Professional photographer in Luxembourg

I took these two photos in London, in the same spot, at the same moment, a month ago. One with my Iphone 5s, one with my Canon 6D camera and a 24-105 f4L. I’ll let you guess which one was taken with the camera and which one with the Iphone:

The Shard London

The Shard in London

I can’t help thinking how photography evolved in the last 10 years. I’ll just stick to digital photography, ’cause that’s how I started, about 12-13 years ago. Back in the days, you needed a decent DSLR, tripod, computer and software to process the RAW into a decent looking JPG. It was even more work with a film camera, but I’m not gonna go there. Nowadays, you just press the button on your Iphone and that’s it! Ready to be uploaded to Twitter, Instagram or a Stock Photo app, in just seconds.

Now look at the differences between the two photos and tell me: does it make sense anymore to carry a heavy DSLR kit everywhere with you, when the results are so similar?

Well, in my opinion it does. I couldn’t give up the camera and all its advantages (interchangeable lenses, better quality at 100% size, manual settings and so on). But not having a proper photo camera doesn’t stop you anymore from creating decent pictures and sharing them online with friends and fans, or putting them up for sale.

It’s just amazing how things evolved in this beautiful world of photography. Sure, more competition will make it harder to succeed, but competition is a good trigger for progress. Real photographers will struggle more to get attention and popularity, as social media tends to favor some crappy snapshots, just because they’ve been taken by TV, music or film industry superstars. But, at the end of the day, I don’t see Kim Kardashian trying to sell her snap of a snowman on Dreamstime, even if it got some 450k likes on Instagram.

So, we’ll just have to build our own audience, and take advantage of all the tools and opportunities social media has offered us. I know I love to be able to share a nice picture in just a few seconds since I’ve taken it, because, honestly, most of the photos I took with my camera in London that day are still unprocessed from RAWs.

I didn’t think I’ll ever ask this question, but times change, so what do you prefer? The smartphone or the regular photo camera?

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Viorel Dudau
Viorel Dudau

Senior editor and social media wizard @Dreamstime |
Photographer in Luxembourg

Articles: 23

2 Comments

  1. Hello,
    The top photo has been taken with the smartphone and the lower photo with the DSLR. The DSLR photo shows more detail and more color nuances. Maybe in many situations a phone camera will do allright, but there are still a lot of situations that only DSLRs can handle. Taking photos with smartphones and sharing them isn’t photography but social media. Although there is one app for the iPhone called Hipstamatic, that produces nice photos. Congrats to your site and work

    • Hi Carlo, you’re right. And my feelings towards the mobile photography are the same. However, being able to shoot a HDR image and post it online in less than 60 seconds, using nothing but a smartphone, still amazes me. Sure, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the next step and use a real camera to capture a higher quality photo.
      Thanks for stopping by!

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