I've long been into photography and have a crap ton of gear that I've mostly been bored of. Canon 5D3, 5-6 lenses, 5-6 flashes, umbrellas and studio gear, you name it.
The two cameras I get the most enjoyment out of right now though:
- iPhone 8 Plus
- DJI Mavic Mini
The introduction of multiple lenses on the smartphones was the thing that started changing everything for me.
I have never really been a "must have every focal length covered" guy with my SLRs/DSLRs. I very often felt more creative and got better results with prime lenses. Having only one focal length feels restrictive, but 2-3 is plenty. With these new phones having 2-3 it's suddenly enough to feel like I'm not creatively restricted. I am fairly excited to get an iPhone 12 Pro or Pixel whatever the next time around that hopefully has super-wide/wide-normal/telephoto options.
The Drone has 1 focal length, but it's an insane tripod that lets you get all kinds of compositions & angles & shots you can't get any other way, so very very exciting.
Having the phone with you all the time breeds creativity. Not having to carry a bunch of heavy stuff breeds creativity. Not dealing with terabytes of RAW photos & programs like Lightroom and hours of "processing" at your desk breed creativity.
Most of what has been sold with high end photo gear has ended up revolving around pixel peeping and being sure you can get a sharp photo of the maximum # of possible shots, even if a lot of those shots aren't really creative. Unless you're really really focused on shooting wildlife or something a lot of those very expensive tools are mostly going to sit and not produce that many killer photos you want to look at all the time. It's also been very aspirational... people get satisfaction out of saving up and buying more stuff and consumerism. But once you have the stuff for years that starts to not be as fun.
I am fairly certain at this point there's no way I'm going to go drop $3k+ on another DSLR body. (My 5D3 is the 3rd I've bought). It's more a question of do I end up starting to sell off some of that gear. There's just more fun trying to do creative stuff with less at this point.
With the depth camera on my iphone 11, the phone is able to dynamically add or adjust bokeh after the fact when a photo is taken in portrait mode, and get a reasonable approximation of it as well without the need to transfer to a PC for manipulation.
It's very easy to quickly see right there on site how the photo will turn out and take a few more if you're unhappy, as opposed to a DSLR where I would lug around an ipad as well just to throw the SD card in it to view at a reasonable size, and still not be sure if I can fix the photo in post.
For life, a phone is now the right camera. For professional endeavors, it might still be worth the compromise to buy the gear.
I've long been into photography and have a crap ton of gear that I've mostly been bored of. Canon 5D3, 5-6 lenses, 5-6 flashes, umbrellas and studio gear, you name it.
The two cameras I get the most enjoyment out of right now though: - iPhone 8 Plus - DJI Mavic Mini
The introduction of multiple lenses on the smartphones was the thing that started changing everything for me.
I have never really been a "must have every focal length covered" guy with my SLRs/DSLRs. I very often felt more creative and got better results with prime lenses. Having only one focal length feels restrictive, but 2-3 is plenty. With these new phones having 2-3 it's suddenly enough to feel like I'm not creatively restricted. I am fairly excited to get an iPhone 12 Pro or Pixel whatever the next time around that hopefully has super-wide/wide-normal/telephoto options.
The Drone has 1 focal length, but it's an insane tripod that lets you get all kinds of compositions & angles & shots you can't get any other way, so very very exciting.
Having the phone with you all the time breeds creativity. Not having to carry a bunch of heavy stuff breeds creativity. Not dealing with terabytes of RAW photos & programs like Lightroom and hours of "processing" at your desk breed creativity.
Most of what has been sold with high end photo gear has ended up revolving around pixel peeping and being sure you can get a sharp photo of the maximum # of possible shots, even if a lot of those shots aren't really creative. Unless you're really really focused on shooting wildlife or something a lot of those very expensive tools are mostly going to sit and not produce that many killer photos you want to look at all the time. It's also been very aspirational... people get satisfaction out of saving up and buying more stuff and consumerism. But once you have the stuff for years that starts to not be as fun.
I am fairly certain at this point there's no way I'm going to go drop $3k+ on another DSLR body. (My 5D3 is the 3rd I've bought). It's more a question of do I end up starting to sell off some of that gear. There's just more fun trying to do creative stuff with less at this point.