
Why My New Professional War Camera Is a Cheap Chinese Knockoff - sergeant3
https://www.outsideonline.com/2175146/why-my-new-professional-war-camera-cheap-chinese-iphone-knockoff
======
jakobegger
This article reads like an advertisement and is lacking the most important
part: Sample pictures that the reporter actually took with the advertised
phone.

------
advisedwang
Interesting that there is no discussion of time to start the camera app or the
shutter lagging behind the capture button. I would have thought that these
things would be the biggest negative of using a phone as a "war camera".

Perhaps the P10 is fast enough that he just never felt this problem.

~~~
buserror
Best message on this topic. Thanks.

What the old Leica of old did was the famous 'F8 and be there' \-- basically
at F8 with a mirrorless rangefinder there was enough DoF to shoot pretty much
anything, at anytime (apart from pitch black) and still come out with a
printable picture... Even a modern DSLR doesn't give you that, as the
autofocus will take a bit of time, unless you disable it. Same with the u4/3
and other mirrorless.

I preferred digital carry-on is a Panasonic DMC-GM1 with a fixed 14mm lens.
It's bigger than a mobile phone, but it's also considerably better, and the
battery last weeks, not hours.

I also still shoot my 1947 leica IIIc, and the old leica M2, just because I
love handling them!

The funny bit is that I can shoot _anything_ and _anyone_ _anywhere_ with my
old 35mm rangefinder, and people will look at you and smile at you even. Try
that with a digital monster or a mobile phone and people will just close down
like a clam.

------
eridius
> * And it can handle Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC) files, which are vastly
> higher-quality than MP3s and more compressed than WAV.*

Why does a photographer care about this? And who seriously compares this sort
of thing to MP3 these days anyway, when we've had better codecs for a long
time?

~~~
URSpider94
One who shoots video and records audio segments as well??

That's why he mentions shooting 4K video and plugging in a Rode microphone
later in the piece.

~~~
eridius
I'm not aware of any video format that uses FLAC.

~~~
jungletek
Well, the video codec doesn't handle audio anyway, so neither am I.

The container format is what I suspect you mean, and Matroska can handle just
about anything. There are others, but that was the first off the top of my
head, and IMO the only one worth using these days whenever possible.

This wikipedia chart is useful:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_container_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_container_formats)

~~~
eridius
I don't think I've seen an .mkv in literally years. I didn't think video
recorders recorded in that format either. .mp4 and .mpeg are still the video
containers that I see 99% of the time (note: I don't use a WebM-capable
browser, so I don't see WebM videos).

------
brokenmachine
How can Nikon and Canon even exist now [Chinese brand smartphone] can take
photos?

Oh, that's right, SLR's take much better pictures.

This reads like an ad.

------
diebir
I agree that the P&S cameras have been made obsolete by phones, yet it is all
about the sensor size and the geometry and physical size limit the phones in
that regard, unavoidably. The low light performance, zoom, etc will suffer. I
think the DSLRs are outdated as well by the mirrorless, such as Sony and
micro-four third cameras.

~~~
jbmorgado
Not only sensor size but the ergonomics. I agree that in daylight my iPhone 6S
is basically as good as my somewhat older Nikon, but the way you handle them
both in order to take a photo really play into the final quality of the image.

The phone will always be like a tiny window to the world, while the camera is
more of an extension of my eye. Might be a personal take, but for me it makes
a lot of diference and it shows in my photos.

------
anta40
I'd love to see more journalistic photos taken by the phone. Anyway, the
article mentioned something interesting though:

"The trick now is a low-profile, fast, connected tool that still allows the
user to control image quality. What’s the best photo gear for this new age of
real-time, run-and-gun, snap-and-post journalism?"

A smartphone can easily handle those. Image quality wise, probably it won't
outclass your new shiny Fuji X or Leica M, but then again the major concern of
photojournalism is capturing the "decisive moment" decently, and not about ISO
performance or bokeh, for example.

~~~
pvaldes
Image quality is overvalued when everybody use tricks to post-process their
images.

Behind "allows the user to control image quality" we could have brighter dawns
+ extra aeroplane (that wasn't here), changing clothes tones to corporate
colors, putting more red in blood or more sad in faces, eliminating objects or
people, adding either perfect skin or a frown and eye bags in the face of a
politic, etc, etc...

The "decisive moment" currently is not recorded, is created from scratch.

Historic or journalistic value on the other hand is not necessarily about
image quality.

~~~
Tanegashima
No matter how much you "tweak" your photos, you are not getting the quality of
a DSLR.

You are not getting the focal distance and zoom of a 70-200.

------
JohnJamesRambo
Am I overly paranoid to remember that Huawei phones were found to be phoning
home to China and spying in the past?

~~~
Markoff
any source of this? from what i remember those were phones from shady
resellers who installed there all kind of spyware, not if you buy Huawei out
of the box, it's pretty clean

------
Markoff
I stopped reading when he said Huawei is knockoff for 400$. This guy knows
maybe about photography, but has zero idea about smartphone brands.

------
Neliquat
I wondered years ago how long it would take for the single function camera to
be extinct. My answer is fast coming into focus.

~~~
luckydude
Oh, I dunno. When is a phone going to do this:

    
    
        http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/2016-hawk/2.html
    

or this:

    
    
        http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/fog.jpg
    

or this:

    
    
        http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/hockey-portraits/104.html
    

I love that phone tech is getting better but I'll take my 1DX & the 200mm f2.0
over a phone a 100x. Phone is handy as heck because it's always with you but
there are some things you just can't do without a great sensor and great big
honking chunk of glass.

~~~
splintercell
If you're impressed by these photos, then try my suggestion and get a film
camera, since you already have Canon gear, get a Canon AE-1 for like $120 used
on Amazon (or cheaper on ebay), it will work with all your existing lenses,
and try Porta 400 film taking similar photos like these.

The reason why I say this because it seems like you've reached a local maxima
for DSLRs and by trying your hand in analog you'd see what's really missing in
your pics.

~~~
luckydude
Dude, I started on a Canon AE-1. Well that was my first personal SLR, I really
started on a Pentax K1000 (didn't we all?).

I've done a _lot_ of film. I think before I went back to that I'd try post
processing. I'm of two minds on post processing, I know it can make things
"pop" but I like pictures to be realistic. Sometimes that makes them look
worse than you might like but they are real.

That said, I am sure a ton of my keepers would benefit from post.

See my profile if you want to try and convince me in email, I'm a total nerd
about photography stuff. Not great at it, I've got a shitty eye for
composition, but still love it.

~~~
splintercell
Well I came from a poor country, so due to leap frog effect, I directly got
into digital photography, and eventually I went into analog.

The things I have learned about digital and post processing (and I did that a
LOT) is:

* Always shoot in RAW mode, why ruin you images by making the stock software by Canon to convert them into dumpy JPEG format.

* Always underexpose digital photos. Digital sensors these days have pretty good exposure latitude (almost as good as analog some even say). When you shoot in RAW and underexpose, you can recover almost everything. Digital sensors are HORRIBLE in capturing highlights. You're commenting on how proud you are at your camera in capturing the shadows of the fog scene, but the highlights of the photo are completely butchered.

* While post-processing, invest in a good monitor calibrator. Granted they can be expensive, the cheaper version of that is to at least do your work in middle brightness of the monitor (irrespective of the actual brightness level you work in) and then crank it up all the way and see how it looks, and crank it all the way down and make adjustments.

* For actual software, I prefer lightroom, because you can create all sorts of presets for it and see immediately how any photo will look in it. You can also buy presets (like VSCO has some good ones) from third parties to expand your collection.

* Discard more shots. That (i.e. being more selective) makes a HUGE difference between a good photographer and an average one.

Finally, I'd say you should try your hand in Medium format analog. Nearly
nothing I did in digital came close to a single Medium format shot I've taken.

~~~
luckydude
I'm curious as to what digital bodies you have tried? The medium format
comment is interesting.

------
Tanegashima
Totally not an ad!

When he says that the P10 camera is the same thing as the iPhone 7 Plus...

------
jdalgetty
Was that an ad?

