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General discussion

Buy a new camera or just go with a smartphone with camera?

Dec 2, 2011 7:40AM PST
Question:
Buy a new digital camera or just go with a smartphone with camera?


I've had my digital camera for more than 4 years and I'm ready to upgrade.
It seems like cameras in smartphones are just as good now as what I
have in my old point-and-shoot--probably better. I've seen great
photos from my friends that were taken on their phones. The photos I
take are family events and vacations. I don't do any high-end
photography. Is it better to upgrade to a smartphone for pictures or
buy a separate camera? Are smartphones going to make the point-and-shoot
camera extinct? Your advice is appreciated.

- Submitted by: Carol S.

Below aree some member answers to get you started, but
please read all the advice and suggestions that our
members have contributed to this question in the following
discussion thread.

Point and Shoot Camera - Submitted by: ajtrek
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-7593_102-5240832.html

Smart-phone Camera - Submitted by: snapshot2
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-7593_102-5240224.html

It all depends on what your bothered about... - Submitted by: darrenforster99
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-7593_102-5240410.html

There is a place for each, and some overlap - Submitted by: hank080225
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-7593_102-5240529.html

Point & Shoot Camera vs Smartphone Camera - Submitted by: ghicker
http://forums.cnet.com/7726-7593_102-5241660.html

Thanks to all who contributed!

If you have any additional advice for Carol, by all means post to the discussion and share it. Thanks!

Discussion is locked

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Why are your ready to upgrade?
Dec 4, 2011 10:09PM PST

Because it is four years old? Or because you're unhappy with your photos? You say you're not into "high end" photography, but exactly how noncritical are you?

The hard answer: figure out what it is about your photos you're unhappy with, do the research, buy a new camera that fits your needs. Portability may be a big factor, especially if you're into candids.

the easy answer: if you're thinking of a smart phone for other reasons and decide in favor of it, just go ahead and get the phone with the features you like. If you like the pictures it takes, do nothing, otherwise shop for a new camera. It's not as if you're investing in a Hasselblad. You may well be doing the equivalent by the time you've paid off your two-year contract for the phone service, but that's a whole other thing.

Personally, I don't see the phone replacing a serious point-and-shoot camera any time soon. Though, I saw in the Sky Mall catalog a telephoto lens for an iPhone, at a price you could barely buy a cloth to clean a Nikkor. I haven't personally evaluated the camera in the iPhone, or the lens, but have no doubt you get what you pay for.

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Point & Shoot Camera vs Smartphone Camera
Dec 5, 2011 8:04AM PST

It is true that the cameras in phones have improved and in a few situations they may take just as good or possibly better pictures than older point & shoot cameras. But any time you compare old technology with brand new technology...the newer technology often wins. So the real question is how does a new smartphone camera compare to a new point & shoot camera? And have smartphone cameras improved to the point where you do not need a point & shoot camera?

Let's start with the advantages of smartphone cameras. Most people take their phone with them everywhere, so now they have a camera with them everywhere they go. If you ever regretted not having a camera to take a picture, then assuming you take your phone with you everywhere you will have less missed opportunities. Smartphones tend to be smaller than point & shoot cameras and in some cases it is just easier to keep track of one item than to worry about hauling around another device. The software on smartphones makes sharing your pictures with other people very easy, and it gives you a portable album to show off your pictures. The image quality has improved in the more expensive smartphones to where it is easier to capture an acceptable image in many situations.

But there are limits to smartphone cameras. Currently, the optical zoom is rare or very limited in smartphones, where the modern point and shoot cameras continue to expand and improve on their optical zoom abilities. If there is a flash on the smartphone it is usually very weak and requires you to be very close to the subject. If you go on vacation and plan to take lots of pictures then memory can become an issue, as well as the battery life of your smartphone. A point & shoot camera with a cheap memory card can holds lots of pictures and often the battery lasts much longer on a point & shoot camera.

Besides what I've mentioned above, many modern point & shoot cameras have a tripod mount or a flat service that allows you to set the camera down to stabilize it. There are many image stabilization methods and a good point & shoot camera will often have better options than what you can find on a smartphone. Most point & shoot cameras are designed to work in a wide variety of situations and tend to perform better than smartphones in those less than ideal situations. I like the rugged and weather/water proof point & shoot cameras, which you can take anywhere without worry about sand, dust or water getting into them.

While smartphone cameras have improved over the last 4 years, so have the point & shoot cameras. Smartphone cameras will take marketshare away from point & shoot cameras, but I think they have a long way to go before the smartphone camera replaces a point & shoot. The optical zoom, flash, limited memory and battery life are important differences to consider before throwing out the point & shoot camera.

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Well explained!
Dec 11, 2011 12:38PM PST

You did a great job in comparing point and shoot cameras with smartphone cameras. Battery life I think is the most important. Why waste battery life of your smartphone when you will need it most likely. So a separate point and shoot camera can preserve the battery life of your smartphone for emergency or more important uses.

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Carol, they are correct. Opticals in cameras beat the smart
Dec 6, 2011 1:13AM PST

Carol, they are correct. Opticals' in cameras beat the smart phones hands down. Now, if you ask any professional photographer what the Best camera to have is, they will say "The Best camera to have is the one you have with you". Camera phones are Handy! They take snapshots and snap "Videos". To take quality photos with a "Take it along camera" for those Best photos. Wink

Scott

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I have at least three cameras

I had an LG Env2 Phone with a 3 megapixel camera which wasn't bad. I bought a Samsung Intensity 2 phone and the camera is 1.3 megapixels and I don't like it at all.

I have a Canon Powershot 640 camera and it has a 6 megapixel camera but I don't use it anymore because a lot of the pictures it takes are blurry.

I now use a 12 megapixel Nikon Coolpix camera and I think the camera offers more resolution and picture stabilization and my SD card for it is 8 gigabytes.

A lot of pictures I use for blogging are size 640 by 480 pixels and the Nikon Coolpix is nice because there is a closeup mode but I end up taking like 30 pictures to get the right photo. I use a small resolution because hosting sites charge for the number of megabytes or gigabytes you use which add up because of the number of page views.

I think a decent camera needs to be an SLR with a fast enough card speed and it needs to have a lense with a decent zoom. The problem with my Nikon Coolpix camera is that even though it has 12 megapixels, try going to a baseball game and sit in the second level and try taking pictures of your favorite baseball player. You need a zoom that can get you close-ups or it isn't worth it. The only reason I haven't upgraded to an SLR is because of money.

I was reading a review about the Nikon 1 J1 but with a $600 price, I would rather spend the money on an SLR even though the Nikon is slim because you are still going to have to use / carry an oversized lense which defeats the purpose of it being a slim camera.

I was reading that the average American makes $39,xxx dollars / year which puts the cost of a lot of smartphone plans out of reach for the average or under average American unless they are single without children.

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Depending on your budget!
Dec 9, 2011 3:01PM PST

I get the impression that you never care for fancy cameras with optical zoom ( not digital zoom which is actually a small cut out of the picture that you are aiming at taking ) and close up to capture flowers or butterflies, etc let alone snapping at your friends and relatives with general background of attraction centers , that is it... So if you have a tight budget , a smart phone with camera is good enough as you can email right out of your smartphone on the fly. I dont understand why digital cameras cannot email photos.. ??? maybe they will find a way to plug a digital camera to your smartphone for email attached photos or they already have it... If you really like to look like a flowery tourist with a digital camera dangling around your neck, be my guest!! LOL!! My cousin had a really beefy digital camera to carry around for travelling and I made fun of him !! For myself, I can not live without optical zoom because I love to zoom at mountains !!! or skyscrapers , etc..and ah sunsets !!

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Smartphones is fine for Mickey Mouse!!
Dec 9, 2011 3:09PM PST

If you take a self photo of your face way close up with a 16mp digital camera then view it at actual size. It is fun to see all the dimples , hairs, boogers up your nostrils!

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Smart phone
Dec 9, 2011 4:52PM PST

I have both a very good camera and a Nokia N8.

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Smart phones have poor IQ
Dec 9, 2011 7:58PM PST

Disclaimer, This is coming from someone who is a serious amateur photographer who is so serious about camera IQ and performance I find even the best point and shoot camera unacceptable. With that out of the way remember that as smart phones have improved so have point and shoot cameras. I'm surprised you say your friends smart phones take better photos than
your 4 year old P&S unless it is a pretty crappy one.

I had an Olympus P&S back in 2002 that would blow away any smart phone made.

The best smartphone cameras are worse than the worst P&S cameras. Why? it comes down to lens and sensor size. Smart phones have tiny non zoom lenses. The "zoom" feature of smartphones is digital only so as you zoom in quality deteriorates considerably. Second the tiny sensor of smart phones is good only in bright light which means that on dreary cloudy days, indoors or any situation where the lighting is poor the photos will be grainy and smeared. I know this is the case with my wife's iPhone 4. In addition the "flash" on such devices is woefully weak and useless for anything more than a few feet away.

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Best camera for screensaver and pc viewing
Dec 9, 2011 10:17PM PST

Lots of great advice here. I will only add that how you view your photos can have a big impact on the camera for you.

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smartphone or camera
Dec 9, 2011 11:42PM PST

If you are just a happy snapper, then, bearing in mind that your phone is usually with you, then it's an ideal solution for those unexpected moments that you want to preserve. If you are interested in photography, then you need to go into it carefully and work out exactly what you think you need to take you forward, from a point and shoot with options to adjust manually, (some excellent options on the market), or reach into your deepest pocket and go onwards and upwards from there Confused

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Smart phone
Dec 10, 2011 12:17AM PST

I went with a Cell Phone with camera sometime ago. Up graded to a smartphone the last time I got a new phone. It has always taken a better picture for me then I got with my digital camera, and I can send it to myself or FB right away, making it much easier for use.

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smart phone takes better pictures?????
Dec 10, 2011 1:52AM PST

There is something odd about you saying that your smart phone takes a better picture than your digital camera. You did not identify what digital camera you have, but if your smart phone takes better pictures, then your digital camera has to be very old (back in the pre-2 megapixel days). In the world of today, any smart phone would take better pictures than that digital camera.

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In your case, no, stick to a point and shoot.
Dec 10, 2011 12:22AM PST

You say you are ready to "upgrade" your point and shoot after 4 years - which suggests that there are things about it which you are not particularly happy with. In which case a camera phone will almost certainly be leaving you disapointed in no time.
Choose your phone because it does what you want it to do in terms of comunication and use it's camera as a notepad and choose your camera to do what you feel you need it to do photographically. Forget all the stupid hipstamatic type effects - they were awful to start with, were only ever there to cover up how poor the average phone camera was and are pretty "last year" already (and are certainly not "art"!)
Go for a camera with a good lens, good sensor (not too many pixels on a small sensor or in low light noise will dominate) and enough features to keep you happy for another 4 years.
Just remember that the best camera in the world is useless unless you have it with you when that once in a lifetime event occurs in front of you.

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Digital cameras Vs Smartphone
Dec 10, 2011 1:10AM PST

Hi Carol,

Camera or smartphone : this is a good question, from my side I have both; apart from technical consideration on pixel, zoom , lenses , memory ans so on; smartphone is useful when you need to stop an image , when you want to remember a smile of yuor child or your friend , camera is useful when you decide in addition to give at your pictures more personal feeling.

Sorry this is not a technical and precise suggestion but is just a pont to start thinking

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Phone Cameras for snapshots
Dec 10, 2011 11:33AM PST

I never thought I'd say this but I think that unless you need the capabilities and flexibility of a DSLR, modern smartphone cameras are really great and provide a more than acceptable family snapshot quality photo. Add to that the convenience of instantly sharing the photo and I think you have a winning combination.

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phone vs camera
Dec 10, 2011 9:31PM PST

No matter how much they improve cameras on phones, the abilities of a digital camera will always be a step ahead of them. The dedicated camera will always be able to take those shots that a phone's camera will have a poor quality in comparison. Plus there's the wisdom of not putting all your eggs in one basket. I realize they say the best camera is the one you have with you at the time, but I've seen a lot of people using either the camera or phone or some other function on their device. Only to find after a while the battery is dead and now they're out of power for everything, no phone, no camera, no music. Buy a new camera and keep the phone for what it's meant to be used for.