One evening, as sunset approached, I was on my normal walk around nearby streets. I cover pretty much the entire neighborhood on a daily basis, so everyone knows my schedule, and some even come out to say hello. I mainly walk to exercise and enjoy the outdoors, so I’m not always at the ready with a camera. Sometimes I’ll even forget to bring my phone, to my partner’s annoyance.

After several minutes of wandering around, I turned the street corner to head toward the lake. Shining back at me was the most beautiful of sunsets gracing the sky. It was gorgeous with swirling deep yellows, oranges and intense tomato reds that seemed to glow and bounce from cloud to cloud. As I approached the lake, the sunset’s reflection on the water was just as intense. We get a lot of great sunsets around here, sometimes nearly every day, but never before like this one.

And all I had was my iPhone 12 Pro.

Mathew Anderson

“All I had”… I felt ashamed as I held the phone in my hand to take a few opportunistic photos. “I work at DPReview with a community of photographers that have proper equipment they carry with them wherever they go, and here I am whipping out my phone as if I were too lazy to bother bringing along anything else, convenience be damned”, I thought to myself.

The main struggle is that I sometimes struggle to find a moment when my standalone camera is with me, unless I’ve planned the trip in advance. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about when it makes sense to grab a standalone camera. Should I always have a camera with multiple lenses ready, or is sometimes “just my phone” ok, and why do I feel like the phone is somehow deficient (even if it’s all I have at that moment)?

Camera technology in phones these days is truly impressive. Sure, they have the limitations one would expect of such a compact device, but some of the photos I’ve taken are, in my opinion, as pleasant to my eyes as if I were seeing them directly (more or less). At some point, we have to ask ourselves when the technology is important enough to keep it at the ready, or when the moment, combined with our skills as photographers, outweighs the equipment.

These thoughts have been preoccupying me during my outdoor walking sessions, so I want to talk with you about them.

Mathew Anderson

Should phones be revered as much as a full-on standalone camera with multiple lenses, but in their own useful way? Or should they be relegated to those convenient moments when one doesn’t have their normal gear setup on hand? And aside from their obvious convenience, in what situations does having a phone on hand match or even outperform a more complex setup?

I also asked these questions to my team, and here are a few interesting quotes from what they had to say.

What others at DPReview have to say

“I love dedicated photography gear, but one lesson I’ve learned over the years is that, in many cases, being discreet is more important than using the best camera or lens. In some places, carrying a camera gets you noticed. Lifting it to take a photo gets you noticed even more. People react to it, and it changes their behavior. At that point, you’re no longer capturing a candid moment because, in effect, you’ve become part of the scene. You’ve changed it.

On the other hand, smartphones are so common that you can lift one up and take a photo, and almost nobody will notice. You’re just part of the landscape. That makes phones a great tool for activities like travel photography.” – Dale Baskin

“As one of our reviewers, I’m always fighting for enough time to shoot all the cameras, lenses and, yes, smartphones I have to test, so it’s rare for me to leave the house without some work-related gear. And yet there are still times when I’ll pull out my personal phone to document moments that may not make for a great picture, but that I want to remember.

With a camera, I know I’ll spend more time making sure the composition and lighting are as good as they can be, or that things or people are posed in a way that makes the moment worthy of a capital-P Photograph. And sure, I’ll sometimes take a second or two to make sure whatever picture I’m taking with my phone looks nice – I’m still a photographer, no matter how small or plastic a lens I’m behind – but I don’t feel the same sense of obligation. I know that photo will just be for me, my friends and my family.

This was essentially the same way I treated the divide between my phone and my X-T3 before I worked here; if I thought I’d run into something interesting worth photographing, I’d take my camera. Otherwise, my phone was good enough, the way a compact would’ve been back in the day.” Mitchell Clark

“A part of the decision for me is the fact that photography is what I do for work. While I love the medium, sometimes I want to give myself a little separation and not think about photography for a bit, so I purposefully leave the camera behind (though it inevitably seeps into my brain anyway).” – Abby Ferguson

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Earlier this week, Fujifilm announced the XF 400mm F4.5 R LM OIS R, a super telephoto prime lens for its APS-C X-mount system. We had the chance to test it out ahead of its launch, putting the compact, 609mm-equivalent lens to work photographing birds and other distant subjects.

Bird photography is not a genre I have spent any time with, but the lens made the process feel approachable (and I’m not determined to get the perfect bird photo). Its autofocus moved quickly from the 2.7m (8.9′) close-focusing distance out to infinity, which was helpful when I wanted to switch from a near subject to one in the distance. It isn’t entirely silent, but the autofocus is quiet enough that I didn’t worry about its sound disturbing the wildlife I was trying to photograph, especially at the distances I was shooting from with this focal length.

Abby Ferguson

The XF 400mm F4.5’s manual focus ring has a relatively long throw distance, so I wasn’t able to react quickly with subject changes while on manual focus. But that proved useful for fine adjustments. It has enough resistance to make precise changes easy, and its texture feels especially good under a fingertip. The clicked aperture ring has a deliberate, satisfying action, and it can be locked into place for operation through the camera’s dial.

The XF 400mm features a maximum aperture of F4.5, which gives it a slight advantage over the company’s XF 500mm F5.6 when light is limited. It gave me some flexibility when photographing birds, but I still had to rely on fairly high ISO settings while shooting in the woods at dawn or trying to freeze fast-moving subjects. Photographers who regularly work in very dim conditions may want more light-gathering ability, but F4.5 should be plenty practical for wildlife and action in brighter conditions. It also keeps the price and size much more reasonable than they otherwise would be.

Abby Ferguson

At 1245g (2.7 lb), this is still a substantial lens (as all super telephoto lenses are), but it is impressively manageable for its reach. I wouldn’t shoot one-handed with it, though I was comfortable carrying the camera and lens that way while walking around. Fujifilm says the lens is weighted toward the rear for better maneuverability when panning, and it felt well matched to the X-H2 I was using.

I didn’t have enough time with the XF 400mm F4.5 for a full technical evaluation, but I came away happy with the images it produced. More importantly, it made my first more deliberate attempt at bird photography mostly enjoyable (minus the biting flies I had to deal with on one trail).

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