PHONE HOME
THE BIGGEST DEBATE LEADING UP TO this year’s TIPA World Awards – you can read all about the winners in this issue – was the proposal to expand the number of smartphone categories from one to three. Given all the TIPA members are photography magazines of one flavour or another, the discussion was robust. After all, it’s the smartphone that’s decimated a significant sector of the camera business that’s resulted in a very big market retraction. To be honest, it’s hard to see how this could have been stopped, given everything else that the smartphone does, but for many photographers it’s definitely not a ‘real’ camera.
The proponents of adding more smartphone categories argued that they are rapidly becoming more like real cameras as lenses, image sensors and processing options combine to deliver more picture-taking capabilities. There’s also an element of if-you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em here, which has some validity because smartphones aren’t going to go away and so it’s time to start acknowledging that they’re part of today’s imaging ecosystem. Another reality is that all the readers of our magazines likely own a smartphone, and probably use them for either photography or recording video clips on occasions. Additionally, over the last couple of years, we really haven’t been able to live without a smartphone, which has meant it’s now with us virtually all the time. Where’s your’s right now… and where’s your camera? Exactly.
That said, I’m pretty sure that you – being readers of this magazine – would make a clear differentiation between what (or how) you shoot with your smartphone and what you do with your camera. The smartphone is today’s snapshot camera, by virtue of being carried with you everywhere all the time… something that was never quite universally achieved even with the most compact of compact cameras. More critically, the smartphone allows the immediate sharing of pictures and video clips to any social media platform, generating pretty instant feedback. Viewer appreciation has always been an important part of photography, which is why, for example, we like to display prints and enter competitions.
The smartphone – via social media – allows you to reach a bigger audience and get a response while everything is still current and relevant.
The arguments against having more categories for smartphones largely centred on the contention that these awards could be better used for other products (the number of categories is always capped at 40). I must say this has always been my response when it’s been suggested that we should be reviewing smartphones in this magazine (which we have occasionally in the past)… i.e. those pages could be put to better use covering products that are… well, more photographic. This was pretty much summed up by the observation that, “it’s not our area”. It’s certainly true there are plenty of other places you can go for comprehensive reviews of smartphones, and I’d be more inclined to think it might be “our area” if there was any real evidence that the smartphone was making any significant inroads into what we might now call the ‘real camera’ market. OK, so smartphone companies occasionally spruik what imaging professionals are doing with their products, but the reality remains that the camera is the primary creative tool for the vast majority of photography and video-making applications that are more considered in both intent and involvement. The smartphone maybe convenient, but it’s hard to see it ever matching the capabilities of, say, Canon’s EOS R5 C or the Nikon Z 9.
As you’ll see from this year’s list of TIPA World Award winners, the pro camp won and, as you’ve probably guessed from all of the above, I was one of those against the idea. As it happens, I don’t think any more worthy category has missed out this time around, and certainly all three winning products are very interesting from the camera point-of-view, especially the OnePlus with its Hasselblad involvement. Nevertheless, I still think our commitment here at Australian Camera has to be first and foremost to dedicated cameras and everything that’s involved with using – and enjoying – them to their fullest potential. Of course, these are also very much celebrated in these awards which illustrate just how much exciting stuff is happening right now. But I have to confess that I still vote as much with my heart as my head, and I suspect every purchase of a new camera has some emotional elements such is the intimacy of photography. I may be often physically attached to my smartphone, but the relationship goes no deeper… uh-oh, I think it’s ringing now.