Smartphones Replacing Compact Cameras? Discussion

[Dragan Petric]

It has taken many years, but a consumer electronics trend is finally coming to fruition. Even I have succumbed.

Read the full content of this Article: Smartphones Replacing Compact Cameras?

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[LandSurveyor]

Yes, I use my phone to take pictures because I always have it AND it takes pretty decent snaps. My Galaxy S is only 5mp but it does a really good job considering its limitations.

I would like to see a more camera-centric phone but there doesn't seem to be much market interest. The few tries at it have failed to impress.

Compact cameras still have better lenses and imagers plus at least some optical magnification, all of which does no good if you've left it at home.

On a daily basis, I just carry the phone but for a vacation trip, I would certainly carry a real camera.

[Varjak]

I thought about this some after reading the article yesterday. I don't really agree with it. I'd say that smartphones ADDED to the volume of digital photos taken. As with social networking, it really added a new opportunity. Very few phones have cameras that can really do a decent job that even a mediocre digital camera would do for any kind of occasion beyond the everyday (birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, etc.) JMO

[rkevwill]

As Annie Leibovitz has said, "the best camera is the one you have with you." I only take my nicer digital cams with me, when I am on vacations, important occasions, or out really taking pics. ( I have a couple of great cams, but frankly, am a lousy photographer anyway). My iPhone is always with me, and it takes a lot of pics.

[Drillbit]

I myself don't even use point and shooters anymore. Even the 5mp cameras on my EVO 3D and Galaxy Nexus are quite decent, short of low light. But I don't see smartphones replacing dedicated point and shooters soon. For some reason many stick to point and shooters which seems to be getting a revival with their retro designs. Should note that point and shooters are becoming more and more intelligent, Nikon has one coming out with Android inside. I think there are people and more than enough of them, who expect a camera to look like a camera with all the physical buttons and such.

[weegie]

I haven't owned a proper digital camera since the likes of the XDA II became available, the more modern devices have cameras easily good enough for my needs, the really big improvements between old models like the XDA II and newer Galaxy SII is the video recording capabilities.
The newer phone cameras are one of the big attractions for me on devices and OSes that have less and less usefulness and appeal overall for me, I'm using an old winmo acer neotouch as I shattered my SII's screen, and while the device and OS are about 20 times more useful for what I want, the camera isn't even worth using compared to the great shots and clips the SII takes.
As rkevwill was pointing out, my trouble with owning a proper camera is that it was never with me when I wanted to use it, was flat or getting low on battery because it hadn't been used for a while

[r0k]

I have 4 cameras. One is a Canon T1i. It is very nice and I have a couple good lenses for it. I have a Canon SX110. It is also very nice. Both are too large to fit in my shirt pocket. My third camera is a Samsung Galaxy Player 5 that I use mainly to tinker with. It's nice but not as nice as my iPhone camera and I don't have it with me that often. The camera I always have with me is my iPhone 4. I use it almost exclusively but I do carry the others along for special occasions. When my daughter was in the finals of a track meet halfway across the country, I lugged my heavy DSLR down there so I could get photos of her approaching the finish line or handing off the baton. I'm not quite happy with the quality of the photos my iPhone takes. Sometimes they are blurry, grainy, or underexposed. Sometimes my iPhone freezes when I take a shot. It's really bad when I want to take a photo of something and I'm dealing with a frozen camera phone. One thing I like about my "mid sized" camera is the eye-fi card which automatically uploads photos to my Mac. I have it set up to create folders based on date and put the photos there automatically. My iPhone has Photostream but I have to take the time to export the photos from iPhoto to get them into the folder structure I really want. Also the way I was doing it was using "export" which changed all the dates to the day I was doing the copying. Not good. I recently went back and tried dragging several hundred photos out of iPhoto to Finder and voila, the file dates are preserved. Having overcome my last objection to the way Photostream works, there is really only one obstacle to my iPhone being the perfect camera. I think if a new model comes out with a faster processor, that might just clinch it.

There are some third party camera apps to make up for the just ok camera software that comes with the iPhone. I have at least two. I have instagram, Camera+ and Camera Awesome. All 3 offer some upgrades over the default camera and by saving photos to the camera roll, they get uploaded for me just like I took them with the built in software.

There are new compact cameras coming out every day. But just like garmins are dead, compact cameras will be dead soon. What will replace them is mirrorless DSLR-like interchangable lens compact cameras. Right now they are more expensive than DSLRs but they are almost as compact as compact cameras like the Canon SX series. Samsung and Nikon have been at it for some time but recently Canon entered the fray. The days of the low end DSLR are numbered. Compact cameras will "grow up" to have the same sensors and lenses as the low end DSLR so we will have 4 kinds of cameras: cheap disposables either digital or film, camera phones, compact DSLRs and professional DSLRs. All others will be driven out of the market or at least into obscurity. And the camera with the most market share? It will be the camera phone.

[rkevwill]

But just like garmins are dead,

Pfffftttt, Garmins aren't dead! Maybe to you they are. Check their profits, stock prices, and revenues. (something I happen to finally actually know something about). Their revenues from aviation, marine, built in automotive, and 3rd party automotive as well as software for phones, is more than making up for their declining sales in standalone GPS's. Myself, I still prefer the superior (and I say that in the extreme) GPS sensitivity of the standalones, over the gps chips in any and all smartphones. Now that I'm done with off topic......

Yep, you are right. Even at the present time, the iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr!

[LandSurveyor]

I myself don't even use point and shooters anymore. Even the 5mp cameras on my EVO 3D and Galaxy Nexus are quite decent, short of low light. But I don't see smartphones replacing dedicated point and shooters soon. For some reason many stick to point and shooters which seems to be getting a revival with their retro designs. Should note that point and shooters are becoming more and more intelligent, Nikon has one coming out with Android inside. I think there are people and more than enough of them, who expect a camera to look like a camera with all the physical buttons and such.

I Googled some stuff up after you mentioned Nikon. Even before I read what I found I was thinking "What for?" and that was pretty much the conclusion of the articles I read.

And a camera without physical controls is anathema. I still hate that P&S cameras no longed have separate viewfinders.

[rkevwill]

I still hate that P&S cameras no longed have separate viewfinders.

This is SUCH a pet peeve of mine. My wife who is used to film SLR's, likes to carry a little P&S in her purse or bag. I got her a canon G11, which she likes, but its too big for smaller bags. So, I got her a Canon A1300 for an inexpensive P&S. What a lousy lens! I ended up finding a used Canon elph, the last one they made with a viewfinder. Its a shame I had to get a 2 year old model to get her what she wants, but the lens is far superior to whats available now.