[LawnboyMax]

Strongly recommend taking a photography class. Photography skill is a lot more important than the camera.

Bought a DLSR camera a while back and enrolled in a weekly photography class at a film school for a year. Now I barely touch this camera. It's pretty bulky and I can take equally nice shots using my smartphone camera (good enough for sharing with friends and for own memories).

The only times I would want to use a DLSR camera over my smartphone is when I intend to make a big print of the photo, so I care a lot more about the resolution.

[hsbaut76]

Personally I don't use a DSLR because they are large, but i do use a professional camera and I can say, hands down, that after you achieve a level of quality for the photo, the control you have over the camera is the most important thing.

You cannot get a decent amount of control with a phone. Want to shoot at 1/15 and get partial and intentful motion blur? Want to do night time street photography, shoot at 1/60, 2.0f and cap the iso at 3200 max?

A phone may be OK for a selfie, but any kind of real artistic expression beyond really basic photography concepts and you won't get far.