The iPhone 4 camera

MEGAPIXELS! At last, we've got some megapixels. Anyone who's anyone knows that if your camera doesn't have megapixels coming out the wazoo, it's not worth your precious time. So, now that the iPhone is rockin' 5 whole megapixels, it's automatically good. Because, a shitty, blurred, noisy photo is automatically better when it's bigger.

I'm super-impressed with the quality of images coming out of the new iPhone. Yeah, there are probably better cameras you can put into a phone, but there aren't better phones so that argument becomes kinda moot from my point of view. The way I like to test a decent quality camera is to take low-light photos with it. You'll find that you can get a decent result with basically any camera if there's abundant light, but how often do you get perfect light? Never, that's how often.

So, on my sobering-up, American-Dad-watching journey home from Hove last night, I thought I'd see what sort of results I could get from the updated iPhone camera. I am pleasantly surprised with the results:

The first thing I noticed to my tastes is how noise is handled. Yes, the images got quite noisy, but the deviation from the true colour is much improved with this new camera. By contrast, by iPhone 3G would always throw purples into noise, making it look quite terrible. A lot of cameras do this; I don't know why.

The image also appears quite stable. The (not always correct/intended) focal points are in focus, even with my rubbish trembling hand, which is another marked improvement on the previous phone.

The iPhone camera is now much quicker to respond. This is a huge advantage over even quite expensive point-and-shoots that I've had the displeasure of using. When I hit the shutter release, that's when I want the photo taken - not in a few seconds. Charlotte's Canon G9 is a huge offender for this, and phones I've used previously have been as well. One of the main reasons for my preference of SLRs over more consumer-aimed cameras (I know, who hasn't got an SLR) is that the shutter responds instantly. This is the first (admittedly, not of many) non-SLR that has an acceptably immediate shutter release.

Whilst I could go further into the clarity of images compared with previous iterations, you can see all that from the photos. These points are the main, non-immediately-obvious reasons that the iPhone camera has vastly improved with iPhone 4. I even went out yesterday for the first time in nearly two years without taking my main camera with me.

I should point out that these images aren't intended to be an exercise in "look at this beautiful photo I'm proud of", more, "look at how well this performs in these conditions".