Last weekend my girlfriend and I went to a nearby public garden, Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, Md.. The gardens were nice but the highlight was the "Wings of Fancy" butterfly pavilion.
Thousands of butterflies were brought in for this show. It was great for photographers. Indeed, I saw at least two people with cameras (film?) that had tripods. Many other people were using digital cameras to photograph the colorful butterflies.
I, however, left my digital camera at home and took my PM-8920 Sprint PCS 1.3 megapixel camera phone, distributed by Audiovox and manufactured by Pantech & Curitel. I have taken more than 100 photos with the handset, and most of them are posted on my textamerica PM-8920 moblog.
Rotten fruit, rotten photos
I'm a pretty good photographer. My highly myopic eyes aren't good for much, but I've got a good "eye" for taking photos.
I don't like taking "snapshots." When I take photos, I aim for every one to be good enough to frame. Few are, of course, but that's my goal.
But you couldn't tell that I can take good photos from my PM-8920 moblog. The photos are awful. The colors are washed out and many of the photos are blurry. The butterflies cooperated. Many of them held still as they rested on leaves or ate from plates of rotting fruit placed around the pavilion.
It's not user-error!
It's not my fault. Honest. I know how to compose photos, hold the camera phone rock solid and not move it prematurely. I know about not shooting into the sun, watching where the light falls, setting fast shutter speeds to stop the action, etc.
The PM-8920 isn't a bad cellular phone in general. But this first one megapixcel camera phone to be sold in the United States (there are now two others) is a non-starter if you care about image quality.
Take a look at the Brookside Garden photos on my textamerica moblog (see below). Then look at the quality of the photos of the Nokia 3650, a VGA camera phone that's at least two years old and still blows away many other VGA phones when it comes to image quality.
Optimistic
As I've written many times, camera phones will indeed replace digital cameras for many people in many situations because the components are improving dramatically. But the PM-8920 has poor quality imaging components (definitely) and/or internal software (maybe).
I only wish I had also taken my digital camera to Brooklside Gardens!
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