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Comment by jeswin | Hacker News Reader

> If this would be the case every wedding photographer would just use an iPhone.

As a POC, some have. Here's Peter McKinnon [1], and Tomorrow's filmmakers [2]. The wedding is also a very controlled lighting scenario, allowing the dedicated camera to maximize its advantage. Shutter-speed matters too, which Phones have closed in on but not yet eliminated. (In my post, I called out brightly lit conditions.)

Large camera bodies are also about looking "professional". Like most people don't wanna go to banks where staff is dressed in t-shirts and shorts.

[1]: https://youtu.be/yLZJS2k2V4k [2]: https://youtu.be/6RAVCzd0MZw

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In real life, weddings don't have a strong control of light. Quite the opposite. It's usually a big mess.

Some weddings I have gone to have the photographer with a big flash and an assistant, who has an even bigger light. With predictable results - everyone looks startled and you can tell that all the red eye has been photoshopped out.

To take candid photos in a dimly lit environment (evening, church, outdoors at night etc) you need a big honking flash or a lens that captures more light than the Hubble.

I’m a wedding photographer.

Every good photographer (almost) always bounces their speed light off the wall/ceiling or uses an off camera flash. I’ve taken hundreds of thousands of wedding images and never once had red eye to remove. People also don’t “startle” faster than the speed of light.

Speedlights aren’t “big honking flashes” and as long as you know what you’re doing you’re still usually at a high ISO as you don’t want the background to be super dim compared to the foreground.

Anyways, phones are especially ill suited for that environment compared to modern cameras. At f/1.4, 1/200th of a second shutter at ISO 6400 you can freeze everything but super fast motion with pretty good image quality in very dim environments. Phones absolutely cannot do that. Even pictures taken outside just after the sun sets are a smeary mess after the built in noise reduction.

Yeah I use a flash during the dinner and party at a wedding, but during church is a big fat no :p Indeed, you're stuck with big telephoto lenses and high iso.

Your last point is so wrong I don’t know where to start.

I don’t like carrying god knows how many pounds of weight on my shoulders with two cameras, 3 lenses, and often two speedlights on me all day. I also bring two Pelican cases of lighting equipment, a camera bag full of batteries and lenses, and an “oh shit” bad with backup cameras and lenses. That’s what I need to do a good job in any condition.

Phone camera photos look good on your phone. If you have absolutely perfect lighting they may even look good blown up to a somewhat reasonable size. Good luck getting anything useful in a dim church, on the dance floor, etc.

It’s pretty often that a mom comes along to a senior photography shoot and takes photos with their phone of me at work and then sends them to me. The quality is utterly laughable compared to what I’m capturing at the time when actually viewed on something that’s more than 6 inches diagonal.

Photographers might make silly YouTube videos trying to get clicks where they use phones on a pro shoot but that’s where it ends.

from the videos, the iphone looks like a terrible way to shoot VIDEO for a wedding, and that's after spending thousands of dollars on extra equipment.

Stills, IMO, would be even more of a disaster.

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