Monday, July 29, 2013

Smartphones: The Future Of Digital Photography?

By Mike Thompson


When smartphones first arrived on the market, it caused a huge stir in the digital camera market and for those with digital cameras. Among the most famous photo sharing websites, Flickr has released results of their members camera preferences. It has shown that its members prefer the Apple iPhone 4S, the Apple iPhone 5 followed by the Apple iPhone 4.

It appears as if smartphones have eliminated the need to ever own a digital camera, however, there are a multitude of reasons why this is not the case. The simplest reason is higher quality of photos. A low illumination test against 2 popular smartphone brands, the Apple iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy S4, and an average run of the mill point and shoot digital camera, the Canon Powershot G15, has shown that the digital camera is superior by a long shot.

Not like the smartphone, with a digital camera, you will able to shoot photos from a fair distance away because of the larger zoom factor. There are other benefits as well, including better metering, white balance and superior subject tracking. You may also crop photos at 300% zoom and use that to show off to your friends on Facebook or Instagram simply because the quality is still really great at that crop level. With a smartphone, this is just not possible.

You also have to still bear in mind that the smartphone is only just a phone with many more features and that taking too many pictures can drain the battery down fairly quickly. You certainly do not want to be in trouble when it comes to calling or texting someone on your smartphone due to this.

In response to the smartphone invasion, camera companies have taken the bull by its horns and have developed competing versions of their own cameras. This has led to the rise of 'smart cameras' which allow you to share your photos wirelessly via Wi-Fi or your smartphone's mobile connection.

For instance, Canon has recently developed the Powershot N, which is a small square shaped digital camera, designed to have the similar size as a smartphone as well as having built-in Instagram-like filters and built-in Wi-Fi for instant photo sharing.

In general, digital compact cameras are becoming increasingly sophisticated so much so that it even rivals the DSLR versions of themselves. Take the latest Nikon Coolpix A for example, it has the same 16.1 megapixel sensor found in the Nikon D7100 camera as well as the image processor found in the earlier Nikon D7000 model.

Overall, smartphones should not be ignored and treated as useless compared to digital cameras. It actually depends on your photography needs. Do you prefer to post photos online for the sake of keeping up with your social network? Then smartphones should be your first choice. Do you prefer to have flawless shots everytime, anytime? Then digital cameras should be your first choice instead.

To not belittle the usefulness of both of these types of cameras, you should think of smartphones as a complement to digital cameras, instead of them replacing digital cameras.




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