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How the Camera Phone Changed the World
theodp writes "Ten years after the amazing Philippe Kahn married a cell phone and a digital camera to capture the birth of daughter Sophie, Slate takes a look at the impact of the camera phone, the gadget that perverts, vigilantes, and celebrity stalkers can all agree on. 'With this kind of device,' Kahn told Wired, 'you're going to see the best and the worst of things.'"
Japanese phones already have pretty high quality phones on their cellphones. I believe 4.0 megapixel is not too unusual nowadays. Dont know why American companies are so slow on the uptake. Milking older technologies for everything its worth?
My mum uses one of these. She's really not into the whole "get a jack-of-all-trades" thing, but just requires a very basic phone in case her car breaks down or in case she's out and wants peace of mind.
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I think many people have a problem with the cell phone camera quality: If manufacturers bother putting a camera on a cell phone, they may as well have decent quality, right? Well, one thing that is overlooked with these cameras is the possibility of digital (panoramic and frame) stitching.
m .jpgi ty_of_books.jpg. jpgn .jpgg p gp g
m 1_corrected.jpg0 _corrected.jpg1 _corrected.jpga ny_corrected.jpgr ected.jpg
By using OSS such as Hugin and Enblend one can increase the resolution of images, add to the field of view and basically achieve the following results:
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/bedroo
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/divers
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/room33
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/jsd-va
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/car.jp
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/car3.j
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/ariz.j
Slightly wider shots:
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/livroo
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/par-ph
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/pan-ph
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/grandc
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/dd_cor
Please note that some of these processed images have not been color corrected with enblend - otherwise they would have turned out much better.
Megapixels is only half of the quality discussion.
A good camera has optical zoom, a bigger ccd (a bigger ccd at the same megapixel still gives a better picture), autofocus, etc.
Implementing this in a cell phone requires space.
Pertaining to this topic..
911 calls in NYC will activate the camera on mobile phones so people can send video of the emergency as it happens.
CNN usually gets images or video from peoples phones within minutes of the incident happening. The 911 people down in NYC just want the same data feed for emergencys..
Kill your TV
That's very similar to Semacode. They have readers for your mobile phone and you can create tags on their homepage. As usual you can find more information at Wikipedia.
PS: There's also a reader for your computer that takes a picture. Combine that with isightcapture and a little Dashboard widget and you could also use it on your Intel Mac.
Now the problem is that these people aren't asking if they can have a phone without a camera. And they know it. They want a phone that has WiFi, stereo bluetooth, a big high quality color screen, 3G, can play back every media file under the sun and better yet they can put custom software on and isn't locked to any provider... but not a camera. And that is where you do end up getting into "good luck, mate" territory.
So they're not just asking for a phone, they're asking for a good phone. Bastards. Should be hanged.
Fortunately, there is at least one such device. http://www.nokia.com/A4145124
I'm personally pretty sick and tired of the use of megapixels as indicator for the quality of digital cameras and cameraphones. I pretty much bet that my older P&S digical camera (Canon Powershot G3) absolutely trounces any 4-megapixel camera phones in image quality, despite being released in 2002. It's even worse than the use of mega/gigahertzes and MIPSes for computer performance; the optics, size of individual photosites and other factors just have so much impact for image quality that it's downright silly to use a single figure to evaluate the image quality.
The above does not mean that I'd want phones with camera to disappear from the face of Earth; if the image quality is sufficient for somebodys needs, it's fine for me. I'd just like people to have some more informed bases for comparisons.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
Do you mean this? (flickr stores the original if you upload it, even though they don't want to show it if you don't have a pro account).
It's larger alright. Sharper? Wouldn't say so, IMHO, it's much better at medium and large, the full resolution really brings out the flaws.
Purple fringing, almost all detail eaten by heavy noise reduction (look at the smaller tree branches, there's nothing but blur), badly overexposed sky. And that's in nigh perfect conditions.
It's pretty good for a phone picture, maybe it's on-par with cheapo pocket shooters, but it's nowhere near the good ones.
If you only want a really basic phone, then you can buy one without a camera. But, if you want one with other features (like WAP, which I use to check my email), it's almost always bundled with a camera.
Yeah but that's not the issue. The issue was that the original poster wanted a phone with no crap with a good battery life. At the point where you're going to be willing to carry a phone with extra features who cares if there is a camera included? Don't use it.
I'll tell you the first time I bought a camera phone I had no desire to have the camera but it was the best all around choice I found in a phone so I excepted that there would be a camera involved... I will admit that I was very wrong and short sighted for thinking I'd never use the camera.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
get a Free BSD!
When parents can't take photos at school events, it may not be the terrorists, but someone has certainly won....
If my children's school hires a professional photographer to take any photos, then a condition of the professionals contract is that all other cameras are banned. That way, you have to buy your photos off him.