Photo School
rogerandfrances.com
rogerandfrances.com
I'd like a photo guide that shows the relative importance of exotic gear, perhaps by showing photos of the same subject with whatever fancy equipment next to photos on a popular SLR and a smartphone.
In the first photo, it's hard to imagine that any other lens would look much different. The fancy APO optics in the Voigtländer lens aren't going to affect a low-res B&W photo much.
Exotic gear only matters if your're trying to do something hard (for example big prints from 35mm film or extreme macro or high speed photography...) and I say this as a Contax/Leica/Hasselblad shooter/gear snob. Merely decent gear is important - smartphone pictures are universally awful when given a closer look.
Which is another way of saying: smartphones tend to take pictures which are acceptable or good under a smaller set of viewing conditions than pictures taken by a skilled photographer operating an optically/electronically advantaged camera in equivalent circumstances.
That's not exactly a fair comparison. In a film camera, you're essentially replacing the "sensor" every time you add a new roll. '40s film (largely) has terrible dynamic range (far worse than an upmarket smartphone camera), is incredibly noisy under conditions smartphones can handle gracefully. Color film compatible with common cameras had only existed since 1930, and it remained disappointing well into the '70s.
A few years ago, I would have agreed with you. The latest generation of flagship phone cameras (iPhone 8, Pixel 2, Galaxy S9) are comparable in quality to a good compact camera. I really can't see much difference between a modern smartphone and an old favourite like the Powershot S120. You wouldn't want to make big prints, but you can get genuinely good images from a flagship smartphone, especially with a third-party app like Camera+ or ProCamera.
Camera doesn't mean much. I give my camera to random people and guess what, I get random photos exactly as if they were done with a smartphone.
It is not the camera, it is the photographer that takes the picture. The picture is the light field that was present at the moment of taking it -- your job as a photographer is to create or find an interesting light field and the camera is just technical means of preserving it. CAMERA WILL NOT MAKE YOUR PHOTO INTERESTING.
We're not talking about bad photographers here, we're talking about someone that knows what he's doing trying to use a smartphone camera seriously. All the skill and knowledge can't do much against rolling shutter or banding in gradients that should be smooth, etc.
My first camera I used when I started this hobby was Fuji X100. This has a lot of limitations. Extremely slow focus, fixed 35mm (equivalent) f2.0 lens. This forced me to study its limitations and what I can get with it.
I have quickly learned, it's not about being able to do everything, it is about being able to do something, very well.
In my experience the main limiting factors of smartphone are the tiny sensor size (noisy, low DR). Image processing keeps getting better but there are physical limits to what can be squeezed out of a given sensor.
If smartphones could trigger flashes at reasonable shutter speed (I guess 1/125 or 1/250) I could see myself using one to take real photos in an emergency.
There are also different definitions of what good gear is. I have several 40-60 year old lenses that are excellent for studio and street photography, but people who want edge to edge sharpness (blah blah blah) would probably laugh at them.
Oh, right, the most important thing: almost everyone shoots portraits with smartphone cameras, which are too wide to give a flattering perspective (yes, even the 50mm equivalent "telephotos", which are also even worse cameras technically).
You're probably right that the first image wouldn't be significantly different on any other lens: it looks to be shot with a fairly narrow aperture in fairly unchallenging lighting conditions, so you're not hitting any of the aspects of photography where lens design has really advanced. A really cheap lens might show distortion or chromatic aberration (admittedly less important in B&W) at the edges, but beyond that, you'd be fine.
But I saw this article recently, and it's a sample size of 1, but nonetheless I found it somewhat surprising: https://petapixel.com/2018/08/15/is-the-sensor-or-the-lens-t... -- unfortunately it doesn't specify how these images were processed so it's hard to draw conclusions (eg: if it was all SOOC JPEGs, I'd be willing to believe that the older image processor in the D610 has worse highlight reconstruction, for instance. Or possibly worse demoasaicing). However prior to reading that article I'd have unconditionally recommended investing in glass before getting a new body; evidently my mental model for this was at least slightly deficient.
FWIW, my 2c: take photos that leverage the gear you've got, and conversely choose gear to get the kinds of images you want. Eg: I love my Nikkor 85/1.4G lens, despite its shortcomings, and you'll never get the same results on a smartphone (I mean, 85/1.4 is a pretty razor thin depth of field). If what you want is a super creamy background and tons of detail on the in focus regions, and you like the framing at 85mm, then that's pretty much the only way to get it (that I know of anyway). However, if you're only shooting wide angle, with everything in focus, then the differences will definitely be more subtle. They'll be there (eg: a Zeiss 21/2.8 on a D850 will pull out detail that the smartphone just won't know is there, the D850 sensor will have a lot more dynamic range, etc), but those differences will be less readily apparent, especially if you're viewing these images on a smartphone screen.
One last point: you're no doubt aware, but there are more dimensions to a lens' quality than its resistance to chromatic aberration (re: fancy APO optics), speed, or resolving power. I have a couple of the Voigtlander lenses for Micro 4/3, and while they have a lot of shortcomings, (so much coma aberration!), the way they render the background has a particular quality to it that's hard to replicate; not always desirable either, but sometimes fun. I also enjoy playing with some of the shortcomings: it will render with a kind of a halo-like glow around close objects when shot wide open. Likewise, the bokeh on my Zeiss 100/2 MP is pretty special (I believe this is a consequence of them not using any aspherical elements), despite the fact that it suffers from terrible chromatic aberration (possibly also related to them not using any aspherical elements). There's also color rendition of different lenses, but much of that can be corrected / simulated in post if you're patient enough. And every now and then I shoot with an old Zeiss Jena 200/2.8 lens with an adapter precisely because of its shortcomings yield a particular look. Colors are a bit more muted, it's a bit less contrasty, and chromatic aberration is extremely pronounced. It looks like a photo that would have been taken in the 60s, which is kind of neat.
Apologies for the long post! I love this stuff. :)
Edit: one more link. Ming Thein's review of the Zeiss 100/2 MP gives some more details on that lens, and I think some of the shots he's included are a great example of that lens's specific background rendering. Despite occasional annoying ellipses, it has a "swirly" property to it that I really like and I just don't get on any of my other lenses. https://blog.mingthein.com/2012/07/27/revisited-and-reviewed...
Only if you take a relatively shallow, digital-oriented approach. Ansel Adams' legendary trilogy (The Camera, The Negative and The Print) are still essential reading if you truly want to understand the photographic process.
I broadly agree with your main point - most of the images on that site are trite and uninspired.