Originally Posted by rigolith

Thanks skitraveler, that's exactly what I'm trying to achieve. My Pixel 8 Pro works miracles, but there are limits. Sometimes I'd like to crop in a bit more, sometimes there is just too much noise. Constrained optics and a small sensor, there's only so much software can do.

But the step up to a decent mirrorless camera, in terms of the effort you need to put in to get good results, seems to be huge. I've been learning Another Raw Therapee and I'm slowly improving, but at least there I usually have a decent base to work from thanks to the phone doing its thing. There aren't many reviews of serious cameras where they look at the auto settings.