New iPhone: Final Nail in the Coffin

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paul13walnut5 said:
Might be the death knell for compact cameras... don't anticipate it'll come anywhere close to a DSLR for flexibility, form or IQ.

I can't say for sure as I haven't handled one, but I remember lots of death knells, how APS would kill off 135, how compact video modes would kill off camcorders etc etc.

I'm confident that for many casual applications an iphone 5s will be good enough.

Delusions aside, how many DSLR users consider themselves happy snappers?
At work, I have a 7D and an ipad. I probably shoot 95% with the ipad because it is convenient and good enough for the job. At home, about the only thing I use the ipad camera on is the occasional Facebook picture or short video clip.

At work, I am most definitely not a "happy snapper", the shots are all very serious documentation of test setup and equipment.

At home, if I use an ipad it is as a "happy snapper", but not with a DSLR.

For me, It's not the tool, but the mindset and need that changes things between snapshots and serious photography
 
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Don Haines said:
paul13walnut5 said:
Might be the death knell for compact cameras... don't anticipate it'll come anywhere close to a DSLR for flexibility, form or IQ.

I can't say for sure as I haven't handled one, but I remember lots of death knells, how APS would kill off 135, how compact video modes would kill off camcorders etc etc.

I'm confident that for many casual applications an iphone 5s will be good enough.

Delusions aside, how many DSLR users consider themselves happy snappers?
At work, I have a 7D and an ipad. I probably shoot 95% with the ipad because it is convenient and good enough for the job. At home, about the only thing I use the ipad camera on is the occasional Facebook picture or short video clip.

At work, I am most definitely not a "happy snapper", the shots are all very serious documentation of test setup and equipment.

At home, if I use an ipad it is as a "happy snapper", but not with a DSLR.

For me, It's not the tool, but the mindset and need that changes things between snapshots and serious photography

Nowhere in your answer did you mention a compact or point and shoot. Thats the question I was answering, as per the OP. Do try to keep up.
 
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paul13walnut5 said:
Don Haines said:
paul13walnut5 said:
Might be the death knell for compact cameras... don't anticipate it'll come anywhere close to a DSLR for flexibility, form or IQ.

I can't say for sure as I haven't handled one, but I remember lots of death knells, how APS would kill off 135, how compact video modes would kill off camcorders etc etc.

I'm confident that for many casual applications an iphone 5s will be good enough.

Delusions aside, how many DSLR users consider themselves happy snappers?
At work, I have a 7D and an ipad. I probably shoot 95% with the ipad because it is convenient and good enough for the job. At home, about the only thing I use the ipad camera on is the occasional Facebook picture or short video clip.

At work, I am most definitely not a "happy snapper", the shots are all very serious documentation of test setup and equipment.

At home, if I use an ipad it is as a "happy snapper", but not with a DSLR.

For me, It's not the tool, but the mindset and need that changes things between snapshots and serious photography

Nowhere in your answer did you mention a compact or point and shoot. Thats the question I was answering, as per the OP. Do try to keep up.
Oops...

Compacts and point and shoots....
I have an Olympus waterproof p/s that goes with me in the kayak.... Definitely a happy snapper camera, would not use it for anything serious as the quality sucks ( I think iPhones take better pictures), but it survives getting regularly dumped into water.

I have an SX-50 that rides in a dry bag inside the kayak....far more cumbersome to get at, but it takes great pictures.... Not as good as a DSLR, but it does save RAW images and the wide zoom lens means no lens changes out on the water. For me, it is a crossover between serious photography and snapshots. An iPhone could never replace the zoom range.

For serious photography on the water, I abandon the kayak for a canoe, and out comes the DSLR in a pelican case and usually a tripod.
 
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Nail in the coffin? No.

I have a P&S camera, and my phone does take better pictures. Granted, the P&S is an 8mp Olympus Stylus 850SW- not exactly new. When I bought the camera, it took better pictures than my phone- which didn't have a camera on it. Rugged and waterproof is what drew me to that particular model.

I think I paid ~$300 for that camera and I don't think I have used it much at all since 2009.

A new cell phone is ~$500 - $700, depending on what you pick.

A "little bit nicer than basic" P&S still hovers in the $200 - $300 range. I can't see shelling out another couple/few hundred for an extra P&S camera, much less closer to $1,000.00 for a "really nice" one.

The images I took with the Olympus P&S can be taken with my current phone, and the phone does a much better job. It's also much easier/convenient to get the images off of the phone via email or send them off as a MMS message.

For another perspective, I purchased a very nice Panasonic Lumix for my mom for a trip before the iPads were common. Learning how to get those pictures off the camera and into the computer was something that never went well, and it is still a foreign concept. Now that she has an iPad, the moving of images from a card isn't a problem because iTunes does it for her. And, the iPad is "good enough".

If anything, the cameraphone has diluted the P&S market.

Others like me have no desire to have two comparable devices.

Devices like iPhones and iPads have a convenience level that is very difficult to match.

My phone has a SD card slot, and I save the pictures there. Syncing with the PC has never been 100%.

The P&S may replace an entry level DSLR and kit lens eventually for some, but not for me.
 
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Rienzphotoz said:
The reason for the poor sales of point & shoot cameras is more to do with the lack of interest of casual shooters, in any serious camera functions... any decent P&S camera will take better photos than a smartphone ... but casual shooters don't care about most of the stuff a serious photog would, the casual shooters only care about capturing the 'moment' they like and share as fast possible with a device that they are already carrying, regardless of the 'quality' of the image ... like my wife who likes the images of her iPhone ... the other day she took an image of a flower which to me looked very ordinary and bland, but she liked it coz it reminds her of a moment she cherishes ... she doesn't care about shutter speeds, fstops, ISO etc ... I think a vast majority are like that, for them carrying another device (P&S camera) is more of a pain, while they can 'get by' with their camera phone. A case in point is the Samsung Galaxy smartphone with a zoom lens, which has far better options (as a camera) than any smartphone, but it isn't selling like hot cakes.

+1 I think this is spot one. Photography is a hobby for me. My youngest son learned to ride a bike a few weeks ago. I didn't run in and grab my 1DX or my P&S, I grabbed my iphone - which was already in my pocket. If I could have known when this was going to happen, I probably would have had the 1DX with me. Was the picture and video from the iphone as good as the 1DX... Absolutely - because it let me capture the moment! Would the picture and video of the 1DX be higher quality - no question. If I could slide the 1DX in my pocket, would I opt for it over my iphone - for sure. For me, the value is in the memory. Each have there place and purpose but I strongly believe the P&S market will decline quickly. I love having great quality images of my kids and wife but, for me and I think many, capturing the memory is the most important. If you can do it with a higher quality image, that is just a bonus...
 
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I think that us gearheads lose sight of one major thing... for most folk, photography is about the photographs, they don't care about sensor sizes, apertures, they just want nice photos of nice things they've done with the nice people in their lives. And if they can do that with an iphone (they can) then why bother with a compact?
 
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People's standards have been steadily dropping. As they've gotten used to P&Ss of the past and then the itty bitty cameras in their phones, any photo to many is a good photo. Interestingly enough, I've seen a few people use their phones to make calls but the add-on that is the "camera", that gets used to document the minutia of their daily lives and quality, high or low, matters little to them. They are used to it, it's convenient and easy to use.
Like some people, I find the quality in anything but perfect conditions to be less than desirable and even then it's simply a matter of if you have no other camera at hand, then any pic is better than none. Am I guilty of using my camera phone or phone camera? Yes because I was out and about conducting my life without the expectation of taking photos so my camera was at home. Was I expecting amazing resolution, colour, sharpness, 20x30 printability? Of course not. These things are about convenience with "good enough" (for most) quality of output.
As an aside, I always find these phone updates from every manufacturer to be somewhat amusing. I've yet to hear of any major (though I admit I don't pay attention to phone news or peruse phone forums) breakthrough in phone performance. It is a phone after all but every new phone has some other feature or add on that's improved but the phone is still just a phone and hasn't changed much. I guess that's the only way they can entice you to buy a new "phone" by tweaking some other "feature" of it. Not much different from the camera world it would seem.
 
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Lol....yeah, standards aren't especially high in social media. I see crappy pics al, the time with terrible filters on them ala Instagram and comments like "wow, you're an amazing photographer" or "you should be a photographer" and I'm all, wtf, that looks like total shizzle. ::)
 
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Nah! But sales won't be what they were.

It won't replace a camera for us enthusiasts, because, while pleasant and convenient, it doesn't have the IQ that we demand. There will be advanced P&S for those times when we want to go light. For tech-phobes, you know them, the people with cell phones that do little other than make calls, there will always be a market for basic P&S so they can snap happily in Automatic and take the card out to print at the drugstore or post on Facebook.

I'd expect the selection of mid-range P&S cameras to dwindle, though. The phobes don't buy them now, and regular folk are switching to reasonably good phones, and the 5S sounds like a great camera (I like my 5, btw, esp. when I can edit and post images with relative ease; the better sensor and lens might get me to upgrade). There will be a few niche specialized models like superzooms for sports parents or waterproof for rugged use. Beyond that, though I'd expect far fewer choices than available today. Most images only end up as digitals anyway, and the quality difference between a good smart phone and a medium P&S shot once it's posted to Facebook post is negligible. And there's the convenience of carrying one device that can shoot, edit and post.

Not ready for a coffin, yet, but P&S is not the bright star it used to be, either.
 
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Joe M said:
People's standards have been steadily dropping.

Really?

Today's cameraphone was unimaginable back when the EOS system was introduced in the late 1980's.

Even then, someone could choose from a Polaroid for instant results or a myriad of film options that required a trip to the drugstore or your own little lab.

I see no difference in the essence of the choices between then and now.

For many, a Polaroid was fine. Others used a 126 (if I remember right). Some chose the 35mm SLR.

The camera phone, P&S and DSLR draw nice parallels, but you can do so much more with a camera phone than a Polaroid.

Same cost parallels between the Polaroid end and SLR end. I paid over $1k for my EOS 620 and some additional bits back in 1987, a hefty premium over a Polaroid camera. 4 x 6 prints were a big deal, and now that is no big deal.

Digital has simply removed the expense of purchasing film and developing it. You don't need a high end computer or monitor to store and view images. You don't need a high end printer, and for simple prints, it is cheaper to print at the drugstore. From what I can see, most of the images taken in my family are never printed, just emailed or shown on a computer.

As a consequence, the meaning or quality of many images isn't there because there are little/no additional costs to see the image.
 
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Joe M said:
People's standards have been steadily dropping. As they've gotten used to P&Ss of the past and then the itty bitty cameras in their phones, any photo to many is a good photo.

I don't know that they have. From my camera shop days I remember folk taking 6 months to use up a spool of 36 in their compacts because they were scared of the cost. I sold a lot of folk olympus mjus, I sold a handful of folk a ricoh or contax. Nowt wrong with the mjus btw.

It would take folk six months to find out that the camera had underexposed, that the flash had given everybody red-eye, or that they had cut the heads off some folk in their group portrait.

I remember the second generation compacts, I'm saying 2MP-4MP generation here, when folk couldn't believe A) how great it was to review the images straight away and B) How many AA's they through and C) how much a 32mb smartmedia card cost. How much!!?!

The images did get better. The most obvious mistakes were deleted and only the good ones printed.

I remember when compacts actually got quite good, I'm thinking Nikon 5200, Canon Powershot G5. Nice glass. Lots of control. Probably not wanting to push things too much beyond ISO 200 though, eh?

To my mind peoples standards have been improving, but we are big on convenience. An iphone is good enough for a lot of social fun stuff, and possibly even good enough when you don't have any other camera on you. The news started showing footage from mobile phones (ALWAYS shot vertically.. c'mon)

The images from the iphone are great. Democratic almost. You have the camera in your pocket all the time.
Folk still treat cameras proper with a lot of reverence, oooh it's delicate, ooh its expensive and so great compacts sit in the drawer manual unread, battery uncharged until it's superceded by an iphone.

Compacts have got even better in the meantime, but to buy a compact thats better than an iphone you need to spend a heck of a lot of money.

Convenience is king. For most.
 
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Although I still think some point and shoots offer more, it's not enough for the general consumer to carry another device with them. With point and shoots the writing has been on the wall for a few years now and it comes down to just a matter of time. Sooner rather than later.

As far as DSLR, camera phones still can't remotely compete. The things it can do well is to take random shots with things that are still. What it can't do well is has been said on this thread: Sports, Low Light, Long distance, etc...
 
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New iPhone final nail in the coffin? Probably - and here's why

My step-daughter is your typical P&S user, just wants to switch it on and take the picture - letting the camera do all the clever stuff. Her iPhone 5 does that more than adequately even in nightclubs where she has to work some times.

But here is the bit that really makes her stop using a P&S - all pictures are automatically backed up via iCloud to her MB Pro & EHD at home. She has a few apps that allow her to process the pictures in all sorts of ways and send as greetings cards or postcards when on holiday. She can also do all the usual process things on the phone such as crop, adjust saturation or exposure, create a panoramic picture, add some filtered effects - and mostly whilst travelling on a bus or train, whilst sitting at home or in a restaurant waiting for food - or similar.

The convenience is just too much and so compact. Having worked in US, Australia, India, Middle East and most of Europe - i can assure you the camera has not failed her yet, and the promoters seem just as happy to use her iPhone jpg's for promotional purposes as she is to put them on her blog or web site.

Are they technically brilliant pictures - no. Would i be happy to have them in my portfolio - not a chance.
But the point is - her and the music industry in which she works seem more than happy with them, and especially the price of the pictures being gained for portfolio and promotional purposes - so sold on her iPhone is she that she sold her P&S on eBay to pay for a larger EHD to store all the extra pictures she was getting because the iPhone goes every where with her when she leaves home!

The P&S only went out if she knew there was pictures to be taken.
 
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danski0224 said:
Joe M said:
People's standards have been steadily dropping.

Really?

Today's cameraphone was unimaginable back when the EOS system was introduced in the late 1980's.

Even then, someone could choose from a Polaroid for instant results or a myriad of film options that required a trip to the drugstore or your own little lab.

I see no difference in the essence of the choices between then and now.

For many, a Polaroid was fine. Others used a 126 (if I remember right). Some chose the 35mm SLR.

And many used 110 film. That was the low point for standards. 110 film was far, far below what phone camera will produce today.
 
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No, the iPhone is not the end of point and shoots, but products like the Nokia 1020 are. Framework.latimes.com/2013/08/25/review-nokia-lumia-1020/#/0
just look at the 100% crops and beach photos in that link.

While its no dslr, my Nokia 928 has optical stabilization, Zeiss elements and a xenon flash.

I've never been a big fan of apple phones and their high price (and their loosing market share worldwide), but their phone camera is certainly nothing special.
 
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RLPhoto said:
I hate my Iphone 5 and unfortunately, I don't have much of a choice beside just waiting for another generation. Apple trapped me here years ago with the 3G, Now it's too much trouble to switch and repay for alot of my stuff. Good strategy apple.
What's wrong with it? I was considering upgrading to the 5...
 
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