Yes, really!
What??????
I didn’t say it IS, I said it CAN BE. And I’m going to explain why that CAN happen.
Please look at these two images? They are shot from the very same angle, with the very same light and subject. The image on the left is clearly a better one, at least from an exposure perspective, don’t you agree?
Well, the image on the left was shot on an iPhone, the one on the right was shot on a $5500 Sony professional system.
How on earth is that possible?
The ‘trick’ is that professional camera systems do not edit the images before showing them to you (if you shoot in RAW) and, what you see on the right hand side, is exactly what the light looks like in this specific situation. There is a rather large difference in amount of light between the left hand side of the chicken and the right hand side of the chicken and the Sony system will just capture what the true light looks like (not necessarily what our eye sees). The smartphone will, on the other hand, ’ghost edit’ (made up term) the images before showing them to you. So the smartphone has created a more balanced lighting by making the left hand side of the chicken less bright. Pretty amazing right?
The Sony system can still give you a very similar result (from an exposure standpoint at least), but you will need to download the image and edit it yourself after shooting it.
what am I trying to say?
All this to say that, if you’re just starting out and/or you want your images to be immediately correctly exposed without the need for correcting them yourself, you MIGHT be better off shooting with a smartphone rather than with a much more expensive, complicated and heavy camera system. Remember, buying a camera system will always be an option, so why rushing to do that when you can start to learn the really important things (lighting above all) right away with just your smartphone?