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Camera Phone Tips
Darren writes "It is getting hard to find a cell phone WITHOUT a camera in it - as a result millions are flooding the internet through moblogs with camera phone images - many of which are poor quality.
I'm sick of seeing poor quality camera phone images being posted to moblogs and so have collected a series of camera phone tips and links that will hopefully help us all improve our camera phone images."
Hang up and drive!!!!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
It's always nice to see a photo of some random cat or an interestingly shaped rock from another continent. :)
The tips on the site seemed pretty obvious to me...get close, increase resolution, don't use digital zoom... the site even states they are obvious. From my brief look at the other linked sites, it looks like there are a few slightly more interesting points, but also a lot of repetition (between the sites).
I think if anyone is a budding photographer, interested in building a gallery on their site, they should get ahold of a "real" digital camera (a device whose primary function is as such). It seems to me that people running "moblogs" aren't going to be too bothered about having high-quality photos anyway.
I know so many people that just shove the phone in their pockets, then wonder why their lint-filled aperture gives them crappy results. Great for sending a quick pic to your mates, but not for anything else. Quality digital cameras they are not.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
If I wanted a PDA, I would get a Palm or PocketPC, If I wanted a digital camera I would get a Olympus or Kodak, How about just a plain phone where the battery actually works through the day and does not cut out every time you order Chinese takeout?
Have fun with these phones while they last. More and more buildings, both public and private are banning them in droves. Schools, libraries, court rooms and companies that develop numerous products are making people leave their camera phones behind for "security reasons". My local book store is also asking customers to leave them in their cars due to people coming in and taking pictures of articles and photographs in books and magazines with their phones . I can't imagine why you would want to have a crappy camera phone picture when a magizine is usually only 4 or 5 bucks but whatever. So enjoy while you can, I for one will be glad when this fad is phased out though.
Please do not let scientific accuracy interfere with the intended humourous/interesting/insightful value of this comment
Just because a picture is bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's better quality.
I'd much rather have a 1024x768 picture that was good quality than a 1600x1200 picture with image flaws.
I disagree.
The problem is that people misuse it. They seem to think the camera phone is there to replace your camera. Right now it isn't!
Since getting a camera phone I have enjoyed taking pics. But at no point did I think they were going to be of high enough quality to be printed out and framed or put up on a web site. But, the ability to take a picture of something and MMS it to a friend (usually to find out if I'm looking at the correct thing), has proved invaluable a couple of times already.
My father bought a digital camera about 6 years ago. It's maximum resolution was 640x480. It was expensive, and little more than a toy. Look at the quality of digital cameras now. I bet within 3 or 4 year time your phones will be more than adequate for posting arb pictures on your website. Why carry around a small camera and a small phone, when you can carry around one camera phone.
As for SMS's and web browsing being fads. Maybe in america, but I know here in South Africa SMS's are huge (and cell phones are owned by almost everyone, well over half the population as far as I know). Maybe its because we're poorer and therefor the money saved is worth it. Given that I just got a camera phone free of charge when renewing my cell phone contract, and even a cheap digital camera costs decent part of a salary here, I think its worth it.
East Coast Brewers
I really doesn't matter if it's a cell phone or not. People will go out and drop $1000 on a video camera, but won't spend $15 on a book about how to properly film a subject. People will spend $1000 or more on a PC, but again, won't drop $15 on a book about how to use it. I don't think that it matters if it's a table saw or a gun, most folks won't spend the tiome to learn how to use it correctly.
There's more to it than that though. The cheap plastic lens on these phones isn't really capable of taking high quality photos, even if you had a high megapixel system behind the lens. This becomes especially true after the thing rattles around in your pocket for a while and you get lint, sand, fingerprints, etc on it.
Another poster had it right: if you want good photos, get a good camera. If you're not worried about being the next Ansel Adams, use your camera phone.
The beauty of camera phones isn't that the picture quality is worth a damn -- it isn't. The great thing is that you always have the thing with you, so if something interesting happens you've got the ability to capture it on the spot without having to run home for your Nikon, by which time the moment will inevitably have passed.
If you want spontaneous pictures that are also of high quality, lug around a nice Nikon SLR -- the D70 looks fantastic. If on the other hand you'd rather not lug around an expensive camera body and a bag full of delicate lenses all the time, then the Lo-Fi, cheap-o camera on modern phones or PDAs can do in a pinch.
But don't bother mixing the two -- I can't imagine wanting to carry around a phone that doubled as a high megapixel camera. Think about it: the image sizes will be far too big to send to other camera phone users, which is a big part of the appeal with camera phones. You could have some kind of removable media, but at that point you have a crappy, expensive camera-phone hybrid that is cumbersome as a phone and inept as a camera. Why bother?
******
Composition, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the image. Look at the ways movies & magazines do photography, and copy what they do. Random examples off the top of my head:
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Most personal snapshots are crap because the people who take them want them that way. They're personal mementos, not art objects. The traditional snapshot is as formalized as a Byzantine icon.
/. effect) and then watched people turn around on the spot and shoot a crappy photo that looks just like every other crappy photo you've ever seen.
As a sometime professional photographer, I've given any number of hints similar to what I expect is on this list (love the
If people want good photos, all they have to do is look at their own photos as art and then work to make them look better.
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
But I cannot fathom why anyone would want to send text messages rather than TALK on their PHONES
200 free sms per month = mass savings if you stop making stupid little 30 second phone calls
or browse the web on a crappy display with no mouse or proper keyboard.
Oh, so you carry a 21" TFT, mouse and keyboard around in your pocket hey? didnt think so. doesnt matter to you though since you probably dont leave the house much. people dont choose to use these technologies for no reason dumbass
TIAEAE!
"The best camera/phone is the one with most pixels. "
No, it's the one with the best optics. I'll tell you right now, I'm not getting full use of the 640 by 480 CCD I have right now. A better lens would do me wonders, but increasing the CCD resolution would give me higher-resolution blur.
"Derp de derp."
There are quite a number of small (fits in pocket) cameras available. I like the casio exilim, but olympus, konica minolta, sony, and canon all have 3MP+ cameras with 3x optical zoom and flash that are about the size of a 1/2" stack of business cards.
These are great cameras to carry with you 24/7 and while they don't take digital SLR level photos they are a lot better than a camera phone and have a lot more smarts about exposure levels and autofocus.
Buy a couple of memory cards and you can take pictures constantly for a week and not pay to upload them over a cell phone carrier's network. You'll get some truly awesome photos that aren't stuck at 640x480 on a fixed-focus no-zoom, filled-with-dirt-lens seconday add-on marketing-said-to piece of junk.
What would funny is if they had gone the other direction and put a cheap cell phone into a Nikon digital rebel. "Excuse me, my camera is ringing..."
Oh the irony of "mobile asses"... in that a huge percentage of the mobile users encountered on a daily bases are indeed asses (aka assholes; asshats).
Picture your average British Rail journey... filled with a constant background noise of tinny ringtones. More annoying are those who think their ringtones are cool/funny and seem to leave them playing for the enjoyment of those around. I swear I'm going to throttle the next person I encounter with The Muppets theme tune, if only because I end up humming it for the rest of the day!!
Worse of all, though, are the actual conversations... either for their sheer dullness ("Hi. I'm on the train" or "Hello Darling, we're just pulling into Sutton" being v. popular), or for the full-on detail they are relaying ("Yeah, I was sick everywhere").
Personally, the thing I hate most about camera phones is, I can't lie to the wife about where I am. "Prove it", she'll say when I claim to be stuck at some god-forsaken station (when in reality, I'm in my local having a couple of jars on the way home).
JJ
Don't be afraid to throw away the crap ones
YES!
The biggest improvement an amateur photographer can make is a simple matter of self-discipline:
Throw away 8 of every 10 photos you take, before showing them to anyone.
There are many reasons why this works. If you adopt this practice now, by the end of the summer you'll have discovered several of those reasons on your own. You'll also have taken many more pictures than you would have otherwise, yet have fewer to show for it. OTOH, you'll start getting more compliments on your work.
Later on, if you decide you like this and want to go to the next level, you can start reading about digital photography and throwing away at least 9 of every 10 shots.