Comments on: Ansel Adams Meets Apple: The Camera Phone Craze in Photography

By: Ansel Adams Meets Apple: The Camera Phone Craze in Photography (iPhone) « Interesting finds

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:43:04 +0000

[...] Jarvis certainly isn’t the only professional photographer singing the praises of camera phones. Shawn Rocco, a staff photojournalist at the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC, shoots with a long-since-obsolete Motorola E815 mobile phone. In fact, the American art world seems to be developing a bit of a fetish for …Next Page » [...]

By: Ansel Adams Meets Apple: The Camera Phone Craze in Photography | Travels with Rhody

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:02:25 +0000

[...] is an excerpt from my September 25, 2009 World Wide Wade column. Click here to continue reading the column at Xconomy. camera phones iPhone mobile Photography photos Xconomy [...]

By: John

John — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 00:55:57 +0000

People usually criticize the iPhone for the 3MP camera. I think the number of pixels is the least important factor here. The lens, noise level, white balance and autofocus speed are all more important.

By: Tom B

Tom B — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:58:31 +0000

For sure, it is the imagination of the photographer; not the camera– that makes for great art. Having said that, better cameras give you way more options and make some kinds of images much easier to capture. I do a lot of macro. And I use advanced settings a lot– bracketing, etc.

By: Digital Photography Links – September 25, 2009 - Digital Photography Tips and Techniques

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 23:13:46 +0000

[...] Ansel Adams Meets Apple: The Camera Phone Craze in Photography – Have fun with your iPhone using the $2.99 Best Camera application. [...]

By: Dean Birinyi

Dean Birinyi — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 19:16:35 +0000

I am always perplexed by people who seem to feel the camera is what makes a photographer. For the millionth time it’s the artist eye, imagination and talent that makes a great image not the tools he/she works with.

I remember back in the late ’80′s a couple of guys went on a nationwide tour with a red couch and shot everything with a cheap little P&S camera… The coffee table book looked great because the photographers practiced their craft rather than worked their equipment.

By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:33:30 +0000

The title of Javis’ book — The Best Camera Is The One That’s With You — really says it all. I have an iPhone, but I tend to pack a Canon when I think that picture taking might be a possibility. But truthfully, the iPhone is more apt to be in my pocket than is the Canon (or both of them).

Picture taking opportunities present themselves all the time. Keep your eyes open to the possibilities and keep that iPhone or Canon or whatever handy!

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:29:06 +0000

I don’t think there’s an opener big enough for the can of worms involved in defining creativity! ;-)

To me, the end result is what’s important, not how you got there. The digital artist or photographer may excel at the most arcane of tools, or she might just use canned filters, but the viewer probably doesn’t know or care if the resulting image strikes a chord in his soul.

After all, most photographers don’t build their own cameras and lenses.

By: Wade Roush

Wade Roush — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:19:48 +0000

"Lomography"! Now there's a word you don't hear every day. I had to go look it up. According to Wikipedia, it's photography using cameras from Austrian firm Lomographische, which are known for their "unique, colorful, and sometimes blurry" images. Eric, I actually feel the same ambivalence you do about all of this. As I wrote my column yesterday, I also thought about going into the question of whether playing around with an image using digital filters pre-defined by experts like Jarvis really counts as "creativity." But I ran out of time! That's a subject for a future column, I guess.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:07:53 +0000

I wonder if the observation that we’re “living in the age of lowered expectations” also applies to photography, and whether the relatively lower quality of camera phone-generated images is a fad. Or, perhaps I should say “different quality,” quality being in the eye of the beholder. Many camera phone images seem to be remarkable only with respect to the technology used to generate them.

That said, I have to admit that some of my favorite images have come from my iPhone. There’s a certain freedom that comes from accepting the inherent limitations of a 3 megapixel photo taken through a dodgy lens, and worrying more about the message than the medium. If nothing else, camera phones seem to be repopularizing lomography!