Originally posted by ChristianRock What I want to know is... out of all photographers that have photography as their main source of income, how many are using iPhones as their primary camera?
That would tell us if the iPhone has killed big camera...
After all, "killed" is a very strong word and I have a pet peeve against clickbaits... which the word "killed" reminds me of.
Around thirty years ago I was using my Pentax Super Program to take photos at a tourist attraction - at a former "company town" associated with a coal mine. Shortly before we left, the docent indicated me as she asked my wife "Who is he with?". She knew what a "professional" camera looked like, and my Super Program looked like that to her eyes.
Around that time, Canon came out with the T-90, and by the time I purchased my next camera, a Canon EOS Elan, all high-end cameras looked like that, so when I stopped along a rural road to photograph an attractive barn, the farmer had every reason to believe that I was a professional taking pictures for next year's calendars, so he came running out to inform me he expected to get 10% of my royalties.
The lesson from these two cases is that most people know what the cameras used by professionals look like. Even if an iPhone X could produce a photo indistinguishable from one produced by a Nikon D850, no professional would use an iPhone X, because nobody would believe that he was a professional - because everyone has an image of what kind of camera goes with being a professional .... and professionals need to maintain that gap because everyone feels he could take great photos if he just had great equipment.