A short lesson in photography

[jimmy101]

My phone isn't even close to top of the line, SE K770i, and it has multiple settings for different depths of field (landscape, focus on background), indoors with flash, indoors without flash, outdoors with flash, outdoors without flash, night with flash, night without flash, beach/snow with flash, beach/snow without flash etc

This phone was released in 2007...I think some people are living in the past when they think of cellphone pictures.

Probably

Still, some of what you describe can be done with a variable shutter speed. Only the depth of field stuff requires a variable aperture.

Any phone with a flash probably is "high end", or at least, it's more advanced than the majority of phone cameras.

Looking at the phone camera photos you see in various places on the web the quality is almost universally poor. It may well be that most of that crappy quality is from the user not knowing what they are doing, smudges on the lens, ...

[MrCrowley]

Just want to clarify that when I said "I think some people are living in the past when they think of cellphone pictures", it wasn't directed at you but a general statement.

[POLAND_SPUD]

I don't like to take the camera with me all the time.. it makes everything more complicated and time consuming...

and I've seen some pretty good pics taken with a phone... acctually, the one I've got now takes better pics and videos than my sister's camera...

[psycix]

Go cell phone camera's!

Assuming that the photographer uses a modern cell phone, capable of making good pictures, the reason most cell phone pictures are bad is because of this:

People taking a quick snap (crap pics):
10% camera, 90% phone
People spending a lot of time trying to make the best picture (good pics):
90% camera, 10% phone

It's not the cell phones that ruin the pictures, its the way people take the pictures.
It is the selection of device versus the intended use that makes cell phone pictures have a bad name.

[rcman50166]

Go cell phone camera's!

Assuming that the photographer uses a modern cell phone

There are no such things as photographers who use cell phones.

[Technician1002]

Two areas where most cell phones fail as well as most point and shoot cameras is zoom and macro. Image stabilization is found on better cameras.

All photos except the cellphone camera shot was shot with a 2.1 megapixel camera.

[rcman50166]

This is where I love my camera. It is a point and shoot but will out class an entry level DSLR in macro and zoom.

[ramses]

what camera do you have rcman? and they do make extension rings for slr's for better macro.

[rcman50166]

I have a Canon SX10 IS. And what do you mean better? You cannot get closer than the subject sitting on the lens

[MrCrowley]

Okay that first picture is quite something

[ramses]

better for dslrs, not better than on top of the lens. that was unclear.

do you use chdk?

[rcman50166]

I don't believe so seeing as I don't know what that is. Unless it is some sort of acronym I'm not aware of.

[Ragnarok]

CHDK - very useful little firmware "upgrade" that unlocks a lot of features on Canon cameras. Fine control over shutter speed, aperture, focus distance and more.

[rcman50166]

Oh I've read about that. My camera has the next generation of image sensor that does not have a hack for it....yet. But I would be hesitant to do that to my camera. I quite like the way it's set up now and I would hate to mess it up and have to explain to Canon that I was hacking their camera.

[ramses]

it is completely temporary. It is completely gone once you pull out the memory card. That said, I suppose you could manage to damage the hardware by overloading it through hacked software. But it doesn't matter, as CHDK is currently unavailable for your camera.