Were point and shoot cameras as good as we remember them?

FIGHT FOR BLOOD!!!

There’s an interesting fixation on dedicated cameras which seems to exist at the bookends of photography. While I try to highlight how good our smartphone cameras have gotten, we see groups of influencers playing with old point and shoot cameras. At the other end of the spectrum, no matter how good a phone sensor might be, we often hear from photographers that you can’t beat a “proper” zoom lens.

 

I really didn’t want to spend money on an old point and shoot, but while cleaning out a box of old gear, I found my old Samsung Galaxy Camera. The battery had turned into a spicy pillow, but prying it out, I was able to track down a replacement and get the camera working again.

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It’s a funky fun little shooter. Like a pocket Android tablet, with a 21X camera zoom lens attached. The EK-GC100 is running Android 4 on a quad-core Exynos. It’s still a snappy little mini-tablet.

What we care about are the photography specs.

Sporting a 16MP 1/2.3” type sensor, this is indicative of what we used to see on middle tier point and shoot cameras, like a Canon Powershot SX. These cameras often featured simplified settings, or a collection of scene modes for things situations like “action”, “pets”, and “food”. You would have needed to spend a bit more to get a camera with features like RAW output, and improved hardware controls.

 

 

Using this size sensor though, it’s not as difficult fitting a wide focal range. This “super zoom” ranging from 4.1mm to 86.1mm, and with an aperture of f/2.8 to f/5.9. Measuring the smaller sensor, and calculating the crop factor, the equivalent focal range is 23mm to 485mm. This is all optical zoom.

Thankfully, the lens fully retracted is capable of fitting in a back pocket pretty easily, but it’s still not as compact as a camera focused phone.

I was really happy to see this focal range on the GC100, as the wide aperture is close to what we use as the “main wide” camera on most of our phones. My pick for a competitive phone, the Vivo X100 Pro’s main camera is also a 23mm equivalent.

 

It’s been my argument over the last three years that it’s actually better to have three or four “prime” lenses and sensors than to have one smaller sensor with a big zoom lens.

Immediately, you might be able to guess one issue with the point and shoot, at its widest focal length, we have an f/2.8 aperture.

The Vivo’s main camera has a 1” type sensor and an f/1.75 aperture.

“ BUT JUAN! THAT’S NOT FAIR TO THE CAMERA BECAUSE ALL THE OTHER LENSES ON THE PHONE DON’T USE THE SAME SENSOR!”

That’s correct, Angry Strawman Commenter.

The Telephoto on the Vivo is a 1/2″ type sensor, with an equivalent focal length of 100mm, and it has an aperture of f/2.5. The Vivo telephoto has a larger sensor AND a wider aperture. That means it’s not only a larger RATIO, it’s a ratio based on a larger actual focal length, which means it’s a bigger opening for light to get through.

 

The GC100’s aperture wide open is f/2.8, but there’s another issue with a zoom lens.

As the focal length changes, the ratio has to adjust. At around a 90mm equivalent field of view, the Galaxy Camera has an actual aperture of f/4.3. This is a huge depth of field and light gathering advantage for the Vivo when we’re near a 100mm equivalent focal length.

The phone faces a challenge, in that it has to crop information at the sensor to “zoom” in-between sensors. The camera can smoothly zoom consistently without any impact to sensor resolution, but it OPTICALLY stops down as the lens extends.

TIME FOR SOME SAMPLES!

Forcing the GC100 to keep its aperture wide open at f/2.8, we can CLEARLY see the difference in depth of field against the Vivo.

 

 

If we’re trying to take a nice photo of a person, the fence behind me isn’t that interesting. We don’t really want it to be as identifiable as the person.

 

The thing about “point and shoot” though, we SHOULD be letting the camera make these decisions, not manually adjusting settings. In another daylight shot, but now in auto, the GC100 stops down to f/4.

 

 

The Vivo is more colorful, and has a substantially shallower depth of field. Looking at the truck behind me, focusing at arms length, we’re DEEP into the frame, and still able to clearly see objects behind me, to the point that I can tell that’s a Ford.

 

 

The GC100 claims a 30% resolution advantage though, so with these extra pixels, and the larger lens, maybe we’ll see better detail on the subject?

We do not.

This bigger lens is not resolving more optical information than the phone camera lens, even though we’ve stopped down. The camera lens SHOULD be sharper at a smaller aperture.

 

While we’re certainly dealing with jpeg post processing on both, and we can assume a modern phone is a more sophisticated image processing solution than an older camera, this zoom lens isn’t as sharp or as clear as the Zeiss branded phone.

Quick Tangent

I also get comments from people who complain about new phone cameras having such a wide aperture. Often along the lines of:

“Well I WANT a deeper depth of field. If I go on vacation, why would I want my background all blurry???”

Which is immediately recognized as a weak argument, but we can still address it here.

The closer we get to a subject, the more the background will blur, and the faster the focus falls off from our subject. If you’re stuck with a phone aperture that you can’t adjust, this will mostly impact your shots when you focus on a person in a “head and shoulder” framing. You’re unlikely to get closer than that and care about your background.

 

If the background is critically important, you’d need to move your subject farther away from the camera. Even moving from a head and shoulder shot to a “cowboy” frame (from waist to head), you’ll reclaim more of your background. On a phone like the Vivo, you could also switch to the ultra wide camera, which has a deeper depth of field as well.

 

If a person matters in my shot, I want the focus to be drawn immediately to that person. If a location is more important, I can still include a person in the shot and capture the location. Shooting with a fixed aperture is a little trickier, but the basic technique is easy to understand and adopt.

MORE SAMPLES!

BUT JUUUUUUAAAN! NOT FAIR! THE MAIN PHONE CAMERA IS BETTER! BUT THE POINT AND SHOOT  HAS A ZOOM AND USES THE SAME SENSOR FOR THE WHOLE ZOOM!

Well Strawman Commenter, even at a 2X crop from the main sensor, the Vivo is still working with more sensor surface area than the GC100. Given the recent advancements in de-mosaic-ing a quad bayer sensor, it’s not EXACTLY the same thing as having a true 12MP shooter, but yet again, the sensor and the lens from the phone is resolving more info than the 16MP sensor and lens from the point and shoot.

 

 

 

This continues deep into the zoom range on the phone camera, as the Vivo Telephoto sensor is also larger than the GC100’s only sensor. The fight is a little closer in terms of depth of field, but Vivo still takes the bokeh edge while resolving more detail on the subject.

 

 

The fight is really close through a 10X zoom, and the GC100 is only able to pull away at the farthest end of its zoom. At a 20X zoom, the Vivo is putting out a splotchy impressionistic painting. The Galaxy lens is soft, but it is an actual optical capture of the scene with better detail.

 

 

Of course, the GC100 can’t zoom out wider, while the Vivo has one other camera for an ultra-wide field of view. It’s not a clear zoom win for the Samsung. The two competitors trade practical zoom range, with the Vivo starting wider.

 

Are There ANY Camera Wins?

The GC100 “fills in the gaps” better than the Vivo.

Going from a 50mm equivalent focal length to a 100mm view is a BIG jump on the Vivo, and the digital crop at around 75mm is not great. You really should pick between 50mm and 100mm and zoom the rest of the way with your feet.

 

The other major win for the point and shoot is the built in flash. LED flashes on phones have gotten a LITTLE better but… Well… No… They really haven’t. They still kinda suck.

 

We’re not grading the processing, just the burst of illumination from the GC100, and it’s much more useful than the LED flash on a phone.

 

Lastly, I think we’ve lost something in trying to maximize phone HDR.

There’s something cloying or irritating about some of the shots that come out of a phone. Back to the example of my face, EVERYTHING is bright. Which means nothing really stands out.

 

One of the main reasons why I think influencers are having fun with older cameras, the simpler processing and spot metering make VERY different decisions on exposure than a phone might.

Comparing the RAW file of my face against the GC100 shot, the RAW file feels more like a “photograph” before any editing is applied. The Vivo jpeg is using the Zeiss “natural” setting, and it’s still aggressively bright and saturated.

 

There’s a digital “engineering” feel to a lot of phone photos that’s technically impressive, but I worry we’re losing sight of what someone might actually want when they point a camera at a person, or a pet, or a landscape.

 

 

 

Capturing more dynamic range in software with DNG stacking is really impressive. How we choose to display that range of information sometimes works against the reality of the scene we’re shooting.

 

Maybe sometimes the shadows should get a little crushed and the clouds should be a little clipped?

The Phone WINS!

While there’s a lot I appreciate about a standalone dedicated camera, we simply cant discount the significant advantages of the modern phone camera.

 

It’s honestly a little similar to how photographers might choose lenses for a job. A zoom lens might be more flexible, but a prime lens is often simpler in construction, offers a faster aperture, and can usually deliver sharper results for having simpler optics.

The Vivo has three prime lenses to choose from, with comparable or larger sensors, and fits in a pocket more comfortably than a point and shoot camera.

 

Photographers shrug off the recent improvements to phone photography, and I believe often it’s out of ignorance. Trolling through camera forums, the people who invest in camera systems, and hold onto camera bodies for YEARS, also seem to be people likely to drive a phone longer than the consumer average.

Comparing a full-frame interchangeable-lens camera to a five year old phone, we would totally expect the camera IQ to crush an old phone. They maintain a “phones are mediocre cameras” attitude, which is often reinforced by lazy tech reviews that focus as much on lazy selfie compositions as they do on lazy rear camera compositions.

That dismissive attitude is again reinforced by the obnoxiously bright and saturated output from a lot of phones, so photogs see little reason to step up to a newer phone with better hardware. It all just looks like processing tricks and AI HDR manipulation.

 

When we really drive phone hardware though, we see what the photog is missing. They’d have a more discrete pocket camera that could compliment their standalone gear. They’re missing out on a fun new era of photography tools that, through the limitations of the phone platform, encourages experimentation and forces an artist to reconsider some of their shooting habits. Phone hardware has gotten so good, so fast, I think artists are now better rewarded for taking the time to play and experiment.

The flipside of this discussion is the harder part to address.

What of the influencer or “avuraj cunzoomer” who wants to have a straightforward system that doesn’t turn everything into unicorn puke?

I don’t know that I have a great answer for them.

Saying “just shoot raw and edit” is a terrible and condescending response.

Some phones have tools to help, but even on the Vivo, finding options to slap on filters or reduce saturation are buried deeper in menus than people will likely look, on a camera that needs to respond to situations and moments.

 

I kinda get the resurgence of point and shoot cameras on social media, especially for people who want a photo to feel like a PHOTO, imperfections and all.

The modern premium phone camera is the superior hardware though. The fight isn’t close.