I think its ubundantly clear, you dont need a good camera to take good pictures. You need more creativity than you do technology.
Supermoon, huh? Just donât take your photos with a Samsung: Samsung caught faking zoom photos of the Moon - The Verge
âŚOr do, if you want.
I think we all know that the reason (most) people take photos with their phones is to post on social media. And the point of posting on social media is to present a version of reality that is intentionally distorted. People are happy with âfiltersâ that create cartoonish alterations to their face and body. Colors are oversaturated. Imperfections erased. Life is just one happy, perfect moment followed by the next.
âRealâ photography is hard and just gets in the way.
I think you need both. You can be very creative with a crap camera that gives blurry pictures with little detail and lousy color balance, and no matter how creative you are⌠you get crap pictures. I agree that the balance is towards having the ability to take good pictures, but at least âdecentâ equipment is also needed. I have a few cameras that can take excellent pictures, but I lack the creativity⌠even though I do know the technical part.
For everyday stuff like documenting disassembly steps or wiring colors, or magnifying labels on the back of equipment⌠phone camera wins. For anything that requires true quality, I grab one of the SLRs. Grab the 30 pound plus camera bag for short trips. much les hiking, not happening. The phone will have to doâŚwith low expectations! As far as actually buying ârealâ cameras, I probably will not be doing that again. I have a few pretty good cameras and assortments of lenses. I probably will not buy moreâŚ
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Yeah, with ~15 years of improvement, phone camera quality has nearly caught up to the level that cheap snapshot cameras were at ~15 years ago. Itâs good enough to be worth using sometimes⌠because not every shot needs the best technical performance.
Indeed. If I relax my small size requirements a bit, there are some pretty good all-in-one compact cameras with 40X (24mm to 960mm equivalent) or even 65X optical zoom. Itâd be nice to have one of those, for the times when it matters⌠and use a phone when the dedicated camera isnât easily at hand.
But my phone mostly gets used to text people, make calls, read books+manga, track sleep, remember groceries, take notes, record audio (like song ideas), analyze audio (real-time spectrometer), get directions during travel, and occasionally run random apps like a calculator or an app to help boot a modded game console. Also handy as a display device to show pictures to people when Iâm not at home. But I donât use it much as a camera or for web stuff, because the camera is mediocre, and mobile web is its own circle of hell⌠and of course I almost never use it as a flashlight. 
Iâd probably find a phone more useful if the OS was more open and community-oriented, instead of being designed largely for corporate benefit. Too many things are too locked down and opaque, and too prone to sending personal data to data mining companies. By default, people donât even have root access on their own hardware, and canât get it without hacks⌠and thatâs pretty messed up.
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I use smartphones for photography on a very regular basis, but I also use several dedicated cameras. The smartphones are convenient and shoot decent photos and video. But a dedicated camera blows it away.
âNah, just a nearly infinite number of monkeys and typewriters.â
GrubâŚhub? 
⌠sure. Theyâve got photos and videos and user comments.
You have just defined the World Wide WebâŚ
Today if I say âWorld Wide Webâ to some people - I get a blank look.
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https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/notcamera.htm
Absolutely true. Someone I knew from Wunderground posted some (to me) awe-inspiring pix, and I called her The Queen Of Layers, because she could snap a pic of a few bands of clouds, a hedge on the horizon, and 2-3 layers of ground, that it looked almost staged, but wasnât.
She did it with a lowly Canon pointânâshoot.
Someone I worked with âgot intoâ photography, spend multi-kbux on equipment, did it for a few years, and⌠I donât mean this to sound mean⌠but showed off his âmasterpieceâ pix that were comically bad.
Two people see a pretty flower in the park.
One lies down on the ground, looks from multiple angles, waits for good light (sun vs cloud, etc.), then snaps a pic thatâs sheer beauty.
The other stands right over it, shoots the pic looking straight down the flowerâs mouth, picks up all the dirt and rocks and broken glass and the empty beer can on the surrounding grass, and even gets his sneakers in the bottom of the shot.
Iâve got a 2007-ish vintage Canon point and shoot that Iâve put together from several broken units and installed CHDK on and keep mostly for sentimental reasons now, used to have a Nikon DSLR that rarely got used, my S/O has a Canon DSLR that never gets used nowadays. I canât compose pretty photos and canât be bothered to go through a bunch, pick, post-process and catalogue the good ones so Iâve pretty much given up on that aside from taking sentimental snapshots with friends or family, or documenting things.
My impression of the difference between phone and dedicated camera photography is that phones take pretty pictures, aided by extreme levels of (sometimes AI-backed) processing but arenât clinical in nature. The photos look good by design but at some level theyâre reimagined by a processor to make up for tiny optics and sensor sizes. Dedicated camera will capture light that has passed through a well described optical system in a repeatable, configurable fashion.
Most people Iâd imagine prefer pretty over clinical, especially when it comes in a super convenient package they lug around all the time anyway.
ETA both approaches are totally valid IMO, this is a personal preference thing. Photography is an art form in the end and itâs up to the artist to pick a tool that fits their process.
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I remember back in the 1990s when the internet was a bit newer, David Letterman would talk about websites that start with âwwwwwâ and end in â.com.com.comâ or something like that.
Iâm probably ruining the joke, but basically he was making fun of the nomenclature of website names. 
What about âThe Information Superhighway?â
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âaytch tee tee pee colon slash slash slash dot dot orgâ
Real web site. One of the most popular sites in the 90s. Stayed up to carry news on 2001-09-11 even when the major news organization servers fell over under excess load. Was named specifically to make it hard to say clearly out loud. And most importantly, a place where pants are optional.
But you could tell when someone really didnât âgetâ the internet when theyâd slowly spell out URIs (incorrectly) by saying stuff like âaytch tee tee pee {pause} colon backslash backslash {breath} double-u double-u double-u PERIOD {pause} something (ess oh em ee tee aytch eye en gee) PERIOD cee om em {pause} backslashâ.
Historians in the future are going to have a difficult time understanding the etymology of this long, unwieldy phrase, because when translated to English, it means âIâll be paying with a check and wonât leave a tipâ.
Holga enthusiasts beg to differ.
Let 'em beg⌠
There are Nerds, then there are Computer Nerds and then there are the captains of the ship⌠Photography Nerds 
Appreciate what you guys/gals can do but the amount of hardware and software to fix/accentuate the hardware is mind boggling.
Why I always laugh at the mullets with their phones out trying to get a great shot (in their Mind) at something that the pros do before breakfast. Better to let it to the pros.
To bad the internet pretty much stole any ownership of pictures that can and will be stolen/used by others with no payment.
Peace out.
I bring a camera when taking many photos is expected. For the last few years, Iâve been wishing that I could find a point and shoot that had a wide angle lens like the one on my phone for taking pictures of small interior spaces. Right now, I have to use an expensive old DSLR with a wide angle lens ($$$ ) or my phone.
For me, the benefit of the phone (besides the component pricing and overall size) is the ability to immediately check the picture with a decent sized screen. I think my DSLRâs screen is like 2". I can also immediately edit the picture and upload it if necessary. With the DSLR, I have to be familiar with the settings for different environments, trust myself to remember what to change as the environment changes (as itâs hard to tell on a 2" screen), have the right lens, upload the pictures to my computer, edit (when necessary) with separate editing software, then upload/print/whatever.
Iâm perfectly fine with taking video/pictures with just the phone if itâs just for memories that I donât care how great it looks, want to take an unplanned pic/vid, or when videos arenât going to be so long that I run out of storage space or battery on high settings. I have an old point and shoot that seemed to take better pictures in low light, but as technology progresses it has started to lose itâs advantages.
I have a smartphone but, I try to forget it at home as much as possible. If I am going to take pictures I only have one camera that I use. Itâs a quite old Honeywell Pentax H1A. Have a few lensâs for it. I normally just keep a pretty fast 55mm on it. No hot shoe or fancy stuff. Iâm lucky enough to have a good camera shop nearby that has a good selection of film and even does developing/processing. Iâve learned over many years of trial and error how to set up my shots. No light meters or cheat sheets required. I have no reason to replace that camera with something else but I do understand most people need something smaller, lighter and more convenient.
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I use a variety of cameras. Mind you, I am a terrible photographer. I just barely get byâŚ
- Canon 90D with 18-135 NANO; also use 10-18 wide angle, and 100mm USM IS Macro lens
- Canon SL2 with 18-55 kit; also use 24mm pancake
- Olympus TG-6
- iPhone 14 Pro Max
- iPad Pro 12.9
- DJI Action 2
Honestly, the iPhone takes outstanding photos. It is able to handle depth perception so much better than the others.