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08
Oct
2022
It’s often been said that the best camera is the one you have with you, and for most of us these days that will probably be our phone; after-all who even thinks about leaving home without one?
So is that the end of the high end DSLR or newer and mega expensive Mirrorless equivalents? Holiday plans encouraged me to put this to the test this summer on a couple of trips away.
First of all a cycling tour around the Golden Valley in Herefordshire, and then, secondly, off to Scotland and to Loch Tay for a holiday of walking and cycling the highlands and lochs.
A 150-mile scenic tour of Herefordshire’s wild, ancient landscapes.
The Watkins Way celebrates the discovery of ley lines by local man Alfred Watkins. Drive along country lanes, through the gorgeous Wye Valley and the magical Golden Valley to find historic ley line highlights. With dramatic hilltop views and ever-changing panoramas of the Black Mountains. The Watkins Way is one of the best scenic routes in the UK!
For the cycle tour of Hereford, I opted to rely solely on my iPhone 11 Pro Max (or whatever it is); I certainly didn’t fancy lugging a heavy and bulky Mirrorless camera along with everything else I was carrying for the trip. So The best and only camera I had was my phone.
The photography I was doing was mostly a mix of landscapes, cityscapes, church interiors and a few odd things that just caught my interest; these were never going to be competition images, but rather a photographic record of my journey and things I found interesting along the way. I also wanted to capture a sense of the colours and some grab shots that would later be turned into sketches and coloured pencil/pastel drawings to exercise the sketching and visual perception parts of my brain.
So how did it go? The iPhone I’ve got was marketed as having one of the best cameras available on a smart phone and the quality certainly stacks up. With three dedicated lenses and the ability to digitally zoom, I was able to easily capture a wide range of subjects without all the fuss of changing lenses and heavy equipment.
The phone was always easy and accessible to grab, being mounted to my bike handlebars; I did have to keep an eye of the battery percentage though as I was also using the phone for navigation and tracking the journey, and I needed to keep the screen brightness low to ensure the battery lasted out the day’s cycling.
Watkinsway 12
Watkinsway 2
Watkinsway 13
Watkinsway 3
Watkinsway 15
Watkinsway 4
Watkinsway 18
Watkinsway 6
Watkinsway 16
Watkinsway 20
Watkinsway 14
Watkinsway 5
Watkinsway 7
Watkinsway 17
Watkinsway 10
Watkinsway 8
Watkinsway 9
Watkinsway 19
Watkinsway 1
Watkinsway 11
All in all it provided everything I needed.
So did I miss not having the Full frame mirrorless camera? Not really; ok there were a couple of times when I thought a particular shot would have been better if I’d had the extra quality and control of the mirrorless, but generally I was happy with what I came away with.
The media says phone cameras are now just as good as many of those bulky DSLR and new mirrorless cameras!
Are they really though? Maybe if you compared the quality of a new phone with a high range DSLR from about 10 years ago. Certainly the resolution is at a similar level, and sharpness and DOF are both excellent. When you need more control over DOF, shutter-speed etc, I think the DSLR would win, but then it all comes down to what you are photographing and what you are going to use the images for.
A good mirrorless or DSLR is still superior in terms of quality and flexibility, but falls completely flat on availability and portability.
My next trip was up to the highlands and I opted to take both the Phone (it’s always with me) and my Canon R5 (Full frame Mirrorless with the 24-105mm F4 lens).
Now I would truly get a chance to compare the two when I took the opportunity.
So I thought i show a few comparison images…
It’s no real surprise that the Canon was going to produce a better quality image. When you look at the iPhone images on the phone they look pretty good but as soon as you zoom in a bit you can see it really lacks detail and looks quite soft and muddy. I was expecting that, although I was expecting the colours to be better.
These close-ups are small crops of the larger images to show the detail captured by each camera.
These next two images are both loch side views of Loch Tay, taken at different times and on different days. The difference is not quite as stark on these shots (however the light was very different). The iPhone image doesn’t have the same detail, but that is to be expected, however it does look over saturated and looses so much quality in tonal ranges (again it looked great on the phone where I’m sure most of these images will be viewed).
Again both are reasonable images and capture the scene competently. The Canon easily wins again on detail and tonal range as you would expect, but both capture the scene well enough to preserve the memories.
And that’s really the point, isn’t it? Why was I taking these images? What was I going to do with them later on?
These were always going to be memory images for me and both cameras were perfectly good enough to achieve that. I certainly won’t be feeling bad if I leave the Canon at home for ease of portability (particularly when I’m out on my bike); but, If I’m going somewhere I’m unlikely to revisit, I’ll still be taking the Canon.
© 2024 Penistone Camera Club All rights reserved.
Penistone Camera Club was established in 1967 by a group of people passionate about photography. One of the founder members Joe Windle enjoyed capturing the local area and landscape. Joe’s legacy lives on in the club with a trophy dedicated to him.
Photographs by members are used with permission, copyright remains with original authors.
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