10 Things you Can't Do with a Smartphone

This was the final image seen in the movie, "The Shining".  It was taken with something called a Banquet Camera.  Read on for why I'm even showing this to you.

Also in this Issue:

• 10 Things You Can't Do with a Smartphone
• Sony A7R V - Little-Discussed Features of Note (youtube video)
• Announcements / Next Time in Cameracraft Magazine
• Adding Detail to Old Photos

10 Things You Can’t Do with a Smartphone

Smartphones are taking over, and the gap in image quality continues to shrink.  (See my lecture about Computational Photography given to the Royal Photographic Society for more on this topic.)  But there are still areas where the big cameras are essential.  Below is a short list (click on any image to view larger and sharper):

1.  Olympic Sports / Nature Photography / Horseback Riding

This is the first example most people think of.  Anything requiring a telephoto lens and subject tracking will remain the domain of mirrorless cameras (and to some extent DSLRs, although the mirrorless camera bodies have eclipsed the DSLR's legendary tracking abilities).

2.  Capturing the Decisive moment

Unless you're in Pro mode or RAW mode, the smartphone may not take the picture when you hit the button. There might be some software-induced delay, or it might go "buffer diving" through the last 60 images in the viewfinder buffer, looking for the least blurry or happiest smile image to use.

3.   Wireless Flash

You knew I would bring this up. :-) NOTHING makes people say "Wow!" as much as using wireless flash to bring light and drama to your images. All of the Friedman Archives books have a chapter on how to use them. Continuous lighting (such as using LED panels) are a viable substitute but with flash you can get critical sharpness by shooting at f/11.

4.  Enlargeability 

Pixel Peeping.

This is no longer a given. While most smartphones pixel-bin down to 12 MP, the new Samsung S23 Ultra gives you the option of shooting at the native 200 megapixels (!), giving you lots of leeway to shrink and otherwise clean up your shot. 

On the flip side, I should also point out that when Nikon came out with their 3 megapixel Coolipx 990 back in 2000, they were able to produce a 65 by 43 foot giant poster from it which they proudly displayed above Times Square in New York City.  Billboards, it turns out, only require about 10 dpi because they're viewed at an extreme distance.  Having said that, if pixel peeping is your hobby, great light and a big camera will satisfy your cravings like nothing else.

5.     Control over depth-of-field

Smartphones are catching up here as well, being able to produce fake bokeh in ways that are increasingly harder to detect.  But historically the bigger camera gave you much more control over what was out-of-focus and by how much.

6.  Overpower the Sun

When shooting outdoor portraits, using such tools as wireless flash and a softbox, you can control the amount of light on your subject and the amount of ambient light independently. Sometimes you can take that to extremes, by using high-speed sync to shoot at 1/4000th of a second and a small f/stop to make the ambient light so dark as to be essentially black, a technique called "Overpowering the Sun". (I did this while on assignment in Vietnam.)

Overpowering the Sun lets you shoot studio shots outdoors in daylight.

Overpowering the sun is probably worthy of its own blog post.

     7.  Real estate photography

Real estate photographers have a technique for balancing the light coming in from the windows with interior light. It involves putting the camera on a tripod and taking 3 pictures (two with flash) and combining them in Photoshop.

Even though smartphones are better than big cameras at rendering high-dynamic-range scenes so they look like your eye and brain remember seeing them, the 3-shot technique demonstrated here works even better - and has been proven to get up to 20% higher prices when used for listings.

8.  Tilt/Shift

See this image of a banquet hall?  It's similar to the famous shot shown at the end of the movie "The Shining". This was taken with a specialty camera called a Banquet Camera, one that was designed for large groups and maximum depth-of-field.  Notice that the front and back rows are in perfect focus. Even at f/22 your conventional digital camera lens can't get this kind of result.

How was it done? The secret was in a technique called "Tilt" (half of the famous comedy team "Tilt/Shift"). Using a giant black bellows, the lens could be tilted until the lenses' focus plane aligned with the plane of the faces. It's a technique that large format cameras have always been known for - being able to move the focusing plane to something other than being parallel to the film.

Anyway, while it's true that the smallish sensors of a smartphone have an inherently greater depth-of-field than a large sensor camera, a smartphone couldn't have taken a picture this big and sharp.  But a modern camera with a tilt lens has half a chance. :-)

(BTW, the "Shift" part of "Tilt/Shift" lenses was necessary in the days of film to correct perspective problems when the film plane and the subject were not parallel (when looking up at tall buildings, for example).  Today we can fix that in Photoshop.

9. Ergonomics

'Nuff said. With electronic or optical viewfinders, you can compose your shot in broad daylight. Not so with smartphone, whose displays get washed out easily.

10. Smartphones Can't Send RAW 16-bit 8K video to an external recorder. :-)

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So those are ten benefits just off the top of my head. I invite you to add your own in the comments!


A7R V - Little-discussed features of note

Here's a quick little video talking about features of the Sony A7R V that aren't being talked about much. It includes two features I don't think so highly of. Enjoy.

Announcements

• The completed version of the Fujifilm X-T5 book by Tony Phillips has arrived!
• Smaller versions of the .epub and .azw3 files are available for the Fujifilm X-H2 and the Olympus OM-1. If you've had trouble getting these to load onto your e-reader, this may just do the trick. Contact me for a new download link.
• The Spanish version of A7R V book is in the works! Avísame si quieres estar en la lista de notificaciones.

Next Time in Cameracraft Magazine

See this old photo? My father took this of me in my darkroom when I was 15 years old. This is what happens when an inexperienced photographer relies too much on the microprism focusing aid in the center of the viewfinder, and shoots wide open at f/1.4, rendering the shirt in proper focus but not the face. Can modern AI-based technology save this shot by adding detail that wasn't there?

In the next issue of Cameracraft Magazine, I talk about the tools used to restore old photos, and experiment with several new tools used to add detail when the original image is soft, and also to add color where there was none originally. (How does it know what colors to use?)

Starting from a B&W image, one colorizing tool guessed correctly, while another tool made me look Scottish with too much lipstick.

Subscribe to Cameracraft Magazine today, and get insights you just won't find anywhere else!


Until next time,
Yours Truly, Gary Friedman

(Disclaimer: This blog was written by a human, with no input from a chatbot.)