DSLR quality has been a buzzword for phone cameras for a while now. And in some cases it is. But when comparing photos across a range of conditions from my phone to a full frame DSLR with a good lens one is clearly better. As one example, simulated bokeh isn't as nice looking at the real thing. The resulting photo difference is more pronounced in long telephoto portraits.
The software, convenience, and always with you aspect ensure phones will probably always be dominant. But as Leica is showing there is still a hunger for photos that look better.
With photography, optimizing hardware (sensor, glass) is going to yield more results than optimizing software. Sensor size has an impact on the resulting photo.
Sure they make good cameras, but I think the real blessing they give the photography world is they way they function as a sponge, soaking up a lot of money so it's not going around and inflating the price of the other vintage camera stuff I want to buy.
Pretty amazing... the market overall for consumer digital cameras has crashed over the last decade due of course to smartphones making a dedicated camera kind of redundant for the majority of consumers. But Leica shows that even in a crashing market there is room for some to succeed! Btw., it was Leica that popularized the 35mm format for photographic film.
While that is undoubtedly true, Leica never really catered to the 'I could do with a dedicated camera' crowd, but rather to the 'I am passionate about photography and am reasonably well-heeled' or 'I am obscenely rich and would like to show off' crowd.
That, and presumably a lot of their revenue is from licencing their brand name to all sorts of phone manufacturers.
I wouldn't be surprised if their own rangefinder line (which is what I believe most people into photography associate with the Leica brand) was at best breaking even - it is merely a means to maintain the cachet of the brand, methinks. YMMV.
(Said as a longtime Leica enthusiast, but the digital Ms are out of my (comfortable) reach - when out shooting rangefinders, it is mostly a Leica M4 (1968) or a Cosina/Zeiss Ikon ZM (2005-ish, methinks)
> 'I am obscenely rich and would like to show off' crowd.
The usual joke is "for dentists who want to take some family snapshots" (which is a slur at dentists, not at Leica. I've used two of their cameras, the Q and the SL2, and both are very pleasant experiences).
The software, convenience, and always with you aspect ensure phones will probably always be dominant. But as Leica is showing there is still a hunger for photos that look better.
With photography, optimizing hardware (sensor, glass) is going to yield more results than optimizing software. Sensor size has an impact on the resulting photo.
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