I decided this weekend to really dive in an look to see what the difference is between the images captured from my EM5-mii and the Google Pixel 3a. I wanted to know: for snapshots in good light, is there any reason to not just reach for my cell phone?
Yesterday, I went out with both and took similar pictures (different focal length) with both cameras.
Olympus – Natural colors in warm mid-day sun. 
Pixel – Unnatural cool tones and over-sharpening
Colors aside, the swing-set is more distorted with the Pixel, which shoots wider by default. The Olympus is with the 17mm prime, already wide in its on right. The distortion probably isn’t a deal breaker; it is subtle and I wouldn’t necessarily notice if the images weren’t being compared side-by-side.
I like the look of JPEGs off my EM5-mii. They are natural looking to my eyes and I don’t usually need to do anything to them when I am taking family snapshots. I have a bad habit, though, of not keeping track if I am shooting RAW or JPEG. I usually choose one or the other for faster write speed (it is slow to write both, extra fast if I can shoot JPEG only). I tend to lean more toward RAW, however, because I prefer the noise reduction settings that I use in Lightroom (LR) over the JPEG noise reduction for images it ISO >1000. So, over time, I have developed/created a Lightroom preset to mimic the colors out of camera. Could I do the same for the images that are captured on the cell phone?
Yep – I spent some time and developed a LR preset that brought the images much closer in line with one another:
Olympus – Natural colors in warm mid-day sun. 
Pixel – Much more natural and very similar to the Olympus
The LR preset is available for use both on PC and on my LR mobile app. Now, to be honest, this is a change in workflow for me as someone generally prefers to mobile edit with Snapseed. But to have everything one click away is not too inconvenient at all, and probably worth the change.
I also developed a preset not only for the default JPEG engine from the Pixel’s default camera app, but also for the LR DNG Camera app as well. I figure that this will degrade the image less, processing it once from DNG to JPEG, rather than processing/compressing it 2 times.
The default camera app is easiest to use, because it is a double-click away when squeezing the power button, but if there is potential of the image being meaningful, it would be worth swiping my pass-pattern and navigating to the LR camera.
But what about the rare instance that I want to print the image as a 5×7, or use it in a calendar as an 8×10? I looked at that too. I took both of the above images and cropped them to 8×10, then resized each to the same 8×10 inches and sampled a 2×3 piece from each:
Does this one look worse? 
Does this one look better?
The difference, as you can see is negligible – and similar to results that I have seen on various websites and YouTube videos. With the sharpening reduced and colors adjusted with the LR preset, a cell-phone image can easily substitute for the mirrorless camera for snapshots.
But with the lens being so wide and the depth of field so large, I think my decision last week should have been to grab my phone, not my EM5-mii with the 14-150mm. I’d have to be more careful to keep the focal-plane flat and to not distort things, but otherwise, it would likely be the wisest choice.
Which now has me wondering about Moment lenses…