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If you think the iPhone's camera is bad...
- Thread starter anjinha
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I'm not saying the iPhone's camera shouldn't be better. But people act like the iPhone's camera is the worst cell phone camera out there and it's definitely not. My friends are amazed at some of the pics I took with the iPhone. I saw a website recently that compared cell phones cameras and iPhone's camera was a lot better than most, even some that people usually say are a lot better than the iPhone in terms of picture quality.
Maybe it's not really crap. The thing is that this phone is being marketed here to be as good as the iPhone but at 1/3 of the price. And having been using it for the past few days I can say that this is just a regular low cost phone with a poorly implemented touchscreen on top.
It's not broken. The pics would be better at a different angle and with different lighting. I just figured I posted this because it was the first pic I took with the LG and it was crap compared to the iPhone in the same conditions.
Do you know what the spec are for the LG camera ?
I just find it odd that the iPhone takes a decent picture in terrible lighting (which most agree the iphone is bad in poor lighting)
and the LG takes an even worse one with virtually no colour
OK, I'll bite: please provide details of a review, by a reputable camera review site like DPreview or equivalent, where a current cellphone camera has outperformed a current compact camera of the same megapixel resolution (i.e. no comparing 6-year-old compact cameras to current cellphones). Go on, I challenge you...
Of course, with a better camera and a few other things fixed Apple might well sell five times as many iPhone's as they do now. It's hard to know without an alternate universe to test it on.
Phazer
Which is why phone manufacturers are brilliant with their megapixel marketing. People don't care about the quality of the optics, etc.., you tell them a bigger number and it is assumed to be better.
Does anyone think those two 0.3 MP cameras on the new Nintendo DSi has no point and no function whatsoever? Maybe you should compare the pictures taken from that to the LG Cookie.
That's not relevant, and those are mainly for a little fun with friends, just like everything else Nintendo.
True.
Frustrating at times when trying to explain this.
Current marketing has definitely penetrated the minds of consumers with pixel count.
Fine. But you need to think and look at the wider picture and stop believing everything Jobs tells you.
As a camera in the phone, you are looking to compare it with $100 compacts, nothing high end.
Now sales of camera phones overtook digital camera in a corresponding curve in 2003 in Japan/Asia and 2006 in Europe (Forbes). Canon and Fuji have all scaled back their compact range as it is being so heavily cannibalised by camera phones. Furthermore Olympus have fully withdrawn from the compact market and are teaming up with mobile makers as announced at WMC. They are all now pushing the higher end compact, hence Canon's 6 SXs the other day and D1000 etc. This was coming out of articles as far back as 4 years ago: http://www.digitalcamerainfo.com/content/Camera-Phones-Outsell-Digital-Cameras.htm
The man with whom Steve has negotiated iPhone exclusive deals in the UK (thought that might get the ears going) states the camera phone market is killing the lower end compact camera market: http://www.cpwplc.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=123964&p=NewsArticle&id=1080655
Now, as for comparisons, as you should know DPReview doesn't do cameraphones, so there would be no comparisons to see there! Besides, they do serious photography to nerdy detail. Your average Flickr/Facebook uploader doesn't check that out! However there are numerous articles to be googled about Sony Ericsson's K850i vs low end compacts.
But what about a CNET review of camera phones vs compacts and a Canon 400D DSLR? Intrigued? You may be surprised at their findings: http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/0,39029453,49289927-1,00.htm
David Pogue, an Apple enthusiast and photographer - who has frequently bemoaned the iPhone's camera - has reviewed phones he thinks give better results than compacts out there. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/technology/personaltech/04pogue.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Convergence devices are the way. The mobile phone market - with the iPhone which was inevitable - is rapidly eating the mp3/4 player, but long before that it was killing the compact/ultra compact digital camera market. Remember, outside the US, the available mobile phones are 1-2 generations ahead in features and network speeds (nowhere beats Japan/S Korea though).
Finally, DPreview does have many forum threads, but this one might interest you with the comments from senior members of the forum: http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1001&message=30783406
Believe it or not, I want Apple to succeed and I want a great device. It's as an enthusiast, not a worshipper, who makes a reasonable, sensible suggestion with knowledge of the wider market of what is possible to achieve an improved machine. I'm not asking for anything major, simply an upgraded phone with small flash and autofocus; I am no idiot who thinks a 12MP mobile can out perform a DSLR or 6MP compact.
But when the phone is universally pointed out by reviewers of phones as having a poor camera for the price point and compared to its direct competitors, it would be blindness to ignore it.
I am criticising one aspect of the iPhone. Not your mother. Stop taking it so personally. Take off the Apple shades and look around at the wider tech world and business. The Pre looks very promising, but by the end of this year, there will be an Android phone (probably Samsung's) that would seriously compete with today's iPhone 3G. Apple will need to move the game on again by the end of the year.
Well here are some pictures taken with my LG Dare, I think it has the same camera as the LG Cookie.
Sorry for the water droplets. They were both taken behind glass.
To prove a point, the iPhone camera is NOT good compared the the LG's.
Edit: here are the specs on mine
3.2MP Schneider Kreuznach lens, Digital flash, and Digital zoom
Sorry for the water droplets. They were both taken behind glass.
To prove a point, the iPhone camera is NOT good compared the the LG's.
Edit: here are the specs on mine
3.2MP Schneider Kreuznach lens, Digital flash, and Digital zoom
Attachments
I hate to say it but I have pictures that are equally as good with my iPhone. Even crappy sensors take decent pictures in sunlight.
I'm definitely not a "the iPhone's camera is good" advocate. I personally think it's crap. I'm just making a point.
Note: That would be my son. Gerber baby eh?
Attachments
How are you proving a point? Do you have pics taken with all the LG phones and the iPhone taken in the exact same conditions and where the iPhone pics are worse than the LG pics?
Look at the iPhone picture thread, there are lots of great pics taken with the iPhone. Does that prove that the iPhone camera is better? No, it just proves that the iPhone CAN take good pics.
The LG Dare does not have the same camera as the LG Cookie. The iPhone camera IS better than the LG Cookie, I have them both here and have been testing them both in the same conditions, that's why I posted this thread. As for the Dare or other LGs I have no idea since I haven't used them.
Please show me where in my post I said I thought the iPhone camera was good... Actually, I think it's mediocre. I simply challenged your assertion that "compact camera play second fiddle to many camera-phones in image quality". Despite your lengthy post, I see no convincing evidence that is the case.
Yeah, sorry… but that picture is pretty poor compared to the two landscape shots posted above. It's got some nasty compression artifacts, there's image burnout on the curtain despite a much lower contrast ratio, the focus is less sharp with a limited depth of field and it looks like the white balance is slightly off.
Granted, not a like for like picture comparison so some of those effects might be overstated, but I'd say that was a good demonstration of some of the problems. More telling might be a picture with some movement in it, or in dark conditions, where I suspect it the gap would be quite significant.
anjinhamarota said:
Oh, it unquestionably is. It's not recording any red saturation at all, but is getting blue. That's why your broadly red cat gets desaturated but the blue box in the background is fine.
Only question is if it's a one off catastrophic hardware failure on the CCD or if there's a really bad bug in the Cookie's image processor. Given I've not seen this mentioned in any other reviews I'd be inclined to say it's a one off and the former, but I could be wrong.
Yeah, but the measure of a good camera isn't that it *can* take good pictures occassionally. Back in my days at university they used to give us cameras that wrote to floppies such was their image quality, and they could take a decent picture in perfect conditions. The measure of how good a camera is is how well it copes with sub optimum conditions. SLRs are expensive because you should be able to take a picture more or less anywhere at any time and get a good image if you know how to use it.
But the iPhone's camera falls down in anything but sub-optimum conditions, and to a greater extent than most of it's rivals. That's the problem, because phone cameras tend to be used by people who are out and on the go, or to capture something surprising. Hence they either feature something dramatic that's moving or they're in a dark/high contrast area.
A good snapshot camera isn't the one that provides the absolute best image quality, but the one that copes with typical usage scenarios the best. And the iPhone's doesn't cope very well at all.
Phazer
Fine.
You are obviously not willing to be open to have a change of ideas publicly here. An ego thing? So we'll leave it there.
If DPReview - which you cited - is not enough, David Pogue, industry leaders, and market economics over the last 6 years can't sway you, I don't think anything will. ;o)
At least we agree -- the iPhone camera is mediocre and should be one of the priority hardware improvements.
Absolutely! A pin-hole camera can take stunning images, taking the argument to the absurd.
Well put.