What is the difference and/or benefit of a DLSR camera vs. a standard phone camera?
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Real cameras are more accurate.
Phone cameras use various algorithms to make pictures look better. You can see it if you look at hair in photographs. You’ll find your phone will smooth the hair out, while a mirrorless will keep individual strands of hair distinct.
Physics mostly. Bigger lenses catch more light, bigger lenses allow to adjust distance to the sensor better meaning you can use a larger sensor, larger sensor means you can either have more sensor cells or space them enough to reduce signal noise, so eg in extreme low light settings, a big camera will have the advantage. Todays phones are able to make up a lot of deficiencies through intelligent processing, so the benefits can often be less pronounced, but back to my first point – you can’t beat physics.
Control. DSLR’s offer far more control over your images than a phone can offer. But with that control you need to have the knowledge to use it. Phones have surpassed your average point-and-shoot camera by just about every metric but they have yet to really crack the DSLR nut mostly due to size constraints.
In order to have a lens that offers a large zoom yet allows a lot of light to enter (critical for shooting in various lighting conditions) the lens needs to be physically constructed bigger. Ever see those giant lenses on the sidelines of games? The zoom in those is no different than the zoom on a consumer camera however those lenses let in a ton more light and are also built with higher quality materials. In short, a phone can’t bridge the gap between quality, size and affordability. They do well but can’t compete with a DSLR.
The size of the sensor – you get much better image quality than a phone camera can. This is simply physics: the bigger the sensor, the more light information it captures. A 20 megapixel dslr can take cleaner photos, even in the dark, than a 50 megapixel phone camera can.
The aperture – controllable, so you can take deep aperture shots like landscapes where the blade of grass near you is in focus as the mountain beyond it, or a shallow aperture shot where the background just melts away from your subject
The shutter – you can take super fast, in focus shots like sports events where even the sweat off a boxer’s strike is seen, to super slow artistic shutter shots ie light streaks in traffic (although most camera phones do this now)
The interchangeable lenses – truly the bread anf butter of dslr and mirrorless cameras. You can change the look and feel of your photos by the hundreds of available lenses available.
Options and quality.
A higher end DLSR is going to get much better pictures than most popular models of phones.
Options- a DLSR can adjust shutter speed, exposure, ISO, color temperature, you can set the FPS of videos, etc…
Kinda under options, but you can change lenses. For nearby, far away, “get almost everything in focus”, “get almost nothing in focus”, etc…
And a big thing is _manual control._ most phones don’t give you control over focus, shutter speed, etc… DLSRs do. Wanna do a long exposure shoot? Easy.
At my last job we had a Canon 5D and they got us this expensive gymbal they wanted to use. The thing was a huge pain in the ass to mount and calibrate. You had to put all these counterbalance weights on it.
Finally I just started shooting those kind of gliding shots on my Pixel, which had really good in-camera motion stabilization. And my boss couldn’t tell the difference.
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