Fair comparison of the camera phone and a SLR camera

Every year, a phone comes out, in which a super-new camera is surely worthwhile, which should be an order of magnitude better than its predecessors and a little more and no one will buy cameras anymore, because the cameras in the phone will be enough for everyone. Or at least to nonprofessionals (those who do not earn money on a photo). And every time after buying the phone, I sincerely hope that now I always have a great camera with me, I will catch interesting moments and beautiful landscapes. A mirror with lenses only in special cases can be taken. But every time something goes wrong.

Of course, over the past 10 years, pictures look much better. But if you take a closer look, 2 changes affected this most of all: first, now the phones exhibit a “warmer” white balance, and second, they align the exposure throughout the frame. That is, remove the lights and brighten the shadows. Of course, this is the best thing that can be done under the physical constraints of the size of the camera and its price. The last innovation - the second long-focus lens and stereo mode with emulation of background blur is just amazing. Blurring the background works surprisingly well.

But do shots from a phone really compare with shots of real cameras? Let's try to understand what to compare with. I have a Xiaomi MI6 phone with two cameras, one with a focal length of 27mm and a f / 1.8 aperture, the second is 52mm f / 2.6 (they write that it doesn’t differ from the most famous brand phones) and Canon 6D. In order not to compare the warm with the soft, you need to find the appropriate lenses for the SLR. In the case of the first, this is the Canon EF 28mm f / 1.8 USM , in the case of the second, for example, the Canon EF 50mm f / 1.4 USM . Unfortunately, I don’t have the first one, so we’ll test only the long-focus camera of the phone.

The second thing you need to do is take a picture of the same thing with the same settings. Fortunately, the good Chinese allow you to choose a camera without tricks with cutting a piece of the frame from the wide-angle and subsequent interpolation, there is also a manual mode in which you can fix all the parameters except the aperture.

And, finally, you need to adjust the colors and brightness of the picture from the SLR so that it looks the same as the photo from the phone. It should be understood that after all this there is another black box that converts the data from the matrix of the camera phone into a picture.

Unfortunately, getting absolutely identical pictures will not work because of the different size of the matrix, with the result that the frame from the phone is all in focus, and in the frame from the camera in focus only a part of the flower. In different cases, this can be both a huge advantage and a serious disadvantage. For example, in reporting and portrait photography, this allows you to select the main object. And in the landscape and macro - the opposite way. The phones have software emulation of the blur to reduce the depth of field, and in the latest models of DSLRs there is support for focus stacking technology, which takes several frames with different focusing and then sticks them together into one image. So I suggest this fact not to be considered an advantage or a disadvantage of SLR cameras.

The first test is simple conditions, the flower is illuminated with a halogen lamp, so we managed to take a picture with a low ISO. Shooting options: ISO100, shutter speed 1/30, f / 2.6 aperture (f / 2.8 on the camera, since f / 2.6 cannot be set, let's give a little head start). Raw from the camera "manifested" in Adobe Lightroom, modified parameters: Temp 3043, Tint +7, Exposure -1.38, Highlights -41, Sharpening-> Amount 50. Picture from the phone on the left.

Resize (phone - left):



I think it turned out quite similar.

Let's look at the crop, first part with contrasting spots and sharp lines (the phone is again on the left, it is better to look at the lower right quarter of the image, since it is in focus):



Here, in general, everything is good both there and there. Pay attention to the sharpness of the lines, Lightroom has better processed the edges of the spots on the sheet, but the picture from the phone also looks very decent.

Now halftones (again, the phone is on the left, but here I suggest paying attention to the purity of colors and gradients):



Here it is - the weakest point of pictures with lots of noise and sharpening. Pictures with such sites look good except on Instagram. When viewed in full screen mode on a computer or tablet, this is already striking. And this is the easiest conditions. What will happen when there is little light?

The second part, difficult conditions: 2 chandeliers with warm energy-saving lamps. Shooting options: ISO1600, shutter speed 1/30, aperture 1 / 2.6 (1 / 2.8 on Canon 6D). I put Temp 2920, Tint -3, Exposure -1.87, Contrast +13 in the lightroom.

Check if the photos look the same enough?



I think enough.

Again, first see the contrast section of the image:



On the left, the noise was so strong that it spoiled the edges of the spots. That is, this is not the leaf of the flower, which was in fact, but its interpretation. The edges of the stains have shifted quite a bit. On the right, the image is at least honest. A little noise, of course, is present.

Halftones:



On the left, there was only one daub, and the noise could not be removed. On the right, everything is not bad.

Well, it turns out that from a phone in low light conditions, the pictures are only suitable for an instragram, but then the photo from the DSLR is not ideal either. ISO1600 by modern standards is practically the beginning of the range. Let's try as in a joke about the race of Mercedes and Zaporozhets "and now the second." Remove noise in lightroom. In the previous settings, add Noise reduction-> Luminance 50 and Sharpening 50.

Contrast area:



Halftones:



Lightroom coped very well with a little noise, and if you do not look at the effect of oil paints that are present on frames from the phone even at ISO100, then it is clear that you can shoot in even darker places, draw shadows on overly contrasting shots, increase the exposure on pictures where automation for some reason did not work properly. Yes, and you can still do a lot of things, while the potential of pictures with the phone in the form in which they are issued to the user, has been exhausted.

Full size images:

Test 1, Xiaomi MI6
test 1, canon 6D
Test 2, Xiaomi MI6
Test 2, Canon 6D
Test 2, Canon 6D + Squelch

Perhaps there will be questions, where does such a large exposure correction in the lightroom come from? Almost 2 feet, the same could put ISO400. I just wanted to set the same shooting options. For some reason, the phone gave out underexposed frames, if I put ISO400 and ISO800. If you do everything right, the photo from the SLR will be even better.

Built-in camera phones never catch up with cameras. Mirror, mirrorless or something else that will appear in the future will always be 3 steps ahead, because they are the source of all the innovations in photography.

UPD:
A lot of questions caused the plot of the photo to be out of focus and not everyone noticed the watercolor effect, so there is still a small comparison:

Phone:
ISO 1794, shutter speed 1/20, aperture 1 / 2.0, wide-angle camera, shooting in raw
In the lightroom, all default parameters are Noise Reduction and Color and Luminance are 0 by default.

Camera:
ISO 2000, shutter speed 1/20, aperture 1 / 2.0, 50mm, shooting in raw
In Exposure lightroom - -1.87, Shadows +30, Whites -33, Blacks +15, Saturation -3, Noise Reduction and Color and Luminance per 0

resize:


Crop: