The first mobile phone to take photos, released in 2000, captured horrific shots. Today, the images of the best smartphones are so convincing that often only a connoisseur can tell the difference from the shots of a classic camera.
Why then take with you an expensive device that takes up so much space and whose strap bruises the neck when, in your pocket, you already have a smartphone? Good reasons, there are still a few, but they will only interest image enthusiasts. Among them: the very long range zoom with which certain compact cameras are equipped and which can also be fitted to cameras with interchangeable lenses. This “spyglass” is still lacking in smartphones. However, it makes it possible to immortalize either a duck landing on a lake or a child running on a football field. Especially since conventional cameras hold better in the hand, a key asset for framing a moving subject.
For added refinement, traditional cameras are designed to work with a host of accessories, including studio flashes that allow you to compose sophisticated portraits, or small portable and light flashes operating wirelessly, which can be placed around the subject to recreate the desired light.
The appeal of buttons and knobs
However, it is above all their educational qualities that make traditional cameras an incomparable school of photography: their buttons and wheels are like an invitation to take an interest in photo technique. They give physical embodiment to fine settings like ISO sensitivity (sensitivity to light), shutter speed and lens aperture, which are the holy trinity of the expert photographer. A trinity which, on a smartphone, is incomplete: the aperture setting is absent.
What about image quality? Mobiles are defending themselves well: a smartphone at 500 euros will tend to produce cleaner shots than a reflex of the same price. It will be necessary to invest around a thousand euros to obtain notable gains, which will grow with each additional euro spent on camera or lenses. Up to a plateau of around 5,000 euros beyond which progress slows down markedly – unless a powerful zoom is needed.
What qualitative leap to expect? Not necessarily a sharpness gain: “For a shot taken in good light conditions and printed in large format, high-end mirrorless cameras do no better than the best smartphones”, notes Hervé Macudzinski, scientific director of imaging at DxOMark, a French testing laboratory.
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