Smartphone Cameras

Smartphone Cameras

One of the most widely accessible image making methods is the camera found in most people's pockets - the smartphone camera.  Phone manufacturers have now developed smartphones so that all of them carry cameras to rival most point and shoots.  Building on basic camera phones - such as the world's first, the 2000 Japanese J-SH04 created by Sharp, or the slightly earlier Samsung SCH-V200 built-in camera phone (contested as you could only access the photos from a computer) - we have now arrived at phones such as the 16 megapixel, 577ppi, dual LED Samsung Galaxy S6, due to be released in April.

The 2000 J-SH04 camera phone
(Wikipedia)

The 2005 Sony Ericsson K750i
camera phone (Tech Radar)

The 2015 HTC One M9 smartphone
with Duo camera (PC Advisor)

The more up to date phones will have both front and rear-facing cameras, allowing for video conferencing and the increasingly popular selfie, albeit with lower resolution front cameras.  The recent rise in "selfie culture" has led to smartphone makers starting to increase the resolution of thesefront cameras. Smartphone cameras differ from cameras as their main function is not to take photographs.  Although camera technology has improved in recent years to include many of the same features as phones - e.g. posting pictures taken to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. using wifi - smartphones are an easier and more flexible way to store and upload images.  It is faster than using a USB cable or SD card to upload pictures to a computer then adding them to your email or social media, and as smartphones can use mobile data they can take and send pictures anywhere as they don't have to be reliant on a broadband signal.

Smartphone camera comparison (Giz Mag)

I have a HTC One X, which has an 8 megapixel camera (1.3 for the front facing one).

Here are some pictures taken with my phone as an example.  I used the different filters available, which include Posterise, Vintage Warm/Cold, Solarise, Negative and Dots.

There is debate as to whether smartphones can take better photographs than most cameras.  Whether or not that is true is generally up to the user, however it can't be denied that smartphones are capable of creating images of the same quality as point and shoots, maybe even some DSLRs.  Which did a test to see the best camera for taking ordinary shots.  A compact camera won, but as they said, the best camera "depends on the type of shots you want to take".



With many apps available to download, or items such as the Nokia Lumia Camera Grip to help make the smartphone camera experience as close to a "real" camera as possible, it's not difficult to see why smartphones are nowadays becoming more prevalent than cameras.  Part of the appeal may the ease in which photographs can set up and taken on the camera application of the phone.  Settings are more intuitive and are located in the same place, making it a more straightforward process.  Even though there are cameras with touch screens, it can't be denied that smartphones, being multi-purpose (with touchscreens), have the added attraction of being more convenient to cart around and pull out when a photo opportunity catches your eye.  

I don't believe that there is a right or wrong side to the smartphone/camera discussion; I use both, and like both.  For different reasons, they are the most useful for different photographs, and therefore I alternate between them depending on the situation.  Smartphones cameras are getting better and better and I'm looking forward to seeing what phone manufacturers do next to increase their ability to compete with camera manufacturers.


Sources used:

Mobiles.co.uk
Wikipedia
The Huffington Post
Tech Radar
Tech Radar II
Digital Trends
BBC News
Phone Arena
Giz Mag
Wikimedia Content (By Morio (photo taken by Morio) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], via Wikimedia Commons)
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