Modern smartphone computational photography is often good enough. When the software gets it right it is often superior to a standard DSLR photo for most, and without the hassle. You are obviously not going to get the benefits of dedicated optics, but it's often not needed.
BTW, take a look at what an AI like Midjourney or Stable Diffusion can do with photos. One could argue whether these are photos at all, but they are 99% indistinguishable from real photos. If you run it on your own GPU and train it on a data set of say your family members, it can conjure photos of you and your family in all sorts of places. You can also invent a better looking family. https://www.midjourney.com/showcase/recent/ (also has more typical arty uses of MJ, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of fashion photography, and advertisements were made using AI - saves on so much) Reload https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/ for a new face each time Music: I find it funny that by the time one can afford good DACs and headphones there's enough hearing loss in one's 40s to offset any advantages from the better hardware? Reading: I find it easier to listen to my books on my smart phone by piping it through a TTS with a custom reading voice, so I can "read" while doing other chores. -- Silklist mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.panix.com/listinfo.cgi/silklist
