Should phones have cameras on them?

[Melooon]

Im pitching this as a thought concept about culture and how we obsessively record and share our lives through images and videos.

Imagine a world where phones no longer have cameras on them ~ capturing moments requires a dedicated device and so only people who are actively willing to carry and maintain such a device are able to record media. Sharing that media is also slowed because you have to import it to a computer, then think about it, then upload it. In reality that was the world 20 years ago but it's VERY different to the world we have today.

We embraced the idea of capturing everything and sharing everything instantly, not because anyone necessarily thought it was a good idea, but because technology made it possible and the convenience of sharing made sharing more desirable.

It reminds me a little of the highway trap: that is, if there is too much traffic, people think you need to build more roads, but if you build more roads then there end up being more cars on them. The only way out is to remove roads in favour of alternatives like trains; less roads = less traffic.

I wonder if the same is true of media consumption and creation; if we want a world with a more healthy social media culture, we need to reconsider the tools that allowed social media occur 

[Monoki]

This is a fun topic. I’ve been thinking of it a lot more lately and debate buying a proper camera or two.

I remember back when I was a teenager I used to record random videos on it and import them into a copy of after effects my dad installed on a rather old Mac computer I had at the time. That’s not counting a regular camera I had as a kid which I used occasionally. Currently the only dedicated camera I have is a small GoPro. But I’ve had a love/hate relationship with it because it has a fisheye lens.

I appreciate the built in cameras on the phone no doubt. They’re useful if I want to have reference of something I saw in the wild. But one thing that annoys me is that there also comes an added expectation at my day job that I sometimes need to take pictures of things while I’m at work.

I’m not a photographer per se, but it does make me wonder if I shouldn’t consider charging as one. Of course that probably wouldn’t go over well.

[randomtangent]

i guess, it depends on the user. some want good cameras, some want multiple, etc - well, that's okay!

tho for me, i'd love to have a modular phone where i could maybe have cameras in IF i need them, or just straight up remove at the least the front camera all the time :P

the back camera can be kinda big, like the DSi's camera or the Nexus 5's camera, but it has to be flat. the phone itself could be maybe slightly bigger than an iPhone 5C, but it has a home button and things as well. i don't want it to be an iPhone, more or less it'd have postmarketOS on it lmao

okay, at this point i may as well just jump ship into the specs of it now i can't stop! 

• 2 or 3GB RAM
• 720p or even 600p 9:16 IPS capacitive touchscreen display, probably ~5.1" in diagonal
• 6MP or 8MP flat back camera
• probably some sort of plastic (but comfy, like polycarbonate with a bit of roundedness like the 5C) with swappable faceplates?
• USB-C charging because... just make it easy? lol
• 3.5mm jack. this is mandatory.
• 32GB internal storage upgradeable

though back to the cameras.
i think for me i'd love to not have the front camera at the very least, and the back cam doesn't need to shoot at a huge resolution, really i don't even want night mode for it, just for it to do better in dim lighting but not grainy :P

there's not a whole lot of use for me with them much, other than taking silly little pics of things and uploading them online! and my iPhone 12 has 12MP cameras and each photo is like tens of megabytes.

[PALEOKNIGHT]

 As someone who uses mine frequently, I can't be against them! I rarely take pictures of myself, but I do take LOTS of landscapes, natural and urban, and of fun/weird/interesting things I come across. It helps me a lot with saving my traditional drawings since it can work as a scanner with certain apps.
 I do have a "professional" camera, even tho photography is a hobby, but I still haven't bought a lens that can zoom far enough, and it needs a whole other backpack to carry safely!
 So, I think phone cameras are really convenient - and much more accessible. We are both social and very visual creatures. Sharing an image with others feels great. So much that art became a thing much before any written language! I don't think sharing became more "desirable", it always has been. It's just that people were given the opportunity to do so.
 Oversharing things on social media tho... That really is a problem, but the thought of removing cameras from phones would be a terrible way to solve that. Only people who have a machine for that being able to take pictures feels to me very excluding, kinda like "only people who can afford to get canvases, brushes and paints can draw".

[BlazingCobaltX]

There's multiple axes you can take this discussion to. One is the ease of access, where I have to agree with @PALEOKNIGHT and say it is probably not the right direction to only make photography accessible to those with the financial means to do it. Photography can be a notoriously expensive hobby. I, for one, am glad I've been able to photograph many precious memories in my life and not have that be dependent on that one rich uncle with a camera.

Another axis is that of skill, though. Everyone can capture photos and video, but how many of us actually understand the mechanisms that go on behind the lens? I've recently bought a video camera and my head got broken by the explanations of the exposure triangle... Frankly I have no idea what I or what the camera are doing, and I wonder if I even really know what goes on behind a good picture. Working with an actual camera, I'd have to learn about the craft. Maybe each picture would hold more weight if I actually knew what makes a camera tick and turn. There's also an element of mindfulness to this.

The final axis is comfort. It is simply extremely convenient to take pictures with a phone camera, but the flipside is that we aren't conscious of how many pictures we take. Data storage feels near free and uploading to social media is actually free. These social media showed us the way to constantly sharing every single thing we do in our day because it makes them profitable and attractive to advertisers. Do I need to take a picture of every meal I eat at a restaurant? Of course not, but Instagram culture has ingrained this type of "I need to have a keepsake" thought.

All in all, I enjoy having a phone camera on me. It's fun to take pictures of beautiful scenery and I do like seeing other people's photos. I wish we would overall be more conscious of making photos, though. Do you really need 30 photos of an event when 1 suffices? The problem now is that we massively communicate through pictures; some people actually do not engage with what others post unless it contains a photo or even is entirely in photo format. The answer to "does this need a photo?" is by default yes because we can, but I think we can change something about this attitude without removing the camera from phones entirely.

[TheFrugalGamer]

I've got to say that I'm pro cameras on phones even if for only one purpose: filming people in charge doing things they're not supposed to be doing. Also, the ability to get photographic proof of things (even innocuous things, like lights in the sky) is one I'm not personally willing to give up!

On a non-political note, as an artist I remember the struggles I had finding cameras with which to both record and make art with in the "before times" and I LOVE that it's so much easier to share my art with the world now.

In a world without phones, I'd be a lot more attached to my scanner, and I would definitely have had to invest in a good DSLR. I would probably have volunteered as the family photographer, and would be the Keeper of All The Photos, which could have gone good or bad depending on how pricey things got...