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.'"

Comments

HOWTO: Improving a crummy cell camera

[dino213b]

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.

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/bedroom .jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/diversi ty_of_books.jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/room33. jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/jsd-van .jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/car.jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/car3.jp g
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/ariz.jp g

Slightly wider shots:
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/livroom 1_corrected.jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/par-ph0 _corrected.jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/pan-ph1 _corrected.jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/grandca ny_corrected.jpg
- http://www.cardope.com/misc/razr_panoramic/dd_corr ected.jpg

Please note that some of these processed images have not been color corrected with enblend - otherwise they would have turned out much better.

Re:What?

[lukas84]

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.

911

[deviceb]

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..