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coincolumnist-dot-com · 3 years

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Finance Redefined: Alchemix rugpull remuneration, and Aave v. 2.5! June 16-23

After close to a month of consulting with industry experts and journalists within Cointelegraph and without, we’re proud to unveil a new segment for Finance Redefined, a.k.a. the premier DeFi industry newsletter: on-chain analysis. Reporters will often look to public records to bolster stories, and the blockchain is no different. Everything from analyzing the wallet of the fake Banksy NFT artist to following-up with exploiter wallets in the wake of hacks, the data is often used but arguably not to the extent that it could be.For instance, there is a wallet widely-known to be that of Mark Cuban, serial entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He’s doxxed himself indirectly and directly many times — the address is the owner of markcuban.eth, for christsakes. And yet, when he announces that he’s invested in Polygon (or an algo stable shitcoin, RIP Titan) it’s news, but when he makes the moves on the wallet in real time…. the crypto-news industry ignores it?Reporting on wallet transactions is fraught with complications, however. As Sam Trabucco of Alameda Research told me in Miami, “doxxed” Alameda wallets know that they’re doxxed (“contaminated” is the term they use internally), and trying to interpret a buy from one ‘known’ wallet may only be glimpsing a small part of a much larger picture — Alameda may be hedging with another acct, and as such public buys/sells are ultimately not indications of a wider opinion on an asset. Check out this thread on folks trying to uncover what Alameda is doing with CRV as an example — the tail-chasing and narrative flip-flopping is extreme:Alpha Leak! You guys have been wondering why Sam dumps his $CVX everyday?? But rn, he's buying back!!https://t.co/e7kKO1e2QG 1/Probably he's controlling the price to accumulate more and more! This could be a good sign, @ConvexFinance => FTX soon?— Ade- $CRV maximalist (@MrFro92) June 15, 2021Additionally, despite ample evidence, if Mark Cuban ever came out and said that a wallet is not his — doesn’t matter if he has the ENS, doesn’t matter if he’s even claimed it as his in the past — we, as an outlet, have no way to definitively prove to the contrary, and as such explicitly linking an individual or institution to a wallet is unacceptable regardless of any amount of circumstantial evidence. So, we’ve tiptoed and wondered and thought and thought about it some more. On-chain data is both public and wildly underused by news outlets, but it’s a new source type from a journalism perspective and really uncharted ethical ground. Some of the language decisions we’ve made might seem a little obtuse, but they’re measured and we think appropriate. Let us know what you think. We hope you like our first installment, courtesy of Bill Zerox aka @0xbilll:Alchemix rugpull remuneration analysis After a rug pull, desperate community members typically beg developers to return the stolen funds and social media channels become chaotic — filled with stories of tragic loss and impoverished nurses. It only makes sense then that in the first "reverse rug" in DeFi history, it’s the developers begging the community to return the funds. The big difference is that instead of ignoring requests, as exploiters often do, the community has seemingly responded.Last week, Alchemix suffered a bug that saw users walk away with 2262 ETH (almost $4.5 million USD, even with the recent price decline) in what is being called the first-ever “reverse rug”. Instead of using treasury funds or minting a new token, steps that other protocols have taken to recoup a loss after a bug or hack, the Alchemix team is asking users who benefited to return the ETH. In exchange, Alchemix is promising users 1 ALCX per 1 ETH returned. If users who benefited from the bug return the full amount of ETH that they were able to withdraw, the team says the generous exploiters will also receive a “special” NFT that includes "yet-to-be-determined functionality in the Alchemix DAO.” If you benefited from the reverse-rug, then please consider becoming an Alchemix legend and returning the free money. Every bit counts, and all contributors will be remembered https://t.co/GqkkIBG9Ma— scoopy trooples (@scupytrooples) June 21, 2021 Although unconventional — as the best things in DeFi are — on the surface their ask to the community has been a success. Taking a look under the hood, however, reveals that the majority of funds were donated from one altruistic Alchemist developer while the accounts that walked away with the most ETH show no signs that they will return the funds.On-chain data shows that the majority of ‘returned’ funds have come in the form of community members donating ETH, as opposed to users returning the ETH that the bug allowed them to claim. 1129.85 ETH has been returned as of this afternoon. Breaking it down, 358.21 ETH (~32%) is from users who benefited from the bug, while 771.64 ETH (~68%) has been donated by community members.

Data taken from Dune Dashboad thanks to 0xGranger at ~2:45 EST June 23rd; https://duneanalytics.com/queries/66340/132563The largest donation so far is a staggering 730 ETH from an apparent Alchemist developer with the ENS handle n4n0.eth. They did not receive ETH from the exploit, so they are presumably reaching into their own pockets — a testament to their belief in Alchemix and their desire to make the protocol whole.When called out in the Alchemix discord, n4n0 simply said, “I’m in it for the tech.”

Screenshot taken from official Alchemix Discord channelA Twitter profile with the same name lists their role as “codemonkey @ http://alchemix.fi."Outside of n4n0.eth’s 730 ETH donation, 196 other addresses have donated a total of 41.64 ETH. While some of the addresses may be speculating that those who donate will be eligible for future airdrops, the response also shows that the community wants Alchemix to succeed. Looking at addresses who received excess ETH from the exploit, the top 20 addresses walked away with almost 1800 ETH, ranging from 25 to 500 ETH. Of those, so far only four addresses have returned the full amount they got off with for a total of 174 ETH. One of these addresses, themockingjay.eth, returned the 40 ETH that they were able to withdraw because of the bug. Their address shows that they are active DeFi users and early Alchemist supporters, as demonstrated by them apeing into pool 2 a couple days after the protocol launched. Zerion currently shows themockingjay.eth’s net worth at over $2 million, demonstrating that they are characteristic of DeFi users who are in a position to support a protocol, as opposed to carry off with the funds.With the promise of an NFT and the chance to live in Alchemix/DeFi/Crypto history forever, perhaps the response here should not come as a surprise. Sign up for weekly DeFi news before it hits the main site!Aave 2.5, and airdrops to comeLike many DeFi protocols, Aave isn’t having ‘growing pains’ so much as the project is sprouting wings. A former perennial top-10 on rankings websites, they’re now the definitive #1 in DeFi with nearly $17 billion in TVL on the back of a highly successful liquidity mining program. However, in an interview with Cointelegraph Aave co-founder Stani Kulechov weighed in on the same problem dozens of protocols now face: how to continue the explosive growth in an increasingly complicated system?“Now the question is, how do we keep growing at the same pace, and also expand the growth as new projects are coming in, as new ideas and innovation comes into the whole ecosystem?” He asked.The first step for Aave is applying what works to new environments. The team is working on a governance bridge that can let users vote on layer-1 for decisions that will apply to the various layer-2 implementations of the market, allowing for “cross-chain decentralized decision making,” says Kulechov. This new feature will be available in a matter of weeks. However, larger changes are coming as well:“We believe the future is multi-asset and multi-governance. This means we’ll have more inclusive decision making in the community.”Multi-asset governance —- say, AAVE and BAL holders voting on a AAVE-specific proposal — will of course be an entirely new experiment, and comes with specific considerations for the community. In Stani’s view, which assets other than AAVE should determine Aave’s fate largely depend on the synergy. Ultimately it will be up to AAVE holders to vote on who gets in, but Stani pointed towards protocols like Balancer — who have a forthcoming deep integration with Aave to deposit unused AMM liquidity into lending pools — as a prime option in a multi-asset governance framework. Likewise, MakerDAO is building a system where the protocol deposits DAI into Aave, and then uses aDAI as collateral in special vaults to assist with liquidity crunches — another deep integration that would possibly warrant inclusion for MKR in multi-asset governance. This is part of a broader framework for the Aave core team stepping away from the project after the eventual Aave v3 launch. At that point, major users of the Aave protocol (including other protocols that may be using Aave), should be the ones to decide its parameters. As a result, the day may come when the most significant votes on Aave governance come from addresses controlled by other governance communities. What if there was a social media protocol built on top of a DeFi Protocol..?— Aave (@AaveAave) April 17, 2021 But what will the core development team do after the launch of Aave v3? Social media protocols? High fashion on the blockchain? And will it involve potentially lucrative airdrops to current AAVE holders? Kulechov was scant with details (despite his odd Tweets on the topic here and there), but did wax philosophical when it comes to possible airdrops:“The two key principles are distribution — how do you empower the Aave community when you distribute new assets — and secondly how you can use tokeneconomics to empower your product and your community.”As an example of empowering a community, Stani pointed to staked Aave, stAAVE, which is used to backstop the protocol as an insurance fund in the case of a shortfall event. Depositing into this fund rewards users with more AAVE and therefore more governance power — ultimately using the token to reward deeper engagement. The development of the backstop model — also known as Aavenomics, a whitepaper that laid out how the protocol would attract liquidity, and the security to back that liquidity — took six months. Stani said the team settled on a model where “the AAVE token becomes a way to transfer risk to community members, as they’re the ones making risk-based decisions.” This forces the community to be more involved, as they bear risk, but proportionally rewards them. Kulechov expressed skepticism that new tokens would be needed for new projects from the core team because “you can build value with new protocols directly in the ecosystem you have, and reinforce the current value there.” He also noted that the Synthetix model, which will lead to four new tokens in the coming months, may have downsides: “The risk is that if you come to market with five new tokens, you kind of might dilute the main asset and the community there, and split your community.” Potential fat airdrops aside, for now the focus is on the forthcoming “Aave v. 2.5,” the penultimate upgrade before v3.Enter DeFi Decade— stani.eth =(⬤_⬤)= (@StaniKulechov) June 17, 2021 Aave 2.5 comes with a focus on risk mitigation. The update will include supply and borrow caps on certain assets, and improved liquidation mechanisms — what Stani calls “the final version before the ultimate protocol we wanted to build (v3),” and afterwards the community will take over the protocol and its development entirely. The team at Parafi Capital, who co-authored a liquidity mining proposal for Aave, are some of the chief architects of the overhaul. Ultimately, while the Aave team continues to iterate and learn from fellow protocols, Stani says the kind of bold experimentation Aave has made (and continues to make) is the best path forward for the space:“The best way to do things is being experimental. You actually need to fail with tokeneconomics before you can find something that actually works.” Source Read the full article

#Aave #alchemix #DAO #DeFi #Governance #MakerDAO #rugpull

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shirlleycoyle · 3 years

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Pornhub’s Content Purge Has Left Fetish Creators Wondering What’s Next

Before the purge that disappeared more than 75 percent of content on the platform, Pornhub hosted a lot of videos and photos that weren’t humans having sex. There were full-length movies, memes, and video game playthroughs that you might see on a non-adult site like Twitch, but there was also a ton of animation, 3D renderings, audio erotica, music videos, fanfic from furries and bronies, and stop-motion animation like LEGO minifigs fucking.

Pornhub became a dumping ground and safe harbor for a lot of stuff, and a lot of these creators didn't necessarily want to upload a photo of themselves to a huge porn corporation's database in order to get verified. They were just throwing things on the site for fun, to share with others in their respective communities, and the wider world. Compared to a site like Milovana (an adult message board and the birthplace of Cock Hero, videos of which are mostly gone from Pornhub now) or the furry fan art forum e621, Pornhub was a way to reach a more mainstream audience. With last week’s action, a lot of that stuff is now gone.

For victims of abusive imagery and non-consensual porn, as well as anyone who's had to deal filing takedown requests for pirated content uploaded to Pornhub, the removal of unverified content is a positive: between Pornhub's new policy for only allowing content partners and performers in the model program to upload and download, and the retroactive suspension of all this content pending review, the platform seems to be making long-overdue changes that sex workers and victim advocates alike have asked for. But by applying a blanket solution to a complex problem, it's caught small, independent creators from niche communities in its net.

Several creators told me that Pornhub's damage-control scramble has created issues for verified users, locked many unverified creators out of their own content, and left many more wondering whether there's even a future for indie and fetish works on the site.

“It was a betrayal”

In a month when sex on the internet is being attacked from all sides—from Instagram's new terms of service, to TikTok kicking sex workers off the platform, to payment processors leaving Pornhub—some creators are concerned that losing one of the most popular porn sites in the world as a platform is another blow against fetish and outside-the-mainstream content on the internet as a whole.

For a lot of creators, Pornhub's melting pot was a source of inspiration for artists, Lifty and Sylox, hosts of the Furry Frequencies podcast, told me in an email. "Many of the videos that were uploaded onto Pornhub from the furry community were sexual videos of furries partaking in sexual acts in fursuit," they said—which could include videos of furries in fullsuit with “strategically-placed holes” performing solo or with one or more partners. "Some furries perform with just their fursuit head, handpaws, and feetpaws to provide better nude content. An unverified, but significant amount of this content catered to specific fetishes of the furry community, such as feet fetishism or watersports."

"Furries won't abandon PornHub immediately," Lifty and Sylox said, noting that more creators will likely migrate to Onlyfans or communities like Furaffinity to post content. "Changes like this tend to take time before the effects can be measured… PornHub's status as a repository for one-stop furry porn content will eventually diminish significantly."

It's not just illustrators and furries who have lost Pornhub as a platform in the last week. Audio erotica creator Goddess By Night told me that she lost all of her content—about 40 videos. She's been making audio erotica for five years, and in the last two she'd made a business out of it. She makes Gentle Female Dominant and Dominant Mommy-themed stories, as well as Futanari role play and other kink-related fantasies.

"Most of my work is a niche within the adult entertainment industry, and Pornhub allowed me to reach a broader audience, so it’s a pretty significant loss," she said. "However, my community has been incredibly supportive and intend to follow me to the next platform(s) I choose. I don’t plan on returning to Pornhub because of this. It was a betrayal, especially to the loads of creators they explicitly welcomed after Tumblr’s ban two years ago. I know some creators who lost work that they may never get back because Pornhub didn’t offer a grace period."

Each of the creators I talked to, whether they were verified or unverified, said that they weren't given any warning before Pornhub's content suspension took place. Pornhub used the word "suspension," not "deletion," and told Motherboard at the time of the suspension announcement that this meant content would be "removed pending verification and review."

Creators whose content was removed saw a message in place of their uploads that explained the video was "flagged for verification" and invited them to apply for the Model Program or Content Partner Program in order to re-enable the videos, or wait for the new verification process to start in 2021.

They were locked out of their own content at that point and were unable to even download it from the platform.

When Tumblr removed all NSFW content from its platform in December 2018—similarly for allegations it hosted child sexual abuse imagery, but also to appease Apple—the social media platform gave creators about two weeks of notice to get their stuff off the site. Pornhub's announcement came at 7 a.m. EST on a Monday and went into effect immediately. By the time most people saw the news, the suspensions were underway, and more than 10 million uploads were gone by 9 a.m.

This is especially bitter news for creators who, in 2018, took Pornhub up on its invitation to move to the platform from Tumblr.

"Amusingly [Pornhub was] very happy to take advantage of the Tumblr refugees back when all that went down, inviting us to upload all our galleries there," adult content illustrator IzzyBSides told me in a Twitter message. "I think most of us on Twitter know we're living on borrowed time, people have backup accounts set up and occasionally plug them to their followers letting them know to follow it in case their main account randomly disappears overnight."

Because the mass suspensions were meant as a broad solution to get unlawful, abusive content on the site under control, allowing users to download their content would miss the point of stopping the spread of any abusive imagery. But the move also meant that a lot of content that wasn’t abusive and fell well within Pornhub's terms of service was removed in the process. People didn't have the chance to choose whether they wanted to pack their bags and go elsewhere. If they want to recover their own content, they'll have to play by Pornhub's verification rules, which have yet to be announced and won't start until sometime early next year.

One animator who asked to remain anonymous told me that they lost about 20 videos, "including story animations, which I loved very much …This was sad for me as the videos were deleted without warning," they said, but added that they luckily had a backup of their videos saved to their hard drives. "However, I didn't have any income from Pornhub, so it's okay, the videos are saved and I'll just move them to another site."

That illustrator wasn't verified, but even being a verified user didn't save some people from the purge. Pornhub's policy changes were intended to skip over verified accounts, but some users still saw their verified content taken down.

“Sex workers are under attack everywhere”

Another confusing aspect of Pornhub's cleaning spree is the effect it has had on verified creators and performers. Many have reported on Twitter that some of their verified content has been disappeared, seemingly at random, even while other uploads have stayed online. Others in the comments of Pornhub's own verification policy page say that they were verified, but now they aren't. From the outside, there seems to be no consistent reasoning for this.

Before the policy changes, there were three types of verification, according to Pornhub: Content partners, users in the model program, and verified users. The last category is now gone, and only uploads by models and content partners remain. The users reporting verification issues were likely in that last category—verified based on the old standards Pornhub used, which involved sending Pornhub a selfie with your face and holding up a sheet of paper with your name written on it. Those users are all now unverified. But inconsistencies remain.

Riley Cyriis, a performer who's been verified on Pornhub for more than a year, told me that most of her free videos and around 40 of 120 paid videos were removed, along with 20 videos she had set to private, only viewable by her.

"My best guess would be certain tags, like 'teen' or 'daddy,' but it's really just a guess," she said. "The majority of flagged videos were my most successful ones ranging from 200k to 700k views, so maybe it's just how they came up? My profile is pretty obviously made by a real person and I listed my age publicly."

She wasn't using Pornhub as a main income source (although many performers do), so she's planning to focus more on other platforms like Onlyfans and Manyvids.

Pornhub has said that it will restart the verification with new requirements in 2021. But the gap is a long time to wait if you're losing an audience and relied on the site for income. Many performers have already lost significant income due to Mastercard and Visa's decision to drop Pornhub. Performer Mary Moody said in a video about the payment processing news that she was making enough money from Modelhub to cover rent each month.

And the verification process, which still hasn't been clarified publicly by Pornhub, could bring up new issues for anyone who wants to get their content back. IzzyBSides said that they'd received verification rejections before Pornhub's content purge, because their avatar—a fire sprite—obviously doesn't match their real-life face. The reason Pornhub gave for their rejection the last time, before the content suspensions, was that their avatar didn't match their verification photo. "We need to see your face to confirm," Pornhub's customer service email to them said. According to Pornhub, this method of verification is now outdated.

It's unclear how verification will work in the future, but Pornhub has said that identification of some kind will be part of the process. There are obviously many reasons that not everyone would want to use their real face as their avatar on a porn website.

"I'm not sure how I'm supposed to get verified with those sorts of requirements," IzzyBSides said, adding that performers who wear masks or keep their faces cropped out of videos would be excluded from verification on these terms. "It would force anyone experimenting out of the closet."

I asked performer Dylan Thomas how a verification system with even more strict requirements for identity could impact trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming content creators and performers. He said Pornhub could avoid excluding these groups by consulting with, and hiring, them to help create the new system.

"Some of us with intersectional experience in both creative strategy, the digital space and sex work would like nothing more than to serve our community and get everyone back online, generating income and having an enjoyable, safe and sexy time," he said.

How Pornhub’s new verification policies and process will unfold in practice is yet to be seen, but by including the voices of people who use the site, it could avoid future mistakes—just as it could have avoided this month’s backlash—and listen to the sex workers and content creators who've been asking for things to change for a long time.

"Pornhub was blatant about their disregard to what appeared on the site. But sex workers are under attack everywhere," Cyriis said. "Aside from the payout issues caused by Visa/MC, YouTubers and celebrities are flicking onto our platforms and basically doing whatever they want with no real financial repercussions. The consequences fall squarely on the shoulders of sex workers who built these platforms."

Pornhub’s Content Purge Has Left Fetish Creators Wondering What’s Next syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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anycontentposter · 4 years

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$200 vs $4,000 Camera: Is Your Phone Good Enough for Travel Photography?

Sensor image quality has advanced so much over the last few years that phone manufacturers are boasting photographs that rival those from larger mirrorless and DSLR cameras. Some, like the Xiaomi Mi CC9 at 108 megapixels, quadruple the resolution of my best camera.

The iPhone 11 Pro and Google Pixel 4 have incredible night mode capabilities using imaging algorithm and stabilization that’s comparable to the high ISO capabilities of my Sony Alpha. Most of them shoot 4K video at 60 FPS. Between using Filmic Pro for film and Snapseed for photos, I have more options than ever with what tools I choose to shoot with.

And that’s just it. Options.

As a photographer and filmmaker, I don’t feel anxious that phones are allowing more people to produce footage that is comparable to my bigger and more expensive set-ups. In fact, I feel better knowing that on days in which I don’t feel like lugging my gear around or even taking my camera out to capture some food photography, I have the option of producing something that is high quality and sometimes indistinguishable from the images coming out of my Sony a7 III.

Comparing iPhone 7 Vs Sony a7S II Images

And I want to prove that using two photographs I took using my Sony a7S II and iPhone 7 (both are 12-megapixel cameras, both a few years old) a couple of years back in the Lofoten Islands of Norway. At the time, I didn’t plan on doing a comparison — I just happened to take the image first on my phone before pulling out my camera to get the shot with a slower exposure.

While resorting through my images recently, I came across the two images side by side when I did a batch edit and noticed that they came out differently (JPEGs don’t respond to the same changes as RAW files). Out of curiosity, I spent about 5 minutes to see if I could make the images similar.

The results were interesting. In fact, they were getting so close than I spent another 5 minutes to spot edit a few things to see if I can make them indistinguishable.

Here are the two photos:

How long did it take you to figure out which was shot on the iPhone 7 and which was shot on the Sony a7S II? How did you figure it out and are you correct? I’ll reveal the answer a few paragraphs down.

Did I Edit The Images?

Quite a bit. The process of creating a photograph is different for everyone and has only ever been limited by the tools that we have access to, whether be it in a physical darkroom or today in Adobe’s Lightroom (and Photoshop). Personally, I do most of my image editing in Lightroom. It’s fast, allows me to do most of the manipulation I want, and I can batch edit a bunch of similar images.

For these two images, I played around quite a bit with the white balance temperature, colors, exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, curves, clarity, texture, and dehaze. The Sony a7S II image was slightly wider at 24mm on a full-frame sensor, so I cropped it some to match the iPhone’s field of view and I cropped the iPhone into a 2×3 aspect ratio to match with the Sony image.

Below are the edited images next to their originals.

Comparison With The Original Images

In the Sony a7S II original, you can more details in the cloud and the overall colors, tone, and contrast of the image are different from the edited version. I shot this with the Sony 24-70 f/2.8 GM lens at .8 sec shutter speed, f/22, and ISO 100. The slightly slower shutter speed allows me to blur the movements of water just a bit. I was kicking myself for not bringing any graduated or ND filters to allow me to shoot even slower than this and to retain the details in the cloud.

In the iPhone 7 version, the first noticeable difference was the completely blown highlights in the cloud. The phone camera also exposed it a bit darker and warmer than a7S II. Other than that, the details are very similar and, in fact, the overall image is sharper than the Sony a7S II because there was some accidental motion micro-shake with the a7S II. The iPhone image was taken at 1/120 sec, f/1.8, and ISO 20.

For both, I added a gradient filter from the top down over the mountains to blow out all the clouds completely and went negative on the dehaze and clarity to add a soft glow to the top of the mountains. This effect ultimately hid the shortcomings of the iPhone sensor with not being able to capture the same dynamic range that a Sony RAW file can.

Below are two cropped views to give you a sense of detail.

iPhone 7 Sony a7S II

Like I mentioned earlier, shooting at .8 sec on a travel tripod standing on a windy bridge created some unwanted shake in the a7S II image. On the iPhone image, the detail is pretty sharp, and sometimes almost too sharp for me. To compensate for that, I dialed down the texture a bit to de-sharpen the image.

You can click here for the iPhone and here for the Sony to download higher resolution versions of the two images for pixel peeping if that’s your thing.

So did you guess correctly above? The a7S II was the first (top) one. Congratulations if you guessed it right. For me, it’s still hard when I look at them side by side, but the giveaway would have been the blurred movement in the water from the slower exposure.

Is Your Phone Good Enough For Travel Photography?

The short answer is yes. With careful composition and exposure, you can take spectacular photographs with your phone. With all the new phones sporting multiple cameras and crazy imaging algorithms to produce some high-quality images, you have a lot more features at your disposal with the device that you’ll always have on you.

With the iPhone 11 Pro, you can even get some beautiful portraits with some nice optically-produced bokeh at a tighter focal length. For landscapes, you can throw on a wide adapter and match the super-wide field of view of my widest camera lens. Even without it, you’re getting a pretty wide image.

With the Snapseed and Lightroom app on your mobile OS, you can edit images even quicker than on your laptop/desktop software. It’s crazy how fast I can create an image out of Snapseed and send/share it right away. I’m finding myself content with shooting on my iPhone a lot more than I was in the past. Even when I’m not, sometimes I’ll send the images from my camera to my phone and do an edit there for social media instead of waiting to load it onto my computer.

Ultimately, as far as photographs go, I believe the content of a good, compelling image will outweigh its technical specs, always. As a photographer and archivist, I want to have the best quality that I can get. When it comes to sharing, most content is consumed on mobile devices where you can hardly appreciate the qualities of a 50-megapixel camera. You probably can’t tell the difference between a 24- and 12-megapixel camera because of the relatively low image sizes that are uploaded and further compressed before viewing.

In other words, as long as an image looks good, most people won’t care about the megapixel count or even what camera it was taken with.

As far as video, which I will go into detail in a separate post, most cameras now shoot 4K 60 FPS, which will allow you to create some beautiful slow-motion footage. Using the Filmic Pro app, I have more control over my settings and have used footage shot from my phone mixed in with my a7S II footage.

The answer is basically yes, you can use your phone for travel photography.

Is The End Near For Professional Cameras?

Absolutely not. While I used this example to illustrate what you can do with a camera phone image (and not even the latest iPhone which is far better than the iPhone 7 camera), a lot of post-processing and artistic intent went into the final image. With the a7S II, I was able to shoot at a wider angle that I preferred (and even wider if I put on my 16-35mm lens). The built-in cameras are still limited in what focal lengths you can shoot with (although with all the triple and quad camera systems, that might change soon).

Mirrorless and DSLR cameras will, for the most part, still produce better images out of the camera than your phone, and allow you more flexibility with interchangeable lenses. For images with more shallow depth of field, the bokeh created digitally is currently not as good as the optical bokeh you get from different lenses. I will almost always shoot with my camera if I want to shoot portraits.

I also prefer the RAW images that come out of my cameras, which gives me more latitude to make fine adjustments. I’ve seen some amazing edits and composites from artists using JPEG images, so I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it’s just a little easier for me to have more data and detail to work with in my edit.

Ultimately, both my Sony (currently a7 III) camera and iPhone (currently XR) are tools, and I always process the images to create a final image that I envision and want to share. Learning your tools is the best way to get the most of your images and constantly relearning is the only way I’ve found to get better and not get stale.

These are all personal preferences, so how you look at it might be different, but it’s certainly interesting for me to see how far camera phone images have come since I first took a photo with my Sony Clie UX-50 PDA.

About the author: Kien Lam is an international photographer and filmmaker based in San Francisco. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. He runs whereandwander.com and believes in living for those moments that make the best stories, told or untold. He is working through his bucket list and wants to help others do the same. You can find more of his photos on Instagram. This article was also published here.