Smartphones overtake DSLR’s in Top 5 Cameras pushing back Nikon & Canon

You may have heard that if you want to become a photographer, then you need to buy a DSLR camera. And then choose lens on the kind of photography you’ve in mind; macro photography, landscape photography. Of course, these lenses don’t come for cheap, but that’s the beauty of it, a photography enthusiast would know a lot about these lenses. And can easily recommend what lens one should use for a particular shot. Even it’s not easy to understand those camera settings.

But there is a new breed of photographers grooming, since when smartphone cameras started to get little interesting and pack heavy duty resolution and technologies. When compared with smartphones, the digital cameras sales are notably declining, and you know what is the most popular feature on a smartphone as per a study? The Camera. It is reported that 92% users worldwide says that camera is the top feature they use on their smartphones. This certainly points us to the direction that cameraphones are more popular than digital cameras.

Now there are varieties of digital cameras available in the market, a photography expert these days would tell that a DSLR cannot be replaced by a premium class cameraphone. It might be true as the smartphones have not yet achieved such technologies where they can offer superior image quality, a wide variety of zoom lenses options, color accuracy and a lot of features that are unachievable on a smartphone camera. But again, the brands such as Apple, Samsung and Sony have continually worked to offer disruptive camera phone technology.

Why Prefer a Smartphone Over Digital Camera?

The foremost reasoning for that is very much clear, with smartphones you get portability and they are many durable devices than any digital cameras, may it be a small point and shoot, or the big bad DSLR cameras. There are no devices in the market with high-end camera capability that would offer such convenience.

There was a time when Point & Shoot were the go-to cameras for photography. But with the rise of camera technology on smartphones, brands were able to fit a powerful piece of sensors on their handsets and Voila, a new breed of smartphone photographer aka smartgraphers was born. To back this up, there is a data that you can look into.

Talking Photography Numbers

The popular photo sharing application, Flickr, showcases the data of their users, who are mostly professional photographers or either budding enthusiasts. You’ll see that the most number of uploads is done using cameraphones. In the top five lists for the most popular camera in the Flickr community, you’ll only see the smartphones, but not any digital cameras.

Moreover, it should not be surprising that in the cameraphones category, the Apple iPhones takes top four places out of the top five. Topping the list is the iPhone 6, which is then followed by iPhone 5s, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6 Plus. The fifth handset in the list is a Samsung device, Galaxy S5, which is South Korean giant’s two-year-old handset.

Talking about the top brands in the Flickr community, the Apple takes the number one position with 24 models, where includes its entire camera enabled devices. The top five spots are taken by recently launched iPhones, and they together amount for more than 1.4 Billion uploads. The average daily uploads amount up to 65,000. This tells us how popular Apple iPhones are regarding photography.

The other smartphones brands that we see in the lists are Samsung and Sony while the Korean giant tops Canon and Nikon on the list, Sony comes fifth. With three in the top five lists being mobile brands, it is a pure indication that smartphones have overtaken the Digital Cameras in terms of camera usage. That’s why you can see a considerable downfall in the sales of Digital Cameras, especially Point & Shoot types. Because let’s face it smartphones can offer better mobility and reliability than those P & S models.

Some photographers would tell you that you can capture great moments with your iPhones, even shoot feature films using them. But the varieties and quality one can get on a DSLR cannot be replaced by any smartphone camera. Well, not yet at least. Smartphones may have become the primary source of photography these days and have even overtaken in terms of the usage, but they will not completely replace DSLR cameras anytime soon. Though, who’s to say smartphone brands might have already figured out how to put more extensive technologies on their smartphones. I guess, we will know that in the future.

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