A side effect of the cheapass hardware in the iPhone:

[theweaselking]

The iPhone camera is cheap[1] and it actually exposes different parts of the image at different times. As a side effect, taking a picture of a fast-moving object, like a spinning propellor, can result in some VERY interesting effects.

[1]: which is not REALLY surprising.

Comments

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Annoyingly, the only metric a would-be buyer has to assess the cameras on phones is the bloody "megapixel" thingie - assertions I've seen that 5Megapixies is enough for professional quality images always seem conservative given the lackage of megapixies vs. the actual quality of iphone pictures, which always strikes me as good enough really.

Any thoughts on the whole symbian platform stuff?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

5MP is totally enough for really great shots, but at that point what you really want are focus, zoom, image stablisation, etc.

Also, BEWARE "software zoom". It is nothing of the sort. It is CROPPING. Optical zoom is the only true zoom. Anything else just makes your picture smaller, it does not zoom, so take the widest shots possible and crop them yourself.

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Digital zoom is worse than cropping. It's cropping with pixel interpolation, so lots of blur added!

[trotfox.livejournal.com]

INDEED!

However, it makes it easier to find a shot sometimes... :/

However, my 8MP phone does quite well with reasonably distanced shots and very well with close-ups in most any light so long as I'm not shaking too badly at the time.

Sony Ericson c905a, FYI. Optical focus, not zoom.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

My phone's got a 2MP, no stabilisation, no optical zoom camera.

It's still perfectly good for *cameraphone pictures*, but for real pictures I have a Canon 10MP camera, and for REALLY REAL pictures I borrow my mother's Nikon DSLR with the "I can see Uranus" set of lenses.

[trotfox.livejournal.com]

Damnit, stop looking in my windows at night!

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I can get really good shots on my positively ancient 2MP* Fuji camera. The lens on that thing is astonishing, though now the sensor seems slower than the current main run.

-- Steve's 7-year-old camera, though, doesn't distort imagery like that, though. At worst it's blurry.

PS: TWK is right; optical zoom is the only true zoom. "Digital" zoom is just faffing around in the software that leads to grainier, crappier shots.

* Then again, my 2MP camera has an RGB sensor for each pixel... which some shadier types would use to claim that it's 6MP instead. However the camera dates from an earlier era before such shenannigans took place.

[matgb]

You caqn have a very high megapixel camera and still get very crap shots; the dpi it's capable of is as important, for example.

My old Sony Ericsson walkman phone had a 2 megapixel camera, same as my old digital camera, but it couldn't take above 92dpi, which meant I couldn't print pictures, etc. So despite having the same megapixels as my old actual camera, it was shite and useless for anything above snaps.

My new Nokia 5800, OTOH, depsite not having a much bigger megapixel range, can take 300dpi images and edit them on the camera, so I've used it for actual photos for actual publication if I've not got a real camera with me.

Sure the zoom's digital, the lense is crap, but it's good enough for most purposes. Not tried it with a prop though.

Once you get above 2 megapixels, you're fine for most stuff, it's the DPI that matters for quality shots. Until, of course, I find another indicator that messes the shots up.

[rgove.livejournal.com]

DPI is the ratio of the number of pixels in an image to its size in in inches on a physical medium. They're not a property of the image itself. Unless these phones actually emit pieces of paper, your comparison makes no sense.

[matgb]

No, it makes perfect sense. The old phone would and could only take wide angle shots that had to be compressed and messed with to get a low quality print. Once you remove quality from an image you can't get it back. The new phone actually takes shots of high enough quality they can go straight to the printers from the phone. When you're running an election campaign and want leaflets with recent shots of the candidate, that's very useful. Said leaflets arrived from printers today.

And a jpeg image in Windows does list dpi as one of the properties, go look it up. I agree it's a crap term, but it's the term used.

[rgove.livejournal.com]

Are you saying that your old phone's lens was too wide-angle for your purpose and so you had to crop your pictures to get something that looked like a close-up without being distorted by perspective? Then what you're actually comparing is the optics, which have nothing to do with DPI.

[aeduna.livejournal.com]

It might be a bit overclever in how it gets up to the pixel size, but its damn fast to get a prop to look almost still.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Except it doesn't really look "still" - it looks like "vertical strips of the photograph were given a delayed exposure each".

[scixual.livejournal.com]

I saw someone do this effect on purpose once, I think it's neat.

And for all practical purposes, it *is* still. Just not accurate.

Interesting, though, if unintentional. I'd love to see a gallery of other shots of fast things ruined in unexpected ways.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

A gallery (http://theweaselking.livejournal.com/3660761.html?thread=21468889#t21468889)

[scixual.livejournal.com]

neat!

[anivair.livejournal.com]

True. Not a great shot unless it's what you're going for.

And then it's a freaking excellent shot.

I had to stare at that picture for a few minutes to figure it out and I still dig it. If it were me, I would have been tempted to say I did it on purpose.

well

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

To be fair, how many phones have -good- cameras?

Re: well

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

None. Which is one of the reasons the iPhone's camera being a cheap POS is not surprising.

Re: well

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

I wondered about that. I figured it was a slight on Apple (which I think it still is, of course, since you point out that it's only part of the reason). Not that I particularly care, but I was curious.

Re: well

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Apple does not use good hardware because nobody demands good hardware from Apple products, so they have no reason to use expensive stuff.

But Apple putting bad hardware, in the same place EVERYONE puts bad hardware because nobody expects semicompetent pictures on a PHONE, is not surprising.

Re: well

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

True.

Re: well

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Apple does not use good hardware because nobody demands good hardware from Apple products, so they have no reason to use expensive stuff.

Hold on, hold on, that's simply not true. Apple hardware is extremely expensive, and that has nothing to do with whether it's also good or not.

Re: well

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Apple hardware is extremely expensive regardless of quality and people who pay Apple prices are uninterested in quality. As such, Apple sources the cheapest crap they can make semi-compatible.

Re: well

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

Now you're on the trolley.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

More: http://www.flickr.com/groups/iphonejelloshots/pool/

See also: http://www.flickr.com/groups/iphonecubism/pool/