ARE STANDALONE CAMERAS DEAD?
Think
you don’t need a camera because your cameraphone is good enough? Think again
T HE DEATH knell for the standalone
camera was sounded almost five years ago. After all, when you have a great
camera with you at all times inside your phone, why waste time buying another
one? It’s easy to take a picture, it’s there with you by default, it’s really
simple to share the picture with friends or family or post it on Facebook or
Twitter, you don’t need to fiddle with cables or storage cards to transfer
pictures to a computer and there are now some awesome photo apps that can do
real wizardry with your images. Why waste time, effort and money on another
camera?
EVEN TECH IS SLIMMING DOWN
Manufacturers have now developed cameras that can give you DSLR quality in a
slim point-and-shoot body
Standalone Funeral: Add to this, the
fact that cameras on smartphones have truly evolved and improved in leaps and
bounds. Never have images from cameraphones looked better. Sensors are bigger,
optics are state of the art, feature sets are bursting at the seams, scene
modes actually work and the in-phone editing of the shots you’ve taken is quite
good. On the other hand, sales of point-and-shoot cameras are down, and most
people don’t seem to have a new standalone camera on their list of things to
buy. Thus it seems that the funeral of the camera is imminent, right? Wrong,
very wrong!
Blurred Memories: We live in a world
of optical compromise and mediocrity – we just don’t know it. Just because a
camera is built into the phone and you’re happy that you were able to reel off
a series of shots at every happening and event doesn’t mean that you’ve got
fantastic images. Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words but a soft, blurry,
poorly lit one is worth just one word: Embarrassing. In this world of Facebook
and Twitter – where every out-of-focus and badly pixelated picture gets a
barrage of oohs and aahs – all you’re doing is populating your timeline with
shoddy images to remember the major events of your life. If a picture is all
about bringing back memories and emotions, then unfortunately the milestones of
your life will now be seen as a series of dingy, dilapidated and tacky
photographs.
The Proof: Think I’m exaggerating?
Do this quick experiment. Take your state-of-the-art cameraphone and shoot
three pictures (a person blowing out a birthday candle in a dark room, a child
running fast across a room and a bright red flower against green grass). Take
the same shots with any standalone camera that is about one year old. Now open
the pictures on a notebook with a 15-inch screen or more. Shocked? Yes, those
pictures that looked awesome on your smartphone’s small little screen look
horrendous now, don’t they? Where did those jagged edges come from, how is it
so out of focus and what happened to those colours? It’s almost impossible for
a cameraphone to spit out images that rival a standalone camera. There’s just
way too much going on inside the phone, including multiple antennae firing
away, plus very little space to get all the optics in. Here are the main
reasons why standalone cameras aren’t going away in a hurry.
Optical Zoom: The Achilles heel of
all cameraphones and the most common feature in all standalones. This is itself
the single biggest reason to get an extra camera. While there will be
cameraphones that will finally get in a 3X optical zoom soon, it’ll be a serious
compromise and won’t be able to rival the real thing.
Image Stabilisation: As phones keep
getting thinner, lighter and smaller – they shake even more every time you take
a picture. Even a little movement will end up as a big blurry picture. While some
cameraphones tout image stabilisation – it’s all digital and mostly a gimmick
that leads to image deterioration. You need optical image stabilisation like in
standalone cameras, and that is just a pipe dream right now.
Other Features: Burst shot mode (or
continuous high speed) in cameraphones can only happen at a lower resolution.
Real auto focus and pre focus is impossible as phones don’t have a real
lock-down shutter button, macro shoots totally suck and shooting text or a
document comes out unreadable. Also, in-camera editing and adjustments are
still light years behind; plus it’s impossible to get real filters and add-on
lenses for phones.
Other Issues: No standalone camera
will interrupt that perfect picture with an incoming call and no standalone
camera will leave you gasping for battery life just because you took an extra
30 pictures with the flash on. Plus standalone cameras represent great value
today. You can get a R6,000 point-and-shoot that will blow the socks of your
R43,000 cameraphone.
The Fight Back: Traditional camera
manufacturers aren’t just standing still and letting this war polish them off.
They are hitting back hard with great innovations and fantastic features, such
as cameras that can shoot deep underwater with no additional cover, cameras
that can give you DSLR quality in a slim point-and-shoot body, fullbody DSLRs
at price points that were impossible a year ago, super optical zooms that can
shoot a closeup of a bird in mid-flight and connected cameras that can let you
share and upload just like your phone.
Do yourself a favour. Carry a
well-priced, well made, thin and slim, full-feature set camera the next time
you leave your home. You’ll be shocked with the photographic treasures you’ll
come back with.
- Rajiv Makhni Rajiv Makhni is managing editor, Technology, NDTV, and the anchor of GadgetGuru, CellGuru and Newsnet3HTBR130519
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