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Join Date: 21 Apr 2003 Location: Penang
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Reputation: 2162 Rep Power: 56 |  Two-Megapixel Camera Phone Advances Photos!
Quote:
NEW YORK - Would you trust a cell phone camera to capture your new baby's first moments of life?
I wouldn't have when my first child was born three years ago but decided to risk it for my second when Sprint Corp. introduced the Samsung MM-A800, the first mobile phone in the United States equipped with a 2-megapixel camera.
Well, actually, I didn't take that big a risk.
To ensure there'd be no permanently blank pages at the very start of my daughter's childhood photo album, I also brought along a trusty film camera, which meant juggling two devices even as I played hand-holding husband and cord-cutting father — truly rigorous battle conditions.
The upshot? Close, but only three-quarters of a proud father's cigar.
The camera-phone shots from the hospital and afterwards provided more than a few album-worthy pictures, but even those printed with blurs, blares of light and muddy contrasts. None came out as sharp or vivid as images taken by the film camera or the full-blown digital camera I used when my first child was born.
The A800's image quality was, of course, far superior to prints from photos taken with the low-resolution "VGA" cameras built into so many phones, as well as the 1-megapixel models that are becoming more common.
For comparison, I printed a series of identical shots from a Sanyo phone with a 1.3 megapixel camera, all abysmal.
The Samsung phone introduces some other nice touches to phone photography: autofocus; a digital zoom function in 10 increments; a sliding lens cap to prevent smudges; a choice of USB port or removable storage card to transfer pictures to a computer or compatible printer; and a big color screen that makes viewing pictures and Web content more pleasurable.
But all that is somewhat beside the point.
Since the digital photos taken by lower-end camera phones are already adequate for e-mail attachments and phone-to-phone picture messaging, the main advantage of a 2-megapixel camera phone — one that costs $500 before rebates or $350 with a two-year Sprint contract — has to be the ability to print out pictures as you might with any digital camera.
There's more to a digital camera than megapixels, so it's hard to know if the digital imperfections — particularly at the overlaps between objects, people, colors and backgrounds in any given photo — are a function of resolution or the image-processing module inside.
A standalone digital camera with the same resolution as the A800 might produce better shots because the image processor isn't competing for space within the guts of a cell phone. Nor are the photo components an additional manufacturing expense in a standalone camera as they are in a phone. Then again, Samsung now sells a 7-megapixel phone in Korea, so these tradeoffs seems to be fading.
I used three different online services to print my photos from the A800 just to make sure the image quality was a reflection of the camera.
The truest images were captured outdoors. Many of the indoor photos suffered from motion blur, a sign the photo sensor needs a real flash rather than the lamp installed on most camera phones. Flashes freeze motion, yielding sharp pictures. Here, instead of illuminating the entire picture with a dispersed burst of light, a visible spotlight often ringed the subject, casting a glare.
Most of the photos I printed were shot at maximum resolution, though a handful were inadvertently taken at one-quarter the top quality. I say inadvertent because — inexplicably and unbeknownst to me since I pre-set the camera at top resolution — the camera defaults to a half-megapixel resolution whenever this "slider" type handset is in the open position with its keypad revealed.
According to Samsung, this default was designed with picture messaging and e-mail in mind. While there's a kernel of logic here I find the explanation presumptuous and the inability to override this default maddening:
The assumption, an executive explained, is that when the phone is slid open, the user is planning to share the photo rather than print it, and thus needs the keypad to type in an e-mail address or phone number to which it will be sent. A high-resolution photo is overkill for that type of viewing, of course, as it takes longer to transmit over the cellular network — possibly at an added cost to the sender.
Fair enough, but no reason to handcuff the user. And then there's the loss of spontaneity.
Maybe you're on the phone or dialing a number when you spot something you'd like to photograph. Even without having to close the slider, the camera takes at least five seconds to start up, and then you've got to slide the cap off the lens and line up the shot. Moment gone. (Admittedly, some digital cameras similarly take too long to "boot up.")
Despite such shortcomings, this experiment was hardly a disaster.
Clearly, the time has not yet come for non-photo buffs like myself to rely exclusively on a cell phone camera. But the Samsung A800 shows that's where we're heading sooner than later.
At nearly 2 inches thick, the A800 is a tad bulkier than I'd prefer for a cell phone. Nevertheless, I relished the opportunity to leave my camera home altogether, and frequently did so, knowing I had my phone to capture unexpected photo opportunities.
Let the photo enthusiasts carry around as many devices as they like. This point-and-shoot amateur looks forward to the day when all you need is one.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050804/...t_camera_phone |
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5th Aug 2005, 09:18 AM
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