Have iPhone cameras become too smart?
Controversial take: DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have largely made themselves irrelevant by ignoring computational photography advancements (computational photography is seen as &quot;cheating&quot;).<p>I own several &quot;real&quot; cameras: FF, M43, and over a dozen lenses. Multiple camera companies. On paper many have very impressive specs. The problem is that camera companies focus primarily on raw specs with software being a secondary concern. To give one concrete example, I can press one button on a cellphone (almost any) and it will capture more dynamic range than my $2K DSLR.<p>How can a tiny sense in a cellphone capture more dynamic range can a massive sensor? Software. It is stacking multiple rapid exposures using an eShutter and computationally merging them. You can do that with a DSLR, but it is time-consuming, outside of camera, and produces worse results (e.g. motion in the frame will ruin your stack).<p>It is super aggravating, but it isn&#x27;t actually surprising if you look at the amounts of money spent on photographic software alone compared to almost the entire camera industry. I&#x27;ve given up for most things, a cellphone can beat all but the absolute top end dedicated cameras and even then only for niches.