---
title: Camera Destiny
published_at: 2017-01-30T05:45:22Z
image: /assets/fragments/camera-destiny/under-the-bridge.jpg
hook: TODO
---

I saw something that worried me.

---
title: Camera Destiny
published_at: 2017-03-31T03:47:21Z
image: /assets/fragments/camera-destiny/under-the-bridge.jpg
hook: TODO
---

A few months back a friend and I were doing walk around San
Francisco, and ended up walking the whole coastline from
the ruins of Sutro Baths to the Marina. We took a lot of
photos along the way. I was shooting with my Fujifilm
X100S. She was using her iPhone 7.

While we examined our haul of photos from the expedition, I
saw something that worried me. The iPhone 7 photos weren't
just good, they were _really_ good. So good that they were
competitive with anything that I was doing with my
dedicated camera. The photo above is one that she took of
me as we were making our way around the base of the Golden
Gate Bridge to Fort Point, and it's better than anything I
took that day.

iPhone 7s are expensive, with the base model coming in $649
USD. But if brazenly overpriced smartphones are being
outcompeted on that front by one other industry, it's pro
and "prosumer" camera equipment. The latest model of my
camera, the X100F (F = "fourth") weighs in at $1,299 USD;
two times the price of the base iPhone 7.

I still remember a time when phone cameras were about 50 by
100 pixels in resolution, and so embarassingly bad that you
wouldn't show one to your most ardent supporters. Not only
have those times passed, but these days they're nothing
more than a distant memory.

There are some enthusiasts like myself who will need to
have their "real" (i.e. non-smartphone) cameras ripped from
their cold, dead fingers, but the future of photography,
and more specifically the type of device that we'll be
using for it, seems to be more clear all the time.

Write the rest of this article
Write the rest of this article


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