Digital Photography is Evolving
Smartphones are quickly turning into the Swiss army knife of the electronics world. They can do so many things and be used for so many everyday tasks, that thinking about life without them really doesn’t bare thinking about. If there is one thing they have never really been able to do well is take pictures. That is until now.
Smile for the camera
Cameras in cellphones are nothing new. In fact, they have been around for a long time. If you go back to the late ’90s and early 2000s you will find that flip phones had cameras built into them, and the camera was the main selling point of the phone. As time went on, the camera was taken for granted and newer features such as app stores and GPS became the main selling points, but the camera is making a huge come back in the world of smartphones.
It is now commonplace to see the latest smartphones on the market packing powerful cameras. The first to boast a camera powerful enough to replace a regular digital camera was the iPhone. The iPhone had a 2mp camera. For the first time camera makers started to take notice.
Today, smartphones have cameras ranging from 3mp all the way up to 8mp. While the specifications look fantastic on paper, they have never really been able to produce the type of shot a regular digital camera can.
The images captured by smartphones are often blurry due to the lack of a good lens, lack of stabilization features, and slow shutter speeds. The pictures also tend to be washed out because of the LED flashes that smartphones use; however, consumers love them because of the convenience they provide. After all it means that you only have to carry around one device.
Even though the pictures produced by cameras in smartphones can leave a lot to be desired, the fact that you can upload a snapshot to Facebook (or any social site) immediately after taking a picture is a huge draw to consumers.
The death of the point and shoot
Even though camera phones are becoming hugely popular again, sales of regular point and shoot cameras are still strong, mainly because of the inconsistent results that camera phones produce. This could be about to change though.
Nokia has always been renowned for making stellar hardware, and their upcoming N9 smartphone is no different. The N9 is going to have a 8mp camera, which honestly does not sound that great by itself. The real difference is that the N9 will have a Carl Zeiss lens (the lenses used by Sony in their cameras), and improved CCD sensors, which means that this smartphone camera, will put most regular point and shoot cameras to shame.
All of these improvements will eventually come to all smartphone cameras. These improvements, coupled with the fact that users can post their pictures right to social media sites, then get directions to the local store, and then make a phone call all from one device, could mean that the end of the regular point and shoot camera could be coming.
