What it is: Mobile phones have had built-in cameras for the longest time. With each passing year, the built-in camera has gotten better and better.
In the early days, professional photographers claimed that film cameras were superior to digital cameras and they were right — right up until the time they weren’t. Then professional photographers claimed that dedicated digital cameras were superior to cameras in mobile phones and they were right — right up until the time mobile phone cameras caught up to previous generations of dedicated cameras.
Dedicated digital cameras will always be superior to built-in cameras in smartphones simple because a dedicated camera allows longer lenses and additional accessories not to mention the space needed for crafting and holding better lenses. This is the same argument that mainframe computer users used to make deriding PCs as toys. Dedicated supercomputers will always be superior to a PC, but a PC has displaced dedicated mainframe computers in a huge variety of tasks to the point where PCs are good enough for most people and only dedicated supercomputers are needed for a handful of researchers.
In the same way, dedicated digital cameras are still needed for some professional photography use, but the built-in camera in the iPhone rivals the best of last generation’s dedicated digital cameras. A professional photographer recently used the camera in an iPhone to capture various images during an Indian wedding, which are known to be colorful affairs prime for picture-taking. As you can see in his photographs, the quality of the pictures is excellent.
The photographer states that the quality of pictures depends more on the skill of the photographer than the equipment being used, but it also shows how the built-in camera in the iPhone is good enough for professional use.
The next time someone dismisses technology because it’s not good enough as existing technology, tell them to use wait. Change happens faster than you think. Even though professional photographers will always be able to claim that dedicated digital cameras will be superior to built-in smartphone cameras, the convenience and ease of use of the iPhone camera is something that dedicated digital cameras will never be able to match in the same way that a laptop is far easier and more convenient to use than dragging a supercomputer around wherever you go.
Sometimes technology is good enough for the majority of people and that’s all that really matters.