Showing posts with label Wi-Fi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wi-Fi. Show all posts

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Smartphones: The Future Of Digital Photography?

By Mike Thompson


Since the advent of smartphones, these devices have cause a major overhaul of digital compact cameras. Flickr, one of the most popular photo sharing websites has surveyed its members and has found that the most popular cameras used were the Apple iPhone 4S, the Apple iPhone 5 and the Apple iPhone 4.

Although it seems as if smartphones have replaced the need to ever need a digital camera, there are many reasons why people are still buying them. The very first and obvious factor is image quality. A low-light photo test against the Apple iPhone 5, the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the Canon Powershot G15 shows that the digital camera is the clear winner.

Not like the smartphone, with a digital camera, you will able to shoot photos from a fair distance away because of the larger zoom factor. There are other benefits as well, including better metering, white balance and superior subject tracking. You may also crop photos at 300% zoom and use that to show off to your friends on Facebook or Instagram simply because the quality is still really great at that crop level. With a smartphone, this is just not possible.

You also have to take into account of the fact that your smartphone is still really just a phone that happens to be fairly versatile and that taking lots of photos can be a cause of a massive battery drain. You definitely don't want to be struggling to be making a phone call or a text message later on because of this.

As a matter of fact, the big camera vendors have decided to compete against smartphones and not just let them achieve a monopoly. This has resulted in the creation of 'smart cameras' which are digital cameras that allow you to send photos online via Wi-Fi or your mobile phone's connection.

For instance, Canon has recently developed the Powershot N, which is a small square shaped digital camera, designed to have the similar size as a smartphone as well as having built-in Instagram-like filters and built-in Wi-Fi for instant photo sharing.

Compact digital cameras in general are becoming more and more powerful as even these kinds of cameras have quality that can rival the more sophisticated DSLR range of their own respectively brands. The latest Nikon Coolpix A has the same 16.1 megapixel sensor as the Nikon D7100 DSLR and has the same image processor as the older Nikon D7000.

In the end, smartphones should not be dismissed as totally inferior to digital cameras. It just depends on what you want from these cameras. Would you take pictures to only just share photos with others? In this case, you would be better off with a smartphone. Would you take pictures because you would like them to be picture-perfect? In this case, you would be more satisfied with a digital camera.

To not belittle the usefulness of both of these types of cameras, you should think of smartphones as a complement to digital cameras, instead of them replacing digital cameras.




About the Author:



Enhanced by Zemanta