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Mobile Phone Cameras
Aug. 23rd, 2009 09:46 pmThe first phone I had with a camera in was a Sony Ericsson P800, which had a 640*480 fixed focus camera in it. If the light was absolutely perfect, it gave enough image quality for a web photo, just about. In other words, it was verging on useless.
These days they're putting 5 megapixel cameras in some phones, although I have reservations over what point there is to playing the pixel count game with a lens and sensor that small - it seems to me that it's a recipe for noise.
I recently got an iPhone 3GS though, and it's the fourth camera phone I've owned (P800, P910i, which had the same nasty 640*480 mostly-pointless camera, and my Nokia 6110 navigator with a fixed focus 2 megapixel camera which was pretty good for web work in good light). It's the first with the ability to focus, and it has 3 megapixels which is the same as my first digital SLR camera nearly a decade ago.
There's no zoom, but I've been very impressed by the picture quality. Here's an unedited image I took in the garden today, which you can click on to get the full size version. I haven't done a thing to this image - it's straight off the phone, and given how tiny the lens and sensor are, I think it's a very passable result indeed:
It's done a great job with the exposure, it's not full of nasty demosaic artefacts like the camera phones I've owned before have been (probably due to being a) cheap and b) lacking resolution), and the colours and contrast are really lovely.
That was shot in good light, but it manages fairly well in marginal light too - it loses a bit of sharpness but the noise is a lot better than I'd expect - certainly good enough for standard size prints.
It feels like the first phone I've owned that can actually do the job of a real camera in certain situations, rather than just produce results suitable for web work if I'm lucky. It's a lot more convenient to carry round than a real camera too!
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/208553.html - you can comment here or there.
These days they're putting 5 megapixel cameras in some phones, although I have reservations over what point there is to playing the pixel count game with a lens and sensor that small - it seems to me that it's a recipe for noise.
I recently got an iPhone 3GS though, and it's the fourth camera phone I've owned (P800, P910i, which had the same nasty 640*480 mostly-pointless camera, and my Nokia 6110 navigator with a fixed focus 2 megapixel camera which was pretty good for web work in good light). It's the first with the ability to focus, and it has 3 megapixels which is the same as my first digital SLR camera nearly a decade ago.
There's no zoom, but I've been very impressed by the picture quality. Here's an unedited image I took in the garden today, which you can click on to get the full size version. I haven't done a thing to this image - it's straight off the phone, and given how tiny the lens and sensor are, I think it's a very passable result indeed:
It's done a great job with the exposure, it's not full of nasty demosaic artefacts like the camera phones I've owned before have been (probably due to being a) cheap and b) lacking resolution), and the colours and contrast are really lovely.
That was shot in good light, but it manages fairly well in marginal light too - it loses a bit of sharpness but the noise is a lot better than I'd expect - certainly good enough for standard size prints.
It feels like the first phone I've owned that can actually do the job of a real camera in certain situations, rather than just produce results suitable for web work if I'm lucky. It's a lot more convenient to carry round than a real camera too!
Originally posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/208553.html - you can comment here or there.
