Hi, everybody, welcome to episode five of the photography explained podcast. In this episode, do I really need a camera in 2020?

I'm your host, Rick, and each week I will try to explain one photographic thing to you in plain English in less than 10 minutes without the irrelevant details.

My aim is to explain things in just enough detail to help us with our photography and no more. And I'm hoping in this episode that I'll be sounding a little bit more natural. I'm halfway to double figures now, which is excellent.

So anyway, let's get on with this.

Do I really need a camera in 2020?
Well, this was not the question that I was answering on this episode, I have to be honest with you. I was planning on continuing with my explanation of the exposure triangle and all that detailed stuff within there. But um, yeah, the question has been put to me by a Mrs Nicola McEvoy, from well, from where I live – she is my wife!

Yep, Mrs. M has asked a question. And this is having listened to episodes 1-4. And she has made a very good point. Yeah, all this detail is great, but do I need a camera? Very good question.

Let's have a look at answering it.

The answer is this. It's very simple. It depends. Sorry, if that's a bit of a cop out, but it really does depend on a lot of things.

1 Firstly, what are your aims for your photography?
Do you just like going out taking photos? Or snaps as somebody I know calls them? Do you want to make a living from photography? Do you want to go professional? Do you want to learn advanced techniques? Or are you just happy wandering around taking photos with your phone?

Now I have to say that the answer depends.

And it's really irrelevant. 

2 What matters.
Two things matter to me. One is that you enjoy photography. And also that you actually go out and take photos. If you do those two things it doesn't really matter. What you use, whether you use a camera or a phone, there is no right or wrong answer – it is down to everybody's own needs and tastes.

3 What about me then?
I need a camera. I use a full frame Canon DSLR for my architectural and construction photography work. Now a full frame camera has a large sensor, which captures lots of information. I also have an Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera or two, which I use my travel photography. But the Canon 6D is my main commercial camera.

4 – What about my phone?
I use my iPhone as well for videos, photos, (pantsing shots – not really sure what I said there…), and oh, yeah, as a phone.

5 Shock news about phones
Believe it or not these phone things everybody carries around with them. There's a wonderful thing you can do them, you can actually dial some numbers in there and talk to somebody else. It's not a device that you're required to walk around staring at you can actually speak to people. And obviously, my phones in day to day use and sharing photos is one of the massive benefits.

6 Can you get great photos with a phone?
You sure can. The software in phones these days is really quite staggering. And I'm sure that people have taken photos with an iPhone that you couldn't tell were taken with an iPhone (other phones are available). But in my opinion at the moment, my iPhone is not good enough for me to use on my commercial photography work.

7 Why is that?
Well, putting aside the fact that if I turned up to a job with my phone, my client would probably look at me and go, really, I'm paying for someone with a phone?

No, there's much more that cameras do. And there's a reason that there are cameras out there. And there's a reason that there are cameras of varying prices, varying complexities.

8 Why do I need a camera.
I need a full frame DSLR camera - that is a digital single lens reflex camera. Another ridiculous term from the past. I need a DSLR to capture high quality RAW images that I can process in Lightroom. And if things have gone badly also in Photoshop.

My phone just doesn't collect the same amount of data, the depth of the shadows, the highlights the lights, the darks, a phone doesn't capture the dynamic range that a camera does.

Sure there's HDR software that you can use in a phone but it's just not the same. The resolution of a photo taken with a full frame DSLR or micro four thirds or mirrorless or APSC format doesn't really matter.

With a camera, you get more information than you get in general terms with a phone.

9 So where was I?
Sorry, I went off on one, then yeah. The quality of a photo taken with a professional lens is going to be higher than one with a camera phone. It's just law of optics really, you'll get more detail, more sharp focus more blurred focus, if that's what you want. So the quality with a camera is better than with a phone.

10 I also have specific needs from lenses
I need a wide angle lens, 17mm on a full frame.

11 Controls and handling
I also need the controls and settings that a digital camera has that you just don't get with a phone. It's also an issue about usability and handling - cameras are designed to be held in the hand. Or put on a tripod in my case.

One of my big bugbears with my iPhone is that if I don't put it in a case, I can't use it because I just drop it. A camera is designed to be held and used to take photos and nothing else.

13 Other stuff
I also use filters, mainly neutral density filters to blur things.

So I need a camera. I have a camera. I have a number of cameras on I also have an iPhone. I enjoy using all of them.

13 But I love my iPhone
But I really enjoy taking photos with my iPhone. A couple of years ago I went on holiday with my Canon 6D and all the lenses, all the stuff that goes with it. But I really couldn't be bothered getting my camera out of the boot of the car. So I just used my phone, and it was great.

This led me onto getting a much smaller Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera. I'll get onto Micro Four Thirds in another episode.

So yeah, iPhones certainly give you the immediacy of a photo - look on the back of the screen on my Canon 6D and you can't really see anything. It's just not the same as the screen on an iPhone. And it's immediate - you can share it. Not a big thing to me. 

Summary
So um, yeah. Do you, me, anyone needs cameras in 2020? Or is phone all we need? Well, as I said before, I'll say it again. It's down to each person. We're all different. We all have our own needs, wants and preferences.

And I'll go back again to the more important point. It's more important that we're all out there taking photos, practising learning, photography, whatever it is that we use, getting out and taking photos, the number one way to improve your photography sounds like an ad doesn’t it?

Enough
Right, I could go on - believe me, I could go on about this indefinitely. But I'm going to stop there because um, yeah, I did have a plan for the episodes, I was getting into very specific technical things which I was going to explain.

But I've got a prompt on my iPad in front of me saying “next on the Photography Explained Podcast”, and I'll be honest with you, I haven't got a clue. I don't know what I'm going to do next because I quite like this. This high level chat about stuff. The question was a great one from Mrs M.

I didn't need to do any research from it. This was all in my head. So next episode, who knows I will come up with something.

Thanks
So I will say thank you very much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode - a bit of a waffle to be honest with you. But hey, there's some good stuff in there. If you enjoyed the episode, please leave a nice review and rating wherever you get your podcasts from.

I am now available on all the main podcast providers. And please subscribe so you don't you miss an episode?

And if you could tell anybody you think who might be interested about my podcast that will be greatly appreciated.

You can also check out my website Rick McEvoy Photography where you can find out all about me and my architectural and construction photography work on also find my blog. As of this episode you can find the list of episodes that I have published and also the list of subjects that I am looking to answer in future episodes. I couldn't get the form working for you to just fill that in and submit your questions. So please email me sales@rickmcevoyphotography.co.uk and I will add it to the list.

This episode is brought to you by mainly Alta Rica coffee and Biscoff cream biscuits. They kept me going - if only that was a sponsored link!

Thanks again for listening and I will see you on the next episode. Cheers from me, Rick.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

camera, phone, photography, photos, episode, mcevoy, iphone, canon, podcast, full frame dslr, rick mcevoy, lenses, answer, dslr, question, exposure triangle, olympus, capture