Every iPhone release time everyone starts focusing on the cameras in them. Loads of people go for photo walks and get great shots “with just a smartphone” and even more people start to question the role of a dedicated camera.

That’s because for more than 10 years the smartphone has cannibalised the point and shoot camera market. The reason Apple worked so hard on the original iPhone was because they knew people didn’t want to carry around a phone, iPod and camera, and even perhaps a PDA — and that is still true today.

The best camera is always the one you have with you, and its ability is very tailored to the type of images you are going to take, but also give you the flexibility to use it more in-depth. While phone cameras are great, I take the vast majority of my pictures on them, nothing beats a dedicated camera in my mind. Anything from a simple point and shoot to a DSLR camera will give you much better shots and enable you to do much more.

But the question really is, what do you want out of a camera, and most people just want a nice image they can lay a filter over and post to Instagram. Increasingly users are asking more and more from their cameras though, and the manufactures are needing to lean more and more on algorithms and computational processing to achieve things you can do easily with a dedicated camera.

There is more than a little bias here because I love my A7iii so much, but I don’t think an iPhone will ever get anywhere near even an entry-level Alpha shooter. Couple this with the ability to wonder around somewhere completely disconnected from the world and look for shots means a camera always wins for me.