All Things Mobile and Wireless
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I really tempted to try a CHDK Wiki Canon PowerShot digital camera firmware hack. But, a big streak of digital cowardice is getting in the way 
According to their FAQ, the changes are not actually written to the camera in a permanent way. The firmware hack can be reversed by simply removing the flash card with the hack on it. Applying the hacks adds features to some (but not all) Canon PowerShot cameras.
Discussions (and sometimes rants) about camera phone photos usually steer towards pixel count, clarity, and color. However, there are subtler differences between camera phone photos and digital camera photos. Take the two photos above taken using a T-Mobile Dash cameraphone (left) and a Canon Powershot A710IS point-and-shoot digital camera. I’ve resized both photos from their respective 1.3 megapixel and 7 megapixel resolutions so that both images are 320 pixels wide.
The first thing you probably noticed is that when resized to the same width the Dash’s photo is much squarer than the A710IS’. Cameras vary slightly in aspect ratio. So, if something seems slightly odd in your cameraphone photos, compare it to the aspect ratio of the digital camera you normally use. Cropping the camera phone photo to match the aspect ratio you are comfortable with might help.
Although I did not take the two photos at the exact same angle, you can still see that the camera phone photo seems flatter than the digital camera’s. Seeing distinct people (mostly heads here) drops off rapidly after a row or two of tables in the food court. The digital camera has a slightly wider angle of view even though I took both photos from exactly the same spot.
So, if something about your camera phone photo doesn’t seem quite right to you. It may not be the resolution or even the sharpness of the photo. It might be some of the subtler aspects of camera phone’s imaging characteristics that might be at play for you.
My favorite digital camera review site recently created a mobile device friendly website. You can find the Digital Photography Review mobile friendly site at…
Qipit good!… With apologies to Devo… I signed up for the free Qipit online cameraphone to PDF scanning service today. Although I’m focusing on the cameraphone aspect today, you can upload a digital photo taken with any kind of digital camera and upload it from the desktop too. For this test, I used a T-Mobile Dash (Windows Mobile 6 smartphone) to take a photo of a price sign in a local store. You can see the resized by otherwise unretouched photo on the left and a resized version of the PDF Qipit emailed to me. It also stored the image on their server for access through the web. As you can see, it seemed to do a pretty good job of focusing on the text area and cropping off the unnecessary area (I cropped it a bit more for this posting). The resulting PDF text was reasonably clear and readable.
I’ve been using various Canon cameras (including several 35mm) for a long time. But, for one reason or another I never got around to trying the Fireworks scene preset available on a number of models. This evening I finally got the chance to try it when I noticed fireworks in the distance and happened to my Canon Powershot A710IS (now replaced the the Powershot 720IS model). I was pretty far away. So, the image above is a cropped and resized (smaller to fit this blog web page). I thought the preset did a pretty good job.
I took part of the afternoon off to attend a function for parents and students at my daughter’s school. And, sigh, I forgot to bring my digital camera (a Canon PowerShot A710IS). Fortunately, I always carry one or two Windows Mobile devices with integrated cameras. Today I had an HTC Advantage Pocket PC Phone Edition that happens to have a pretty decent lens and a 3 megapixel resolution. So, I was able to squeeze off a couple of photos at the school.
Now, are these photos as nice as ones that a decent point-and-shoot like my Canon would have taken? Not really. Are they better than nothing and pretty decent looking (good enough for a 4×6 print)? You bet! Thank goodness for cameraphones.
A number of Windows Mobile camera phones have so-called camera flashes. But, that is a misnomer for the ones I’ve seen so far. They do not flash for a brief period to light up a photograhpic subject like real camera flashes. Instead, they light up and stay lit up until you manually turn off the light. In effect, they are flashlights. These camera flashlights do not have much of an effective distance. They do not do much good on objects more than a foot or two away. They can be useful sometimes, however. The photo on the left was taken in a relatively well lit restaurant using available light. The photo on the right was taken a moment later with a HTC Advantage 7500’s Pocket PC Phone Edition’s flash turned on. I think I instintively moved the Advantage a bit closer to get the light to shine as best as possible on the ice cream.
Most cameraphones (at least the ones I’ve tried over the years) have limited the kinds of photos I take. Outdoor shots in bright but not too bright sunlight came out best. Indoor shots were grainy. And, close-up Macro type shots? Forget it. One of my early cameraphones (the MPx220?) had a flashlight sort of flash. But, it was essentially useless for indoor shots. I’ve heard great things about the various high-end cameraphones available outside of the US (or outside of my budget like the Nokia N95) but have not been able to test any. So, it has been very interesting to take the camera part of the HTC Advantage 7500 (Windows Mobile 5, the WM6 based 7501 is out now) through some tests.
The photo above was cropped and resized smaller to fit this blog. But, it is otherwise untouched. The original 3 megapixel photo was taken indoors. And, I used the 7500’s flash feature to light the Altoid can (I just discovered this Dark Chocolate dipped Peppermint candy last week :-). The 7500’s autofocus feature seems to result in photos that are much much better than the usual photos I get from other cameraphones. I hope lower end cameraphones start getting these specs and features soon.
I’ve been interested in cameraphone photography since the first time I tried a Nokia 3650 cameraphone way back in 2003 (The Nokia 3650 GSM/GPRS Phone with Camera, Bluetooth, and More). I also wrote a half dozen of the hacks in the cameraphone section of the book Digital Photography Hacks (2004). But, I’ve always readily admitted that cameraphone photos were nowhere near the quality of even low priced digital cameras. You just can’t compare a glass lens device to a (usually) plastic lens device. However, cameraphone photos have been steadily improving over the years and are starting to look pretty good. The T-Mobile Dash I use as my day to day phone takes decent photos in daylight conditions. I just started taking photos with an HTC Advantage 7500 (a Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC Phone Edition with a 3 megapixel camera). So far, I’m reasonably happy with what I’ve seen so far (see a shrunken version of a photo from the camera above). I’m planning to perform more testing of the 7500’s still photo and video capabilities over the next couple of weeks and will post photos here and on other sites.
The Canon PowerShot A710IS has been available since last fall. You can see it on the left compared to the Canon PoweShot S1 IS (current version is S5, btw). Although it only has a 6x optical zoom (with image stabilization) compared to the 10x for the S1 (and 12x for the S5), its smaller size won me over. I think it may tend to shoot a bit overexposed compared to the Panasonic Lumix TZ3 I wrote about in an earlier blog entry. But, for the most part, I am very pleased with the A710IS. And, I really like the fact that it runs on two standard AA batteries (vs. the proprietary batteries needed by the Lumix). I wanted to have an Amazon affiliate link to it. But, guess what, Amazon is no longer directly carrying it. I suspect Canon (or Amazon) may be pushing the Canon PowerShot TX1 camera with 10x zoom and near-HD video recording. If you can find a A710IS, is will probably be heavily discounted. And, you can probably expect a new model to replace it this fall. But, if you find it at a good price, you might want to consider it.
Sample A710IS Macro photo below…
I bought a SanDisk Ultra II SDHC 4GB w/MicroMate USB 2.0 Bundle
The SanDisk MobileMate SD+ reader I bought just a week earlier, on the other hand, has such a tight SD slot, that I’m worried it might strip the metal contacts on SD cards I use with it. I’m probably going to put it away and give it a negative review over on Amazon.com.
The SanDisk SDHC card and reader bundle, on the other hand, gets a thumbs up from me.
The University of Arizona High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment has some spectacular high res photos of Mars on their website. And, I was surprised to find that they have pages formatted specially for mobile devices too. You can find it at…