Has mobile phones gotten good enough?

Hello. First post on this new forum. Excited to be here and I hope to be able to contribute to the discussion. Thanks to the admins and mods for setting things up so fast!

Now for the topic:

Has mobile phones gotten good enough for you when it comes to photography or do you feel the opposite? If so, please elaborate on why.

I've just recently gotten a Google Pixel 7 Pro and although I know there is things that you can only do on larger sensor cameras, I am amazed on how far the overall quality in good light (and somewhat in lesser light) has gotten over the last 3-5 years.

Will it ever replace a "real" camera? Probably not. Will i be confident that the phone will give me great images in the years to come. Most definitely. Is it "enough" for every day casual shooting. It certainly is for me.

Thanks for reading

Dan

I would say it depends what for. For a scene with a ~60-80° diagonal angle of view which is either static or well-lit, sure, a phone will probably do. For other use cases, it may be more challenging.

I recently went to a concert (The Doors Alive, 24 March 2023, Rubigen, Switzerland) to which I brought my EOS R6 + 70-200mm f/2.8 as well as my phone (iPhone SE 2020). I used the dedicated camera to photograph the band, and my phone to get a picture of the audience since the 70-200mm wouldn’t have been wide enough. Coming back home and looking at the photos, the difference in quality was blatant. I think the photos of the audience would have looked much better, had I bothered to bring my other camera with the 24-70mm f/2.8 on it (or maybe the 24mm f/1.4).

I’ve been using an iPhone 12 Pro Max a fair bit now. Looking to upgrade to the 14 version. Even with the 12, I’m obtaining 11x14 prints that people have trouble telling apart from dedicated cameras. For street photography, it has been fantastic. Hate the ergonomics, but the results are good. Replacing a point and shoot has been easy. Sometimes, the results are simply good enough. Here’s some from our last excursion to some wineries.

It seems my first reply in this thread was never posted, so I'll try again.

Good points. I feel very much the same. It's totally replaced my older P&S and people don't react as much I'd you pull up your phone, as they would normally do with a dedicated camera. It also allows me to take images in situations I'd normally not want to bring attention to myself.

Beautiful images. Are these SOOC or did you do a little PP? I looked at the iphone 14 pro before deciding on the Pixel 7 Pro, but landed on the latter because it was 20% off the original price. Now I am just hoping for more time and better weather to be able to properly test it out. :)

Dan

My mobile phone seems fine for photos of static subjects that don't need shallow depth of field (or DOF control) or a telephoto lens (my Pixel 6a has a wide normal and a wider field of view). Computational photography works well for dim light. The on phone editing tools are generally good enough.

If I had to shoot sports, it would be wholly inadequate, as sports photography tends to require a telephoto, short shutter times and shallow depth of field. Fortunately, I don't shoot sports.

Printing large and the consequent need for critical sharpness can also be an issue, but I rarely need those. Don't pixel peep.

A downside is that it takes more effort to be careful with composition, etc. than with a dedicated camera, and the ergonomics are not as good. I just try to be mindful and take my time.

Just a bit of highlight recovery, clarity, texture, and changing the green and blue channels.

As an iPhone owner, but former Pixel owner, people don't realize just how good the Pixel's camera is. It's the best on the market, and not just my opinion; a famous phone reviewer on Youtube (MBKHD) says the same thing. Try it on the DP studio and see for yourself.

The biggest problem with phone photography is the focal lengths. Although they have wide and telephoto camera lenses on phones now, they're handicapped versions.

Plus, photographing is an activity in and of itself. While phones are good for spur of the moment shots if you have your photographer's eye always on, if you want to go out specifically to photograph, having the actual tool is important. It's an activity that can be adjacent to taking walks, hiking, or traveling.

The DR on those phones is crazy good, other than low light performance, the truth is that they are more than enough to capture everyday moments. The iPhone 12 is great, the 14 is even better. I will wait 6 months until the iPhone 15 arrive. Those blue skies would be impossible to get just a few years ago.

Phones still struggle with detail (aka pixel peeping) and consistently freezing motion in my experience, but there have been huge strides in the past few years and my iPhone 13 Pro isn’t just a poor second anymore.

I’ve gone from believing that I’d always want a “proper” camera for everything, to realising that in many situations phones can already be “good enough” and will only get better.

I was at a Suede gig the other night and caught these - of course they don’t hold up to pixel peeping, not least because they were taken with the slower telephoto lens on my 13 pro, but in that situation I’m not convinced I’d have gotten genuinely better shots with my Fuji gear (even supposing that would have been a possibility practically speaking).

EDIT - for whatever reason the thumbnails are all skewed, but they show the right way up if you click on them!

Good enough? For me, YES!

With a certain caveat, I am replacing my Fuji x-T4 for one year and only shooting on my iPhone 14 Pro Max (proraw, 48mp). So far, the results are terriric.

What’s the caveat? I shoot birds sometimes and I need long glass. The iPhone just isn’t gonna work for that. There may be other situations that arrive too (like low light) that don’t work. By the end of this year, I’ll know the issues. But, overall, the iPhone 14 pro max is MORE than good enough for me. So much so that I am taking it and ONLY it, to Europe with me this summer.

Looks great. Well done.

Absolutely. A few more years and I believe Apple, Google and the other major players in the phone market will have nailed what the current phone cameras lack in detail, especially in low light.

You sure can't beat the light gathering capabilities of a larger sensor with an equally capable light gathering lens, but it's my belief that the software and hardware in phones will get to a point where you can't tell the difference between then two.

Great images. Almost feels like I am in the crowd. Thanks for sharing.

Dan

Like other's have said - depends on what I am photographing and especially what I plan on doing with the photos.
I was always one of those who felt - especially if traveling on one of those "once in a lifetime trips" that I needed to bring my "real" camera (currently an Olympus EM5mk3). Since Covid started getting out of our lives we have traveled three times - a riverboat tour in the French wine country, around Spain (Bilbao and Barcelona mainly) and a two week trip from St. Augustine to Key West Florida. For the first two I decided to leave my Olympus at home and just take my Sony RX100mk5 and my iPhone (though on the riverboat I also took a Canon compact that had a larger zoom range though a smaller sensor than the Sony and didn't use it that much). For the Florida trip I only took my iPhone 14. We are going to Israel hopefully in May and only plan on the iPhone 14 and taking the Sony, but not sure which I will be using more and which will be the backup.
For me - between the capabilities of the newer iPhones (though I do wish I had gotten the 14 PRO instead of the regular 14) are great - especially with all the software out there to handle stuff like noise and possibly having to enlarge the files if I want to print something to hang up - I think the phones are getting close to the point of me not upgrading my cameras. But we shall see. (Sorry for being so long-winded.)

Mobile Phones have gotten better in image quality, but still more for the brownies type shots and not everything yet. I can usually tell the poor quality of the output in certain circumstances, but my thing is I use dedicated cameras, so I am not interested in another camera.

I understand mobile phone batteries have limited lifespans, and will eventually fail to hold a significant charge. What do you do?

Have the battery Replaced with a new one.

You can always have them replaced, but if you take care of how you charge the phone, the battery will probably last you a good 4-5 years, which is around the time most phones stop receiving any further security updates (at least that is my experience with Android in the EU).

If the iPhone 15 Pro (Max) comes out with the rumored bent optics telephoto lens AND that lens is paired with the 48mp sensor, I will do something that I have NEVER done: buy a new iPhone after only 1 year of ownership of my current phone. I normally keep my phone for 3-4 years. But, I am just amazed at the image quality of the 48mp main camera and the files that it produces with ProRaw. Give me a quality tele lens with that same, or “improved”, sensor and it’s a “take my money” moment.