For some older Canon cameras, there is Magic Lantern > <https://builds.magiclantern.fm/>. But more modern cameras (especially > mirrorless cameras) are more locked down, and there isn't a lot of interest > in hacking these cameras anymore. > Eh? I've updated my Canon mirrorless camera firmware multiple times in the last 3 years with official Canon updates. In fact, one of the updates improved the auto eye tracking of the camera significantly.
I agree with Thaths on the philosophy that "the best camera is the one you have with you" so yeah, for family gathering, casual travel photos, etc., your smartphone is plenty, especially if the photos are meant to be seen on social media and largely on tiny mobile screens. But if I walk into a client's office with a smartphone to take their professional photos, I won't be getting paid. ;) If you need photos that are meant for professional use, can be blown up into larger sizes, printed, etc., the dedicated camera device still has a purpose. Slightly disagree about the software on mobile phone cameras vs DSLR/mirrorless. The whole purpose behind phone camera software is to "enhance" your photos so that any random person can appear to have taken half-decent photos without worrying about time-consuming post-processing. They work well enough for most of the use cases. Except when the software gets it wrong - some of those "portrait" mode photos with fake shallow depth of field can mess up, for instance - or when it decides it knows better than you what you were going for [1]. Oh, you decided to lift the shadows in this shot? Well, I was intentionally going for a high contrast look. This annoys me often enough because I will be framing something on the mobile camera keeping in mind where the light is falling, and the camera software decides to do its own thing. In travel photos, it usually super-saturates the sky to an abnormal blue. In food photos where I'm shooting food sitting in my wok that has a black patina, it will lift the shadows to make it look grey. Yet another example: Samsung mobile camera software sometimes softens skins to a ridiculous degree, making people look plastic. (Reddit tells me it's a Korean cultural thing, but with a pinch of salt and all that.) The professional photographer, on the other hand, wants total control on the post-processing. The editing is the other half of the photography process, so we don't really *want* the camera to decide whether this person's face looks better with more shadow detail or if the narrow cone of light I used is insufficient and the whole scene's exposure needs to be increased to compensate. Just give me the image I saw through my viewfinder in the raw format and let me decide what to do with it. Yes, this can mean multiple bracketed exposures for some landscape photos vs my phone doing it automatically, but I can then pick and choose which parts I want to keep instead of the camera deciding. I will readily concede that if you're the kind of person that has neither the time nor the inclination for this kind of editing, and just want photos you can post on Instagram, you're better off with the phone - probably 90% of people. I'm not sure if Thaths meant the other editing and digital asset management software that Canon and others make, in which case I agree that it's crap and pretty much everyone uses something like Lightroom or CaptureOne to manage and edit their photos. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88kd9tVwkH8&t=1s
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