Cameraphone Capers

Wells Cathedral, 7th April 2012

Several months ago, I was agonising about buying a compact camera. I tend to find that a DSLR is just too big, noisy and downright intrusive in certain situations, so I was seriously considering the purchase of something more discrete. However, I'm really attached to using a viewfinder, which very few compacts have. And to add to my indecision, I was tempted by the various mirrorless systems that are around at the moment, especially the Olympus Pen.

[Despite the fact that my all DSLRs are Sony, I didn't like the look of the NEX system cameras, which shows you just how much of a fashion victim I can be when it comes to technology. To be fair, if Sony had decided to use the A-mount on its NEX cameras, that might have swung things back in their favour with me. However, I'm sure that there are good, technical reasons for going with E-mount. But I digress.]

Anyway, when I changed jobs recently, I had to return my company mobile phone. So, after many years of pay-and-go making do and a few years without any phone of my own, I went out and bought a contract. Again, I used my heart rather than my head when making a purchasing decision and came back with a Nokia Lumia 800.

The Lumia has a fairly decent 8 mega-pixel camera built in and I've found myself using it quite a lot for happy snaps of my family. Controls are limited and the shutter lag is horrendous, but it does the job and I always have it with me. It has, in fact, filled the need that was driving me to consider a compact camera. I've tried presenting this to my wife as an overall cost saving, but I don't think she's convinced.

Over the Easter holiday, we went to the Bishop's Palace in Wells and I managed to leave my camera bag at home. Wandering about after our son, who was absorbed in the Easter egg hunt, it occurred to me to try my camera phone on other subjects. Whilst he was busy with the dragon's nest in the orchard, I made the image above.

I'm not going to pretend that this is how it came off the phone. I colourised the image and adjusted the brightness of the sky in GIMP. But the phone made a good job of the exposure without any help from me. The finished result isn't the best photo I've ever made, but I find it quite pleasing.

This tends to support the hypothesis that the compact camera market will be eroded by camera phones until, in a few years time, we will be left with a three tier market: camera phones at the low end; mirrorless systems in the mid range; and full frame DSLRs and medium format at the top end.

Actually, my view is that the DSLR is a dead end in design terms which will be obsolete in a few years time, but that's a subject for another post.