Posts Tagged ‘iphone 3g s’
The camera you always have with you
Yeah, you guessed it, the iPhone. This picture was taken at the North Cape, Norway the northernmost point in Europe. This post is in part a testament to the iPhone’s usability since it was entirely written on one.
I’ve had a 3G S for a couple of weeks now and more than put it through the paces on my recent trip to Norway. The thing simply works, it quietly does what you want it to do, if not always with stellar results it at least keeps itself way above the average. It was actually strange at first since i’ve been used to things taking a whole lot more effort when it comes to capturing and sharing media on the move (thank you LG Viewty). My main problem with the Viewty was the unresponsiveness of everything, from the phone os to the 3G connection to the shutter button lag and the final nail in the coffin which was the touch screen losing its sensitivity in some areas. The iPhone os seems really well thought out. Someone must have sat down for hours and thiught up ways to put a smile on every user’s face every time they use this device.
The camera which at first glance should be a downgrade from the LG’s 5MP with AF, actually showed better, less washed out and sharper results in spite of the worse resolution. In fact i’d almost go as far as saying that it outperforms some of the 2-3MP compact cameras i’ve owned over the years at least in good light. In low light situations there is still the issue of high noise levels but that is just technically hard to avoid due to the small sensor size that a phone camera has to have. The tap-to-focus technology Apple used works fairly accurately and i can see this becoming standard in simpler compact cameras in the future. This is a feature that would just make sense to a novice photographer, it’s simple and intuitive.
Now for the drawbacks…The lack of ergonomics of the iPhone when used as a camera is pretty evident, it was clearly built to handle like a phone/pda, not a camera. Its unstable in the hand and i just couldn’t seem to hold it well with one hand and use the camera in the portrait orientation. Landscape was less of a chore but still unstable. I used a non slip case which didn’t seem to really help matters.
I did however forget all about that when i started using editing apps, flickr uploaders and the built in youtube and mail apps. In one word, seamless. No wonder people like Chase Jarvis sing this thing’s praises!
At about 2700-3000 items in the camera roll the iPhone slowed down but only marginally, weirdly enough not when browsing through the camera roll but when using the camera. The shot to shot time became a split second longer and it also took a little longer to change from the stills to the video mode. One 7GB memory dump later that went back to normal.
Furthermore the iPhone is a great way to keep yourself organized whether it is meetings or creative ideas you’re typing into it. It’s a good tool for location scouting and note taking because it’s capable of capturing stills video and text with the added bonus of being able to upload it to the web. Now if roaming costs wouldn’t be so excruciatingly high, it would have played an even bigger part of my 2 weeks on the road.
