A 41 MP cell phone camera?????

I personally think the advent of decent quality is a great thing. I don't think it will ever reach the quality of a Good (Nikon) DSLR but the quality has improved a lot. I shoot pictures with my iPhone 5 all the time. There are times where I do not want to carry my Nikon but see something that just demands I take a picture. I have started sending those to my computer and running them through Adobe RAW processing and then into CS6 and then dressing it proper with NIC tools. I have been surprised at how good they can actually look. I will have to shoot a good picture this afternoon and process it and and post it here.
 
OK here is a properly processed iPhone photo. You can see the EXIF at the bottom of the photo

photo iphone.jpg
 

Carolina Photo Guy

Senior Member
For many people their cell phone IS their camera, they have a camera in their cell phone so they would argue why own a separate P&S or DSLR or whatever... Because they're not photographers. Marketing loves numbers because most people are "too busy" to do serious research on something as sophisticated as today's smart phones. Start discussing processors, cache memory, bandwidth and watch the typical users eyes glaze over. Put "41" in front of them, though, and instantly they will equate that with "better than <lower number>". Numbers are easy and universally understood.

Just for the record, do I agree putting a 41MP camera on a cell phone is about as useful as tits on a bull.

There is an old saying down here that fits this to a "T".

Them figgers may not lie, but them liars sure can figger!
 

co2jae

Senior Member
Hey Don, can you post 2 photos and have us guess? I think I would have identified this as not up to your normal DSLR standards, but maybe my brain was swayed by knowing it was an Iphone pic.......
 
Hey Don, can you post 2 photos and have us guess? I think I would have identified this as not up to your normal DSLR standards, but maybe my brain was swayed by knowing it was an Iphone pic.......

yes you would be able to tell the difference if side by side. But left on it's on and had I not told you what it was shot with and you were not used to seeing my photos would you have guessed it was from a cell phone?
 

riverside

Senior Member
Smart phones are where photography is at for a big chunk of the general public. Instant internet posting for email/social sites, show & tell in person, convenience being the name of the game. The last party we attended it seemed half the people there were using smart phones for showing photos to others. I wonder what the consumer photo print industry is today compared to even five years ago.
 
Smart phones are where photography is at for a big chunk of the general public. Instant internet posting for email/social sites, show & tell in person, convenience being the name of the game. The last party we attended it seemed half the people there were using smart phones for showing photos to others. I wonder what the consumer photo print industry is today compared to even five years ago.

I was managing a region for a major one hour photo chain and about 25 years ago I ended up buying 2 of the labs where I live now. The first year we were there we did over $600,000 in photo finishing alone. Those numbers started to drop in a few years when the equipment got cheap and a lot easier to use so every WalMart and drug store started to install them. The quality they produced was crap so we held our own for a number of years. Then I started to see digital slowly coming in. Bad quality are first but my background was electronics and especially television so I saw the direction it was going. I sold out before the bottom started to drop out and went to work for another chain as a area manager over the southeast. They owned 700 labs and I manager about 100 of them. I left eventually and since that point all the labs closed and the parent company also owned Sears portrait and they went out of business to.

I think there are a few good printing companies that are still out that and will continue to operate because it is still cheaper to have prints done than it is to print your own. But many people like me don't print that many photos anymore. They get processed and put on FB or sent to my phone because that is a lot better than carrying around a photo album. I have access to all my photos in my phone as long as I can access the internet. I can access my Network Attached Storage from anywhere and all my photos are on there. My favorites are located on my phone.

I think at this time where we are is pretty much going to be the norm till the next big thing comes out.
 

riverside

Senior Member
I was managing a region for a major one hour photo chain and about 25 years ago I ended up buying 2 of the labs where I live now. The first year we were there we did over $600,000 in photo finishing alone. Those numbers started to drop in a few years when the equipment got cheap and a lot easier to use so every WalMart and drug store started to install them. The quality they produced was crap so we held our own for a number of years. Then I started to see digital slowly coming in. Bad quality are first but my background was electronics and especially television so I saw the direction it was going. I sold out before the bottom started to drop out and went to work for another chain as a area manager over the southeast. They owned 700 labs and I manager about 100 of them. I left eventually and since that point all the labs closed and the parent company also owned Sears portrait and they went out of business to.

I think there are a few good printing companies that are still out that and will continue to operate because it is still cheaper to have prints done than it is to print your own. But many people like me don't print that many photos anymore. They get processed and put on FB or sent to my phone because that is a lot better than carrying around a photo album. I have access to all my photos in my phone as long as I can access the internet. I can access my Network Attached Storage from anywhere and all my photos are on there. My favorites are located on my phone.

I think at this time where we are is pretty much going to be the norm till the next big thing comes out.

I've maintained our extended family website for a number of years, all photos. I initially spent a lot of time scanning in old prints relatives sent me, some personally interesting stuff, but over the past five years most relatives have lost interest in any of that history. I attribute it to smart phones providing immediate gratification and my old man cynicism of younger generations disregarding their heritage. What contemporary individual would be proud of using a smart phone to show an image of a early 1900s Texas cowboy on his horse who became successful at a social gathering? Or making a print?
 
I've maintained our extended family website for a number of years, all photos. I initially spent a lot of time scanning in old prints relatives sent me, some personally interesting stuff, but over the past five years most relatives have lost interest in any of that history. I attribute it to smart phones providing immediate gratification and my old man cynicism of younger generations disregarding their heritage. What contemporary individual would be proud of using a smart phone to show an image of a early 1900s Texas cowboy on his horse who became successful at a social gathering? Or making a print?

I agree in principle. BUT we have to change with the times while trying to maintain some of the family treasures. My hobby other than photography is Genealogy. I have spent 25 years gathering all the info I can. It is like pulling teeth to get some of the recent updates to the families. I am sure when I die it will all go away but somewhere their will be a record that some child will decide is worth the effort just like I did when my grandmother died and took up the record keeping responsibility. She had little pieces of paper with notes written on it and I updated it to computer records and eventually to the WWW so it could be seen by families all over the world. You pictures you scanned and made electronic can be shared with many people that wojuld probably never get the chance to see a print.
 
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