The Streets of Yerevan

In 2022, there are several solid reasons to have a separate camera in addition to a smartphone. Let’s put resolution, optics, and everything else aside. In my view, the main motivation is simply that the photos don’t look like what the iPhone produces.

Those are exactly the kinds of photos everyone has on Instagram, and they all look more or less the same. It doesn’t really matter whether you shoot digital or even film, these photos will stand out noticeably regardless of the quality of the gear you use.

That’s exactly why I love my Fujifilm XT-20. Yes, it’s sharper; yesterday I put a new 35mm prime on it, but in reality I just really like the photos it produces. Especially the color. I don’t even try to grade them much, I just sometimes pick a different profile in Capture One and nudge the highlights and shadows a bit.

The fact that everyone has a camera in their pocket is an incredible achievement of humanity. I’m a bit jealous of people born around 2010, because I have three photo albums for my entire childhood, and they have a magazine of their whole life. Mobile cameras have come an astonishingly long way.

But in the end, the iPhone has downsides both technical (the resolution still isn’t quite there yet) and artistic. Smart HDR helped get rid of the problems inherent to the first digital cameras, but now it too often makes light and dark areas look the same. And sometimes having deep blacks and blown highlights isn’t a bad thing at all.