anyhow— I appreciate the comment and the opportunity to discuss things and learn a bit along the way.

I don’t claim to be anything of a photographer. I shoot pictures for myself and my family, to post on a blog or three, and to send to family and friends or some of the families of the kids I work with.

So, yes, when I speak about photography I am clearly speaking about something different than you and something that is done for different purposes than you.

To flesh out my statement “better than the specs” though let me note that my last attempt to use a camera phone was the 1.3mp camera on the Samsung Blackjack. It felt like an afterthought and I never used it. When I got the iPhone I noted that the mp count was a bit higher but it had EVEN LESS flexibility than the Blackjack. Based on the specs I assumed it was a useless “throw-on”. I have found that it is not and that my assumption based on specs alone was wrong– (for my purposes). When I started using it I found that it actually is quite useful for me. I find it easy to point and shoot, love having such a huge “view-finder” and actually find the pictures as good or better than I need. I also love not having to think about it and knowing I have a camera with me all the time.

Again, my needs and wants are clearly different than yours.

I find it perfectly sufficient for what I normally need.

All this noted- I all really hoping the gen2 iPhone ups the specs a lot. More mega pixels, flexibility and video mode would make for something AWESOME.

There are more issues to the camera that I can mention, including its inability to take any photos that have motion in them. It is just a slow chipset, or a really bad driver, not sure which, but the camera is unfortunately not good enough for anything but for still photos in which you had several seconds to point and shoot.

Also, try to take photos with a relatively low LUX and you will see its other big weakness.

Anyway, I just don’t see how the camera on the iPhone could be said as ‘better than its specs say’. I disagree. Either you have a rather low expectation of what digital photography should be, or you think that phototgraphy is limited to pictures small enough you can put on a weblog.

I have a 5MP compact camera and the photos are orders of magnitude better than the iPhone shots you’ve posted. Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone, and for a 2MP camera it’s not bad, but the photos it produces are awful compared to a ‘real’ camera.

Rick’s comments about the N95 camera are also spot on. The N95 camera blows the iPhone camera away.

Even the shots you’ve posted, which might seem halfway-decent for a mobile phone, aren’t so great. If you’d shot them with a real camera you’d say they were blurred, with terrible colours, and serious exposure issues.

Sorry dude 🙂 Loving the blog, btw!

Maybe the CASIO is just that much crappier, rather than the iPhone much better.

Anywho – Great view (noticed I didn’t say great pics) 😛

But if the natural lighting at the time was not good, then my iPhone picture quality was quite bad – and those were the photos I had been thinking of.

While I won’t go so far as to say the iPhone takes pictures as good as my Casio Exilim 8MP … the consistancy of the iPhone’s camera is a lot better than what I get from the Casio. I’m not sure what it is about the Casio – but the pictures are a crap shoot. Sometimes I get wonderful pictures other times its like I was riding a sled down a rock slope they are so blurry.

Fortunately I’ve got a Canon Rebel DSLR. And there’s no way that thing is staying home on my next vacation.

But, can I ask if you are using the in-built camera application that comes with the iPhone, or are you using one of the 3rd party ones from Installer? (I’ve been using the in-built camera app).

For MY purposes the iPhone was not only sufficient but GREAT.

Sure, it lacks the flexibility and higher resolution BUT that wasn’t my point. My point wasn’t even that my Casio was AWEFUL and my iPhone was GREAT. My point was- I assumed that based on specs it would be a slam dunk and the Casio would be good and the Phone terrible and I was blown away by how good the pictures from the iPhone were. For MY PURPOSES they were good enough to leave the Casio behind.

I completely agree that the inability to take video is a bummer– hopefully that changes in June or with the release of the 3G iPhone.

Personally I find the weakest link on the iPhone to be the Bluetooth radio which could make the device so much more than it is.

jcjdoss– thanks for sharing your story- it helps reinforce the point I was trying to make. It also doesn’t hurt that you were taking pictures in Maui and me Jamaica. Not bad subject matter in either place.

It might be fine for the shots you posted on the internet, nothing better than reduced pixels to obscure any good detail, but now try to print that piece of junk on paper and see how that goes?

Do you live in an NTSC world still? Come one man, if youa re going to glorify the iPhone, at least do it on things that do warrant merit. Its camera is the weakest link in the hardware, and the fact that it cannnot even do real time video is also a big downside to it.

Stop drinking that kool-aid in excess. We all love our iPhone, but to try to tell people to throw away their camera because it offers ‘better’ quality is just downright wrong.

Yeah, I don’t even own a camera anymore. I’m just waiting for Polar Bear Farm to develop ShowTime further, or MonsterandFriends, in order to have an awesome video camera, with sound, possibly?