Cameras and Photography Explained

For years the general conclusion has been that the smartphone has been gobbling up more and more of the camera market, starting originally with casual snapshots and now often suggested to be any photo possible with a mid-range zoom (e.g. 24-70mm). I certainly agree with the former contention, but not exactly the latter. 

As it turns out, smartphones have still left a largish arena for dedicated digital cameras to play in, though no single Japanese camera company seems to have figured out the breadth and depth of that available realm.

Let me start of by saying that smartphone cameras have gotten considerably better over the years (as expected), but the "tuning" of them tends to be narrow. By that I mean that the real goal of most tends to be how good the images look on the device or in social media. There's a lot of behind-the-scenes shuffling and manipulation of the captured data that's all predicated on that assumption of output. 

For instance, to deal with the random nature of photons while photographing in low light, the smartphones these days look at adjacent moments for non-moving backgrounds and use machine learning or artificial intelligence to "correct" moving elements in the scene. Since they're already dealing with a video-like stack of images around the moment, they'll also use that extra information to inform "exposure" decisions, bringing up dark areas compared to the brightest range. Coupled with HDR displays and HEIF, the results can look really darned good on the device. Indeed, often better than straight-out-of-camera JPEGs from dedicated cameras.

More recently we've seen the addition of more pixels in smartphones (using the same or similar area), often with a quad-pixel design (basically Bayer, where each Bayer color is broken into four sub pixels). This gives the intelligent engines within the phones more pixel density with which to determine detail, at the expense of color information for that detail (partially made up through new demosaic patterns). 

My current assessment—made mostly with recent iPhones—is that we're at the stage where excellent 12mp images can be taken in most situations from about 13mm to 120mm, and perhaps something approaching 24mp quality level can be obtained in certain situations, though mostly centered on the 24mm focal length. (I'm using "equivalent to dedicated larger sensor camera" focal length numbers here.)

Yet I wrote earlier that there's still a largish arena for digital cameras to play in, so what did I mean by that? Let me highlight some of the areas still relatively protected from smartphone cannibalization:

1. Timing. While all digital camera shutter releases have a tiny bit of lag to them compared to the actual capture moment, with practice you can be incredibly precise at capturing "the moment." I had someone on the football sidelines recently tell me that they don't use a second camera anymore for the close action, because they just take out their smartphone. Okay, but are they capturing peak moment any more? I don't think so based upon observing their output. Good thing publications seem to only want "jubes" images now, as those often have plenty of usable moments to them (as opposed to the exact moment of the catch with the foot dragged inbounds). But in terms of "timing" a sideline event, I'd rather try to do that with the Fujifilm X100VI or similar camera than my smartphone still. And, of course, my Z9's excel at that.
2. Telephoto. The iPhone is up to 120mm in focal length now, though I don't find that to be as good a lens and final capture as for the other two capabilities (wide, midrange). Pixel density with "reach" is still dominated by larger sensor cameras; it's pretty stunning what even a Coolpix P950 can do, though Nikon really needs to refresh the firmware in that camera with some of their more current knowledge. It's not surprising that Nikon has been emphasizing getting the telephoto lineup "right" with their mirrorless system, particularly when you realize that a lot of folk who want #2 also have a need for #1. 
3. Size. I've seen some iPhone images printed large, and they're pretty darned good (though highly curated). However that tends to be an image that's lower on fine detail and more about overall subject impact. And as with most large images we encounter today—e.g. backlit large displays at the mall—the phone images do show their weaknesses if you examine them too close when displayed large. On the video side, 4K is a fairly low bar, and the recent smartphones manage this quite well. 8K is where I see some clear differences between what the phones are achieving versus dedicated gear. Of course, who has an 8K display and can afford 8K/60P data storage?
4. Bokeh. It's no surprise that the topic of bokeh has gotten a lot more lip service lately. The small capture size and lens constraints of smartphones put limitations on what they can do directly. Moreover, the smartphone attempts to use depth information to build out-of-focus areas artificially still pretty much gives itself away on examination, at least to my eyes. Fast lenses on large sensors produce the type of out-of-focus areas we have a long history of experiencing (much like inter frame blur with video), and tend to thus prefer. 
5. Control. While smartphone camera apps can be found that give you more control over what's happening—Halide for the iPhone, for example—they don't come close to the fine-grained control and nuance that's available these days on most dedicated cameras (which was one reason why I complained so loudly about the lack of control customization on the original Nikon Z models). I'm not sure that the camera companies exactly grok what we want to control and why, but if they want to survive, they'd better.

It's clear to me that Nikon has considered most (if not all) of these things as they tried to put some distance between themselves and the smartphone makers. Coolpix: (mostly) gone. Dumbed down UI: gone. Lots of telephotos. Faster prime lens base set. The Z9 is 45mp because of #3, plus has a stacked image sensor supporting #1, and has the most exposed control (#5) of any previous Nikon, for example. 

But consider the Fujifilm X100IV using the above criteria. Timing: check. Size: check. Bokeh: sort of check. Control: check. It only misses on the telephoto bit. Not all dedicated cameras will hit on all five, for sure, but that's probably fine as long as they do a good job of excelling on two or more of the others. 

As I've written for well over a decade now, the camera companies need to better match the smartphones in terms of getting images to social media, as that's where most images are at least initially shared now. If the photographer uses HEIF, they can even match the HDR characteristics on the small displays. Why is this point so important?

Well, take that sideline photographer and his smartphone: one reason why he's using it is that he can push an image to his agency immediately, for release on the wire services almost instantly. He has (mostly) better access to the play and athletes, so he can still get a better image than the person in the crowd can with their phone. What I've objected to in the mobile device linkage of pretty much every dedicated camera is that the minute a smartphone user can do it as well and faster than I, I lose (and so does the dedicated camera maker). 

So these questions arise out of the above:

• Exactly how many units can be sold that fit into a majority of those criteria? 3 million a year or 6? It makes a difference, because unit volume will dictate R&D expenditures, and if R&D goes down at the camera makers, it's game over: the running away from smartphones goes to narrower and narrower niches, and the smartphones continue to gobble upwards.
• Which camera makers have really figured this out? As I note, I'm pretty sure that Nikon's thinking pretty much is (now) aligned with the above. Even the acquisition of RED and their >4K video cameras fits in the above criteria. On the other hand, I'd tend to say that Canon is still "executing as before." Their drive to maintain a 50% camera market unit share means they have to play extensively at the low end that the smartphones keep nibbling at, and I'm not seeing how they are going to stay competitive at that.
• Can anyone market those criteria well? So far, my answer is basically no. I sometimes see a statement or two in a press release or product introduction event that speaks to these things, but it's usually buried in other statements. Go back and re-read any dedicated camera press release in the past year and evaluate whether it speaks to the five criteria I list or not. QED.