Originally Posted by
Seattle Forrest
My smart phone takes crappy pictures. They look ok but not great when reduced to web size. The thing only has a digital zoom, and there's no control over the exposure. So there are a lot of reasons point and shoot cameras still make sense. That's not even getting into battery life.
The way a smart phone could really help with snapshots on the go is if you could get at the photos from your camera with it, so when you get back to a place with cell coverage, you can send a few of them off to friends and show them why they should have joined you on the ride.
There are apps for Iphones that allow manual focus and exposure control. If you look at the link I posted above, image quality is as good, and in some cases better than the basic Nikon point and shoot.
An optical zoom is admittedly an advantage for the point and shoot.
But is it enough advantage to pay $150, and have another device to carry and keep charged. When you could go up to the $400 range and get a camera that's still pocketable, has a larger image sensor, full manual controls, has very good image quality, and has raw capture.
My suggestion is that the Iphone 5 is good enough for most people for most purposes. If you care enough about photography that you're not satisfied with that, then a camera like the Canon S120, or the Sony RX100 is going to be a significant step up from the phone, and the basic point and shoot.