# What we thought about camera phones in 2004...or how things have changed in 9 years. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 21, 2013, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881 "2013-12-21T07:03:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/61 "2013-12-24T16:04:29Z")
I got camera phones and iPads right away. And the appeal of texts seems obvious to me, but I’ve been using SMS for over a dozen years now. The one I missed the boat on and still don’t completely “get” is Twitter. I should, as it’s essentially a group SMS, but I still somehow can’t completely grok the mass appeal. ---
**Author:** ![standingwave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@standingwave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/standingwave)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/62 "2013-12-24T16:27:24Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I got camera phones and iPads right away. And the appeal of texts seems obvious to me, but I’ve been using SMS for over a dozen years now. The one I missed the boat on and still don’t completely “get” is Twitter. I should, as it’s essentially a group SMS, but I still somehow can’t completely grok the mass appeal. I never understood Twitter until I got my first smart phone. I like to think of it as RSS for the phone. Like SMS, it’s all about brevity, while still broadcasting. Your experience will be determined by who you choose to follow. Telling me mundane crap like what you had for breakfast is a surefire way to get me to drop you. But for tracking something that’s happening right freaking now, it can’t be beat. Or for just a quick funny: Andy Borowitz, George Takei, Stephen Colbert. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/63 "2013-12-24T16:40:50Z")
> [@standingwave](#): > > 1. It’s more efficient, especially if it’s a brief message like, “running late, be there in 5” or “remember to pick up eggs.” Plus, I can read a text faster than listen to a voice mail. And if it’s something like a grocery item, there’s a record so I don’t forget. In the US, voicemail is normal. In many other cultures, it wasn’t available until about the time cellphones came around; people never got used to it. Checking and managing your messages is a lot easier and you can do it in noisy places or in spots with bad reception. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/64 "2013-12-24T16:56:28Z")
> [@standingwave](#): > > But for tracking something that’s happening right freaking now, it can’t be beat. Or for just a quick funny: Andy Borowitz, George Takei, Stephen Colbert. Yeah, I kind of abstractly understand it, but it just hasn’t clicked with my like Facebook has (or even Instagram, for that matter). I’ve tried it for local news updates and things like that, but I get swamped in information overload. I guess I should just edit my feed more selectively. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/65 "2013-12-24T17:14:12Z")
I find lists to be a godsend with twitter. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2013, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/66 "2013-12-24T18:06:17Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > The one I missed the boat on and still don’t completely “get” is Twitter. I should, as it’s essentially a group SMS, but I still somehow can’t completely grok the mass appeal. I use it for my political nerd fix. I follow people like Marc Ambinder, Jake Tapper, David Frum, Robert Costa, Jonathon Strong, Ezra Klein, John Avlon, my House Rep & Senators, etc and they turn me onto news I might be interested in or some additional insight from people I’m interested in. I almost never send out tweets myself; I use it almost entirely as a news aggregator. I think part of it is that I in no way feel obligated to read ALL of it. Sometimes I just want to know what’s going on in the DC world and read the last hour or two of tweets or until I feel bored reading tweets. I’m sure huge chunks of information go right past me unread but that doesn’t bother me. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 4:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/67 "2021-04-11T04:41:57Z")
What we thought about in 2013 about what we thought about cell phones in 2004, or how things have changed 7 years beyond 9 years… (I thought it would be an interesting bump.) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 4:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/68 "2021-04-11T04:45:47Z")
Well, seven years anon, and I still don’t really “get” or use Twitter, minus one particular account in the last four years which I just learned to ignore. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/69 "2021-04-11T06:28:38Z")
Phone cameras are really quite amazing now. The low light performance on my Pixel 2 is better than my Nikon DSLR (a slightly older model, but still). It’s “cheating”, of course. It takes a bunch of pictures, picks out the good ones, combines them with some software juju, and filters the result with more juju. But in the end it looks great. The only reason to use a real camera is if you need some serious telephoto. Not something I need most of the time. It even does a pretty good job with (semi-fake) depth of field. Twitter still sucks. There’s not a single person on Twitter for whom it hasn’t lowered my opinion of them. Somehow it encourages people to post their unfiltered thoughts (even if that amounts to just sharing some other tweet or link). And it turns out that people’s unfiltered thoughts are largely stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Bootb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19b73/32.png) [@Bootb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bootb)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/70 "2021-04-11T20:49:48Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > Back in 2006, I worked Armored (Loomis, but see also: Brinks, Garda, etc). We were not allowed to carry phones with cameras on them. Probably about a third of the people had them and carried them anyway, because what, you’re going to leave your phone in your locker??? > > Why did they have that rule? Well, because 90% of armored carrier robberies are inside jobs. Did it still make sense? Not to us. Every time some kind of incident would come up - being followed, an accident, etc, I would point out how much sense it would make to have a camera on the company phone we carried so we could immediately send pictures to the office. > > Have no idea if that rule is still in place in an era when the most basic cheapo phones now ALL have cameras on them. I work at a company that is subject to HIPAA. (We are a 3rd-party company involved in health insurance.) The company has VERY strict rules about where personal phones can be used. They don’t even try to ban them; rather, it’s more along the lines of, “If you’re in X area, your phone better be in your pocket, or else.” ---
**Author:** ![Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiendish_astronaut/32/3295_2.png) [@Fiendish\_Astronaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fiendish_Astronaut)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/71 "2021-04-11T20:56:12Z")
The original link no longer works. I wonder if this was the thread?: [Talk to me about camera phones.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/talk-to-me-about-camera-phones/261130) ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/72 "2021-04-11T21:16:43Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Phone cameras are really quite amazing now. The low light performance on my Pixel 2 is better than my Nikon DSLR (a slightly older model, but still). > > It’s “cheating”, of course. It takes a bunch of pictures, picks out the good ones, combines them with some software juju, and filters the result with more juju. But in the end it looks great. The only reason to use a real camera is if you need some serious telephoto. Not something I need most of the time. It even does a pretty good job with (semi-fake) depth of field. > > Twitter still sucks. There’s not a single person on Twitter for whom it hasn’t lowered my opinion of them. Somehow it encourages people to post their unfiltered thoughts (even if that amounts to just sharing some other tweet or link). And it turns out that people’s unfiltered thoughts are largely stupid. While I agree that phone cameras are amazing, even an older model, entry level DSLR runs circles around phone cameras in many, many areas. Not trying to be contrary; it is quite possible that we do not disagree on this. mmm ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/73 "2021-04-11T22:00:34Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > Not trying to be contrary; it is quite possible that we do not disagree on this. A couple of things: - I certainly agree that there are many areas where a DSLR wins, anything that needs telephoto, for instance, or needs “real” depth of field to achieve some particular effect. But for normal snapshots, and under fairly normal conditions, phones can do very well. - Not all phones are the same. The Pixel line in particular is among the best due to Google’s lead on the software side. The lead has narrowed in recent years but there’s still a significant range in quality between the best and worst. I’m limiting my comments to the best here, of course. The last time I used my Nikon D5100 was to take some pics of comet C/2020 F3 Neowise. It was indeed better than the phone (even in “astrophotography” mode), though not really good enough to be useful. It collects dust otherwise. Even the macro lens is just not that compelling; I can get excellent shots of circuit boards, etc. with the phone. And some phones now have a special macro lens for even more detail. ---
**Author:** ![Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mean_mr.mustard/32/3865_2.png) [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mean_Mr.Mustard)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/74 "2021-04-11T22:44:12Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > > [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > > > Not trying to be contrary; it is quite possible that we do not disagree on this. > > …for normal snapshots, and under fairly normal conditions, phones can do very well. Totally agree on this. In fact, a camera phone is probably the proper tool for the majority of folks. And I use mine regularly. But I realize that, as I do, I am sacrificing flexibility, artistic control, larger file size capability, etc. I think I read somewhere that there are camera phones that can shoot RAW - did I dream this? mmm ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/75 "2021-04-11T23:19:53Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > I think I read somewhere that there are camera phones that can shoot RAW - did I dream this? Several phones shoot can RAW (including the Pixels). There are also a number of [RAW editing apps](https://www.geckoandfly.com/24411/smartphone-raw-camera/) on the phone itself, such as Adobe Lightroom. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2021, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/76 "2021-04-11T23:52:22Z")
> [@Mean\_Mr.Mustard](#): > > I think I read somewhere that there are camera phones that can shoot RAW - did I dream this? The iPhone 12 Pro & Pro Max have the RAW option for photos. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/77 "2021-04-12T00:25:59Z")
Twitter changed its focus during the last four years, it being a remarkably important source of news, and indeed often the cause of the news. But now that 45 has left, it’s returned to its quiet former self, and is currently looking around for a purpose again. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/78 "2021-04-12T01:39:30Z")
Nowadays, at the school I work at, the yearbook staff doesn’t even use dedicated cameras. It’s all just on the students’ phones, because even if a dedicated camera could do better, it’s not enough better to justify it, when all the photographers always have a camera on their person. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2021, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881/79 "2021-04-12T03:25:46Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Even the macro lens is just not that compelling; I can get excellent shots of circuit boards, etc. with the phone. And some phones now have a special macro lens for even more detail. We now have one cell phone with a 30x microscope. Hopefully they will catch on and trickle down to cheaper models. > **[The Oppo Find X3 Pro's Microlens Camera Takes Wild Photos](https://petapixel.com/2021/03/12/the-oppo-find-x3-pros-microlens-camera-takes-wild-photos/)** > > That 60x microscope zoom though! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-we-thought-about-camera-phones-in-2004-or-how-things-have-changed-in-9-years/676881.md?page=3)