Mobiles and Photography

MooseJam

So I've been thinking about taking up photography as a hobby, I'm not going to go out and spend big bucks on a dslr, firstly cause I don't have that kind of money to spend and secondly I'm not serious enough about this to justify spending that kind of money. I'm a bit of a gadget freak though so I could spend a few hundred on a mobile. So question is what are your thoughts on mobiles and their cameras, at the mo the best is a 3 meg cam but the next gen soon to be released will be a 5 megapixel which surely should not be sneezed at. Is it posible to have photography as a hobby and only have your mobile or would all you serious guys laugh and look down your nose. I would be interested in your opinions as I know nothing about this yet, thanks in advance

Fajitas!

You see, it's not nessicarily the megapixels of the camera, it's the size of the sensor taking the pixels. It would be possible to take photographs as a hobby with a camera phone, but your restricting yourself an awful lot with quality, and control. A lot of the work that goes into taking a photograph is choosing the right 'settings' which I doubt you'll be able to do with a cameraphone. You don't nessicarily have to spend big bucks on a DSLR, but could quite easily go down the route of a point&shoot with advanced features, or a hybrid/bridge camera. Even consider going down the film route if you wanted. You could get yourself a mobile that dosn't cost a few hundred and go for any of those options?

Roen

I thought there was a 10 Mpix mobile out a year ago or more?

Anyway, conventional wisdom would say that it's the 'artist' behind the camera that makes the image.
All well and good. What happens when the person behind the camera decides to do something that the camera cannot do? If it's an artist they shite on about you "not getting it" or "not understanding"...or maybe "lacking the vision".

If it's a photographer, they'll probably ask themselves "where is my gear (or me) lacking"? or "what would have suited that better"? ......They'll know what they need and work from there. Instead of coming up with a result and trying to justify what they have.

Ultimately it's up to you. Only you know how serious you are and only you know what type of images you want to take. Only you know how much you want to spend.


Any chance you could tell us what you're into so we could tailor the advice toward that?

Zillah

Megapixels are mostly a misleading lie. My DSLR is 6.1 MP, and if you put a picture taken on that next to a picture taken on a 6.1MP camera phone you'd be shocked at the quality difference. Its all about lenses, sensor size and encoding.

A camera phone will have a crappy lens, tiny sensor and economic (read: shitty) encoding format.

Camera phones aside, I was amazed at the difference in quality between my DSLR and a finepix compact I bought for nights out.


If you want cheap and high quality photos, then go for a film SLR. Its a bit messier having to get film developed but if you want to do anything other than take casual snap shots then you kind of need to.

MooseJam

Zillah wrote:

If you want cheap and high quality photos, then go for a film SLR. Its a bit messier having to get film developed but if you want to do anything other than take casual snap shots then you kind of need to.

without investigating i would have thought a film slr = dslr in price, i won't ask if this is so, i'll hit google

Stephen

Film SLR's can be had for peanuts now.

I have a mobile with a 3mp (Sony Ericsson K800i) camera and, while its good for a phone camera it is utter **** compared to even the cheapest of point-and-shoot digital cameras. Tiny pinhole-like lens + tiny sensor = bad.

Oriel

I'd like to shoot the person who thought it would be a good idea to put a camera onto a telelphone.

Paulw

Oriel wrote:

I'd like to shoot the person who thought it would be a good idea to put a camera onto a telelphone.

Shoot with the camera ... or the more violent type?

Ever wonder when and who launched the very first camera phone?

Sharp - a leading mobile operator in Japan and a member of the Vodafone Group - released the first camera phone in the world made by Sharp the J-SH04, in November 2000. [A brief history of camera phones on Satochi's Wireless Weblog].

"The J-SH04 was the industry's first mobile phone to feature an integrated 110,000-pixel CMOS image sensor for taking digital photos. It was followed by the industry's first application of a 65,536-color semi-transmissive TFT LCD on a flip type phone (J-SH05). Both models were supplied to J-Phone Co. Ltd., and raised Sharp's presence in the mobile phone market".

thebaz

buy a seperate cheap camera and mobile .. reasonable deals can be got everywhere on both .. the first digital camera i had was 2 megapixel , and my current sony phone has a 2 MP camera , and while the camera phone is reasonable for a phone, and the 2 mp camera quality wasn't great -- there was no comparison in photo quality .. the mp means little, the size of sensor and quality of lens is what its about, as other have said.

ladgie353

If you are talking about this kind of phone, which looks decent enough at taking pictures, here is a thought:
The Nokia N95 costs around 800 Euros (not available from any operator AFAIK so full price from Komplett).
That would get you a basic phone + a very decent p&s (Panasonic LX-2 or even a Leica D-LUX3 come to mind) which will blow the N95 as far as pictures go.
You could probably even get a second-hand dslr (?) or a basic one new from a country far far away...

pete4130

A camera should be a camera....a phone should be a phone.
The main reason camreas were introduced into phones was to increase theinterest in an already saturated market, to get people to go out and buy new handsets and keep sales up IMOP. Granted the quality does get better on these camera phones as time goes by but they are simply just a gadget. would you buy a phone with an MP3 player to listen to music in your house...probably not, so why buy a phone with a camera to specifically take pictures?
Think in the long run, phones have a limited life expectancy too, so it will more than likely break, get lost or smiply just stop working.

MooseJam

thanks for replies guys, i shall look at a film slr or a decent p&s dig cam

Owen

Just to reiterate what the other posters are saying, here's a picture taken with my Nokia n93 in a pub at night, a phone that Nokia say is an imaging device, and has one of the best cameras on the market :



And here's one taken on my Canon 350d, in a pub at night, with an additional flash, and an average speed lens, all of which would fall well within your budget.

brightspark

Here's a mobile printer

http://www.boreme.com/media/yr2007/reinventing-the-polaroid.jpg

melekalikimaka

ned78 wrote:

Just to reiterate what the other posters are saying, here's a picture taken with my Nokia n93 in a pub at night, a phone that Nokia say is an imaging device, and has one of the best cameras on the market :



And here's one taken on my Canon 350d, in a pub at night, with an additional flash, and an average speed lens, all of which would fall well withing your budget.

wow, theres no difference!

sineadw

I picked my film SLR up for less than €50 on ebay, and that was with a zoom and a soft case (which is still a bloody godsend!) and a roll of film, and a lollypop for some reason. Its a great camera too.

Seconding (7thing?) the point of the sensor size v's megapixels. My old P&S is 2 and takes infinitely better shots than my 2.1 mobile camera. You'd be severely limiting yourself with one of those. They're great for crappy snaps in the pub and thats it.

Oh and they make the most annoying fake shutte noise in the world. I guarantee people will want to kill you...

Zillah

MooseJam wrote:

without investigating i would have thought a film slr = dslr in price, i won't ask if this is so, i'll hit google

My God no. A decent Film SLR could be a tenth the price.

sineadw wrote:

I picked my film SLR up for less than €50 on ebay, and that was with a zoom and a soft case (which is still a bloody godsend!) and a roll of film, and a lollypop for some reason.

That is so cool.

Calina

sineadw wrote:

....
Oh and they make the most annoying fake shutte noise in the world. I guarantee people will want to kill you...

{note to Calina-self: never use phone camera in front of sineadw as dying early is not desirable}

sineadw

Actually, mine makes the noise of a bottle opening as I can't mute the damn thing. I think the bottle one is even more annoying, which is the main reason I chose it. I pretend it has kitsch value.

Zillah

Mine made an obnoxious QUACK! for a while. I turned that off

ThOnda

I love having camera on my mobile, however only for my blogue purpose or for getting funny signs into my computer.
All you need for photography is control. The more you learn about photography, the more you want to control even the process of taking the pciture (aperure, exposure time, zoom, EV balance, colour balance - in that order).

I am attaching an example of picture I am taking with my mobile, 'cose I have mobile almost always with me.