iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras

Most other points also seem contrived to me. Not all: skin color really seems better on the traditional camera. Whether that's due to the phone not being able to use the main camera, though, I wouldn't know...

These pictures simply need to be compared with reality if you want to know which camera is better. I can't tell what the shape of the leftmost person's head is. I noticed the difference, found the iPhone version more flattering, but then read the text and saw that the iPhone is apparently distorting it. A reader can't judge how close it is to reality. Continue reading, and matching reality is now bad: the traditional camera can't properly capture the background (or light in the foreground of the later child picture) and the author thinks that's good. Blurring and darkening is something you can always still add in, I'd say that a camera performed better if it delivered a picture close to reality and you can work with that data to highlight any aspect you want. The camera doesn't have to force that upon you

Not with true large format, but with the new Fuji medium format cameras it's starting to become reasonably possible to do faster work like wildlife at larger format sizes. The main issue remains, which is sensor readout speed, but the technology has gotten so much better that you can get results with things like birds-in-flight that are comparable to a FF DSLR camera from 10 years ago, with MF now, as far as speed, but at 3x-5x the effective resolution.

Cost is still prohibitive though, I recently upgraded and really considered the new Fuji 100MP MF line, but ended up with a Nikon Z8 in the end for wildlife. On my next iteration, I'll probably bite the bullet and go MF. If I could double the resolution and get similar speed, it'd be worth it, IMO. Especially at the sizes I typically print

Also in normal phone reviews, they always put pictures of different phones next to each other so that people can form their own opinion on what they prefer. How is the reader to know what it really looked like? The reviewer should compare it against what they actually saw and felt the mood was in the moment and give a verdict of which camera captured that

Of course nicer colors look nicer but that's not the camera's job: I can turn that up if I want it. For that to work well, the camera needs to know what's there in the first place

Eyeing the raw results from the pro capture mode vs. the automagic results of my five year old 300€ phone, it does an amazing job of removing sensor noise and improving lighting in ways that I usually can't replicate short of using a tripod and a whole lot of image stacking. The only exception is extreme contrasts, such as a full moon on a dark sky or rays of direct sunlight (at sunrise) on half of a rolling hill when the other half is still in complete shadow. Then the only solution is to take two pictures, one where you can see the dark bit and one where you can see the bright bit, and stitch them together

- Don't use the super wide lens and stand too close to people

- Use the super easy edit features to fix distortion

- Pay attention to lighting & exposure

- Don't just accept the iPhones default settings

If you want toned down contrast and color smartphones are perfectly happy to do that.

Otherwise.. I do configure my fancy digital camera to capture reduced contrast and color saturation compared to the defaults on a smartphone. So a lot of the time my samples would look like his.

Average people want contrast + saturation turned up like crazy. This is why the defaults ship that way. This is why a lot of the beginner non-phone digital cameras often shipped with the defaults that way. This is why TVs ship with the brightness/contrast/saturation boosted. The average person might look at your more subtle photo and appreciate it as better than theirs but then they will go right back to being super happy with their high contrast/saturation images.

Most I've done is 60 group photos in an hour at a trade show.

> Really, what it looks like to me is just that you have a product that costs ~nothing to operate

Correct

> and seems like it sort of makes sense for smallish wedding-and-anniversary party venues

I would say the intended use case is destination venues like a upscale golf course or hotel.

> the ask to add a Wal Mart style belt mounted printer to my kit

Not how it works. If you looked at the website, you'd see that you print and cut the tickets at home before hand on a normal printer.

> It's bizarre to me in what world you live where this constitutes "easier," but I also don't care

Handing someone a ticket is easier than collecting their email.

> You want to intermediate and transactionalize a relationship so ephemeral it can already be nearly overlooked even to exist, and where your presence is unneeded and unwelcome - and mine is the most HN comment ever?

I have unlimited confidence and patience. Hit me with the snarkiest rebuttal you can muster!