[a fool in paradise]

>>Jeff Lundeen: People lug around large cameras with huge telephoto lenses.

Large cameras (especially film) have larger capture.

And not all lenses are the same.

You can have a “versitile” lens but a dedicated high performance lens (for low light, for distance, etc.) can be more suitable. Depends on the task.

I heard a millennial talk radio host joking about the “old tech” of the camera used by the astronauts on the moon. “So big like something from the 40s”. They weren’t going to have much opportunity to go back and get more high definition captures ergo use a camera with a larger negative. Probably also needed to keep moon dust out of the camera.

[Bobalu]

I remember those lunar cameras, they were Hasselblads. They took large-format roll film. You could get great low-light shots with Tri-X-Pan film.

What's cool about the cameras in modern phones is the sensitivity of the CMOS camera element is so great that the f-stop of the lens is high enough that you get a pinhole-camera effect and things can stay in very sharp focus even in fairly low-light.