Camera Showdown: Unveiling the Power of DSLRs vs. Smartphone Cameras
Today I’m going into a comparison between traditional digital cameras and phone cameras. I’m purposely leaving film cameras out of the comparison, because I don’t have enough experience as a photographer with film cameras. The truth is that with film cameras, your skills and your creative vision have to be much sharper, and I kind of like that kind of challenge, but it’s cheaper to toss out a bad digital image than it is a bad film image, and that’s a factor for me. I’m also going to stipulate that when I say “phone camera” I mean a really good phone camera, like the iPhone 15 pro or a high-end Samsung, because if you’re serious about smartphone photography, that’s what you’re probably going to want. I have an iPhone 15, but not the Pro version. If you use a less-expensive phone as a camera, the specifications will be a little different and the differences between that camera and a traditional camera will be even greater. For “traditional camera,” I’m specifying a digital camera with a price point of around $3,000. Let’s dive in!
IMAGE QUALITY
Your image quality is determined by the size of the camera’s sensor, the megapixels, and the quality of the available lenses. I’ll touch on each of these with an explanation of how they affect the final image, and I’ll give you some examples.
One of the most recognizable factors in how good your images look, especially when you take them large, is the camera’s sensor size. Larger sensors capture more light, and photography is all about capturing light. That means that larger sensors are going to produce better image quality, especially in low light conditions.
This is part of an image that I captured with my very first digital camera, a Fujifilm FinePix A350, magnified to 300%. The sensor size is 5.2 megapixels, which was fine for that time. I printed an image on 8 ½” x 11” paper and it was really nice. However, if we want to take it bigger, we are going to start to see some pixelation – you’ll see the sharp edges of each pixel.
This image was taken several years later with my next digital camera, a Canon Powershot SX60, magnified to 400%. You can see that by going bigger, the pixels are still a lot smaller. That’s because the sensor of the Powershot SX60 is 16 megapixels, nearly three times better than the FinePix. There were only two years between the purchases of them, and they were nearly the same price!
I used that Powershot a lot, and then I decided it was time to get a camera with interchangeable lenses, so I jumped into another Canon, this time an Eos Rebel T5. This camera wasn’t much bigger on sensor size, at 18 megapixels, but that wasn’t its selling point for me. It was a true DSLR and it was going to make me learn how to use a camera. (It did, but my photography was pretty awful for several months!) You can see that at 400%, it’s pretty pixelated, almost the same as the Powershot, but at least the pixels are small.
A couple of years ago I did a serious upgrade to a Canon R6, a mirrorless camera. It has a 20-megapixel sensor, not a whole lot bigger than the T5, but with the improvements in technology in general and being more sensitive to light, while it’s still pretty pixelated at 400%, it does incredibly well in low-light situations because of other features it has.
On the same trip where this mast was photographed, we went to the Ark Experience, and the pictures I took inside that were tack-sharp and incredibly detailed.
So that’s what the sensor does. How do phones and “regular” cameras compare on sensors? Well, the iPhone 15 pro has a 48 megapixel main camera – more than twice what my R6 has! The R5 gets close to that, but at another $1,000 in price than I paid for my camera, and my camera does better in low light than the R5.
The size of the sensor also matters. The iPhone 15 Pro has a 9.8 x 7.3 mm sensor, and my R6 has a 35.9 x 23.9 mm sensor. My camera is going to do better in low-light conditions and when I want a shallow depth of field (discussed in this post). The iPhone can do depth of field variations by using software computations and AI.
Now let’s talk about lenses. The iPhone 15 Pro has standard (wide), ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses, and those three different lenses operate seamlessly without a lot of finagling from the user. There are a lot of different situations that are served by these three lenses, even though they’re fixed and have a limited aperture range. My camera, on the other hand, can accommodate a host of interchangeable lenses, which gives me a range of high-quality options that I can tailor for my specific needs. I kept the lenses I used with my T5 and bought an adapter that lets me use them with my R6. Doing it that way introduces some limitations on the scope of the image (it may be cropped in a bit more than it would be with a lens native to my camera form factor), but that’s fine. Lenses can be expensive, and I didn’t want to have to buy them all again. The biggest advantage these lenses have over the lenses in even the best smartphone is that they have superior optics, larger apertures, and features like image stabilization (which can sometimes be more of a bane than a boon).
CONTROL AND CUSTOMIZATION
My Canon lets me take full control over what I want the camera to do. I can set the shutter speed manually, which controls how long the shutter is open and exposing the sensor to light. By having that control, I can decide if I want a moving object to be sharp and completely in focus or if I want it to have some blur indicating motion. I can adjust the ISO to control the camera’s light sensitivity. I can also determine the aperture myself to tell the camera how much of the scene I want in focus.
Smartphone cameras do a pretty good job of handling these things automatically. Auto mode on a camera and auto mode on a smartphone do pretty much the same thing – they use the conditions of the scene to automatically set the shutter speed, ISO, and aperture. Many smartphones are using AI to recognize different scenes, like landscapes, portraits and night scenes, so that they can make setting adjustments and optimize the photo. Many traditional cameras, including mine have program modes that do the same thing. However, the iPhone 15 Pro offers an Automatic Hi Dynamic Range that combines multiple exposures to create a balanced image with more details in both the shadows and highlights without losing either. My camera can do a bracketed exposure set but combining them is my job in a photo processing program like Photoshop.
Additionally, many of the higher-end smartphones have a “pro” or “manual” mode that allows users to manually adjust some of the settings, and some also have advanced night modes that enhance low-light photography. Smartphones are also able to leverage AI for features like Portrait Mode, which blurs the background, and smart object removal.
USABILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY
My Canon Powershot was about as easy to use as it gets, and it did a nice job of making the quick on-the-fly adjustments for depth of field, and my iPhone does a decent job of it as well. Both are designed to be easy to use and provide decent photos. A traditional camera, though, will require some time to figure out how to make things do things, unless the photographer wants to spend all her time on Automatic, and that kind of defeats the purpose of having a great camera.
Both my Powershot and my iPhone are extremely easy and lightweight, which means I don’t mind carrying them around. My T5 was bigger, bulkier, and heavier, and my R6 is even heavier, even at the same mass as the T5. As a result, I tend to be pretty judicious where I carry it. Add one or two extra lenses, and I’m looking for a sherpa. If that wasn’t enough, I got a great telephoto lens that has its own carrying case because it’s a big honkin’ lens. But it gets shots I’ll never get with my iPhone.
It’s also easier to learn to just start taking pictures with a smartphone – not good pictures, just plain old pictures. A traditional camera can have you taking pictures quickly, but when you start getting into exposure compensation (adjusting one leg of the exposure triangle and making the other two match it for good exposure), well, you have to learn how to do that on your first SLR/Mirrorless camera.
LENSES
The lenses on phone cameras come cover a decent range of focal lengths, and they’re always ready. However, they have limitations in extreme distance or extreme close-up shots. Some phone cameras do those types of shots better than others. My Canons let me swap lenses depending on what I want to do, and how far away the subject is and how close I want to bring it. Now, my Powershot has a pretty good digital zoom on top of the optical zoom (where the lens itself moves in and out), but digital zooming will result in image quality degradation. Plus it’s really hard to hold focus on the subject at a great distance, although that’s true of traditional cameras with telephoto lenses as well. But I can also swap out a fixed lens for some purposes, a wide-angle lens for landscapes, a fisheye lens for fun shots, and even a macro lens for serious close-ups. That’s possible with phone cameras, but again, with limitations.
SIMILARITIES
Both traditional and phone cameras are using AI for image enhancement and scene recognition, and they use similar software for the basic image processing, like color correction and autofocus. Under the right conditions, both types can be used for professional photography. Both provide options for video recording, and the quality will vary depending on the hardware you’re shooting it on.
There are photography skills that are just plain photography skills, like learning how the exposure triangle works, learning to compose your shot, eliminating distractions, and stuff like that. If you know those things on a traditional camera, you can put them to use on a phone camera, and vice versa. If you have a phone camera and you want to take better photos with it, a good place to start is by learning photography fundamentals.
YOUR TURN
I love all of my cameras! I want to get really good at iPhone photography, but I’m not giving up my mirrorless camera. It’s good to know I can catch a decent shot of something with my phone, but it won’t get a good picture of a pitcher on the mound at a game the way my Powershot does with its digital zoom.
What’s your preference? With all the possibilities and price points, you can find a way to take passable shots that can be improved in post-processing. What’s your Every Day (Camera) Carry, what’s your dream camera, what do you wish your current camera could do that it can’t do right now? Drop a comment below and let’s keep the conversation going.
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