I think I've been thinking about old cameras all wrong. At least, this video from James Warner of Snappiness has me rethinking how I look at old smartphone cameras, as he talks about the three best "vintage" smartphones to use exclusively for photography.
Now, Warner is no stranger to old digital cameras. He's built his entire brand around it. While smartphones historically didn't get a lot of mindshare as cameras back in the day—the day being 15 or so years ago—they certainly are now. Given that, a lot of manufacturers took some risks and created some interesting tools for photography.
Warner's first choice is not one of those. Warner pulls out the old iPhone 4S as the first example of a good vintage phone camera. He makes the argument that this was one of the last phones to produce more natural-looking images before the likes of computational imaging and other technologies started making images look less real than before. While I can see the argument as far as colors and shadow/highlight detail go, the 8 MP images look a little rough on today's high-resolution monitors. You can see for yourself when he posted some images on Instagram to his followers in an attempt to have them guess the camera. Still, to my eye, they do look less "digital" than my newer iPhones, which seem to take on a sort of "painterly" look with all of the processing going on behind the scenes.
The second camera (phone) is one that wasn't easily available stateside: the Huawei P10/P10 Plus. This camera stood out because it had a unique second sensor that was dedicated to monochrome images in addition to the standard color camera. The benefit of this second camera on the phone is not unlike that of very expensive dedicated cameras such as the Leica Q2 Monochrom, where removing the color and low-pass filters results in a lot of detail and potential for shadow/highlight recovery—with the obvious downside that you can't photograph in color.
There's a third phone in Warner's roundup with a really impressive trick up its sleeve, but you should watch the video above for the full rundown and to find out what the third phone in his top three is. It's a real oddball.
All of the phones in his roundup come in at less than $75 on the used market, so nothing will really break the bank.
If I'm adding my two cents here, while I don't find many of my old phones to be appealing to shoot with or look at the images from, there is something to be said for the older Pixel phones. I still have my Pixel 3a, and it was really the phone that made me think twice about cell phone images when it came out.
Do you have a favorite smartphone camera? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.
Perhaps our desire to feel nostalgiac about vintage equipment no longer makes sense
Interesting statement. To me, it never made sense.
Photography is about the photos we take, not the gear we take them with. That is why it is called "photography" and not "cameraography". Logically, the gear we choose should be based solely on a practical basis, not on nostalgia.
I have a Pixel 3A and the photos are great, plus I discovered by accident that it has awesome slow motion video with show motion sound.
Not if you want to zoom in to crop! (Though I'm not familiar with the latest, greatest high MP smartphones. Anyone?)
The new iPhone 16 Pro has a 120mm equivalent zoom and it basically caused me to sell my ZV-1 since it was pretty much redundant at that point (hot take, I know).