Is Your Smartphone Camera Good Enough?

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/technology/04camera.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss' target='_blank'>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/t...ner=rss&emc=rss</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Ariel Dunitz-Johnson, a 30-year-old illustrator in San Francisco, bought a point-and-shoot camera in May. But in July, she bought a smartphone, with a camera built in. Soon, whenever she wanted to take a picture, she found herself reaching for the smartphone, a Droid Incredible. She barely uses her point-and-shoot, a Panasonic DMC-LX3."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1291513997.usr105634.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>I tended to do this, but after my last trip to Dallas, I'm moving the other way back towards my point-and-shoot camera. Some of the shots I was taking didn't turn out very well, and once the moment passed, it was pretty hard to get another shot (I was taking pics of some of the football players as they passed through a tunnel). It could have been my inexperience in using my iPhone 4 to take pictures of a moving target, so to fix it on the fly what I eventually did was just film it and take screen shots, which turned out better than the regular pictures I was taking. My pics would have been a lot better had I been carrying my other camera. In my case, the "inconvenience" of carrying a camera would have been worth it to me, hindsight of course kicking in. How about you, do you think your smartphone is "better" for your needs than your point-and-shoot camera?&nbsp;</p>

[Sven Johannsen]

I think it comes down to, 'the best camera for the shot, is the one you have with you.' These days that tends to be the one in your cell phone. Is it better quality given the choice? Heck no. It does though have the built in sharing feature, FaceBook, Twitter, Live, even YouTube. So I guess if your intent is to take snapshots to share, with friends/family, the phone is probably not only good enough, but better. If your intent is to take amature photographs, maybe opt for a point and shot. I suppose if you are going to be a photographer, get a real camera. Guess that means DSLR these days.

I even resorted to 'video the whole thing and grab stills after the fact' when shooting with digital tape based video cameras. The quality suffers a bit, but you don't miss that great shot due to reaction time and shutter lag.

I have to say MS did one thing right in accomodating this trend in Windows Phone. They require a dedicated hardware camera button which brings the phone out of the dormant state directly into the camera app. No turn on the phone, unlock the screen, find the camera icon, push it load the app, and then look up to see the shot gone. WP7, hold the camera button, 2 secs, and ready to shoot.