Today, more people take photos with cell phone cameras than with any other kind. Convenience, ubiquity and the ability to post results at once all combine to make the tiny cameras with miniscule sensors more popular than all other types combined. Larger, more professional equipment is far more bulky and more expensive. It also produces immeasurably better results. And yet, for most purposes, cell phone cameras are good enough.
Now imagine that all other cameras are restricted by law to use only in professional studios, certain wilderness areas or private homes. When carried elsewhere, they must be in hard cases with batteries and memory cards removed. Ridiculous? That’s generally the legal status of long guns in the US — far superior to handguns in performance but bulky and very much restricted from daily use.
Under the current circumstances, professional photographers waste little time discussing performance of cell phone cameras. They discuss real professional equipment, lighting, logistics and the generation of visual ideas. The difference between cameras in competing cell phone models are so irrelevant to them as to escape notice. Should better equipment suddenly be restricted or entirely unavailable, the minor differences in the performance of inferior but legal equipment would suddenly come to the fore.
That is why so many people obsess over the kinetic energy, magazine capacity and other features of handguns. Handguns are the wrong weapon for almost every defensive fight — machine guns, grenade launchers and other serious arms are much preferred by military and police who are not under the same legal and logistical restrictions. But absent the right weapons — mainly for legal and logistical reasons — we try to make the best of the poor options. Absent sufficient training as well, we try to substitute improved equipment for insufficient aptitude. It’s a reasonable, if regrettable, approach. A person whose life consists of a job, a family and other interests besides photography or self-defense will still get slightly better results with better gear.
