Smartphone Camera Apps: Can They Outperform DSLRs?

Finding and buying the best DSLR camera is no longer the single available option for controlling shooting settings and achieving excellent-quality photos. Smartphone cameras have become increasingly popular among photography enthusiasts who turn these devices into a shooting powerhouse, thanks to smartphone apps.

This flexibility, along with the smartphone’s portability, is the reason many people are switching to smartphones from digital cameras, according to phoneradar.com.

In a recent statistic released by Flickr.com in December 2015, smartphones—particularly the iPhone 6, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5, iPhone 4s, iPhone 4, and iPhone 6 Plus—took the first six spots as the top cameras used by the members of the photo-sharing community, overtaking the Canon EOS 5D Mark II that took the seventh spot.

Does this rise in smartphone camera use mean that smartphone cameras will soon replace DSLRs?

Smartphone camera vs. DSLR

After testing a smartphone camera, a DSLR, and a point-and-shoot camera, photographer and blogger Harrisson Jacobs concludes in his article for the BusinessInsider.com that despite attempts of certain smartphone apps to mimic shots taken with DSLRs, the former still fail to replicate the delicate quality and sharpness that the latter produce. He also maintains that although some apps attempt to achieve the effect of the lens, they cannot do precise shots from particular locations like that of a Nikon D90 from 50-feet away with a 300mm telephoto lens attachment. “An iPhone attempting the same photo would never have been able to zoom in that closely without pixelating the entire image,” he writes.

Aside from zoom capabilities, smartphone apps like the Open Camera for Android allow users to switch focus mode, fine-tune scene modes, lock exposures, and change the white balance filter. But after thorough testing, Dylan Jones, founder of tech blog ThatOneGeek.us, maintains that while using the app on his Samsung Galaxy S5 does help him take better photos, the app still isn’t able to do some things that would otherwise be possible with a dedicated camera.

“Everything has to come with some down side. It’s not the perfect camera app out there, but it does p[er]form well when needed. The things that did bite it hard for me is the fact if you have to[o] much on your screen like all the grids and angles the camera will lag from time to time. Also when taking a photo it can slow down the UI and it’s harder to take that photo. And the last thing I found to be annoying… is even if you stand still or get the perfect angle the photo can either be too close or even turned sideways.”

There’s also the Camera MX, which enables users to take control of the photo composition through its GPS tagging, self-timer, flash, and zoom adjustment features. But this is as far as smartphone apps go. These features still cannot make your smartphone capture shots in low-light or extreme darkness like a dedicated DSLR can. This app also does not change much the unsightly effect produced by the smartphone’s slightly wide-angle lens on shooting portraits—unless you invest in smartphone lens attachments that correct this problem.

Speaking of smartphone camera attachments, one product that attempts to bring the interchangeable lens feature to iphoneography is the Ollo clip 4-in-1 lens system that features four type of lenses: fisheye, wide-angle, 10x Macro, and 15x Macro. However, a review by iphoneographer Emil Pakarklis of iPhone Photography school reveals that this product works well only in macro shooting. For other types of lens-specific shooting like fisheye and wide-angle, the Ollo clip tends to distort the details of the image.

Which is better?

Considering all these tests, it is sufficing to say that while smartphone camera apps and filters upgrade the shooting capabilities of a smartphone, they have certain limitations (possibly due to the smartphone’s size and form) that keep them from fully achieving what a DSLR can do. And if you’re not willing to compromise your photography experience with these limitations, you are better off just using a DSLR or a mirrorless camera.

Perhaps in the future, smartphones and supplementing apps that can outperform DSLRs would be developed. But as of the moment, given the current technology, DSLRs and other dedicated cameras remain unbeatable in capturing that perfect photo.