subject: Can Digital Cameras Survive The Camera Phone Onslaught? [print this page] Digital cameras have always been used quite successful for snapping photos. Candid shots, planned photos, maybe even small clips, have all been taken by digital cameras.
Till date, thanks to our handy digital cameras or camcorders (which are fondly called Handycams) we have been able to preserve all our memories quite successfully. With constant improvements in the features & hardware, digital cameras have always outpaced camera chips (I would not dare to call them a camera) or camera modules found in most of the mobile phones or as they are referred to as Smart-Phones.
But all this started changing gradually. Earlier the camera chips could not cross the 0.3MP range. These camera chips were pure proof-of-concept. That means the cameras were not good for anything beyond a grainy shot which was totally useless & appeared just like the surveillance camera footage. Many would think Nokia pioneered the first camera phone, however it was Kyocera! In June of 1997, the first images were taken & immediately transmitted wirelessly from a phone & thus was born the age of Camera phones.
Ok, enough with the history lesson. Once the race began, it was never ending. Companies initially put in higher & more powerful CMOS sensors in their phones. With higher & higher processing power available to the phones, the raw chewing power available for these camera sensors grew by leaps & bounds & hence companies continued to put in more & more Mega Pixel rated sensors.. It was a cycle which consumers benefitted from.
However, there were & still are many problems with the camera modules that kept them a postion behind dedicated digital cameras.
The lens is fixed focus & camera phones have smaller sensors which limit their performance in low light. These cameras do not have physical shutter. Hence have a very long shutter lag to capture the image correctly. Some do not even have a flash or better yet, a proper flash. Camera phones do not have tripod mount ability. Hence user must always carry the camera phone to click.
However, most of the problems are being addressed. Camera phones today have CMOS sensors which can rival consumer level digital cameras. Nokia N8 has a 12MP sensor! They have Xenon Flash (or at least dual LED Flash)
Many camera cum smart phones even have optics by high-end manufactures like Carl Zeiss!
So you can now take sufficiently good photos which can be useful for printing, even having them plastered on walls or for sun control. Yes, sun control, by getting your own photos on blinds. This new concept called as Photo blinds requires just image which is printed on commercial window blinds. This way, photos taken by your smart phone end up on your windows.
Thus, the day may not be far when the camera phones out-pace digital cameras in the race of taking god photos on the go!
