I am sure you weren’t all expecting the second part to this commentary so soon – well here it comes!
My wife and I agreed since way before our baby was born, that we were going to take lots of photos. Maybe not so many videos, but certainly capture (and print) lots of photos. We both own 7 Megapixel cameras, but in the last 18 months or so, I’ve barely used mine. The thing that triggered this was the K800i and K810i, both of which had (for the time) stunning 3.2 MP cameras – I thought, why should I lug my camera around when the one on this phone does the job so well?
Anyhow, time passed and currently I have one of (I’m not saying which one) the crop of 5MP cameras out there – and there are now lots of them. You would think that when the market is awash with 5MP cameraphones, that they are gonna be pretty good right?
Well, when we were taking our first tentative photos of our baby, I used my cameraphone – I reasoned that the Manufacturer is telling it IS that good, the optics sound swish, and most people rave about it – so it’s gotta be good, right? Wrong.
What we found, on checking these pics out on the PC, was that both the focus wasn’t great, plus, the noise in the picture was quite substantial. It was only rammed home when I got a copy of a single pic that was taken by relatives, on an old Kodak 3MP camera – suffice to say the proper camera pic blew my “5MP wondercam” pics out of the water.
And so here’s what I contend – cameraphones are handy, they are convenient, they are flexible – but in no way are they yet ready to replace the ‘traditional’ digital camera. I’m sure quite a few of you might disagree, but then when you re-check the quality of pics you’ve taken, I defy not to notice that the quality isn’t quite there!
(I appreciate both parts 1 & 2 of the Baby Mobile diaries have been a bit down on technology, so to end on an up-note: can anyone name the model (not manufacturer, that’s easy) of the Mobile that is in the pic above – it was one of the first Mobiles to have a camera attachment – 10 points on offer here! For an extra 20 points, can you tell me the number of colours that the screen of that Mobile suported…..?!)