Although the iPhone camera is not the best by a long shot (although the recent addition of the Clarifi has helped, in the case of close-ups anyway), it is still possible to do some interesting things with it. The App Store helps a lot here. There are one or two really handy applications for playing around with images – I actually have a whole page of them. I’m not going to list them all, but my top picks are probably Photogene, which is a small photo editing program for cropping and adjusting levels etc.; and CameraBag, which can apply a number of different processing effects to images either from the camera roll, or taken straight on the camera.
Consider the shots below – the first one is the original, and the others were all created with CameraBag.
For uploading I tend to use Tumble to post snapshots to my tumblelog, or FlickUp to get them up to Flickr.
Now, this is antagonistic, but all this shows me is that the iPhone camera is “not the best by a long shot “. No matter what some tweaks do, there’s not enough clarity and contrast in the original image to give you much to work with in post.
I mean, sure it’s better than my 6310i, but what isn’t? IMO – the limit here is the original lens/sensor combo and for anything other than impulse snapshots I’d want a camera not a phone. No amount of post is going to make up for that…
That’s a fair comment. I completely agree that the iPhone camera is rubbish – it’s a real shame they didn’t take the opportunity to update it for the 3G model. It is fixed focus and poor. The only thing the apps do really is make it a little more “fun” to use. And there’s no way I can carry my DSLR everywhere I go for a quick snapshot, so this has to do.
Sure the iPhone camera could be better, but I’m honestly ok with it. I really enjoy using Photogene, and I actually like some of those shots Andy got with the CameraBag app.
For a quick camera this works for me, and most of the time I’m just sending pics to TwitPic or Tumblr. The iPhone camera is a million times better than the camera on my old phone anyway… at least I can make out what I’m taking a picture of when I’m done with it.
The apps do make taking pictures on the phone more fun, even if they’re not perfect, I think that makes it worth it 🙂
I agree. The iPhone camera is poor in quality but better than some phone cameras of the same era. Camerabag has given my iPhone camera a new lease of life for out-of-the-pocket shots. I use a Canon 5D D-SLR plus extra battery pack so its the size of an elephant (but not a white one). Horses for courses huh? I wouldn’t take prized shots with the iPhone camera and I wouldn’t/couldn’t keep the 5D on me all the time.