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by n0zmer 1006 days ago
Buying a real camera was the best travel decision I've made. Everyone thinks phone cameras are just as good until you actually get a decent camera. And they are just as point and click. Seriously, phone travel photos are garbage in comparison.
4 comments

Nah. I use an XT-4, and while it's certainly a better camera, it's quite easy to take a worse photo with it than with a new iPhone.

Yes low light perf is better with a camera, sharpness too. But unless you use HDR bracketing you're DR limited in a lot of every day situations that the general public will be disappointed with. Blown out highlights or indistinguishable shadows. The iPhone or other high end phone will stitch multiple photos with HDR automatically. People prefer that.

Auto-focus is generally not as good as with iPhones either. The amount of computational power in the SoC dwarfs modern cameras, and while you can get very good auto-focus, you've never heard of any iPhone user complain about the camera not focusing on the right subject.

Still, wouldn't trade the XT-4 at all. It's ceiling is vastly higher than any phone camera if you know what you're doing and understand the limitations.

Which lens/lenses do you use with your XT-4? I am in the same situation, I have an iPhone but while the photos it makes in certain situations are better I would prefer the XT-4 in other situations, if I have the camera with me that is.
Sorry just noticed your reply.

I have the 16-80mm kit lens, and also the 23mm F/2. Both are good lenses.

What I have noticed with this XT4, and I don't know if it's a general problem or specific to XT4/Fujis, is that it's very prone to choosing slow shutter speeds. I normally shoot effectively in aperture priority, but when I first got the XT4 it was constantly picking too slow of a SS to capture people/kids.

The way I fixed that was to go into the settings and find the "auto ISO" section, and set a minimum SS of 1/125s which works well for most everyday situations. Then bump up the ISO ceiling to something very high like 12000. The idea is that if your SS is too slow you basically have an unusable image, whereas at least with high ISO you can denoise and have something useful.

I also now use custom film simulations I got from Fuji X weekly. My favorites are these: https://fujixweekly.com/2021/05/03/fujifilm-x100v-x-trans-iv...

and Portra 400 and some others I can't remember.

I used to travel with a DSLR, and while the photos were phenomenal in comparison to my phone's output, the ease of minor edits, photo reviewing and management, backups, and posting them were strong enough reasons for me to ditch my camera setup.

I now travel with an Insta360 X2 that is much more convenient and compact, but there are certain types of photos (night time, star trails, light trails, portraits, etc) that phones and action cameras are just laughably bad at.

Micro 4/3 body with the Olympus 45mm 1.8 is the bees knees. The glass literally slaps. I've had people IRL gasp when seeing photos the thing produces, especially if they haven't touched a real camera for a few years. Yes the iPhone Pro cameras are good, but you can't beat physics.

But... the best camera is the one you've got on you, so I can't blame anyone for the convenience factor, I also take pictures primarily with the iPhone.

I was thinking about it but I would still need both. I'm not carrying around a DSLR on a typical walk.