We all know that smartphone cameras have come a long way since they were first introduced in the early 2000s. The flagship smartphones today offer great features to capture and cherish your favorite moments. But can your smartphone be the perfect photography gear? Has image quality on modern flagship phone cameras rendered the professional DSLR irrelevant or obsolete? Have the smartphone cameras finally reached where they can replace the mighty DSLR?
Industry experts estimate compact and DSLR cameras sales to be on the decline for some time. There is little doubt that the smartphone killed compact cameras. However, that happened over 5-6 years ago, when most smartphone cameras were decent but limited. The recent years have witnessed people switching from DSLR to upgrading their smartphones – thanks to the technology for better sensors, better lenses and simple processes.
Let’s compare some key features and see if we can get away with kicking out the weighty gadget for real.
Image Sensors
In simple terms, larger image sensors can capture more light. This essentially means that your camera’s processor is large enough to have sufficient information about surroundings, which in turn leads to the camera visibly superior images, crispier textures and more detailed better quality photos. Since smartphones are small integrated devices as compared to the massive DSLRs and are not just capturing images but processing tons of other information, image sensors can’t be very large. The smartphone companies, however, are taking a leap to offer the best image sensor that physics can offer for their handsets.
The new variant in the OPPO A-series, OPPO A9 Quad camera setup comes with a 48 mega-pixel rear sensor. The front camera houses a 16 mega-pixel rear sensor. This gives excellent colour accuracy, white balance accuracy, details, textures, sharpness and minimal noise – pretty much all the ingredients of a good photograph and what we expect from a DSLR.
Convenience
In today’s day and age, nothing can beat the convenience of carrying a smartphone. Smartphone for us is everything from our phone to diary, from our computer to watch, and from our gaming gadget to camera – all in one. You may be thinking that using your smartphone for photography instead of a DSLR isn’t remotely similar, but with today’s advances in technology, it’s a lot easier to capture high quality images using your smartphone’s advanced camera features.
Weight, Complexity and Cost
DSLR cameras have many great features, but the tradeoff is weight, complexity, and cost. What DSLR cannot offer is convenience of use, portability, immediately usable images, easy edits through apps, immediate sharing online, easy camera to video switch definitely a budget-friendly option. So unless there is some real reason to carry the heavy and not so affordable camera gear, switch lenses, work out the shutter speed and a hundred other settings for a professional photo, your smartphone should do the deal for you.
Smartphone manufacturers have come a long way and continue to make incredible strides with the camera feature of their flagship devices. Improving on each aspect like sensor size, pixel density, controls, zoom and optics, smartphone organisations are investing time, money and resources to beat their own graph every single time, while bringing consumers closer to capturing life with the phone in their hands, as close to reality as they expect from a DSLR. With how things are, seems it’s just a matter of time!
