I got interested in photography during my travels, and my wife is very interested in it.
I bought a decent camera. I really enjoyed playing with it, and spent some happy hours learning about it. I even took some decent photos (well, I liked them anyway).
But in the end, carrying it became a chore and trying to take off-the-cuff photos during adventures took too long. I found that we needed to go for specific "photography adventures" with the camera, with the intent of taking photographs with the camera, in order to use it. If we were going for a trip without the specific aim of taking photographs it was just easier to use the phone cameras.
Also the camera photos were stuck on the camera, while the phone photos were instantly usable in social media, and shareable from the Google/Apple Photos. I have a portable drive folder somewhere with all the camera photos, but I never see them. The phone photos are a search away.
I think it's the difference between "being a photographer" and "taking photos". I am not a photographer, I just want to take some photos and share them with my friends. They're going to look at the photo for approximately 5 seconds max, on their phone, and never again. All the comments in the article are accurate but meaningless in this context.
On the other had, if you're a photographer and want to take a photograph that someone will hang on their wall, all the comments in the article are accurate and relevant.
Why can't you be both? I am an amateur photographer, but it doesn't mean that I carry my camera with me everywhere that I go. I see photography as a hobby, so when I feel like I want to do "hobby things" I bring a camera with me. I prepare myself to do so. It doesn't mean that I don't use my phone camera at all (in fact I upgraded my phone purely for the "better camera").
If you are just taking snapshots to share with friends, then it makes sense to not bring the camera. But if it's your hobby, where you sit down and take time and care to take a photo, then it's a different game altogether.
I don't often print my photos out and put them on a wall, but I do have my own photography blog where I post the photos I take (with a camera). I think the article is still relevant to that kind of scenario too.
I think the purpose of this kind of page is to outline differences between taking a snapshot and taking a photo. This is to argue back at people who think that taking a photo with an iPhone is just as good _in any situation_ and think that _anyone_ with a camera is wasting their time. It also attempts to combat the prevalent myth that more megapixels = better photos. Yes that myth still exists in 2025.
yeah agree. I decided I wasn't a photographer, though I'm still interested in it.
> This is to argue back at people who think that taking a photo with an iPhone is just as good _in any situation_ and think that _anyone_ with a camera is wasting their time.
"Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience". Seriously, are there people who think that iPhones are just as good as dedicated cameras, and can still tie their own shoelaces?
I'm surprised no camera manufacturer has created an easy way to get all your photos to Google Photos / iCloud/ Dropbox / etc. They have some wireless photo transfer things, but they're clunky and unusable. Just connect the camera to WiFi and auto-upload everything to the service of my choice. I'm guessing it's a mix of:
* Camera manufacturers are hardware companies and can't do software and cloud stuff.
* It wouldn't interact well with swapping SD cards, which is what all the pros want.
* The camera would need to stay powered when off to upload photos. Current cameras have a hard power switch.
Also vendor lock-in. The camera company gets no revenue from integrating with Google/Apple, and potentially loses a source of lock-in, so why do it?
Also, the RAW format that the camera stores is huge, and pretty much unusable. You'd want to store JPGs but those are export format not that actual image. Though I guess that's an answer to the lock-in question: export jpgs to the cloud, keep the RAW images on the device.
> Also the camera photos were stuck on the camera, while the phone photos were instantly usable in social media, and shareable from the Google/Apple Photos. I have a portable drive folder somewhere with all the camera photos, but I never see them. The phone photos are a search away.
Seems like you don't really care much about those photos then. If you have them on a portable drive, how long would it take to do a drag-and-drop to put them on Google photos? 40 seconds + waiting for the upload? It's really minimal amount of friction.
> They're going to look at the photo for approximately 5 seconds max, on their phone, and never again
Sure, no need to do anything else for such snaps. But it's also nice to keep some long term photos to show your kids or grandkids. Like people did from the 70s up till the 00s. In fact, there are inexpensive services that help you arrange your photos in quality printed book-form albums, similar in principle to the physical photo albums of the past, where individual printed photos were glued. I find that picking such a book off the shelf happens much more readily than any urge to load up an external hdd to view photos on a screen.
I bought a decent camera. I really enjoyed playing with it, and spent some happy hours learning about it. I even took some decent photos (well, I liked them anyway).
But in the end, carrying it became a chore and trying to take off-the-cuff photos during adventures took too long. I found that we needed to go for specific "photography adventures" with the camera, with the intent of taking photographs with the camera, in order to use it. If we were going for a trip without the specific aim of taking photographs it was just easier to use the phone cameras.
Also the camera photos were stuck on the camera, while the phone photos were instantly usable in social media, and shareable from the Google/Apple Photos. I have a portable drive folder somewhere with all the camera photos, but I never see them. The phone photos are a search away.
I think it's the difference between "being a photographer" and "taking photos". I am not a photographer, I just want to take some photos and share them with my friends. They're going to look at the photo for approximately 5 seconds max, on their phone, and never again. All the comments in the article are accurate but meaningless in this context.
On the other had, if you're a photographer and want to take a photograph that someone will hang on their wall, all the comments in the article are accurate and relevant.