I thought other phone camera's were so much better than ours...?

[Terabethia]

Well I am here to say... They are NOT!

I got married Sunday. Very small wedding, around 40 people, but just about all of my guests had smartphones. Most were iPhone's, 2 with Moto Droid, 2 with Droid X, 1 with whatever Sprints Galaxy Z line is (Captivate?), and 1 with Blackberry. The rest was a mix of older flip phones. My husband and I both have the Incredible.

Of course, everyone was taking pictures. And while I had an actual photographer take "real" pictures for us, I also asked everyone to get me their own pictures. I am pretty sure I have them all collected now.

Of course the couple flip phones sucked. But what surprised me most was the quality of pictures from the iPhone (1 was an iPhone 3, 2 were the iPhone 4). They SUCKED! If you make them any bigger than 4x6 they look horrible. And even at the smaller 3x5 they are still very washed out looking. Same with the Moto Droid but I suspected that...

Next is the friends with the Droid X. Also a surprise, maybe 60% of the photo's were blurry. In all fairness, one of them just uploaded the pictures to Facebook so I am sure there's some quality loss from that. But still... I expected a lot better and was surprised to see that. One of the friends is really close so I asked him about it. He said that while the phone has the ability to take really decent pictures (and he did get a few) it is VERY hard to use and keep steady. Said he almost always ends up taking 4-5 shots of the same thing in order to get 1 decent shot.

Last but not least is our phone and the Galaxy X phone. By far the best pictures. I didn't take any myself as I was too busy running around playing the good bride/host, but my husband took lots with the Incredible and so did the friend with the Samsung. A couple fuzzy shots here and there, but I can honestly say that if I had these pictures printed out at a full 8x10 or even 11x13 they would look great framed.


So anywhere, there's my little thought for the day. Clearly this isn't a scientific study of the camera's and there are a lot of factor's to consider. I am pretty sure everyone was running default settings, and with some tinkering you could probably do better. And you do have to consider the person using it, if they have steady hands and the angle they shot at (near light, using flash, so on etc). But at the end of the day, the average phone user isn't a photographer who knows all about lighting and tinkering with settings, so I think it's a good representation of real world conditions.

 

[ctc]

Congratulations!

 

[MutantCheese]

I rarely feel he need to pull out my 14MP Sony DSLR camera since I've gotten the Samsung Fascinate and the Incredible. I'm snapping away and the pics always look great. Not competition worthy, but just fine for general photographs of the family, pets and events that I attend.

 

[Terabethia]

Thanks =)

I would post some of the pictures for comparison but most have lots of people in them and I don't feel right posting pics of other people online without their permission.

 

[Terabethia]

I rarely feel he need to pull out my 14MP Sony DSLR camera since I've gotten the Samsung Fascinate and the Incredible. I'm snapping away and the pics always look great. Not competition worthy, but just fine for general photographs of the family, pets and events that I attend.

I agree. I don't even carry my Canon around anymore, my phone is great for those "wow, that's cool!" random moments. And I was the person who would get a new camera every 12-16 months and always have it on me!

 

[Websurfer]

Congratulations!

 

[jbdan]

Congrats on the joining it's a beautiful thing!

 

[Los88]

Congratulations!!!

 

[NightAngel79]

Congratulations Terabethia!!

 

[iowabowtech]

Congrats and best wishes! Now if anything happens to your Incredible, you can commandeer his by order of executive decision.

 

[SemiAntiConductor]

The iphone 4 camera is superior to our Inc camera. This is a FACT of our reality. It uses a much better, more sensitive, imaging sensor. Because someone illiterate to photography sent you a low resolution picture from an iphone 4 does not mean our Inc cameras are better. They are not. Having drunk photographically illiterate people at a wedding taking pictures is NOT a means to measure camera performance. You could have given they a DSLR and they still would have taken awful shots. Our Inc is GOOD but in no way does it beat some of the other new smartphone cameras out there. No way.

 

[rsarno]

I got married Sunday. Very small wedding, around 40 people, and rsarno

CONGRATS!!!!!!
WOOOHOOO!!!!

Ok now back to read the rest of the post lol.

 

[SynisterWolf]

Congrats

 

[Dmark]

The iPhone 4 camera is definitely better than the previous generations, but I know the incredible has performed better than our neighbor's 3G camera.

 

[vasilator]

The iPhone 4 camera is definitely better than the previous generations, but I know the incredible has performed better than our neighbor's 3G camera.

I can attest to that as being a former 3g owner. However I have compared my incredible to the 4g and sadly it really isn't close.

The interesting thing about this post is that where I found the Iphone far superior is when you just whip it out and take a quick picture. The Dinc for me seems to take a few takes before I get a good one.

FOTR, I am an in no means a beginner when it comes to photography either.

 

[ptco911]

Congratulations!

 

[chrisjz]

Congratulations!

 

[Stupifier]

I think the interesting thing about all the cell phone camera talk these days is the whole Megapixel race. This is such a flawed figure of merit for camera quality. In part, this is due to the consumer's desire for an easy way to grade the quality of a camera (8MP>5MP). Consumers don't want to look at a bunch of specifications....they just want a number. Industry has exploited this grossly.

I am an Optical Engineering graduate student and frankly find it down right sad how badly my industry has tricked the masses on this issue.

I will try to keep this explanation brief and to the point...if people would like more details, I would be glad to elaborate. There is an important parameter is any optical system (including your phone's camera) called the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF). The MTF is considered a primary figure of merit when describing the quality of your optics. An MTF plot (MTF vs Frequency) shows how well various frequencies pass through an optical system. On an MTF plot, the frequency at which the MTF reaches 0 is called the 'Cut-Off Frequency'. The optical system cannot detect frequencies above the Cut-Off Frequency. Very fine structures have very high frequency content to them..and vice versa.

Unfortunately, cell phone cameras have pretty poor MTF characteristics. Their Cut-Off Frequency among other factors.....is not that great. A lot of high frequency information is lost when taking that photo with your cell phone. Meaning, that extra fine detail you are looking for in your photo....is not there!

Now lets think about the whole Megapixel thing. Will increasing the amount of pixels fix this issue? No. Here, you are simply jamming more pixels into the same frequency limitation. The high frequency content still goes undetected.

I hope this helps users here understand a little bit about their Cameras.

 

[SemiAntiConductor]

Stupifier, it has nothing to do with optics. It has everything to do with the tiny CMOS sensors used in the cameras. The more pixels you cram into a tiny sensor the smaller each pixel becomes. The smaller the pixel the less sensitive it is to light and the more noise produced in the photos. This is why even 3.2mp cameras produce far better images than a crammed 8mp camera like the one in our Inc. The LG Dare is an excellent example of this. It uses a 3.2mp cmos camera and produces far superior pictures than the 8mp cmos in the Inc.

Low light pics with the Inc are awful compared to the LG Dare with 3.2mp camera.

Canon recently REDUCED the number of pixels in one of their DSLR cameras because of this.

Today higher MP = LOWER image quality. Our 8mp camera in the Inc greatly suffers from this. Its a shame. The general public is not an intelligent group of people and they are the ones to blame for this mess. Its a shame.

 

[Stupifier]

@SemiAntiConductor
I work with CMOS sensors as well in my lab and you do bring up a good point....BUT, saying that optics has "nothing" to do with the issue is plain wrong man. You can't say optics has nothing to do with the issue. If the optics (plastic lens in the case of our DINC) does not have a good enough MTF, it will not matter whatever CMOS sensor you use. Think of it from a systems standpoint. The light goes through the optics before it hits the CMOS buddy. The signal is already degraded by the MTF before even touching any electronics......

 

[Terabethia]

The iphone 4 camera is superior to our Inc camera. This is a FACT of our reality. It uses a much better, more sensitive, imaging sensor. Because someone illiterate to photography sent you a low resolution picture from an iphone 4 does not mean our Inc cameras are better. They are not. Having drunk photographically illiterate people at a wedding taking pictures is NOT a means to measure camera performance. You could have given they a DSLR and they still would have taken awful shots. Our Inc is GOOD but in no way does it beat some of the other new smartphone cameras out there. No way.

I know 6 different people with the iPhone 4 so I have seen what it can do in all different situations. From what I have personally seen, I disagree.

As far as THIS person I am referring to, no, they were not drunk. These were pictures from the ceremony itself, they hadn't even gotten to the reception site.

I did clearly state that many factor's go into good pictures, including lighting and ability to tinker with camera settings. But the photo's I received from the people THAT day were crap. And yet photo's taken with other cell phone camera's (including our Incredible's) came out just fine.

Maybe user error? Could be. But it doesn't change my option that strait out of the box with no real "experience" in photography (which is 90+ % of the population), the Samsung and HTC phone's kicked 2 iPhone 4's butt. At least Sunday it did.

 

[Terabethia]

Stupifier, it has nothing to do with optics. It has everything to do with the tiny CMOS sensors used in the cameras. The more pixels you cram into a tiny sensor the smaller each pixel becomes. The smaller the pixel the less sensitive it is to light and the more noise produced in the photos. This is why even 3.2mp cameras produce far better images than a crammed 8mp camera like the one in our Inc. The LG Dare is an excellent example of this. It uses a 3.2mp cmos camera and produces far superior pictures than the 8mp cmos in the Inc.

Low light pics with the Inc are awful compared to the LG Dare with 3.2mp camera.

Canon recently REDUCED the number of pixels in one of their DSLR cameras because of this.

Today higher MP = LOWER image quality. Our 8mp camera in the Inc greatly suffers from this. Its a shame. The general public is not an intelligent group of people and they are the ones to blame for this mess. Its a shame.

I really do miss the camera quality of my Dare. That thing took some pretty bad ass pictures.

As for as MP goes, it's about the biggest scam out there. A friend of mine recently "upgraded" her point and shoot from a 10MP to a 14MP and then told me that even her "old" camera was better than my 8.5 MP.

HA! After a quick explanation of what MP actually is and what it does for you, plus a little lesson on why her "old" camera is actually BETTER than her new one, she feels a wee bit stupid.

 

[Terabethia]

Okay, here are two examples. These pictures have been cropped (to remove other people) but have not been edited any other way. They are the original size and color and so on.

These pictures were taken maybe a minute apart, in the exact same location. The two people taking the picture's were standing right next to each other, so similar angle's.

The first picture is from the iPhone 4. Used by an sober adult who has owned every iPhone that has ever been out. No idea if they messed with camera settings, but I doubt it. This is one of the clearer ones they gave me, yet it's still pretty fuzzy.

Second picture is from the Incredible, used by yet another sober adult (who was using my husbands DINC). 80% of the pictures on both the Incredible and my friends Samsung came out pretty good (for a cell phone)

Neither picture is perfect of course. That's what the actual photographer was for. I was just honestly surprised at the quality of pictures that I received from the people I know with the iPhone's and Droid X's.

 

[DROID_SCOTSMAN]

The iphone 4 camera is superior to our Inc camera. This is a FACT of our reality. It uses a much better, more sensitive, imaging sensor. Because someone illiterate to photography sent you a low resolution picture from an iphone 4 does not mean our Inc cameras are better. They are not. Having drunk photographically illiterate people at a wedding taking pictures is NOT a means to measure camera performance. You could have given they a DSLR and they still would have taken awful shots. Our Inc is GOOD but in no way does it beat some of the other new smartphone cameras out there. No way.

While on paper? It may be better, or it may look better on the iphone screen, i can assure you after many tests with friends and coworkers my incredible has out performed the iphone4 HUGELY!!! Yes I still get blurry pictures at times, and I wish I had the panoramic feature of my LG env touch (which beat out the iphone 3) but this camera is really good. The screen does not compare to the Iphone 4, but I have been and remain very happy with my incredible. I will not be upgrading until LTE rolls out. And... I feel good about that. Nothing out right now imo is worth switching too. The battery is the only problem, but I get through the day on my 1600 battery and I stream pandora and play Mp3s and read my emails throughout the day. I found turning the brightness off when Im indoors and turn off the sync button I can squeeze more juice out the phone.

Oh yea, and congrats on getting married. I just celebrated my 1 year.

 

[Old Member]

The LG Dare is an excellent example of this. It uses a 3.2mp cmos camera and produces far superior pictures than the 8mp cmos in the Inc.

You just lost ALL credibility with this statement. I had an LG Dare, a very good friend of mine (albeit a poor college student) still has one. We've been at the exact same locations taking pictures of the exact same things and my pics look like they are from a medium grade camera (not a camera phone) compared to his Dare. Thats got to be the most RIDICULOUS statement anyone has said on these forums in a long time. I can't believe that you've not been called out for that yet.