Thursday
Oct042012
Smartphone cameras?
Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 3:00AM If a new smartphone looks great and everything looked exactly what you wanted, but the camera was poor would you still buy it? For me it would probably be a no.
Thursday, October 4, 2012 at 3:00AM
Reader Comments (10)
Of all the features of the modern smartphone, the camera is the one I least care about and not even something I take into consideration when looking at phones. So for me the answer is yes, I'd buy it.
I don't use the camera a lot but I expect it to at least do a decent job. If it were poor I'd probably look elsewhere; if it were adequate that's be fine. If it gave my pictures a funky purple haze effect that'd be awesome, but for now that will just have to remain a hazy dream ;o)
I'd still buy it, even if the phone had no camera at all.
But most of us do own smartphones with fairly poor cameras. iPhones and most if not all Android phones come with very basic cameras. They are acceptable, not good.
No decent camera, then it's stays on shop shelf. Camera is very important. It doesn't matter if you have a super brilliant camera, it's the camera in your pocket that often counts for taking that spontaneous shot.
It is something I always seem to think is important and yet it's probably the feature I use least. I take very few pictures but if I go anywhere interesting I tend to take my compact with me. It is good to know that I can take a reasonable shot on my phone if I need to. My children, on the other hand, are always snapping away and posting on various forums. For them it's an essential feature.
The camera is a nice to have but would be way down the list. I'll have to see how good the iPhone 5 camera is. The iPhone 4 was handy every now and then, but I certainly didn't depend on it for anything.
The quality of the camera is very important to me - with young children being able to snap those unplanned moments is vital.
I'm like Donald Stidwell. To have a camera is good actually, but overall it's not an item I value much. It's fine for the casual photo.
If I want a proper photo, just don't bug me with the "a mobile phone can take excellent photos", because it can only point and shoot, generally speaking. A dedicated camera can do a lot more, particularly if you want control over what you are shooting.
The camera quality on phones has dramatically improved over the last couple of years - they aren't as good as a stand alone camera, but they aren't bad either. Most can deliver decent photos in decent conditions. The area they tend to suffer is in regards to WB and in shutter lag. The S3 is no exception - it struggles with WB, but in regards to shutter lag it is almost in a stand alone camera league which is very impressive.