¶ One of the main complaints aimed towards the iPhone is that camera is deemed to be crap. Having just taken possession of an iPhone, I thought I’d do a quick comparison. It’s only fair to compare the iPhone with another mobile – comparisons and expectations with digital SLRs or compacts are pointless.
My previous phone was a Sony Ericsson k800i of 2006 vintage, so two years older than my iPhone. It has a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera, compared with the iPhone’s static focus 2 megapixels. Not that image resolution has anything much to do with photo quality – clarity of the lens, and accuracy & size of the sensor are far more important. These are the comparison shots:
Poppy taken with an iPhone
Poppy taken with a k800i
The shot was taken hand-held, lit by daylight through a window, but conditions were fairly dark (late afternoon in mid-Winter). Both cameras reported an aperture of f/2.8, with the k800i reporting a shutter speed of 1/15 (the iPhone doesn’t record the shutter speed).
For me, on this non-scientific, one-off comparison the iPhone wins. Contrast (in particular the blacks) is better on the k800i, but the lighter areas are blown out. This is particularly noticeable in the detail of the cushion and the white areas of Poppy’s fur. The iPhone could do with a little more contrast, but the mid-range detail is much better than the k800i. Here’s a full resolution comparison. I’ve reduced the k800i to the same size as the iPhone.
iPhone on the left, k800i on the right
In this shot, the detail captured by the iPhone seems far superior to the k800i, despite the higher resolution of the latter. This may not be a precise comparison as there seems to be a lot of post-processing applied by the k800i, possibly through its digital image stabilization. But that said, in real world use, this photo is typical of what I’d use a cameraphone for: shots of people and pets in poor light conditions; not tripod-mounted still-lifes.
So in this one example, the iPhone wins over my old phone. Sure there are newer and better cameraphones than the k800i (the k850i for starters), but at least the iPhone seems an improvement over what I had previously. When I want to take a photo in even lower light (a pub) or of a macro subject (food) I’m sure I’ll be thinking differently, but for the moment I’m pleasantly surprised.
The iPhone is now the fourth most popular camera on Flickr so if you want to judge for yourself how good or bad it is, there’s plenty of photos by which to do so.
Comments
1
Any excuse to take a pic of your dog!
2
Funny reading this a day after I created a Flickr album of what I think are my best iPhone photos, some of which are wonderful, although I do run them through Photoshop quite often.
For me, its all about capturing something good enough to be tweaked and refined on the computer later. I’m not interested in dragging a heavy or bulky DSLR around with me, or even my old Canon Ixus.
I like having one device for calls, music, photos – and being able to capture images and memories whilst out “in the field” that do not disappoint me once refined and Flickr’d. Yes, they’d be better if taken with a fancy camera, but I’m more interested in what memories and emotions photos evoke in me and others rather than pro quality under a magnifying glass.
3
I must say that I think the K800i is more to my taste, either way it is close and adjustments can be made easily with Photoshop, like Colly says.
4
I love the iPhone camera, but most photos end up to be too blurry in most cases.
5
try a comparison in lower light conditions… i’m guessing the aperture is fixed therefore the only control the phone has is the exposure time, hence as the light drops the exposure time goes up and images blur…
the camera is perfect for casual snaps but for anything more there simply isn’t the control…
it’s only an opinion but i would suspect that apple didn’t consider that the camera would be used for anything other than casual photography and therefore went for a viable but so-so lens/sensor…
6
I find the camera actually to be quite good in good light, it just not great on moving subjects or in dim light. Where things are still and lit, i’ve had some great spur of the moment pics…
7
Try Night Camera ($1) or Darkroom (free) from the App Store. Even for daylight shots they gets better results.
8
Quite, and anyone who expects more of a cameraphone is always going to be disappointed.
Thanks for the tip, Steve. I’ll give those a go. Night camera is 59p for us Brits and has the additional feature of the entire touchscreen being the shutter button, which should go some way to making up for there being no physical button.
9
This past summer my girlfriend and I went on vacation to Provincetown on Cape Cod Massachusetts. We took the ferry from Boston on which we realized we forgot the camera! We had to resort to taking all photos of our trip via my iPhone; I feel that it did a decent job, although most of our pictures were outside on sunny days.
http://picasaweb.google.com/eferraiuolo/Provincetown
10
I am the unfortunate one who has not yet caught up with the times. After the CES I am dying to get my hands on the new Palm Pre that is coming out. It is supposed to have a 3 megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field. Interested to see how that will par up with the iphone and storm. I will run a comparison with my friends phones and see how they hold up…my money is on the PRE.
For your pics – nice to see how far along technology has taken these cameras from two years ago…something tells me ‘they’ are holding out on us. I am expected resolution like the Nikon D60.
11
I think the only thing that might be of some interest for you is that you are happy with your iPhone. Surely every mobile phone has its advantages and disadvantages of which you will learn of during your use but for the beginning it’s ok that you are happy with it. So enjoy your iPhone.
12
I have been pretty impressed with the iPhone camera, and I strongly recommend the Night Camera app. I think it’s $1usd, but it’s great even in just low-light situations. Simply has better color and contrast.
Cheers!
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