iPhone killing point-and-shoots?

I bought a nice Powershot 260IS thinking that my bag would be lighter and I'd still come home with decent shots I could show to people.
Then my wife pulls out an iPhoto 4S and takes pictures that have true colors, better, 'normal' contrast and she can send them off her gadget without any uploading or manipulating, just like that.
It is humiliating!

I think I hear the bell toll for the point and shoots unless the people at Cakonpus take the challenge seriously. As I've heard, the Panasonic Lumixphone has already been launched in Japan. Obviously, at Apple, they have lined up some aperture chaps in the iPhone developing team to fight with the physical laws fconfronting the sugarcupe-sized optical apparatus that they have squeezed in their smartphone that does GPS, Calendar, upgrades your Facebook status and wakes you up in the morning..the F..er even reads you aloud your SMS!!!

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Where is the Canodobebook social camera that millions of buyers are waiting for?

I can be corrected on this but the current best smart phone camera is in the Samsung Galaxy S3. High end smart phone cameras are getting pretty dam good thats for sure when compared to P&S.

A P&S worth a fraction of the cost of a high end smart phone can still hold it's own though & for a fraction of the price so I guess that's one advantage.

It might for people who take an occasional photo, but for vacation/kids it drains your battery way to fast to take as many photos as many people do in those situations. So, until a phone can do all the other things it does and take 500 shots on a single battery charge, you risk being without a phone if you used it for a vacation camera.

My iPhone 4 Jpeg1 pictures are nothing good.

EDIT: I followed link to two pictures on FB.
Sorry, both are adequately crap JPEG1 in camera processing.
Any P&S with RAW support and post-processing in PC will outperform both,
but at FB they "eat" everything.
Last place I want to post my DSLR pictures is FB, it was designed by students with crappy mobile phone cameras.

The so called 'camera' in those phones suck, it will not kill off point and shoot cameras anytime soon with the exception of Nokia's new monster which kicks just about everything else's butts.

/ Magnus

Good or bad photos aside, smartphones are having a market impact. According to Clark Howard, a consumer expert, smartphones are having an impact on the camera market and a HUGE impact on the GPS market.

Our oldest daughter (in her 30's) dislikes her point and shoot for the shutter latency (delay). She is dissatisfied with the photos from her Smartphone even more; it may be more responsive, but she doen't like the photos it takes. (I know of much more responsive point and shoots than the one she has.)

It is hard to conclude, from this anecdotal evidence, that phone cameras will 'take over' from point and shoots entirely.
The conveniece of the general purpose device (phone, calculator, audio player, GPS, camera, ethernet browser, etc.) offsets the compromises in performance or features in each application category vs. dedicated devices.

The iPhone 4S takes pretty nice photos and videos. One thing to keep in mind though is that most people just email it to someone or post it on Facebook; printing them hardly ever happens anymore. I think one of the main reasons the phones are taking some of the market share away from p&S is because you already have your phone with you and if it takes decent pictures then the p&s is one less thing you have to carry with you.

So I can't tell which one is the iphone and which the point and shoot but I'm going to guess that the lady is taken with the camera and the man with the iphone. The reason I say this is that there is no fill flash on the man's photo. However, the lighting with the highlights and the shadows is actually quite nice compared to the filled flash photo.
This is a question of putting the light where you want it and has nothing to do with the camera itself. With a point and shoot you at least have a better ability to control that light.
I have a Galaxy S3 and it does an OK job, but I hardly use it for the reasons mentioned above. It uses way too much battery power, the LED flashes are lousy, shutter lag stinks, and sharpness is a bit lousy.

Camera phones are the death of the cheap P&S, and thank goodness for that. Hopefully soon the only thing you will really see in P&S cameras are action/sports ones (waterproof, shock proof, etc.), and high quality ones for reasonable prices. That being said, here are my thoughts on the biggest reason the iPhone image is better.....

When it comes to IMAGE QUALITY from photography hardware the order of importance is:

Lens
Sensor
.
.
.
(way down there....)
Everything else.

The Powershot 260IS has a 20x Super-Zoom lens. The iPhone has a Prime in it. So already the iPhone has a massive lead.... I mean an absolutely astronomically large lead, just from that alone. And given the size of the sensor they can put a very good quality prime lens in there for cheap too.
The Powershot has a sensor that is probably 4 times larger than the iPhone. That helps a bit, but it doesn't come even vaguely close to making up for the difference between a 20x super-zoom lens and a prime.

So the problem is not so much the P&S itself, but the fact that it is a super-zoom P&S that has compromised image quality built right into its design. Up side is that the Powershot can zoom in on things much further away and still get a mediocre shot while the iPhone can't get a shot at all.

My advice to the OP would be to get yourself a quality 1-5x Compact/P&S instead of a (relatively) cheap super-zoom. That will get you way better photos than that iPhone. Also get an Eye-fi card and have it upload wirelessly to your smartphone automatically and you too can post photos to FB a couple minutes after you take them.

For instance, here is a SOOC Jpeg taken in similar circumstances to your shots (full auto mode too). Difference is mine was taken with a camera that doesn't compromise in lens or sensor quality nearly as much as yours. Indeed, it is actually as good or better than consumer DSLR's from just a couple years ago (Better than the T1i at the very least in my opinion).... My wifes Fuji X10 (4xZoom, f/2-f/2.8, $450 shipped as open-box with warranty just three weeks ago):

IMAGE IS A REDIRECT OR MISSING! Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

IMAGE IS A REDIRECT OR MISSING! Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

The way I look at it is, in addition to my hatred of smart phones (high cost, un-needed apps, etc.), I view point and shoots as one step down from DSLRs as far as comfort in the hand and phone cams another step down from that. I tried using my son's smart phone to take photos a couple weeks ago. The damn thing was too small, too slippery and I found it extremely awkward to use.

After using a family member's ELPH 100 for flower shots - quite frankly, no, no the iPhone nor any smartphone will not replace a GOOD P&S. My smartphone is very good at gathering information on the fly, providing navigation (in backup to a real compass and paper map) and being what it was meant to be - a PHONE. At no point did it ever come close to replacing any camera I've ever owned with it's only use coming when I had no other camera available or I quickly needed to snap a pic of a product tag in a store.

To Arentol: I still have my Lumix LX3 for P&S RAW shooting.
For real photography I have a 5D II. One thing I do not need is more gadgets.
Unless, of course, Canon launches a FF mirrorless that can use EF lenses and the whole new series of primes.
Not likely.

My GF indeed leaves her nice Lumix at home and is perfectly happy when she han share her iPhone 4S shots on FBook or email them over 3G network wherever she is.
So I can see with my own eyes that the iPhone is taking over the market of P&S.
As to the Powershoot 260, I thought that its quality would match the price.
I was disappointed. Cameras like that will and should vanish.

kf095 wrote in post #14628255
My iPhone 4 Jpeg1 pictures are nothing good.

EDIT: I followed link to two pictures on FB.

= = =

Last place I want to post my DSLR pictures is FB, it was designed by students with crappy mobile phone cameras.

We are a family living in four different countries so FBook makes sense.
There are artists and photographers with diplomas in the family and that is completely bedside the point. The point is to communicate with pictures and videos over the Net.
Too many pixels = too long upload times.

As it seems, we are not the only ones using some of our pix in this fashion.
The quality requirements are easily met by a smartphone.

I can understand people hating smart phones when I think about the fervor our teachers hated ball-point pens when I was at school. Have you tried picking up a fountain pen lately and using it in our everyday business?

I use my iPhone 4 daily for various purposes. Jailbreak made possible its use as a telephone also. The problem with smart phones is their users.

I think your question does not cover the real issue, sharing..I have replaced my point and shoot with the Iphone because of the simple sharing abbility over any camera including my 5dmk2 and 7d.

I think that major camera manufactures will see this and adress it, I also would never use an iphone at any event that I feel is somthing that will end up printing or want somthinf bigger than FB or twitter.

Nothing beats seeing a part that your buddy who is working on a full restor of his classic car at a sale and within seconds he can see it and if I need to buy it, my point and shoot can not help me here.

So in taste of your question yes its killing p&s cameras but not touching some