You could capture an image with it, yes, but 2mp is not very many pixels. It's sort of like the videography thing....the other day, some friends of mine were interviewed for the local news, showing off their ROV that just won an international competition. The camera man showed up with a camera the size of a small suitcase. He had a huge battery pack and wireless trasnmitter, along with a built in microphone. Why? Because it produces
broadcast quality footage. But my brother has a very small digital camcorder, it's about the size of a Gameboy. Sure, it's not the greatest, but it works. And it's small, he could carry it around all of the time to capture the moment. And besides, isn't it more about the photographer than the euqipment? Guess what, TV-20 decided to use their camera. I offered my brother's camera, but they still insisted that they really needed to use something that produced a high quality image for their news.
In much the same way, yes, a camera phone might be really useful for capturing "documentary" style things and you might even sell an image to a big name magazine....if a terrorist attack occurs. What is on the front of the majority of magazines?
Time Magazine Past Covers
You can search there for all of the covers for the past 80 years or so, I think. Just looking at the ones shown on that one page, I don't see a single one that looks like it was taken with a cellphone. Infact, I read part of one of the articles you linked to, the first one. The person was talking about how a tiny camera would be great becasue it would let him capture something without lugging around tonnes of camera gear. I agree. However, he is not a pro photographer. Anyone who is a professional photographer is getting paid to haul around their lenses and bodies, they are totally focused and dedicated to capturing life around them, they are not only shooting the once a week moment they see.
As far as art goes, yes, what is most important is the vision of the artist, not the equipment. But at the same time, let us try to apply that mindset to other things in life. For example, we could say that as far as freedom goes, what is most important is how hard the Cuban tries to get to America, not what he uses to get here. He can try hard, but it's a darn long swim!! He'd be much better off making a boat or a plane or something, than swimming. He needs to have the perserverance to get here, but he also does need some equpiment. We can see from that example that the equipment does indeed matter. If equipment didn't matter, well, without a scanner I can't put my pinhole-shoebox camera pictures online, can I? Once again, we see that equipment matters.
The artist, then, needs not only a good camera to capture their subject with, but the eye to see it with. Otherwise, you'll get a good photograph with no story, no soul. Sometimes, shooting with a cellphone might be the way to produce a truly classic image. But mosto f the time, it is not. And a good photographer or artist needs to recognize which tools will help him the most.
I would also argue that equipment made 30-60 years ago can produce a better image than this lens can. I have no proof of that, but I think more professional photographers use 30-60 year old wide format camera equipment than cellphones. (for taking pictures, atleast. Wide format cameras suck at making phone calls.)
Anyways, I am more than willing to haul my camera equipment around, because if I see a moment I want to capture, I can have my camera ready just as fast as my cell phone camera. Also, I have to pay to get the image off of the cell phone. Next, it is much easier to blow up or crop the image from my camera without making it look horrible. When my cell phone can make prints up to 8x11, essentually, when my cell phone camera is 6mp, and has a focal range of 28 to 500mm and is f2.8 at the very very slowest when wide open, f8 when at 500mm, I don't hav eto pay to get images off and I can shoot in raw, and my phone feels like it is built as well as my pentax *ist Ds and can accept threaded filters and lenshoods, with a built in tripod mount and easily adjusted settings with some dedicated controls, I'll think about selling the Pentax.
[edit] it also needs a hotshoe!
