Digital Photography Hacks

Live with a Less-Than-Perfect Camera

Ansel Adams might not have used a camera phone to photograph “Moonrise, Hernandez,” but I bet he would have loved to have one around when he was hanging out with Edward Weston.

The value of a photograph taken with a camera phone does not lie in its photographic quality. The value lies in the sense of immediacy and the knowledge that you are able to capture—and, indeed, share [Hack #77] —a moment in time that would have been lost had your camera phone not been with you.

Most of us who are not professional photographers do not carry cameras with us all the time. Many of us, however, take our mobile phones everywhere we go. We take photographs for their personal value. Photographs can let us relive a special moment time again and again. So, for many of us, the choice between a nonexistent six-megapixel image (because the digital SLR is home, safe and sound, in the file cabinet) and a small, slightly blurry picture from the camera phone is clear: pull out the camera phone! For example, I can show you the rainbow in Figure 7-1 only because I had a camera phone with me to capture it.

Figure 7-1. Camera-phone picture of a rainbow

How Photos from Camera Phones Are Different

Anyone who has played with taking pictures on a camera phone knows that it’s not the same as regular digital photography, at least not yet. We’re already seeing impressive improvements ...