Who needs a pocket camera?

Just saw an article in the paper about the Mobile Phone show in Barcelona. Apparently Sony Ericsson's new "Idou" phone has a camera which will take a 12.1 megapixel picture.
So really why bother with an extra small camera to fit in your pocket when your phone will do it for you. Ok it will not do anything like your lovely small camera, you will not be able to adjust exposure, or aperture, or even focusing, but that is why you have your Nikon, Canon or any of the other big names. But think about it, If you have a contract on your phone now and are paying £30 a month for all your minutes and texts and you can get this phone for the same tariff. Then your camera is free. Be great for all those snapshots and pictures you might have missed.
I will assume that the images are all jpeg (RAW would be a bit too much to expect) but open up the image in Photoshop or Lightroom convert it to 16bit tiff, do any adjustments needed and save to the size you want. I would say that a minimum of an A1 print would be possible without a problem.
I have a camera with only a 3.2 megapixel camera and I can do A3s.
Must try an experiment and use my camera/phone to do a studio shot and compare with an image taken on my Nikon D300
Interesting times.
Gerry

35mm Film and the new age of Digital

This is a podcast from the Lenswork magazine (brilliant little photo mag)
Talks about something I as an "OUL FELLA" never thought about. I understand what the focal length is of a lens when used on an "OLD" film camera and how the new Digital Focal lengths offer an equivalent focal length, but what if you have never used an older film camera. What is the relevance?
Listen to the podcast.
Gerry



Podcast #495, 9 February 2009

35mm Equivalence

When camera lens focal lengths are expressed in "35mm equivalence," that assumes we know what this means. But what about those people who never used a 35mm -- past or future photographers?

Audio MP3
Run time 3:14