A simple and compact camera that beats iPhone? Some do exist, none of them perfect

India Today

3 days ago

Last night while scrolling through X aka Twitter, I came across a post by Sheel Mohnot, a VC and a fairly recognisable name in the Silicon Valley circle on social media. Mohnot had a question: 'I want a simple camera that beats my iPhone.'Indeed. The question is not uncommon. A lot of people who have a little bit of interest in photography — but not as much time or passion to plonk thousands of dollars on a full-frame system — have the same question. As a casual photography tool, the iPhone is unparalleled. It is good to great in terms of image or video quality, depending on how much light its sensor can get, and its image processing, along with its blazing speed and ease of use, makes it a fairly reliable shooter of casual moments. The same can be said about the Pixel 9 Pro, Vivo X200 Pro or the Oppo Find X8 Ultra.advertisementYet, there are moments where you need more. Maybe you need a camera that not only excels in good light, like the iPhone and Pixel do, but also in low light where the small camera sensors in phones can't go past the rules of physics despite all the AI wizardry. Or maybe you might not care about photography as much as the guy with a $5000 mirrorless camera and $3000 lens does, but you do have enough passion to want to click beautiful locales and gorgeous people in all their glory.
You want a camera that can let you be a little creative in how you click and what you click. A little bit more versatility, just a bit more performance, a few more photography features than what an iPhone can offer. And you want it in a camera where you don't have to spend one year learning its various modes, and dials, and esoteric terms like focus distance and pixel stacking and diffraction and blah blah blah. I mean have you ever seen a regular person pick a large camera and then struggle to get even the focus right!The answer to Mohnot's question is that it depends. You see, in the last 10 years a chasm has opened in the way cameras are used. On one end you have casual photographers, recording and clicking their weekend getaways in hills for social media. These people earlier used to buy compact cameras. Now they all use iPhones and Pixels. Then there are people who do photography either for work — think wedding photographers — or for passion, think your usual wildlife or street photographers. These people use expensive and rather complex mirrorless and DSLR systems.So, what are the options if you want something better than the iPhone for casual photography but don't want the bulk and complexity of pro or hobby cameras? Not many. But it is beginning to change, although prices of these cameras remain higher than what I would like to see.Fujifilm and Sony lead, Sigma steals the showWhat you need in a camera that is better than the iPhone and yet made for regular users and not the National Geographic photographers are three things: ease of use, portability aka pocket-ability and a palatable price. Not one camera offers all three.Instead, there are as-best-as-possible options. The charge is led by Fujifilm in this category because it has a few cameras that might not be easiest to slip into a jeans pocket, but which offer incredible photography features in a compact form. The top of these is Fujifilm X100 VI. It comes with a fixed — but extremely sharp — lens and the image processing of Fujifilm, which is unique, means it is likely to delight users every time they use it to click photos. Although, it is also quite expensive at a market price of around Rs 1,70,000. Fujifilm has other options too. They range from Fujifilm X-M5 to just-launched GFX100 RF, a medium-format compact camera that costs more than Rs 5 lakh.advertisementWhile Fujifilm gives you retro looks, chic vibes, some cool film-simulation modes, and (mostly) superb X-Trans sensors in its cameras, Sony is more practical with its compact offerings. The company sells a number of compact cameras — although, again the word compact is doing some heavy-lifting here given that none of these cameras are truly pocketable. If I am picking something from Sony, I would choose the RX100 VII. Its image sensor is too small for my liking but it is a versatile option because of its zoom lens. The company also has the RX1R M3 with a full-frame sensor coming soon but that would be, I suspect, a Rs 5 lakh camera.
Fujifilm X100 VI
advertisementThen there are some options from Panasonic (Lumix S9), Ricoh (GR III) and Leica (plenty but all of them outrageously expensive because they seem to be luxury items and not photography tools). In between, I understand that Nikon and Canon too are making large sensor compact cameras, seeing that there is some demand for it.However, one camera that I believe is closest to what we are looking for is Sigma BF. This one is a big surprise. Earlier when we received this camera for review over here at India Today Tech, we didn't go into it expecting much. My colleague reviewed the BF but when I saw the images clicked with it, I had my jaw on the floor. The Sigma BF turned out to be a camera we could love. Sigma, because it is not a traditional camera-maker like Fujifilm, Canon and Nikon, has none of the legacy baggage. Instead, it is thinking about cameras with a fresh perspective, which reflects in the design and user interface of the BF. To sound a little corny, the BF has been made with a lot of love. With it Sigma has tried to merge the great camera hardware with interface and design modelled after a top-end phone. For example, the BF has no storage card slots. Instead, it has a huge internal storage, somewhat like phones.advertisementSure, the BF has its own share of issues, largely for people who are more familiar with legacy cameras. But overall, as a camera that you can point somewhere and then click a great photo, the Sigma BF excels. It also looks like a camera that Apple would have made if it had decided to make one.More significantly, we found the Sigma BF to be solid in its core functionality, which is clicking photos. Its full-frame sensor offers better fidelity than what compact cameras from Fujifilm and Sony manage. It also has a surprisingly robust auto-focus system with excellent eye focus which is great for the kind of photos one would want to click with the BF. The price of the whole kit is somewhat fair, although still pricey. The BF paired with a fast L Mount lens — Sigma has a few primes — comes to around Rs 2.2 lakh. It is definitely not cheap, but considering that it can beat more expensive cameras makes it a worthy contender.Having said that, no perfect options exist yet. The legacy camera companies are stuck in their glorious past, and brands like Sigma don't have the pull yet. Of course, it is also a matter of demand. While some of the people who have a passion for photography can be a little outspoken in their desires, it is not yet certain if the market for a compact and high-performing camera is there yet to justify big moves. The result is that for most people a high-end phone is a better value. And if that high-end phone happens to be the iPhone, or the Pixel, or something like Vivo X200 Pro and Oppo Find X8 Ultra, it would double up as a more-than-good-enough camera for casual photography.- Ends