Camera Phones

A small moan/warning to anyone getting a phone with a big camera. They're crap.

I have an Xperia Z1, sold as one of the biggest, best bla bla camera phones out there. 21MP or something. I'm told size isn't everything but it sounded better than my previous HTC 8MP jobbie. It isn't.

I'm no photographer but I do take photos of work to send to clients. This is easy; take photo, hit share and email it to them. Not any more. The photos are too big to attach to an email. I think OK, I'll upload them to imageshack and send them links instead. Nope, too big for upload. In fact they're too big to do anything with. The choice appears to be resize them which is a pita, or reduce the resolution in the first place, to 8MP, thus rendering the 20MP camera redundant.

A real photographer will have a proper camera. The majority of people use phones to take pictures of their genitals, selfies and their cats. If the internet can't cope with the sizes what is the point? Oh and they take forever to upload to the cloud as well.

If I'm being stupid an there's a simple solution here I'm all ears.

Smaller genitals?

There's various solution - pay more - pay for 4G access, and become frustrated at the cost and coverage, and pay for decent email provision without some of the attachment ceilings of some of the usual suspects.

Reduce the resolution - I very much suspect 8MP is perfectly adequate for your pictures. Or futz with the compression applied to them, if that's something your phone allows / you have the technical nous to do.

To be honest, it's not a smartphone issue, per se, you'd have similar issues with pictures taken from standalone digi cameras too.

The internet can cope fine with larger file sizes than digi cameras - chances are, it's either, or both, of the service you're paying / not paying for, and or the facilities of the email system you're paying / not paying for.

I know it's not the phone's fault as such. But seeing as I barely get 2G at home never mind 3 or 4 that's not an option. I'm currently escalating a complaint to vodafone over it so I won't be giving them another penny.

mail.com allow 50MB attachments- each photo is around 7MB. Are there limits to receiving large files? Can a hotmail or yahoo user receive such emails? Typical company accounts?

Does imageshack not auto resize when you upload to it? Photo bucket does, well at least it does when I upload from the PC.

Carl

technodup":138xujrp said:

I know it's not the phone's fault as such. But seeing as I barely get 2G at home never mind 3 or 4 that's not an option. I'm currently escalating a complaint to vodafone over it so I won't be giving them another penny.

mail.com allow 50MB attachments- each photo is around 7MB. Are there limits to receiving large files? Can a hotmail or yahoo user receive such emails? Typical company accounts?

Click to expand...

Realistically, most email provision will be good enough, for email for several, decent res pictures (I'm often in the same boat - sending or receiving pics from far away lands, that have, um, a somewhat restrictive internet regime).

More than that, though, (size and / or number) and you'd question email being the appropriate medium for transport.

21MP on most camera phones (bar some of Nokia's bastard love children) is utterly pointless, most of them have a truly trivial sensor size. And if 21MP was important in the detail of the photos you wanted to send, you'd be using something different than a camera phone, and likely some more robust means of transport.

I remember getting a nokia 6...100 ish type thing years ago and thinking it was cool having a 1.3MP camera, that and a 64MB card you could put a couple of songs on.
Got a Sony 850k a few years later, 5MP camera (and 500MB card, wow I was blown away by that especially since you could stick in a 4GB card). That 5MP camera was awesome, took great photos and as a camera phone (rather than a phone with a camera) came with heaps of camera "things" I had no idea how to use. But it was very good. I replaced that with a Sony W995 that had a 8MP camera, being a walkman phone it did the music thing very well, but straight away I found the camera to be pretty average and nowhere near as good as the old 850 one.
Now I have a Sony xperia S with a 12MP camera and like the 995 is not even close to as good as the camera on the 850, so more MP is definitely not as good as an actual good camera/software/hardware. Although I have no issues uploading/emailing the 12MP photos

Neil":400mtetm said:

21MP on most camera phones (bar some of Nokia's bastard love children) is utterly pointless, most of them have a truly trivial sensor size.

Click to expand...

Spot on.

Although more and more smartphone companies are recognising that sensor size is more important than pixel density - one of the reasons why the HTC One collected so many accolades and awards in 2013, despite it 'only' having a 4MP camera (but having sensors which were significantly larger than anything else on the market).

The only advantage that I can think of with a high MP count (such as the Nokia 1020 or the latest Xperias) is the ability to "zoom" without losing picture quality because the phone essentially keeps cropping the image. When you have more pixels to play with, you have more image to crop, so therefore the user can crop an image further without sacrificing details.

Barneyballbags":8yo83t20 said:

Neil":8yo83t20 said:

21MP on most camera phones (bar some of Nokia's bastard love children) is utterly pointless, most of them have a truly trivial sensor size.

Click to expand...

Spot on.

Although more and more smartphone companies are recognising that sensor size is more important than pixel density - one of the reasons why the HTC One collected so many accolades and awards in 2013, despite it 'only' having a 4MP camera (but having sensors which were significantly larger than anything else on the market).

The only advantage that I can think of with a high MP count (such as the Nokia 1020 or the latest Xperias) is the ability to "zoom" without losing picture quality because the phone essentially keeps cropping the image. When you have more pixels to play with, you have more image to crop, so therefore the user can crop an image further without sacrificing details.

Click to expand...

I think there's some arms-race mentality in the specs of smartphones, too. My previous handset (still use it daily as my second / work phone) - a Nokia N8, had a decent enough camera for a smartphone - 12MP, and an improved sensor area compared with most smartphones, plus a decent lens (for a smartphone), and a xenon flash. Relevant to the OP, they were also canny about use of compression, in that pictures taken in it's full capacity, were still reasonably sized, given their dimensions.

My current smartphone (a BlackBerry Z10) has an 8MP camera, with, I suspect, a rather average / normal sensor, bog standard lens, and LED flash. But does have some reasonably clever camera software, in comparison to my N8.

Most of the time, I'd trust my N8 to take better pictures - and true enough, very much in the main, it does. Occasionally, the clever(er) software in my Z10 might be more suitable for some pics I want to take, and / or the environment they're taken in.

Things like the pureview 808 and recent 1020? Whilst I can see that it's not just lip service or bragging rights, I do wonder of the relevance - I suppose a smartphone is a handy compromise - I rarely bother with anything else, now for most picture taking, but I can't help but think anybody who's really that keen on taking a decent picture, would be aiming for something better and more dedicated? Maybe I just don't understand their demographic.

yeah but if your selfy isnt 21MP how will all your facebook friends be able to see you in all your awesomeness?