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Monday, 20 May 2013

Blackberry Q10 camera




All images Blackberry Q10 Smartphone

Having just upgraded my Blackberry to the Q10, I thought that I'd better try out the camera at least once. This is a new camera, apparently 8MP, though the square pictures I was taking turned out to be 6MP in size. To be honest the pictures weren't as bad as I was expecting, which isn't saying much. The 100% blowups above are just on the right side of acceptable, apart from the tulip, which is a mess with no detail in the flower whatsoever. 

Since phone cameras are supposed to be destroying the compact camera market its interesting that these images aren't even as good as those from the 2MP Olympus C-2000Z I had 13 years ago. I have some A3 prints from that camera that are surprisingly good.

These phone cameras can be useful I guess as some kind of visual notebook, but any notion that they are any kind of a photographic tool strikes me as ridiculous. However using the Q10 camera did give me an idea as to why Instagram and all those other filter options exist. To mask the awful image quality. 

Everybody says that these will get better, but of course at the same time that happens then conventional cameras will be getting better as well. Phone cameras may be an option for the visually illiterate, but for anyone with even the slightest bit of interest in producing images that will stand the test of time, they strike me as completely useless. Its a shame that people will look at family snapshots in years to come and have results that are significantly poorer than those their grandparents took.

If people are satisfied with this, then fair enough, but its sad that the words photography and mobile phone occur in the same sentence. Its even sadder however that sites like Dpreview spend so much time on this 'dumbing down' of photography. A bit like taking those out of tune idiots who audition for Pop Idol or X Factor type shows seriously as singers.






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