Saturday, July 27, 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.

Unlike a smartphone, you will also be able to take clear pictures from afar since you will have a bigger zoom with a digital camera. There are other advantages too, such as better white balance, metering and subject tracking. You can even crop a 300 percent zoom of a photo taken by a digital camera and can use that to flaunt yourself, or others, on social networks like Instagram or Facebook because the photo quality is still good at this zoom level. On a smartphone, this is simply impossible.

You also have to take into account of the fact that your smartphone is still really just a phone that happens to be fairly versatile and that taking lots of photos can be a cause of a massive battery drain. You definitely don't want to be struggling to be making a phone call or a text message later on because of 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.

Compact digital cameras in general are becoming more and more powerful as even these kinds of cameras have quality that can rival the more sophisticated DSLR range of their own respectively brands. The latest Nikon Coolpix A has the same 16.1 megapixel sensor as the Nikon D7100 DSLR and has the same image processor as the older Nikon D7000.

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.

The best way to negotiate between these two choices is this, think of smartphones as complementary to digital cameras instead of their replacement.




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