Bryan Jones, retinal neuroscientist and photographer (via James Duncan Davidson):
In short, we are rapidly approaching a point where Apple has many of the required tools in their workflow to redefine how photography works for professionals as well as consumers. There are some professional photographers that have embraced smart phones in their workflow and some like my friend Trent are even teaching classes in college on photography with smart phones. That said, while it is true that while the iPhone is being used professionally by some in limited capacities, right now the smart phone is nowhere near a replacement for SLR camera systems […]
The iPhone technology convergence is showing the world the way forward in terms of how to integrate technology into photography. It remains to be seen whether Apple will capitalize on this or how soon camera companies will begin to adopt strategies pioneered by the smart phone industry.
Bryan’s article is great. He hits on two themes: (a) just how empowering software can be to photography (both in terms of removing friction from someone’s workflow, and also to improving the quality of the image); and (b) how far and how fast will Apple push the quality of the iPhone camera’s hardware?
This is something I plan to write about more in my eventual review of the E-PL5, but one of the first things I thought after I had edited my first batch of images was, now what?
I posted them to my Flickr account of course, but that seems like not enough. I chose not to post them to Instagram because that’s cheating, but my Flickr account is a like ghost town when compared to the activity on Instagram (both in terms of the quantity of images posted by people I follow and the amount of feedback I get on the images I post).
Not only do I want to have a personal archive and album of my images (so far I’ve been putting all my favorites into iPhoto), but I also want to share images with friends and family. The iPhone makes archiving automatic and sharing extremely easy. I haven’t yet figured out just what I want to do with the images I’m taking with the Olympus, nor what my ideal workflow looks like.
Samsung has attempted to marry the quality of a dedicated camera with the apps and sharability of a smartphone in their Galaxy Camera, but based on The Verge’s review it’s overpriced for the quality and a bit frustrating to use due to the software.