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iPhone Remains Flickr's Most Popular Camera in 2015 Ahead of Canon, Nikon and Samsung

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Apr 12, 2001
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Flickr has published a 2015 Year in Review that again crowns the iPhone as the most popular camera, used for 42% of photos uploaded, based on EXIF data analysis. iPhones finished ahead of the Canon EOS, used for 27% of uploaded photos, and the Nikon D, used for 16% of uploaded photos.

Flickr-iPhone.jpg

The photo sharing website's cameras page lists the iPhone 6 as the most popular camera in the Flickr community, trailed by the iPhone 5s, Galaxy S5, iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 5. Apple is the most popular camera brand on Flickr overall, ranking ahead of Samsung, Canon, Nikon, Sony, Motorola and LG.

iPhones have been the most popular smartphone cameras on Flickr for several years, which is largely unsurprising since DSLRs and some point-and-shoot cameras cannot be carried around as easily. In January 2015, Apple eclipsed Nikon to become the second most popular camera brand on Flickr.

Article Link: iPhone Remains Flickr's Most Popular Camera in 2015 Ahead of Canon, Nikon and Samsung
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2015/12/03/flickr-iphone-most-popular-camera-2015/
Doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Not many people carry a dedicated camera with them but most people will carry a phone with a built in camera. I would think facebook pictures are mostly from phones as well.
 
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They should have gone for an ILC camera instead of that stupid watch. Just imagine the power of a dedicated camera fully integrated into the Apple ecosytems, possibly with its own Appstore. Oh well
 
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Makes me wonder how accurate the results are. What would happen if they compared all iOS cameras to all Android cameras instead of specific brands?
 
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MacRumors said:
...since DSLRs and some point-and-shoot cameras cannot be carried around as easily.
Click to expand...
Actually, at this point, are there any point-and-shoots that can be carried around as easily as a phone? I'm not specifically aware of anything on the market (leaving aside silly little keychain things) that's as light as a modern phone. Lack of optical zoom aside, I'd be willing to bet that there's nothing available with similar image quality at the same volume range--the good point-and-shoots tend to be the nice-fixed-lens/big sensor type, which are pretty hefty.

Otherwise, not surprising. The best camera is the one you have with you is generally true, but in particular once the image quality reaches a certain tipping point it's way more true on a photography site like Flickr. Sure, it's better to have a crappy VGA-resolution flip-phone camera than nothing in theory, but people don't post flip-phone photos to Flickr. Some point a few years ago phone cameras reached the pretty-good-point-and-shoot area, at which point this kind of result is inevitable.
 
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It could also be a result of the iPhone hardware having small storage capacity (on the lower, more affordable models) and iCloud only providing 5GB free cloud based storage. Compared to other phones and Flickr's large amount of free storage...this to me is not surprising
 
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This article should read "Flickr fails to capture mobile picture market". Clearly they are doing a horrendous job because compare the number of iPhones out there to the number of canon EOS cameras, and compare the number of photos in general taken from an iPhone compared to the number taken with canon EOS cameras and I am sure you will find that the ratio is FAR more than 1.5:1 but yet there are so few people with iPhones posting to Flickr comparatively. I would guess the difference is EXTREME in the percentage of people who take a photo with an iPhone and post it to Flickr vs the percentage of people who take a photo with a Canon EOS and post it to Flickr
 
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postpc said:
They should have gone for an ILC camera instead of that stupid watch. Just imagine the power of a dedicated camera fully integrated into the Apple ecosytems, possibly with its own Appstore. Oh well
Click to expand...

I'd like them to push the current tech in the iPhones even more. Optical zoom would be super cool. I still see many people use the digital zoom which is useless. It'd also be great to be able to natively control ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. I think this alone would make it feel more like a camera. People who want to learn the basics can use the iPhone to do just that.
 
newdeal said:
I would guess the difference is EXTREME in the percentage of people who take a photo with an iPhone and post it to Flickr vs the percentage of people who take a photo with a Canon EOS and post it to Flickr
Click to expand...
True, but what does that have to do with anything?

Flickr is, at least ostensibly, an art photography site. The photos posted there will, therefore, tend heavily toward those the person who took them considers to be artistic.

And people who are taking artistic photos (as opposed to "cool, look at that", or personal-event photos like at a party or family vacation) will very disproportionately tend to use fancier cameras than the population at large. In fact, they probably tend to use fancier cameras when taking artistic photos more often than they do when they're taking personal photos. I, for example, am much more likely to get out my big camera (if it's nearby) to take a beautiful sunset than to use my iPhone, but I'll be more likely to not bother for a quick family photo.

They're also more likely in general to even own a fancy camera--it's getting to the point where people either own a fairly fancy DSLR/mirrorless camera, or they just have a phone, with no in-between.

And on top of all that, nothing about Flickr has to do with the "mobile picture market", nor does this article or Flickr's writeup claim anything of the sort. Some Flickr photos are no doubt studio photos, and depending on your definition of "mobile" I expect very few of the photos published there qualify at all.

Basically, yes, of course Flickr doesn't represent the overall camera or number-of-photos demographic at all. It's not supposed to, it doesn't claim to.

What's interesting is that an increasingly number of people consider their cell phone camera good enough to take artistic photos with and post them to an art photo sharing site.
 
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DIRSGT said:
It could also be a result of the iPhone hardware having small storage capacity (on the lower, more affordable models) and iCloud only providing 5GB free cloud based storage. Compared to other phones and Flickr's large amount of free storage...this to me is not surprising
Click to expand...
Yeah but the iPhone 4, 4s, and 5 were the most popular cameras on Flickr before while the competition had the same amount of storage.
 
I've shot some 6400+ pictures this year with my Nikon D810/D4S. Not one of them has appeared on Flickr or any other social media site yet I made a lot of money from them. What am I doing wrong?
Oh, I think I used my iPhone camera about 20 times in the same period.
 
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iPhones are NOT the best camera out there...

They are the best-most-convenient camera out there, hands down.

If you aren't going to lug the best around every moment, the iPhone does an excellent job.
 
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I think that the main reason is down to the fact that with the new Flickr app it automatically uploads your phone pictures privately to Flickr for safe keeping.

This way has meant that I have ~500 pictures from DSLRs and scans and 2000+ from my iPhone even though only a small selection (5-10) are public compared to the hundreds of DSLR shots.
 
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Not sure what this really means besides people who like to share pics on social media like to use cell phones to do it.

I take 10's of thousands of pictures a year with a Nikon, and put 0 on flickr. Photography is a major part of my life, butI have no interest at all in using flickr.
 
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I have a really hard time believing that mirrorless only makes up 3% of their uploads. It's one of the only growing camera segments at the moment! I know so many people switching to mirrorless. Maybe they're just not using Flickr? When I click around the mirrorless cameras I spotted don't even show a type next to them—it's just blank. I mean just look at all the top Fujifilm cameras that are mirrorless! And then ones from Sony like the A6000 which has 15M photos alone, not to mention the A7 series and older NEX series. Maybe mirrorless users just don't use Flickr. I know I wouldn't personally and I'm about to switch to Sony's mirrorless systems. We only use Flickr at my work because we have dozens of teams spread out all over who access the photos that myself and others on my team take and we need our photos to be easily accessible by the public as we'll often link to sets from news stories and promotional pages. That and the decision was made back in 2010 well before I started working here. I read that Yahoo might be about to sell off their Flickr stuff. Hopefully it gets better and doesn't fall to pieces as that's going to make a lot of work for us.
 
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H2SO4 said:
No it isn’t. It might be the one a friend has that zooms into the mountain a mile into the distance that your iPhone can’t pick up.
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My Canon DSLR is better than my iPhone and has lenses worthing 5 iPhones.... But most of the time I don't carry my DSLR with me while I'm carrying my iPhone everywhere.

But I know, you HAVE TO downplay Apple, even with a post with so little meaning as this.
 
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DIRSGT said:
It could also be a result of the iPhone hardware having small storage capacity (on the lower, more affordable models) and iCloud only providing 5GB free cloud based storage. Compared to other phones and Flickr's large amount of free storage...this to me is not surprising
Click to expand...

Most people that use flickr do so for the social sharing aspect. Also, there are plenty of people using non-16gb iPhones, which if your theory was correct, would not be otherwise counted.
 
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