Another nail ….

Hastening the demise of the DSLR.

…. in the coffin of DSLR and mirrorless camera makers. Yes, Zeiss just released an Android based mirrorless which will run you $6,000 and will get you hacked at no extra charge. A fool and his money …. But innovative?

The point is that innovation in traditional camera design is notable for its absence. Nikon makes ugly ducklings cobbled together by a committee, Sony makes more models than you can shake a stick at and Canon is focusing on multi-megapixel high ISO sensors no one needs. ISO 100,000 and 80 megapixels? Essential, no? And they all cost more than the iPhone which can be upgraded annually for less than $500 and does lots of other things than just take pictures.

You can read my iPhone 11 Pro user review here and the iPhone 12 Pro comes with no surprises, kaizen being the order of the day. Perhaps the most interesting new feature for photographers is the addition of a LIDAR detector. The newly added Laser Imaging, Detection and Ranging sensor makes nighttime focusing even more accurate, building on the already stellar Night Mode missing from your $3,000 mirrorless SLR.

Suffice it to say that the iPhone 11 Pro saw me selling my two Nikon FF bodies, some two dozen Nikkor lenses and two Panasonic GX7 bodies with four more lenses. I would have sold the china cabinet this lot needed for storage, but a small thing called COVID got in the way.

On the phone front there is 5G, a not-ready-for-prime-time feature awaiting the build out of US networks, but, hey, trendy as heck.

More when my iPhone 12 Pro arrives here, my order delayed by the wait for my favorite Lameeku wallet case to be released… Yes, the iPhone 12 Pro is differently shaped than the iPhone 11 Pro and that may be the greatest new ‘feature’ of all, for any change to the iPhone’s awful handling can only be an improvement. When Steve released the slab sided iPhone 4 in 2011 – a form factor emulated by the iPhone 12 Pro – he stated that his goal was to emulate the quality feel and experience of using a Leica. What he did not mention was that the iPhone was a fraction of the cost of the Leica rangefinder and did not break down. These two attributes carry over to the iPhone 12 Pro. There is still no optical zoom lens, but I would think that will be added next year when Apple perfects the periscope zoom design which will fit within its existing case designs.