Consumer fixed-lens cameras are much more dead as a market than ILCs, and those made up the bulk of camera sales. Almost everyone who isn't doing photography as a profession or serious hobby is satisfied with smartphone cameras now.
There is one more use case not covered by smartphones but actually covered by fixed-lens cameras - taking photos in rainy weather (which in some parts of the world is hard to avoid) or underwater. While there are waterproof smartphones, capacitive touchscreen becomes unusable as soon as it catches even a few drops of rain or water from wet fingers. A camera like Fujifilm XP140 works well in rain as long as there are no drops on the lens and under water if you want to make a shot of marine life.
And while there are gloves which allows to use touchscreen using it in the snow is not the best experience either - pressing a physical button is easier.
I expect many smartphones to have quality better then this camera but in some conditions it's hard/impossible to use a smartphone. And quality is enough to capture some moments from a family vocation.
The iPhone is waterproof and you can take a photo with the physical volume up/down key. I've used it underwater a couple of times, none of my other proper cameras would be able to do that. My two cents.
I've used my olympus TG4 underwater at a depth of 15m (best I could do without scuba), and had it trailing on a lanyard on my wrist whilst swimming in the ocean. I'd like to think nobody would subject any current smartphone to these sorts of conditions, and expect them to survive, nor believe the marketing rhetoric.
One other thing I do like about the TG4, nice big buttons, and I've had plenty of opportunities to use it in rather adverse conditions.
"Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Liquid damage is not covered under warranty, but you might have rights under consumer law."
I think of it more as good to have for an accidental drop, rather than a specification to rely upon for regular underwater photography, although the more recent phones do reach ever higher Ingress Protection (IP67, IP68 etc) water/splash/dust ratings.
Anecdata but I’ve jumped in saltwater to get ahold of my stupid dog that fell off our dock with my iPhone 12 in my pocket. I am typing this response on said phone :)
Took my 12 mini on a day of kayaking, water got into the lenses and broke the faceID camera. The water in the lens eventually evaporated, but the faceID cam seems permenantly broken.
They are water resistant, but I wouldn't use it in water as a matter of course. Maybe if its in pristine/as new condition, at best - I've dropped mine a few times, which probably didn't help.
Smartphones don't really work for underwater photography. Even the water resistant models have very limited depth ratings so to take them scuba diving you need a strong housing, just as with any other camera. There are underwater housings available for a few smartphone models but controlling anything through the touch screen is problematic, the small lenses and sensors don't work well in dim light, and there isn't a good way to trigger external strobes.
Any thoughts on the various action cameras for underwater? I've got an inexpensive (not GoPro) one that I've taken diving. It's just in looping video mode, cutting a new clip every few minutes, and could certainly use additional lighting. If I want stills, I just grab them from a freeze frame.
While I'm starting to get more into diving, I don't want to just throw money at other goodies before I know what they'll do for me.
If you honestly think your phone camera is a valid replacement for medium/large format film, then you were never serious about photography in the first place.
For all their improvements, smartphones are still extremely limited by sensor size and the size of optics. Those are terrible, compared to even the entry level DSLRs.
I'm glad it works for your use case (although I can't imagine what that is), but any decent photographer will be able to tell a smartphone picture from a picture taken with good optics and a DSLR. It's just that the market for those photos has also shrunk and the masses are happy with their instagram filter drivel.
not only that, but Google magic eraser made my holiday photos appear like i had my own private island and yacht and i was always happy and smiling and looking at the camera and the sunset and skies, oh my! it just lights up my instas. i don't get what real cameras even do, they have something to do with reality?
seriously though, not all the kids will be coopted into this, and will find cameras are still instruments for artistic expression. but for that we hardly need dpreview and its obsession with optical sharpness and perpetually reviewing every camera in existence as "almost good enough"
You might have it mixed up with DXOMark. DPReview is more "you can sort of tell the difference side by side, but who does that outside a review? They're both good"
and film photographers weren't as serious as daguerreotype photographers in the 1840s.
the market shrunk because gatekeeping photographers were insufferable and tone deaf and everyone ignored them because they had an accessible solution that was good enough.
if you want to pursue a convoluted process for self fulfillment, the choice is yours, but almost nobody else will care about the output of your photos or your fine tuned process.
That's an interesting transition. Why were you choosing those formats over digital ILCs at that time? Most people I hear from choosing film within the past decade, especially larger formats are as interested in the process as the result.
>Phone cameras can't come close to the quality of even a full frame DSLR, anything medium or large format is light years ahead of phone quality.
This is true for medium format if you're doing a drum scan of the medium format negative. Realistically, however, most medium format negatives are never going to be drum scanned.
If you're scanning with a flatbed or via a DLSR, then the difference in quality vs. a modern cell phone camera is not huge. With a typical flatbed you'll get less resolution than a modern cell phone camera; if you scan with a DSLR and macro lens you'll get a bit more (but it's laborious, especially for color negatives).
It's possibly a bit counterintuitive just how bad a job flatbed scanners do in the case of medium format negatives. Years ago I was very excited to make my first scans of some 6x6 negatives with a consumer Epson flatbed scanner. The resulting photos showed about the same amount of detail as roughly equivalent photos taken using my iPhone 4S. There was far more detail on the negatives, as I easily confirmed with a loupe. Extracting that detail via practical scanning methods is far from trivial.
The other point to consider is exposure, color and dynamic range. Modern phones do a fantastic job here.
That's a strange comparison, but if all you want is a photo to post to Instagram, I guess you really doesn't need medium format film, and any "phone camera" will do.
