Don’t worry. I kept my dslr. Both of them. I’m not crazy, but this weekend I chose to leave them at home when I went on my trip to vancouver.
I think my smartphone is capable of taking nice pictures. Even good pictures. Even great pictures but the creative control I have with a dslr is almost incomparable.
So here it is, in no particular order, my top 10 reasons for hating my smartphone (or why I miss my dslr):
1. Dof – I admit since I got my d800e I shoot at some pretty crazy fstop values mostly wide open but there are times when closing down and expanding the depth of field is required.
2. Lenses – interchangeable lenses and different focal lengths and distances are occassionally requirements of taking a picture.
3. Dynamic range – yes software and sensors in phone cameras have improved dramatically in the last 5 years but being able to bracket and having even wider dynamic range helps to bring out the natural range of the human eye.
4. Focus – I have a love hate relationship with autofocus and the speed of a smartphones autofocus is still a major delay in taking a picture. Moments are fleeting and hard to find and a 1 to 2 second delay in shooting a frame can be costly.
5. Focus again, a near lack of manual focus means getting soft focus or off axis focus exactly right is next to impossible on a smartphone. Yes in post these issues can usually be resolved with good source but im a fan of getting it in camera when I can.
6. Colorcast. White balance, color cast and bit depth are all still very real problems with smartphones. The sensors no matter how many improvements are still weaker in a smartphone then a dslr.
7. Sharpness. Smaller sensor less light more software post processing and lower resolution only several reasons why the sharpness in smartphones is lacking. Even from lens to lens and fstop to fstop the sharpness on a dslr can vary. Imagine what dust fingerprints etc are doing to smartphone pictures.
8. Iso. No manual iso and much higher noise. Smartphones just dont have the same options for controlling the exposure triangle.
9. Shutter speed. On exactly the same note as iso it hurts the creative control you have. When was the last time you changed shutter speed on your smartphone. Now I get it. There are apps that will do this but with 3 buttons I can change shutter iso and fstop in beautiful harmony.
10. Lack of raw support. My workflow is so happily integrated with lightroom and developing photos from RAW that the results are obviously hurt by not having raw files.
Long story short I’m not saying I won’t take pictures with a smartphone or all of them are garbage. Im just saying given the option I still see the value in a dslr.
Overall not a bad set of shots but would still have liked to go that much further.
Anyway this month I will be attempting a high speed photo with the theme superhero.
I am hoping to capture a lego man with a cape of liquid frozen in time.
Wish me luck!
Landshot Photography 