the camera you have with you

Is of course the best camera you have.

Old saying I know, but always true.

On my last blog post 'h' made the point about people having capable phones with them and then using things like Instagrams to turn that into a grungy image. This got me thinking about how good phone cameras are today (which is a point I've already blogged about over here, where I've compared my phone to my wifes compact digital camera).

Today I'd like to do a quick compare of the latest phone cam in the Samsung Galaxy 3 with my now 4 year old Nokia -72. Just to see how far things have come (or how far the opposition has caught up with what was the crown prince of phone quality).

First the overviews

Nokia E72

then the Samsung Galaxy 3 (SG3)

The first thing which I noticed looking at the image from the SG3 is that the cam it a little wider angle than my Nokia is. Not a bucket load, but perhaps enough for some situations.

Interestingly the Nokia E72 is a 5MP camera (2592x1994) while the Samsung G3 is an 8MP (3264x2448) camera. The interesting thing which came from this examination (to me) was that the extra width of the SG3 angle of view ends up producing exactly the same pixel feature size as the Nokia. So the extra pixels don't get used to make a higher quality image, so much as to give you that extra around the edges.

Some overviews. A crop from the shadow areas:

E72

SG3

... and from some highlight areas

E72

SG3

These are all 100% pixel crops, so you can get down to the nitty gritty of what they make up.

Aside from some colour balance issues, the E72 handles the shadows a wee bit better (suggesting it has a better dynamic range). So there's not really a lot in it.

Which is interesting because I often read about how good the camera is on the SG3, but it was hardly mentioned about how good the camera was on the E72 back in 2009 when it was released (over 3 years ago). Oh well I blame marketing and bloggers who get paid by companies to shrill up a product but often haven't got a clue.

None the less either camera would make a great camera for casual photography. I haven't extensively tested the macro ability of either camera, but I know that if I'd had a camera like the E72 as my digital camera back in 2000 when I was living in Japan I'd have been rapped.

With that in mind I thought I'd finish off with a shot I took yesterday while out doing some errands on my scooter of a really cool bike.

I've done a quick n dirty photoshop job to add some blur to the background to make the bike stand out more from the background (cos small sensors don't do that very well), but none the less its a cool BSA.

Try that with Instagram
happy snapping