The folks working for your local news org are getting paid to take photos on phones. Almost all of the people you would probably consider “professional photographers” in that industry got laid off years ago.
Watching them take photos on their iPhones at high school sporting events is always painful.
I've never seen a wedding photographer using an iPhone, and the ratio of wedding photographers to news org photographers is probably 100:1 if not more.
If we’re including the journalists using iPhones then no, that’s not going to be the ratio.
For what it’s worth, I’m a professional sports photographer (side gig obviously), and I don’t get paid for iPhone photos. I’m not disagreeing with you that iPhones cannot replace dedicated cameras, but they are a lot closer to replacing them for weddings than they are for sports.
I think the only reason why wedding photographers won’t stop using their dedicated devices is the appearance of professionalism they give.
But yeah, there is only so much advanced computational photography can improve - you can probably do a fairly good job for a slow scene like a wedding, but fast movements are hard to capture with small sensors.
Yea, but wedding photogs are businesspeople, who respond to customer expectations. If they show up with “non professional” equipment, they tend not to get referrals, in spite of whatever photo quality they deliver.
Watching them take photos on their iPhones at high school sporting events is always painful.