Is the megapixel worth it?
A lot of people have been coming to me for advice regarding what type of phone to get. Whenever I ask them what exactly are they looking for, they always say they need one with a camera. A megapixel camera. Need.
I for one have tried out several of these megapixel wonders, shown in the Carl Zeiss Nokia N90 vs. SE W800i showdown and many more, even before I started blogging.
That’s me on the job. But if you happen to have the priviledge to peek in my pocket you’ll find a Sony Ericsson K700i. Zero point three megapixels, with all 640×480 glory here baby! You see, the question of ‘what camera should I buy?’ isn’t actually very correct or accurate. I’m going to ask you back, what will you use it for anyway?
If you’re an avid photo blogger I would recommend getting at least a 3.0MP camera with a very good zoom. Screw the camera phone. From experience, photo blogging is intensive in optical zoom, not in megapixels because you want to get those fine details up close - the letter you just received, a signage that caught your attention, children in the park .. you get what I mean.
High megapixel camera phone photos take up so much space (roughly 300kb - 400kb) and can fill your phone’s puny internal memory real quick. Unfortunately the quality of these built-in cameras fall in the “better things are out there but these are nice to have” niche. So its really hard to qualify.
A few notes though:
If you’re after a camera substitute then you’re better off saving a bit more for a real camera. Don’t be misled that camera phones in the megapixel line are at par with regular cameras. Maybe in the first generation of digital cam tech this was true. But you can get cheaper cameras that deliver higher quality images than phones.
If you do decide to get a megapixel camera, make sure the processor speed of the phone is at par with the technology. The Nokia N90 for instance was a slow moving mule compared to the Nokia 6630 (codenamed ‘Charlie’) because the latter had two processors - one for the camera and one for the operating system.
Don’t be a fool to what you see on screen. It’s best to see what camera images look like on the computer because that’s where they will be placed anyway.
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POSTED IN: The Unwired Life
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