My reasoning for thinking this is not a good analogy is the supercar is a device that cannot be used/exploited in normal operation. It is illegal to use the top speed or acceleration of a supercar. It cannot make traffic move out of the way for you. A Supercar will not get you to work any faster than a Toyota Corolla. The Corolla will go fast enough to send you to jail, just like the Supercar. You can't use the Supercar features without legal risk without going to a special place (the race track). People who own sports cars and supercars try to rationalize this away but it's true. They are really just driving them around to show off and can't realistically use the cars capabilities in the real world.
If a fancy DSLR or Mirrorless camera is like a supercar than it would mean everyone who had a DSLR or Mirrorless camera had to use the camera with one fixed prime lens that had bad quality and was locked at a small aperture. You had to use it in green "full auto" mode all the time. You had to set the camera up to run in it's slowest mode, and you had to set the camera up run at a very high ISO and to store photos in a high compression JPEG setting.
Only when you went to the special zone of photography would you be able to use the extra features. (Changing lenses & settings for maximum effect.)
Most people who carry DSLRs & Mirrorless cameras around can exploit their advantages ruthlessly in the real world whenever they want.. nothing at all like paying for a sports car or supercar and just using it as a show-off token.
I am not arguing against Om's point though. I'm in the same boat as him, I have a pretty expensive camera setup but have bought minimal camera gear since 2012 and use my Smartphone more and more.
I mean, really, are we going to get into discussing the people who buy a supercar and hold it as an investment/collectible and rarely drive it?
Or what about the people who track their McLaren and absolutely use it to its full potential? Those people 100% absolutely drive them for performance and use every bit of it.
And yes, there are camera owners who collect cameras. And camera owners who buy "Prosumer" models just because they want a nice camera, even if they don't use it to its full potential. Maybe not you, but we both know there are such people.
That doesn't really invalidate my analogy or validate it. If you feel around to the edges of any metaphor, it breaks. But the question is whether the basic idea is right. I think it's right enough, you don't.
Ok.
Talking about how special places are designed for the sports cars and inferring that it can/should only be used there seems to me incorrect inference of the analogy. At that point we may as well talk about expensive tire repair and maintenance, but I don't think that was intended either haha.
The point others were making is much more simple: neither DSLRs or purpose-built sports cars are particularly convenient for casual utilitarian use. People who buy both of these things lean more towards the 'hobbyist' side of things.
You are absolutely right that there are many people who lug their DSLR everywhere. But I think you might be underestimating just how many people actually do go to racetracks.
Of course, some people own fancy things as status symbols. But also, hobbyists don't have to continually "exploit the capabilities" of their hobby to be legitimate hobbyists either.
Sure, a standalone gets you higher resolution, optical zoom, etc, but consider where those photos are most likely to be viewed - you can't get the most from them without going to a special place (printer). You can't make people view them on a PC. Realistically, most people are going to be viewing their photos on their phone, whether they originated there or not, after they've been mushed through facebook or insta's compression anyway. People who own cameras try to rationalize this away but it's true.
If a smartphone camera is a Toyota Corolla, a nice camera is a basic luxury sedan for Sunday drives. It does everything a little better, but it's a bit pricier for less use. That being said, it's really for people who just like to drive.
As I see it, the phone is a general-purpose device that also takes pictures, just as a sedan is a general-purpose vehicle, whether luxurious or not. Whereas, a camera just does one thing (two if you count video separately.)
Thus, to me, a dedicated camera at any price is like a two-seater sports car with hardly any trunk room. You can buy cheaper sports cars, sure, but they still lack the affordances of a sedan.
To me, a “luxury sedan” corresponds to a high-end phone.
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That being said, all metaphors/similes are leaky, so you are probably “not wrong.”
95% of the time you're happy you just have your scooter with you, but the other five percent of the time, you may be disappointed or downright helpless compared to somebody with better equipment. Say you and your friends decide impromptu to go to a music show twenty miles away, the concert starts in two hours, and public transit will get you there at approximately noon tomorrow. Your scooter is useless, and you have to ask for a ride. This is analogous to when you see a coyote in your neighborhood (let's assume that's a rare and interesting occurrence in your neighborhood) and you're pointing to a blurry dog-shaped dot on your phone saying "Look! It's a coyote!" and your neighbor is ordering a 2' by 3' print showing the reflections in its eyes and the steamy breath coming out of its mouth. Situations like that are frustrating, but each person will feel differently about whether it's worth embracing the expense and daily hassle of traveling with a bigger piece of equipment.
Your point makes sense when the full functionality of the phone is taken into account. I was viewing the argument as phone camera vs dedicated camera.
There's a whole other rabbit hole when you get into the discussion of whether the camera or the lens is the primary driver of good photography.
It's about that everything that 99% of people need the Corolla does. So, there's no motivator to spend money on the better car for most people.
Anyway it's irrelevant since I was just picking something similarly sized to the Corolla that had been brought up.
In that sense, supercars are actually a decent analogy. If supercars were around the same cost as mirrorless cameras and SLRs (<$5k, with minimal ongoing cost), then I'd expect supercars to be incredibly popular - lots of people would love to have one for weekend drives.
The first doesn't take much room compared to what it does, it can do a lot of things decently, might cost more on the long run but is cheap to start with. I think someone needs to first feel limited by the all-in-one's printing capacity, performance or cost to fully understand what will the laser printer bring to the table.
And this works at any level. Photographs using zooms lens switch to single focus length lens when they hit a point they want more of X or Y. Otherwise there's no point in giving up the convenience of multi-purpose solutions.
Still this is kind of what I was looking for. Thank you for the advice.
And while we're on THAT subject, active safety in the form of a lighter vehicle that steers more competently and accelerates at will is criminally underrated by the "Big SUV makes me safe" crowd.
Those Sonys are really nice though. I just bought a new Fuji body and a 16mm f/1.4 macro. It's unreal what new mirrorless bodies + high-end lenses can do these days.
But I gotta say, the Fuji X bodies are beautiful, both in handling and aesthetics. I played with a friend's X-T3. I don't think I've ever enjoyed using a camera more. My Panasonics are fantastic from compactness/features/quality/lightweight standpoints, but Panasonic ergonomics and handling is pretty, uh, "workmanlike".
I also love the Fuji body design. Hilariously, I got the Fuji system as a travel-friendly replacement to my bulky 5D3 setup, and while there are some smaller lenses that make it quite portable, I find that I most often grab the 16mm f/1.4. This lens makes the setup feel only slightly smaller than the dslr! I’ll probably sell one kit or the other and buy an rx100 V for travel. (I rented the rx100 IV for a trip to Peru a few years back and was really impressed).
Still I’d like to see E-mount lenses get cheap for selfish reasons.
To me, the extra utility of the Corolla is like the extra utility of email, text messages, phone calls, web browsing, exploring the limits of analogies on HN, and so forth.
I can do those on a phone, but not on a camera. (Actually, I'm sure that somebody has a camera that lets you send and receive mail, that's Lett's and Zawinski's Lwas...)
But if you were to talk about a cube van... We'd have something. A cube van won't fit in my garage, just as a camera won't fit in my pocket (Yes, I used to own a Casio that did, but still...)
A cube van is extraordinarily inconvenient for anything except moving my entire house. For all smaller jobs, my station wagon rules. But when I wanted to move house, I hired a proper cube van.
And if I ever need to take an amazing picture, I would probably use a proper camera.
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But all that being said, Steve Jobs did compare pickup trucks to desktop computers at an earlier time. If he were here today, he might suggest a laptop is a pickup and an iPad is a sedan.
So you might have something.
https://mobile.twitter.com/classicretro/status/1169344101973...
You’re welcome.
Every automobile on the road does almost exactly the same thing, with a few variations in details like cargo capacity and creature comforts.
But cameras vs. phones is a different situation. I've not heard of a phone that can do 100x optical zoom, nor remotely the kind of high quality, high resolution imaging that a modern digital camera is capable of.
If you hire an Uber, you don't care whether it's a '96 Corolla or a Hummer or anything else; it's going to crawl through traffic and get you from point A to point B in almost an identical fashion.
If you hire a photog for an event such as a wedding, you'd expect them to bring some pretty high end equipment and provide us with a hefty thumb drive or two with dozens if not hundreds of gigs of pictures that are far beyond what even the best phone can achieve.
You make the point that all cars 'on the road' do the same thing. Then you take a photography example that's not equivelent to a standard 'road' journey.
A wedding would be far more like taking a normal car to an F1 race. In such a case an F1 car excels in that particular form of driving in a narrow set of circumstances, and yet you still could technically take it on a road if it were legal to do so.
In a similar vein, 'supercar' cameras are highly specialised tools requiring significant support to get the most of them - large lenses, powerful computers and skilled RAW conversion. Not entirely dissimilar to specialist needs an F1 car might have.
So you can certainly take a 'supercar' camera as your daily driver but you'll face a ton of hassles and extra work as a result.
“Every camera does almost exactly the same thing, with a few variations in details like optical vs. digital zoom capabilities and memory space.”
“When you’re going about you’re daily life and need to take a picture, you don’t care if it’s an iPhone camera, an Android camera, or a fancy DSLR; all of them will capture the photo nearly the same, aside from minor differences which often require a professional to discern.“
“If you show up to drive around a race track, you’ll be expected to bring a high end car with... [you get the point]”
However, a sizable minority of photographers can use the extra features of a dedicated SLR camera with telephoto or microphoto lens. There's plenty of great photography that simply can't happen, or won't happen with nearly the quality, by using a smartphone.
That's not to say that smartphone cameras are bad; they're excellent today. I have always wanted to get a modern digital SLR, but now I'm thinking a high end phone is sufficient for 90% of what I would want to do, so should I really spend $1500 to $2000 to do that extra 10%? Since I'm neither a pro nor a passionate amateur, probably won't.
The idea that cameras are more diverse than cars is honestly laughable. Do you realize the level of technology that is in cars?
>If you hire an Uber
Not everyone lives in a major city and hires Uber to get around. I've been in one Uber in my life.
There is no question that they beat the pants off a Toyota Corolla.[1] But most us us just want to drop our kids off at school and pick up groceries.
And you know what? A Corolla is actually a pretty good car. And nobody[2] really cares about their daily driver’s 0-60 time or whether it set a new record at Nürburgring.
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[1] Substitute your favourite boring daily driver.
[2] To paraphrase Joel Spolsky, by “nobody,” we mean “Fewer than 10,000,000 people.”