Early 2011 I started taking pictures. Not with an SLR camera yet. I only bought my first one in December 2012. Up until then, I went for walks with a mobile phone and a very small digital camera. I can recommend everyone to start taking pictures that way. You start by learning to look, looking for beautiful images and making good compositions. You only buy the right camera and lens when you know what you want to photograph. There are specific lenses for every form of photography.
Recently I have been out and about again without a camera. Nice walks and occasionally taking pictures with my smartphone. The circle is complete. I am doing what I started with again.
The Samsung Galaxy 23 Ultra is of course much “smarter” than the mobile phone from 2011. You can do much more with it. Also take very sharp pictures. The details are very nice. The quality comes close to an SLR or good system camera. Where the smartphone falls short, you can see especially in the background. It often looks grainy and has JPEG artefacts. Also, the depth is missing. But I have found a nice solution for that.
To take pictures quickly and easily with the smartphone, I take pictures in JPEG. For post-processing I normally always use Lightroom and Photoshop. Lightroom has a Denoice with AI option, but not for JPEG files. That is why I bought Topaz Photo AI. With this you can edit JPEG files. The result is beautiful. I am very happy with it. See below some examples.
When you zoom in you can see how much detail there is in the photo. The photo below is the heart of the flower from the photo above. What is special is that you can see the pollen grains on the eyes sharply.
The photos below, I took in my kitchen. There are always some flowering plants on the windowsill. Now there are also some fuchsias.
