I Reviewed Late-2000s Digital Cameras. Allow Me to Remind You Why We All Switched to iPhones.

There was always three things that made a standalone camera better than a smartphone camera: larger sensors, better glass, better ergonomics. For most people people those advantages went away once computational photography got good enough and technology improved which allowed for very compact lenses on larger sensors.

I’ve got a different background than most photographers in that I have a lot of experience in testing camera image quality. For me, a full frame mirrorless is still the way I prefer to take photos, as it has noticeably better and more natural looking images due to better hardware. Phone cameras suck in some ways like having realistic depth of field (portrait modes look so bad to me), but they also excel in using image stacking and AI enhancements to alleviate the hardware downsides to the point that I’ll sometimes prefer the phone over the prospect of trying to achieve the same on my full frame.

No, the size of the sensor matters, and phones are mediocre cameras. I will die on this hill.

There are very few (sub-$1500) point-and-shoot digital cameras of decent quality to even compare any more*. The ones that are left are targeted at vloggers, and despite how neat phone camera technology is (and it is incredible), it’s often astonishing how good a compact camera with a modern sensor and decent zoom has gotten.

It’s a shame the market got hollowed out by phones, because over the past few years, phones have just gotten more hallucinatory with their output images in an attempt to “fix” the photos they’re talking, and hardware innovation has stalled out. Because of course it has. They don’t have the space of a dedicated camera.

* IMO it is a disservice to Sony that the author mentions their $1500 camera but not the very similar ZV-1 model that’s only $800.

For me it’s all about focus. Not with a lens and a receptor, but of my mind. I can’t take serious picutres with the thing I just watched cake fart fetish videos on and that my boss is calling me on while I’m trying to capture something beautiful. If you want a record of something, sure pull out your phone. If you want to force yourself to take thoughtful photographs, an actual camera is an excellent tool, even at half the megapixels.

I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but I really don’t like the basic ergonomics of taking photos with my phone. To me there’s no comparison to the weight and layout of a dedicated camera.

Ok top of that, I like to fiddle with settings and focus manually, and I don’t want my images to be automatically filtered through AI or scraped by Google.

I can certainly agree that a big part of photography is being in the right place at the right time and using whatever camera you have to take the photo. And I know that the phone cameras these days are pretty good and more than enough for the casual user, but I like a dedicated camera, even a cheap and old one, if only for the experience of taking photos that way.

I still have an iPhone and I prefer the pictures my Fuji Finepix took back in the 2000s. It didn’t put that weird fisheye effect on landscapes that make background objects look like they’re a kilometre away when they were only a few meters away. I’m still surprised by how good those pictures are, and the way the lens automatically extends and retracts is just joyful. I never think that of my iPhone.

The pictures are more grainy, and have other shortcomings. But they look like what I saw with my eyes.

I grew up during 110 & 35mm point and shoots… I even shot on 120mm medium format a bit… then I moved to digital p&s and finally iPhones/Smartphones. As an avid photographer, I’ve also owned and used extensively my SLR and DSLR’s (and now Mirrorless “DSLR”).

I absolutely loved my Canon SR-T 101, then my Canon T6s, and finally I recently picked up a Canon R6. I own more L series glass than I care to admit and will choose that experience and the output and control I have over those photos above pretty much anything else.

But I’ll say this: the best camera to capture a moment is the one in your hand. A modern iPhone takes pretty solid photos. Definitely better than some I’ve used along the way. Is it perfect, no. But most of the time, the choice is “take a photo with what you’ve got, or miss the opportunity”. Now, for obvious reasons I don’t always carry my R6 with a 24-105L attached, but at least I can still get some decent photos.

If you like the aesthetic of an early 2000’s Point and Shoot, have fun! learn it well and it’ll probably get you some interesting photos. That’s the joy of photography. The composition, medium and subject are only part of the style and everyone can have their own flair and decide what they like.

Do I wish there were some modern P&S pocketable cameras, yep… but I already have a phone that takes up that spot and it’s always on me anyway.

My Minolta Dimage was pretty decent in it’s time; I used it at a wedding and got better photos than the professional photographer using film. It was all about understanding the device’s strengths and limitations. The Dimage was great because it had a solid burst mode, so I’d take 1,000 photos where the professional took 30.

Of course, I still eventually moved on from that camera to a decent DSLR camera, which I still use when I go somewhere with the intent to take composed photos.

But the old rule still bolds true: the best camera to use is the one you have on you when the photo presents itself. And everyone tends to have their phone handy, even if they have limited control over focal depth and aperture and try to make up for it in post.

Phone cameras are bullshit because you need to buy an app to get all the features a regular camera would have built in. You need an app for long exposure, aperture settings, time lapses, raw data

What a biased bunch of garbage.

I understand why people want to go back to older analog things to try and stay offline, but the issue isn’t your phone itself. The issue is the apps that you load up on your phone that are there just to keep you distracted. Remove those, and your phone goes back to being a useful tool instead of a black hole for attention.

I never took those cameras seriously real glass kicks ass iphones are trash.

Crux of Article:

But it would be a shame to see you blow hundreds of dollars on a “vintage” point-and-shoot (a phrase I cannot believe I’m actually typing) or the reanimated corpse of a long-dead pocket camera under the mistaken impression that it’s anything more than a toy destined for the junk drawer once the novelty wears off after a few weeks.

…

So I have to chuckle when I hear anyone waxing romantic about the vibe of those old pocket-cam photos, because their grainy, blurry, flat shots were a serious source of discontent back in the day. The search for the least-worst image quality was the entire reason I had a job.

Anyone have a recommendation for something smaller than a canon rebel t6? (Pocketable?)

Haven’t found a phone that isn’t color stupid or takes pics that don’t turn to grainy trash with the slightest zoom… Even 50mp phones are wildly outclassed by a decent 18-24mp cam.

@Aatube I haven’t switched to iPhones and never will.