iPhone still ain't a DSLR
Marco Arment:
…photos from the iPhone 4, and even from the 4S, don’t hold up. They look fine on a 3.5-inch screen, but they look terrible on my big desktop monitor and abysmal on the Retina MacBook Pro.
This is nothing new. I have been using both DSLRs and smartphones to take photos for many years now and while smartphone cameras are getting better and better every year, they still have a long way to go before the quality of the photos they produce is anywhere near DSLRs. In large sizes and on high resolution displays smartphone photos still look rather rubbish. And when it comes to prints, the difference is even greater. The point is that unless you ever try to make a large print or to view your pics in 100% size on a decent monitor, you may feel the difference is minimal. But it’s not.
In reality it is still (unfortunately) about two different tools for two different jobs. Need great portability? Take your smartphone. Want decent pictures that can be presented in large sizes and don’t suffer from high noise and limited sharpness? Digital SLR (or at least a very decent pro-compact like NX-7 or Fuji X100) is what you need.
