iPhone X iPhone X or dslr

[eyeseeyou]

There are plenty of YouTube vids doing an eye test to see if the random person on the street can tell which picture was taken with a dslr and which picture was taken with an iPhone X.

The results would probably be surprising to the folks who are calling the iPhone X pics garbage.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Why do these threads always follow the same pattern?
Op asks if iPhone (whichever model) is better than a DSLR.
People then answer 20 questions OP didn't ask.
Expect to see the usual answers of
best camera is the one you have on you,
Pro can make pictures look good with any camera,
iPhone okay in good lighting conditions,
Etc, etc.

But the question from the OP remains unanswered. Is the iPhone X better than a DSLR?
Well I challenge anyone on here planning on getting married etc to book a photographer who turns up with a camera phone and be happy!
Lol.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Well I challenge anyone on here planning on getting married etc to book a photographer who turns up with a camera phone and be happy!
Lol.

I thought about this scenario before and here’s what I imagined:

I heard there’s this photographer that can shoot our wedding for half the cost of the average photographer. Cool let’s take a look at the photographers portfolio. AMAZING.

Reads the details during checkout: Unless requested Photos are taken with “non traditional”(dslr) cameras. If a dslr is needed an additional “standard” fee will be charged.

Well I’m already impressed with the “non traditional” portfolio and understand print quality will take a hit for photos past a certain size and I’m perfectly fine with that because I won’t be printing photos that large. For the price they’re asking and what I’m using the photos for it doesn’t make sense to spend that much more money.

Submitting order.

 

[RobbyIdol]

I've had several people tell me they take "just as good photos" with their top of the line cell phone as they did with their DSLR.

SPOILER: Their DSLR photos were always garbage.

If you know how to properly use a camera, there is no comparison to a cell phone. If you don't, and you don't intend to learn how to use a real camera, then just buy the cell phone. Your photos likely won't look any different anyway.

 

[sean000]

I personally would encourage anybody interested in photography to buy an entry level £700 DSLR. I think it offers more encouragement to learn and greater satisfaction knowing you’ve done the work yourself with a camera rather than allowing a phone to do it for you.

Phones are great for the casual shot, we all use them, but there’s always justification for a decent camera too. I take more photos with my phone than anything and it produces some great pics for 6x4” prints and social media. Still love my Canon though and I’m very glad smartphones were not around when I took an interest in photography because I doubt I’d have looked beyond them.

I agree that if someone is interesting in pursuing photography as a hobby, they would do well to buy an entry level DSLR or mirrorless camera and a fixed focal length prime lens... or at least a camera with manual controls and a viewfinder. As pleased as I am by the improvements in smartphone cameras, I will never enjoy shooting with one the way I enjoy shooting with a dedicated camera. Not only do I know I can get better results from my other cameras under many situations, but I can also do so more easily and comfortably... and with far more options that will help me get different types of shots. On the other hand there are also things I do like about using the iPhone X vs (or alongside of) my dedicated cameras:

• Video - the iPhone X handles video and slow motion extremely well, but I will still use my Olympus for video in low light.
• Convenience - If i want to take a photo/video and immediately share it, I will use my iPhone. If I have my WiFi memory card in the Olympus, I can use that to transfer an image to my iPhone for sharing... but I don't do that very often. I usually shoot RAW and prefer to process my photos in LR on the desktop before I share them.
• Portability - I added m4/3 to my gear in 2010 because I wanted a more portable camera than my Nikon DSLR. I got used to carrying my Olympus with a pancake prime (or other smallish lens or two) every day, but there are times when I leave the house with only my iPhone. The iPhone X makes me more comfortable about traveling ultra light.

Most people are not really interested in pursuing photography as a hobby, and they will always take convenience over image quality. That's why most people stopped using dedicated cameras years ago.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Well I challenge anyone on here planning on getting married etc to book a photographer who turns up with a camera phone and be happy!
Lol.

I made a similar point earlier in the thread lol.

There is a reason why DSLRs exist though and if a photographer turned up at your wedding with an iPhone X, you’d be worried.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Well I challenge anyone on here planning on getting married etc to book a photographer who turns up with a camera phone and be happy!
Lol.

This implies that photographers get hired or judged based on the equipment they use and not the quality of photos they take.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

This implies that photographers get hired or judged based on the equipment they use and not the quality of photos they take.

It didn’t come across like that at all. You rarely get to see what a photographer uses before you hire them but you certainly would judge that photographer if they turned up with nothing but a mobile phone for a professional job and rightly so.

 

[eyeseeyou]

It didn’t come across like that at all. You rarely get to see what a photographer uses before you hire them but you certainly would judge that photographer if they turned up with nothing but a mobile phone for a professional job and rightly so.

But wouldn’t you hire a photographer based off of their portfolio or even at least a word of mouth recommendation?

Getting a little off topic here but from a business perspective, honestly who cares what camera you use if the customer is happy with the final product and you deliver what you promised for what they paid for?

 

[0970373]

I thought about this scenario before and here’s what I imagined:

I heard there’s this photographer that can shoot our wedding for half the cost of the average photographer. Cool let’s take a look at the photographers portfolio. AMAZING.

Reads the details during checkout: Unless requested Photos are taken with “non traditional”(dslr) cameras. If a dslr is needed an additional “standard” fee will be charged.

Well I’m already impressed with the “non traditional” portfolio and understand print quality will take a hit for photos past a certain size and I’m perfectly fine with that because I won’t be printing photos that large. For the price they’re asking and what I’m using the photos for it doesn’t make sense to spend that much more money.

Submitting order.

It's probably a mirrorless camera which is not a DSLR. Can you link the website? I'd like to take a look.

 

[Apple fanboy]

This implies that photographers get hired or judged based on the equipment they use and not the quality of photos they take.

An iPhone might make a decent shot of the bride and groom outside. But at night in the reception? In a Church? I doubt it!

Look at the end of the day an iPhone is a multi use device. The camera is good for a multi use device.
But any tool that is dedicated for just one purpose is always better for that purpose.

 

[eyeseeyou]

It's probably a mirrorless camera which is not a DSLR. Can you link the website? I'd like to take a look.

This was just a made up scenario. The point is that when you see a “good” photo you most likely don’t care what camera was used to take it.

I used to have a clothing/accessory brand that required taking a lot of stylized product shots to be hosted on online stores. I was told you NEED a dslr if you want to take “good” photos of your products so I spent around $500+ on a canon t2i(?).

I don’t recall what the exact situation was when I was forced to use my iPhone at the time to take product shots but guess what, it didn’t affect my sales at all and nobody complained about the quality. I’ve also had a similar experience using a canon s90.

Again it really depends on how you plan on presenting your photos. I mean Polaroid instant photos are still popular and those pics are usually poorly composed and are not sharp at all and nobody complains.

 

[Jimmy James]

The phone has better low light performance.
/sarcasm

 

[smirking]

Sure, if you pixel peep you're going to find an edge that didn't work out perfectly or a branch that's blurred oddly.

Those are some really nicely composed photos and are good quality regardless of how you took them, but if I took those, I would be kicking myself that I didn't decide to haul my dSLR with me. I'm viewing on an LG 5K. They say "taken on a smartphone" loud and clear to me when viewed on this hi-res of a screen.

I'm not saying that a smartphone photo isn't good enough. Some of those are good enough for most people and better than what most people would take regardless of the gear, but that post did the opposite for me what you intended. It made me more determined to bring my d750 around with me whenever possible. It made me think, "Nice photo, but it could have been even better."

 

[eyeseeyou]

Those are some really nicely composed photos and are good quality regardless of how you took them, but if I took those, I would be kicking myself that I didn't decide to haul my dSLR with me. I'm viewing on an LG 5K. They say "taken on a smartphone" loud and clear to me when viewed on this hi-res of a screen.

I'm not saying that a smartphone photo isn't good enough. Some of those are good enough for most people and better than what most people would take regardless of the gear, but that post did the opposite for me what you intended. It made me more determined to bring my d750 around with me whenever possible. It made me think, "Nice photo, but it could have been even better."

I’m not disagreeing with you but doesn’t the 5k monitor pretty much ruin most of the images you’d see on social media?

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

But wouldn’t you hire a photographer based off of their portfolio or even at least a word of mouth recommendation?

Getting a little off topic here but from a business perspective, honestly who cares what camera you use if the customer is happy with the final product and you deliver what you promised for what they paid for?

Yes I would hire a photographer based off their portfolio hence why I said that in my first sentence. I’d expect them to have the right tools for the job too though. If they turned up with just an iPhone X I’d be very concerned as I’d want them to be prepared for any possibility and not the limitations a mobile phone camera poses. I don’t doubt an iPhone X can take a great picture but it doesn’t even compare to what a DSLR can achieve in the hands of a professional. You can’t really debate that.

 

[Apple fanboy]

You can’t really debate that.

Agree. But they will!

I don't shoot weddings but if I did I'd have to take both my bodies just in case. That's what a pro does. Has a redundantcy plan.
Even having two SD cards in your camera is a must imo.

 

[smirking]

I’m not disagreeing with you but doesn’t the 5k monitor pretty much ruin most of the images you’d see on social media?

Not really, but I say that with reservations. The 5K monitor exposes poor dynamic range and makes some edits more obvious because the artifacts are louder, but I don't expect most people's photos to be professional grade. If something doesn't look amazing to me, I'm not dwelling on it.

If I had come across fs454's iPhone X photos in the wild, they would have been cool photos and I might consider following his feed, but he precluded his picture show with saying he was a photographer and a cinematographer. Now I'm judging on a different level. Now I'm not just interested if they're cool photos or not. I want to know, "How cool are they?" and I didn't think a number of those photos were as good because the artifacts were choppy enough to be distracting or the lack of dynamic range made the subject less prominent.

One of the first things I did when I got my LG 5K was go back and edit a lot of my previous photos that I thought of as being really good. Some of those included smartphone photos. Very few of those got a pass, but a surprising number of photos taken with my d70 over 12 years ago survived the cut. I still liked them. Granted, the gap between a dSLR and a smartphone camera 10 or even 5 years ago was light years apart so if I have to repeat this same retrospective exercise another 10 years from now, I would expect my iPhone 7 photos to fare better, but still be well behind.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

Agree. But they will!

I don't shoot weddings but if I did I'd have to take both my bodies just in case. That's what a pro does. Has a redundantcy plan.
Even having two SD cards in your camera is a must imo.

When I got married the photographer had two cameras too and a suitcase full of lenses. She did an amazing job and cost us close to £2k for the whole day. You get what you pay for as not anybody can just point a camera and get a good result. We went to her studio, looked through endless pics to give her an idea of what we wanted and we got just that. If she’d turned up with an iPhone 4 (2010), I would have been extremely worried. No professional would do that though. We’d leave the guests to take candid smartphone pics as they all serve their own purpose.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Yes I would hire a photographer based off their portfolio hence why I said that in my first sentence. I’d expect them to have the right tools for the job too though. If they turned up with just an iPhone X I’d be very concerned as I’d want them to be prepared for any possibility and not the limitations a mobile phone camera poses. I don’t doubt an iPhone X can take a great picture but it doesn’t even compare to what a DSLR can achieve in the hands of a professional. You can’t really debate that.

If their portfolio was impressive enough, assuming they shot the type of photos you’re looking to get shot, to land the job I’m not sure why you would think they don’t have to tools to get the job done regardless of what tools they use.

From the spec sheet the iPhone X can’t compare to a dslr but there’s plenty, a lot, of evidence that the average person can’t tell the difference.

All that being said if you’re the type of person who feels an iPhone X can replace a dslr just says that you aren’t using all of the features even a low end dslr has. If you’re the type of person who thinks the level of settings on a iPhone X don’t compare to a dslr then I’d assume you are not aware of halide, Lightroom mobile and focos.

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

If their portfolio was impressive enough, assuming they shot the type of photos you’re looking to get shot, to land the job I’m not sure why you would think they don’t have to tools to get the job done regardless of what tools they use.

From the spec sheet the iPhone X can’t compare to a dslr but there’s plenty, a lot, of evidence that the average person can’t tell the difference.

All that being said if you’re the type of person who feels an iPhone X can replace a dslr just says that you aren’t using all of the features even a low end dslr has. If you’re the type of person who thinks the level of settings on a iPhone X don’t compare to a dslr then I’d assume you are not aware of halide, Lightroom mobile and focos.

I knew from the types of photographs I was seeing that they were not produced on an iPhone. This seems like a bit of a pointless exercise really? We both know professional photographers don’t base their businesses around using mobile phone cameras. I refuse to believe any phone can compete with a DSLR in low light situations with a decent speed light and this might be why togs haven’t abandoned their kit in favour. I’m sure the flash is very good on an X though and the average person wouldn’t care either way.

 

[lugworm]

DSLR lense prices are ridiculous.

And £1000+ for a phone isn't ?

 

[smirking]

DSLR lense prices are ridiculous.

Tear one apart and you might change your mind. They are as full of electronics as they are full of glass. I made the mistake of opening up a 10 year old lens to try and clean it out and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The thing was packed with mini circuit boards arranged in a circle around the lens chamber. I had an easier time replacing the battery in an iPhone.

Some of the premium glass is indeed overpriced, but you can get great glass for a lot less these days.

 

[jtara]

On the car shots: I don't find the fake background blurring/double-image attractive. It's a distraction. I hope that was just an experimental series.

I have no problem with manipulation. Feel free to dodge/burn and even rub all you want, when it is called-for.

I guess now I'm obliged the include a car photo. I'll toss in 3 more to boot. Yes, they were all taken with an iPhone 7S. (Now have an X.) Two are manipulated in one way or another, two are not. They were all shots taken at a moment when I saw a picture, and so I used the camera that I had.

If I were using a camera for anything serious, though - to make a living or even as a serious hobby or a sideline - I'd use a better camera. For me, probably a mirrorless.

 

[jtara]

Whoops, guess we can only do 3 at a time! So, one more...