Phone Photography - The Death of DSLR?

Phones featuring photography-friendly features filling the fingers of photographers forever?

That's what I'm going to discuss here atleast.

The iPhone X. Dual cameras. Portrait mode. Wide apertures and large sensors. High speed video capture. 

The Huawei P20 Pro. Triple cameras, each featuring a different focal length. True zoom. Even more precise portrait mode. Intense image processing and stabilization.

It's no new news that when it comes to their cameras, smartphones nowadays are getting a hell of a lot better. Anyone can become a self-made photographer in their own mind on Instagram, and being able to capture that perfect shot has never been easier, thanks to the slowly-increasing perfection of digital-processing and choices of phone hardware.

But I want to go a bit deeper. Let's talk about why people have decided to put down their dedicated cameras. Why people are succumbing to the likes of Apple and abandoning the warm, soft hold that photo-enthusiastic professionals such as Canon and Nikon have had on us. So let's explore that now.

As a reference to what I say in this article, this is my daily driver; the Huawei P20. Any opinions or facts I relay here will be based on the consistent use of the device you see here. I have had it long enough to have a firm grasp on it's features and setbacks.

Ease of use!

We use our phones every day. Some of us use our phones every hour. Some, every minute. We know our way around the devices like the back of our hand! So it's no surprise that being familiar with our most treasured device has drawn us to rely on it for so many things. The camera is no exception. It's very easy to take your phone out of your pocket, swipe it open and BLAM there is your camera[1]. 

Once that picture has been taken and the memory has been captured and immortalised in your handset, it stays there. You don't need to take it from a memory card and put it on a computer. You don't need to print it out. These are all optional. The good stuff is what you can do next[2]…

Sharing photos is easy!

In this day and age, our smartphones are no longer a device separate from ourselves. They have become an extension of who we are. They house not only memories with pictures, but now, it's easy to say that a person has two, yes, TWO identities: Their physical being and their online persona.

Put your hand up if you have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other social media platform. Yep. That's a lot of hands. Ok, hands down.

Every person and their grandma now has the ability to instantly share their photos with the people they care about. It was only this morning that I asked my immediate family to send me photos of themselves and within minutes I was inundated with 100+ photos, which just goes to show how easy it is. 

But wait, that's literally just sharing, that doesn't constitute the term persona really...

Well you're right. What does back up that term, however, is what you share on your online profile. You can pick and choose what photos you want everybody to see. Every day we see new photos of our friends and family, whether they have arrived at their holiday destination, visited a popular landmark[3] or got a new puppy (N'aww)! The keyword their is choose though. How often do you see someone post a picture that they didn't want people to see? When you post these easy-to-capture photos of happiness for the world to see, that is what people see and judge you on. Essentially, a person's idea and image of who you are is based on the pictures you post. This is your online persona. You can be whoever you want to be online, and easily portray that image through sharing the right photos. This leads me to my next point.

"The sun is shining, they're smiling! God they look so happy!"

Make the picture look how you want

I guess this all started on Instagram way back. They introduced the concept of "filters", allowing us to change visual aspects of our photos to bring out more colour, change the style of a photo[4] and ultimately make it look exactly how you want it to.

Then came Snapchat filters! Fun little cartoon additions, such as face overlays and masks. 

Then came beauty mode! Remove those pesky blemishes with ease, makes those eyes sharp and punchy, rosy cheeks. You name it, beauty mode did it.

Us die-hard photographers (and anyone who paid attention to available apps) will have discovered Adobe Lightroom Mobile, Google's Snapseed and similar image manipulation apps. These gave us the tools we need to manually change the colour production and composition of the photos we take. Oh, and did I mention that all of this was still on the device your took the picture with. It was as simple as Take picture > Edit picture > Share picture.

Did you honestly believe that the colours and contrast were straight from the camera?

So we have ease of use, ability to share, apps to change the picture's look, but we haven't even spoken about the real technology yet.

Processing and hardware advancements

On a DSLR, if you want the subject to really punch through the frame and defocus the background, you bought a "fast" lens[5], but this would generally be an expensive option and any good "fast" lenses were prime lenses, which had fixed zooms, so you would need to buy more than one lens, but then with more lenses, you would need more space and more money, which would mean...

So us photographers have had to put up with this for some time now, and we have always dreamed of a compact, all-round fast lens for every occasion, but they don't exist[6]. Thankfully, smartphones have been finding ways to get round these problems through various methods.

Portrait mode has allowed the user to take photos which give the subject the punch they desire, by using digital processing to blur the background. Granted, some phones do it a lot better than others, but with the added ability to even choose the level of blur, it's a feature that many of us can no longer live without. 

Dual cameras have not only increased the accuracy of said effect, but on some phones one of those cameras doubles as a separate focal length. I have 2 lenses on my handset, both unfortunately are 27mm focal lengths, but one being a 12MP f/1.8 RGB sensor and the second being a 20MP f/1.6 Black and White sensor, which deliver incredibly accurate results in portrait mode.

Front facing cameras are maybe something we take for granted. Have you ever tried to take a self-portrait (Selfie!) with a traditional DSLR camera? Not easy, I tell you! And with technological advancements allowing higher-spec lenses (And sometimes 2 of them) to be fit onto the front of the phone, you know damn well what that means...

#JustWokeUpLikeThis

Anybody can now wake up, rub their eyes, grab their phone and instantly take the perfect selfie and yet still manage to look semi-decent, if not beautiful[7].

Before I reach the conclusive portion of this topic, I want to take the time to share some photos that were all taken and edited on nothing more than my Huawei P20 phone.

So that settles it. Fits in your pocket, takes great pictures, editing software built in, ability to share with the world, what more could you want?

Well, here's some food for thought

There are a few things that I don't like about this. Some of these are going to show my "mental age", others are going to maybe come across as unfair, so warning about that.

When looking at image quality, you can have all of the processing power you want in a phone. It will never match up to the quality of even a mid-range DSLR camera. Your choice of focal lengths and apertures give a DSLR user the ability to craft the highest-quality picture possible, using true, glass-based optical zoom and not digital zoom, which introduces noise and a loss of quality.

Owning and using a DSLR is a learning curve. You're never too old or young to learn and if you're interested in photography, you should be interested in achieving the best results and exploring the many ways in which you can achieve them. There are many routes. DSLRs using jpegs, or introduce yourself to RAW footage and editing in software. There's various formats of analogue photography, not limited to 35mm film and polaroid photographs. You could even work your way up to using £15,000 Hasselblad cameras in studios. Not to mention that when you hold a DSLR, people move out of your way. Shooting a wedding with a phone isn't going to yield great results and nobody will take you seriously at all. So why do it?

But outside of the technical side of things, there are some more things to consider too.

Firstly, this really seems to have taken the fun and challenge out of photography. It seems that anybody with a good phone and an Instagram account can take advantage of features that would otherwise have been very difficult and require practice and/or training in order to achieve. Does that devalue some of the work of die-hard photographers? Are we wasting our time? I mean seriously, I have seen a man shoot a wedding on an iPhone and create some truly incredible results [8]. This gives me the impression that proper, hard-earned photographs are going to somewhat die out over time and we might suddenly start to see the decline of camera sales, especially considering the high price tags on some of them, however, I know that I don't share the knowledge of that industry as much as others do, so that is a guess based on opinions and a small bit of logic. Who knows, maybe business is booming. I haven't seen the numbers.

Secondly, this one is where I show my age. I don't like what I said in the paragraph about online personas. You can now become whoever you portray yourself to be, which may be good in some ways, but for the third person, it can do a great deal of damage. I have constantly seen friends and people from school on Facebook, sharing their adventures, their weddings photos and more, and although I feel happy for them, sometimes it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong. Why haven't I been to Hawaii? Why aren't I married? Am I lazy? Am I poor? Am I doing this right?

To resonate with that, on the other side, I also find myself posting pictures that show what I am doing, but in an effort to make it look like I don't feel worthless and that my life is a jumbled up mess that I'm slowly trying to piece back together. Everybody sees the lovely photos of Barcelona, the happy kisses from my darling on the cheek, my two baby Ying and Yang cats. I received a message today from an old friend who said "...your life is one people would aspire for". That's not correct at all. They don't see the struggle, they don't see the emotional torment going on, they don't see the hard work I have to put in every day to keep myself afloat and alive. Why? Because my addiction to sharing photos only extends to photos that make me appear happy.

And I'm going to talk about one more thing before I end. Which is the word addiction. When did it become common practice to spend every single minute of our short lives with our heads buried into our phones? When did it become ok to go to a family event, only to see that at the most wholesome moment of my life, people are holding their phones in the air? For f**k sake everybody, just live in the moment. Enjoy what is happening around you and put your phone away.

And for young people, this s**t is toxic! To extend on the online persona, I have seen first-hand the effect that "likes and followers" have on a young person's self-esteem. The next generation don't have as much confidence us we do, and I'll be damned if that is down to anything other than the way in which they are trying to portray themselves online. If you have 50 followers whilst your friend has 5,000, that does not mean they are a better person. I want to make sure that those words are echoed through the ears of every young person out there, because it's sickening to see the effect of social media on them.

The conclusion

Ok, yeah. It's easy. You buy a phone, you press a button and you've take a good photo. You know what, with a bit more work, you can take great photos. But I wholly believe that the expense of this greatly outweighs the gain. Put your god damn phones away. 

If you want to take photos, by all means take photos, but think first then think afterwards too.

Oh and on a purely technical note, if you want to take GREAT photos, buy yourself a DSLR and invest some time in learning how to use it. Learning is one of the greatest parts of life. Don't waste your time by taking the easy route. Learn a new skill and enjoy where it takes you.

*slow exhale*

Remember what you have around you. Don't forget about it whilst you're there fishing for fake likes and followers.

[1] Many people with DSLRs are aware of the hassle of carrying it around our necks, sometimes having the wrong lens on, sometimes it's in a bag, lens caps, hoods, flashes, etc. In the wrong setting with the wrong situation, these simple setbacks can make us miss the moment.

[2] Besides leave it on your phone, untouched for the next 3 years or so, until you eventually "upgrade" to the next device. I have too many photos to say that have just been scrolled past for months, never really seen the light of day.

[3] Although I will take a minute to rant about all of the pictures I see of people posing in selfies in places of grief. There are countless rage-inducing photos of smiling individuals, with their faces carelessly/cluelessly beaming the words "Look at us" whilst standing in a place where literally millions of innocent people died. I'm looking at you, Auschwitz tourists. Have some respect.

[4] The 'retro' style photos seemed to be a very big hit, especially since people have been craving a hit of nostalgia since I can remember!

[5] A wide aperture (f-stop) which means it is capable of allowing more light to reach the sensor. This lets you get that blurred, bokeh-heavy background. You will usually be looking for a lens (Preferably prime) with an f-stop around f/2.8 or lower for the best results.

[6] I understand a constant f/2.8 18-75mm lens or something would be a very good all-round lens, but would still not be able to cover every eventuality in a photographers work.

[7] Say what you will, I look like a stud in that picture, I know 😎

[8] Seriously, search up "Peter McKinnon". It's worth noting that not everybody can do what he does. He has a natural gift for this sort of stuff.