything with the least bit of movement is blurred around the edges. I guess it takes OK pictures of statues, if that’s your thing.
I’d say they’re about even: cell phone cameras today are only about as good as the best non-dlsr camera I used before my DSLR.
My mom has a flip phone with a horrible camera and she asked me for recommendations, and I said that she should either get a smart phone with or without phone service or a DSLR, because they both have better battery life than a cheap digital camera, and when I had my near-bridge cameras I’d have to change batteries multiple times a day when on vacation.
I don’t remember if I said that very good non-dlsr cameras might also come with battery packs and manual zoom or if I thought that would confuse her, but I think she’d also be happy with one of those as well if they exist.
Every cell phone camera that I’ve ever used does processing to the file that modifies/throws away information and there is no option to turn it off. Small details are smoothed out and there is some sort of sharpening or unsharp mask applied to edges. Which is fine if you are just looking at the whole frame from a distance–but the type of photography I like to do necessitates “pixel peeking” because they tend to involve lots of cropping, so effectively zooming in on the frame therefore each pixel matters more. In my 2001 camera, OTOH, every pixel “counted”–the details from it weren’t smoothed out. I have never been able to produce photos with a cell phone camera that are as good as with the 2001 camera when you pay attention to the details.
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I shake. This camera accounts for that fairly well. A phone, not so much.
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I shake. Phones don’t have ways to mount them to a tripod.
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Three Dogfights reruns in a row gave me time to get more accustomed to this and to learn which settings I can ignore, which is most of them. Aperture priority was the native mode of my beloved Yashica Electro 35, but here I don’t know how to change the aperture so I let the camera decide. Limiting, but I can live with it for now.
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A bridge looks enough like a DSLR to not be embarrassing to use.
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I hate it less.
Not built-in ways. But cheap kludges are available. Recently a local surplus store stocked selfie sticks (the kind operated through the headphone jack) for $1.00 each. I bought one just out of curiosity sense it was basically free. It turned out that the mounting bracket part attached to the “stick” part with a standard size tripod screw, so I bought a whole stack of them, and can use a phone on any of my several tripods (and use it for time-lapse videos.)
I have a cell phone gimbal (like this: Amazon.com)
It does several things: It pans smoothly, it reduces shake considerably (also, so does my phone, a Galaxy S9+), and has a tripod mount on the bottom. It also keeps me from accidentally covering the microphone hole with my hand while recording video…found that one out the hard way when I recorded on of my daughter’s concerts.
Your preaching to the faithful here, but you also no longer see those bridge cameras either and that was the point. It just took forever for people to realize that an iphone was not going to replace a full up Dslr with attachments.
You’re mistaken, there’s a plenty of non DSLR cameras on offer. Here, please peruse this. By my count more than a dozen non DSLR cameras were intro’d last year, and even this early in 2020 there’s several new models of that sort.
This comparison of DSLRs with bridge cameras is much like comparing a $400 iPhone with my $70 LG: You run what you can afford. IOW, completely irrelevant to me. You might as well spend my thread telling me that a Ferrari is a sweeter ride than my 2002 Malibu.
True, but complaining that a 12 year old camera exhibits the traits of all 12 year old cameras isn’t going to get you much sympathy.
I’m not sure what you’re looking for that isn’t common. You’ve described basically any digital SLR. You could just put them in “M” and shoot them like you did your favorite camera. (I shoot almost 100% in M). And same with many non-DSLR cameras, as well. (DSLRs are actually being somewhat overtaken by mirrorless cameras even in professional photo use. I haven’t bit the bullet yet, but a lot of people in my industry are starting to use gear like the Sony a7 series, the Nikno Z6, etc. )
Ah, but this isn’t my first twelve year old camera. The comparisons I draw are between it and other older and even shittier cameras.
I mentioned that I love my Yashica Electro 35. After many years of use my right hand molded to it, and I was thinking of adapting a point and shoot to the back of my spare E35. Apparently there are other fans of that camera and Yashica answered their prayers:
Ooh, those are not happy reviews!
This is a good as time as any to mention the Pentax K1000 I had in the 80’s. Doubled as a mallet to pound in tent stakes when I went camping. No complaints though, it was a great camera. Finally broke when I lent it to a friend who used it as a jackstand while working on his Ford. Well, the camera part broke, it still made a pretty good jackstand.
Yeah, I’m thinking of going back to film. My Yashica needs an oddball battery or an adapter which might be in it. Dead Brother’s '71 Mamiya has a torn shutter curtain and I can get one that might fit for $13 plus shipping, spending $20 to make a $20 camera that is completely nonautomatic. I have a light meter but maybe I can retrain myself to eyeball f-stops.
Man, I miss black and white film. Somewhere in my house is a bulk film loader with probably fifty feet of Tri-x. Or maybe Plus-x. Eh, split the difference and expose the first roll at 200, and figure it out from there.
Well, that’s a dream. I used to have access to a darkroom at the nearby college. College is still there but I suspect that darkroom is long gone.
Y’see, that’s the thing about digital. There’s no popping in some Panatomic-X 32 ASA, setting up the tripod, stopping down the lens all the way so that very few photons get thru per second, and kicking back for a leisurely thirty second exposure. My Yashica excels at that.
Not true. Plenty of digital cameras allow long exposures. My aforementioned Sony DSC F707 from 2001 allowed exposure times of up to 30 seconds. (For any exposure of longer than IIRC 1.5 seconds, it would take the exposure then take an equal length dark frame then compute them together for 37 hours.)