Australian Photography – March 2022
English | 70 pages | pdf | 54.19 MB
Despite us running plenty of stories over the years about smartphone photography (the most recent being one in December) I’ve always struggled with using them as anything more than a backup device for photography. I’m sure this is totally unfounded in 2022, but it’s still something I’ve never quite been able to shake.
However, a couple of months ago I slipped and dropped my Sony A7. This ended up needing repairs and, combined with me trying to thin out my cameras over the last few years, left me with only a smartphone to shoot with. No problem, I thought – I had the latest Vivo X70, probably one of the best smartphones you can buy today, with a whopping 50MP sensor and four separate sensors to cover everything from wide-angle to telephoto. And it was great – until
I broke that too. There’s nothing quite like smashing a $1,000 piece of technology on the concrete to make you reassess your spending. So, from under a layer of dust and old paper in my drawer emerged my long-forgotten Alcatel – think of it as the unkillable cockroach of the smartphone world – that still miraculously holds charge despite not seeing the light of day for more than three years.
Is the camera good? Not really. It’s slow, struggles in low light and has an interface that makes you want to tear your hair out. And yet, I’ve quite enjoyed using it. Like an old film camera, it does have a certain charm despite its limitations. The only decent results come when the conditions are just right, but this does encourage a more conservative approach to photography.
And, at the very least, it shows just how much innovation in smartphone cameras has occurred in the last few years.
Like our story on converting old cameras to infrared on page 34, it’s worth reconnecting with old gear from time-to-time, and especially so if you find yourself wanting the latest and greatest. Unfortunately for me, first it was the camera, then the phone, and now my laptop screen has just died – leaving me to write this editorial on another device that dates from the early 2000s. And yet, just like that old smartphone, it’s been totally fine. Chances are you probably have a similar device sitting in a drawer somewhere – maybe you should take it for a spin?
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