[Dartmoor Dave]

A good choice being turned down only because of some opinionated baboon insistence?We should all care more about what other people think of us: this way we will all end up doing what's best for... them?

Apparently it's not the done thing at a Cunard dinner table to tell another passenger where he can shove his entire collection of Canikon zooms.

[35mmfilmfan]

Apparently it's not the done thing at a Cunard dinner table to tell another passenger where he can shove his entire collection of Canikon zooms

Not even if the helicoid has been recently lubricated ?

[mohb]

Does this whole issue get distorted by a 'fear' of the cellphone? In the days before cellphones at events I was often the only person using an SLR, everybody else would be using compacts or even the incredibly popular 'disposable'. If I visit my local heritage steam railway then DSLRs dominate, enthusiasts want the best so they use the best, holiday makes want an image so they use a convenient medium which also connects them to the internet and the destination of most of their pics.
After forty years of carrying a bag of camera gear wherever I go I find it difficult not to take a bag but I imagine that for many the idea of carrying a 2kg bag just for a Facebook photo is ridiculous

[dave2k]

I find that camera usage is very specific to the situation. I recently visited Alaska for a sightseeing trip. At the very "mainstream" locations cell phone camera use was dominant, but as you move toward the harder-to-reach locations ILC use became much more common. Two examples are a bus tour in Denali National Park and a whale-watching boat tour. On the boat tour I'd say at least half of the tourists were shooting DSLRs including some with very nice long lenses. This reflects what is required to get very good photos. There's a very popular, easily accessible sunset at the beach location not too far from where I live and on a recent visit there were hundreds of people waiting to shoot the sunset. About 95% of them were using their cell phones. As usual, I had my backpack, 2-4 lenses and a tripod to shoot the same scene. I do look for other Pentaxians and I'll say hello to them if I get a chance, but they are hard to find!

[steve_k]

Cell phones are definitely better than DSLR’s at taking that selfie of yourself going over the edge of a cliff. 😁

[WPRESTO]

Some years back it was observed that sales of compact, shirt-pocket digital cameras, the tiny ones that have a 3X zoom, had peaked and were declining because people were using their cell phone cameras instead. After all, in the latter part of the film era, people were delighted with an Instamatic, and then with single-use cameras available from a twirl-around display in every drug store. For a time, single-use cameras were given out to all the guests at wedding receptions. They wouldn't be distributing ME Supers much less F3's

[Lord Lucan]

he was latched onto by an enthusiastic Canikon who spent the whole two weeks telling him he was using the wrong camera.

I think it shows a lack of confidence on the part of the Canikon, he needed to excercise his thoughts out loud as to why his camera was supposed to be better.

I have never met this scenario. If I did I think I would listen to their points, and, if they had not already mentioned it (unlikely), ask if they were familiar with the www.dpreview.com website and recommend it's side-by-side comparison tool. I'd tell them that it would show that between Nikon/Canon/Pentax's (and some others') equivalent offerings, the advantages and disadvantages were six of one and half a dozen of the other.

[ccc_]

last year we spent a month in that area...I don't know about 95% but that would be close
I mentioned somewhere else that I never saw another pentax
the rental cameras tended to be Nikons
the people I talked to using their own gear almost all used canon
beyond that a couple of sonys and maybe three Fuji x30-types (I carried one everywhere and left my q at home because of the Fuji's EVF)

my wife used a Samsung phone and took away some excellent images
much like the Fuji, it was close to hand and highly portable...which my k3 and sigma 150-500 was not

[WPRESTO]

You also need to consider what people want to photograph. During a visit to the Canadian Rockies (film era) we were at an overlook to a beautiful glacial lake with mountains all about, crystal clear day. A busload of Japanese teenagers on tour arrived. They sat on a bench behind which there was a tall hedge and took selfies with P&S film cameras. They took pictures of each other in front of the bus. One would take a camera from another, turn their back on the scenery, and take a photo of the camera owner with nothing but the walkway as background. I did not see a single person from that bus take a picture of the scenery, in fact, very few of them even looked at it. Go figure.

[Kevin B123]

Here's the thing, some of those peeps will return disappointed with the images they took, and look for a better camera and understand that they need control over it to improve things. I did.
The old phone image below hardly bears looking at, and most phones are way better now though so maybe that's changed too.
I still take crap pictures though, but I'm not fumbling through a menu system anymore. And my battery won't die. And I can zoom and still get a decent image.

[photoptimist]

I find that camera usage is very specific to the situation. I recently visited Alaska for a sightseeing trip. At the very "mainstream" locations cell phone camera use was dominant, but as you move toward the harder-to-reach locations ILC use became much more common. Two examples are a bus tour in Denali National Park and a whale-watching boat tour. On the boat tour I'd say at least half of the tourists were shooting DSLRs including some with very nice long lenses. This reflects what is required to get very good photos. There's a very popular, easily accessible sunset at the beach location not too far from where I live and on a recent visit there were hundreds of people waiting to shoot the sunset. About 95% of them were using their cell phones. As usual, I had my backpack, 2-4 lenses and a tripod to shoot the same scene. I do look for other Pentaxians and I'll say hello to them if I get a chance, but they are hard to find!

Exactly!

I see the same pattern. The mass-market tourist spots attract mass market people who have no interest in photography but do want selfies/snapshots of their visit to the place. More specialized or obscure destinations attract hard-core travelers who are more likely to carry a standalone camera.

This isn't a new phenomenon. Thirty years ago, all these selfie-takers would have had instamatics, pocket 110s, etc. I'd bet that 95% of Kodak's film and print paper production was used by snapshot compact cameras. Although there was a time when "everyone had to have an SLR" (with kit lens and the hood on backwards), that fad died and most of those SLRs are in the attic or at garage sales.

[Rondec]

There are more "photographers" than ever before. There are plenty of folks who are using a cell phone camera now who would never have purchased any sort of ILC in the past. Maybe (at the most) they would have purchased a compact with some sort of built in zoom, but probably not even that. The fact that they are using any sort of camera right now is probably progress.

I do find it amusing when I see people using cell phone cameras in places where they are going to get poor images -- taking an image of the night sky with their flash enabled, etc.

[clickclick]

In my experience, most of these folks never look at the photos on anything other than their phones anyway, so they have no idea what real IQ is. I've got a friend who will ask me to send him pictures. Invariably I have to beat him to get him to look at them on something other than his phone. The reasoning? Email came to the phone, it's in his hand, and they looked nice. Sigh.....

[normhead]

IN a way it's nice, for those who never wanted more than cell phone snapshots, a phone is a wonderful thing. It's great they don't have to carry a lot of gear yp get the images they do. But, it helps DSLR images stand out from the crowd. The more people use cell phones, the more reason for hiring a pro to do important stuff.

[clickclick]

cell phone = Instamatic