My very first camera was a Kodak sigma focal plane film camera. It had manual everything. Manual shutter, manual aperture, and because it was a film camera, the ISO (or ASA back in those days) was constant.  That meant whatever light sensitivity you wanted was limited to the film you loaded into the body of the camera.  To set proper exposure one needed several baselines of camera settings depending upon lighting conditions committed to memory. Then, there was the issue of processing the film and prints. You could ship the film off to a lab,  but in my case I had  access to a darkroom.   The darkroom experience featured fumbling around int the darkness, hence the name and the snootful of a bouquet of chemicals used in the  processing of the aforementioned film and prints.  In my teens with some money I saved at my first job I purchased my first SLR camera- the Minolta XE-5.  Simply the beefiest camera I ever owned. It was dropped on numerous occasions, exposed to questionable weather conditions and yet I had that camera for over 30 years before it finally broke beyond my ability to repair it.  That was when in 2005  I finally made the leap to digital.  That was one of the most interesting learning curves I encountered.  What was so seemingly difficult for me to adjust to was the difference in the effects of shutter speed between a digital camera and a film camera.  For example for sharp high speed images on a film camera, I only needed to set the shutter at 1/500sec or 1000/sec.  To get the same effect on a digital camera I needed to set the shutter between 1/1600sec-1/2000. Easy adjustment for some.  Quite painful for me, but I finally caught on.  After that speed bump, I found myself missing the film camera less and less.

Fast forward 20 years. OK less than that, but it took me a few years before I gained access to a phone that was capable of recording the night sky.  Night sky on a phone? Unheard of.  Nonetheless The image of the aurora at the top of the page was recorded on  and iPhone 14 Pro Max.  That’s right.  A phone.  I’m amazed. (understatement)

Who would have thought that in less than 20 years, digital cameras would have come as far as they have?  Nowadays, night photography can be done with a camera installed on a phone.  I’m totally amazed that a little phone can now do a  fairly decent job at astrophotography.

Although I’m not quite ready to chuck the DSLR anytime soon, Phone cameras have really come a long way.   I think there is an issue of ergonomics of the phones before I entertain that thought very seriously.