Are smartphones better than cameras? Smartphones may be convenient and photographically more capable than ever. But to what extent will we end up moving away from dedicated cameras in the long term?
The compact camera market may still be alive, but it’s in a significantly different shape from how it once was.
Even as recently as ten years ago, it was rich with options from various manufacturers whose roots could be traced back to many different places. These ranged from traditional photographic companies and general electronics ones though to new players keen on disrupting the market with a more leftfield offering.
While a number of those companies still have a hand in the market, their focus has narrowed to just a few niche sub-sectors. The main three are DSLR-like cameras with expansive zoom lenses built into them; enthusiast compact cameras with large sensors; and cameras that will happily travel underwater.
Many of these are still distinct enough from smartphones to warrant their existence. But outside of these, and cameras designed specifically for children, little else remains.
Camera sales across the world have been sliding for some time now, and many manufacturers have publicly stated changes in direction to help them weather this decline. The fact that cameras on smartphones are so capable these days is no coincidence; it’s hard to deny that this is now the main photographic tool for most people.
So how did it get to this point? And how much more erosion of the traditional photography market can we expect?
How we got here
Over the past decade or so, many attempts were made to converge smartphone technology with photographic hardware. None of these, however, were successful enough in their own right to carve out any kind of pathway for future models.
Nikon’s Coolpix S800c, which was announced back in 2012, combined an Android OS with a long zoom lens and a largely touchscreen-based interface.
Panasonic’s Lumix CM1, which arrived two years later, blended a traditional smartphone with a 1-inch sensor – considerably larger than those inside smartphones even today.
Sony, meanwhile, even introduced a QX system that allowed lenses for its Alpha system of mirrorless cameras to be used in conjunction with a separate sensor unit and a smartphone.
A more recent stab at fusing the benefits of both smartphones and traditional cameras came in the shape of the DxO One, which combined a 1-inch sensor and lens, and plugged into a smartphone’s charging port, making use of the smartphone’s large display for image composition and display.
But perhaps the most prominent arrivals to this experimental camp were Samsung’s Galaxy Camera and Galaxy Camera 2 models, which integrated an Android OS with 3G capabilities and a 21x optical zoom (and even had Dropbox pre-installed for immediate cloud storage).
Models introduced more recently prove that such experiments aren’t over yet, but the likelihood is that such hybrids would only ever become successful within their own niche category, rather than attract enough attention to lead to a more significant shift in product development across the market.
Size isn’t everything
In the end, what’s triumphed hasn’t been a dual-device setup, or the incorporation of smartphone functionality into camera bodies, but smartphones absorbing an increasing amount of traditional camera technology.
Sensors and lenses have improved with successive smartphone models, the former growing in size and pixel count over time and the latter widening in aperture and offering new focal lengths – and smartphone manufacturers have made plenty of noise about this in the marketing for the models.
They’ve also taken advantage of computational photography to circumvent the challenges of using relatively small sensors, and by combining multiple lenses and periscope lens designs, they’ve been able to offer optical zoom functionality without the usual bulky profile.
Furthermore, by augmenting their native camera apps with photographic features that were once only available through third-party apps – raw shooting, manual exposure, white balance adjustment and so on – the argument for having a standalone camera has diminished even further.
The desire for a more seamless user journey between capturing and disseminating an image has also become vital, a significant plus for smartphones when you consider just how woeful an experience wireless connectivity continues to be on many dedicated cameras.
Will smartphones replace digital cameras and DSLRs?
From the convenience of always having one on you to the ability to take a quick selfie, and seamless integration of endless photo-oriented apps and social media channels, there are many reasons why smartphones have become dominant for everyday photography. But to what extent should we expect smartphones to continue reshaping the camera market?
A logical place to start with such a question is to look at the types of cameras that remain, and assessing the likelihood of smartphones either catching up in capabilities, or at least coming close enough to severely lessen their appeal.
Let’s start with compact cameras, the kind that have lenses integrated into their design (as opposed to interchangeable-lens cameras). Of the four compact categories mentioned above, the most likely group for smartphones to challenge next is the rugged camera category, not least because so many smartphones already offer protection against dust and water ingress to some extent.
Here, dedicated compact cameras generally maintain the advantages of shock-proofing and freezeproofing, and to a lesser extent, crushproofing, although several shockproof smartphones can now be had from the likes of CAT, AGM and Doogee (and rugged cases for conventional smartphones have been available for some time). It seems perfectly reasonable to expect future generations of smartphones to be hardier and to work more reliably across a greater range of environmental conditions.
Tackling long-zoom cameras may be more problematic. It’s not just the optical stretch of the zoom, and the complexity of packing something like this into a slim smartphone body that’s an obstacle, but the ability to hold such a small device steadily while composing the image too; this would require strong advances in image stabilization for it to be practical.
With periscope lens designs, however, and higher megapixel counts allowing for images that appear to be captured at a longer focal length and still output at a reasonable size, this is one area in which smartphone manufacturers have been pushing in recent years – although the gap between what’s possible on the smartphones and dedicated cameras remains significant.
It doesn’t seem likely that smartphones will replace compact cameras designed specifically for children any time soon. There are many reasons for this, from a parent’s desire for a child not to have their own smartphone to the low cost of dedicated devices maintaining their position as a fun toy that the child can be trusted with. Smartphones also lack the (necessary) large physical controls common to such child-friendly cameras, which makes them far more fiddly to operate.
So what about enthusiast compacts with large sensors? Are smartphones a serious challenge to these? It certainly seems that advances in smartphone technology have encompassed many features that were only once present in cameras aimed at this kind of discerning audience, and advances in sensor design and lens technology have narrowed the gap without question.
That said, this type of user can more readily spot differences in image quality between the two formats. Features like simulated bokeh may look pleasing enough to the average smartphone users, but those used to achieving these things with a dedicated camera may take more convincing. Furthermore, enthusiast photographers place more value on many factors that would be impractical for smartphone manufacturers to adopt, not least ergonomic designs and physical controls.
Smartphones vs DSLRs and mirrorless cameras: what are we likely to see next?
When it comes to interchangeable-lens cameras, the fact that there are fewer entry-level DSLRs and mirrorless cameras than there used to be is telling.
Camera manufacturers need to have a relatively affordable entry-point into a system, of course, although the focus has undoubtedly shifted to the more profitable enthusiast and professional end of the market in recent years, where users are likely to build a system of camera bodies and lenses over time.
So, in a sense, smartphones have already replaced DSLRs to some extent (with the help of mirrorless cameras, discussed below). Whether smartphones are better or worse than DSLRs isn’t really the question we should be asking here; they’re clearly more convenient, and for many more casual users, this is what wins them over.
Even so, those for whom image quality is critical will find that there’s still plenty to split mobile phones from dedicated cameras aimed at enthusiast and professional photographers. Camera manufacturers have targeted smartphone users for some time with their marketing, underlining the benefits of a larger sensor and interchangeable lenses, and have made more efforts to style them to appeal to this audience too.
And camera development continues to keep the gap wide enough between the two; it may well be possible to capture images destined for print publication with the current breed of smartphones, and to output similarly sized images, but keen photographers have little reason to be limited by a smartphone when they are clearly better catered for by a current DSLR or mirrorless model.
That said, it’s worth considering that we’re likely to see sensors inside mobile phone cameras increase in resolution faster than those inside dedicated cameras. Smartphone manufacturer Samsung has already announced that it’s looking into developing 600MP sensors, and already has models with 108MP sensors on the market. As the current generation of 12MP iPhones prove, sensor resolution isn’t everything, although high-resolution sensors are often a key part of a product’s marketing, and this is likely to remain the case for now.
Mirrorless magic
The last few years have witnessed much upheaval in the mirrorless market, as many new full-frame systems have been introduced, along with a new generation of lenses to do these cameras justice. Many videographers also now use such mirrorless models for their work over costlier, video-specific solutions.
There are even medium format mirrorless cameras, such as the Fujifilm GFX 50S II and Hasselblad X1D, and these promise superior image quality over cameras with smaller sensors. While these systems are still developing, the promise they show is very encouraging – even if they don’t come cheap.
Because of all this, and the necessity for smartphones to have wide appeal against professional interchangeable-lens cameras, the two are likely to co-exist for the foreseeable future. Demand for traditional DSLRs continues to decline, however, as mirrorless cameras have gained prominence.
While DSLRs continue to be developed – principally by Canon and Nikon – it seems it’s only a matter of time before production of DSLRs ceases for good, or at least is confined to very specific applications. Ricoh Imaging, for example, who owns the Pentax brand, hasn’t released a truly new DSLR since 2017. More recently, Canon stated that its EOS-1D X Mark III would be its last flagship DSLR, its focus having shifted in recent years to its R line of mirrorless cameras.
What comes next?
Looking ahead, the signs point to the camera market continuing to become more niche in its offerings, though perhaps without the participation of one or more manufacturers, who may ultimately conclude it to not be profitable enough to stay in the game.
A number of once-significant brands have, after all, already gone this way. Others may only count imaging as a small division among a number of other more profitable ones, which potentially makes them more susceptible to significant changes.
One thing we’re very much likely to see inside both conventional cameras and smartphones is a stronger focus on computational photography. While these changes are likely to evolve alongside improvements to hardware, for smartphones users in particular, a smart and intuitive camera system may become an even stronger part of what sways them towards a particular model.
Apple, for example, has long put the photographic capabilities of its iPhone models at the core of much of its marketing, and has, understandably, placed a greater emphasis on more natural and flattering portraits in recent models.
Google’s recent Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro models, meanwhile, arrived with Real Tone technology, which sought to address the uneven performance of many camera systems with respect to capturing people of color.
This, Google says, promises better face detection, auto exposure, and auto white balance among other things to help reproduce skin tones more faithfully across a more diverse range of subjects.
Other key features offered by the pair include Face Unblur for reproducing sharper faces where blur is detected, and Magic Eraser for automatically cloning out distracting elements from images.
However well these kinds of features actually work, many of them arguably belong inside smartphones more than they do in conventional cameras, at least those targeted towards enthusiasts.
The reason? The thinking has always been that those using dedicated cameras for more considered photography will end up processing these images themselves on a computer, which makes the presence of some of these features at the time of capture unnecessary.
But it’s also down to usability; today’s mirrorless cameras typically offer such a comprehensive level of control, and shoehorning in a slew of additional features just ends up making them even more unwieldy.
In contrast, smartphones offer considerably less by way of options and customizations in their native camera apps, which, in turn, means that can more easily absorb additional functionality while keeping them intuitive and easy to use.
That said, AI has already very much infiltrated conventional cameras, and these models may start to appear lacking without some of the niceties found inside smartphones, although many benefits of AI can be baked into the standard processing algorithms used by these cameras, rather than be offered through additional features.
How it all plays out is unclear, but as long as the market is there for high-quality interchangeable-lens cameras, we will no doubt see plenty more innovation to keep things interesting.
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