- The X-Pro 3 is $2k, not what I call middle-end.
  - I agree on the aggressive AI processing. Fortunately I could disable it.
  - It was a Nikon D5500. I used the 18-55 kit lens, but f/1.8 prime lenses can do better indeed, at the cost of switching lenses all day.
  - I compared on my 27" screen, no difference, even in low-light scenarios and at different ISOs

The D5300 is pretty old, I had one in 2013-2014, coming from a D3200.

> - I compared on my 27" screen, no difference, even in low-light scenarios and at different ISOs

This might be the main difference between us, I usually do prints in A3+ sizes and the differences in picture quality between a smartphone and my cameras are very noticeable.

The A72 and D5500 have the same used price.

Again, I understand the price point but it's an oddball comparison. Perhaps a comparison between the A72 and a Fujifilm X-E2 could tell us more but I don't have either devices to directly compare myself :/

Because people who find their 2022 smartphone outperforming their 2015 DSLR don't upgrade to a 2022 DSLR.

Did you do a real image diff on the same setup? I doubt it. Phone cameras have come a long, long way but a lot of the advances are through "smoothing" things out through software.

I've done 6 years of professional photography to pay for college. Portrait shoots, weddings, even produced videos, ads, festivals, wildlife documentaries. I worked on Nikon D4S fullframes. How is my age relevant ?

My point is, professionals can always squeeze extra juice of the hardware, but the average consumer does not.

But once you take RAW photos and hit the Auto button in Lightroom, the Pixel doesn't hold a chance against the D5300.

Fuji uses the same sensors on many cameras, you can get an xt-2 or xe-3 for much cheaper, with the same sensor

For me it's the opposite, show how smartphones are better than the current crop of mirrorless APS-C as this is the extraordinary claim requiring evidence.

When I get some time I might shoot some comparison pictures, but if I don't: remember that I'm not here to serve your demands, I'm sorry.

I have used an iPhone SE and a mirrorless M4/3 camera to photograph a sheet of paper containing barcodes of varying sizes (including some with bars less than 1 pixel wide). I then checked which barcodes were readable in the resulting image.

The light levels were the same, both cameras were positioned and zoomed so the target took up the entire image, and both cameras were supported on a tripod.

I expected the M4/3 camera would blow the iPhone out of the water with its much larger lens, bigger sensor, and higher price. But no, the iPhone's image had marginally more readable barcodes.

Modern smartphone camera performance is just crazy, for the sensor size.

Protocol: handheld at 10 PM, 10 shots each, at different ISOs, picked the best one

The bottlenecks are different, but the sharpness is comparable.

  - The DSLR was limited by optics, it's blurrier with some chromatic aberration
  - The Phone has strong AI processing, I wish I disabled it

It's still over-sharpened and probably used multiple shots to get high dynamic range, it's much more noisy too, and shows less resolution

Also the d5500 is a lower tier camera from 2015, the phone was released in 2021

Yes there's HDR bracketing, but we only care about the result.

One is blurry (optics), the other has artifacts (AI), but overall sharpness is similar.

Depends on what you need, of course, but for most people the photo from the phone is superior.