Anyone have a cellphone with a great camera?

[daledale]

I have a fairly old phone that does everything I need fine. I also had a point and shoot camera which recently died on me and I need to replace. I'm wondering if camera phones are good enough to replace the point and shoot cameras today. If they are, it might make sense for me to upgrade my phone for one that has a good camera. Anyone have a phone with a camera they love?

[ua_guy]

I had an iPhone 5 and an Android / Samsung Galaxy camera taking photos of an outdoor adventure this last weekend. They're good for posting Facebook-quality photos. Watch out for finger prints / crud / pocket lint, etc on the lens.

That is to say, both phone devices sucked for real photos. They're good for selfies (if you're into that? I'm not-) but even with high(er) resolution and digital features, they just don't seem to do anything any real justice.

I'd look into an actual point-and-shoot. The last one we bought was a Sony Cybershot about 3 years ago and it still works very well even though it doesn't have the highest resolution available (I think it's 10Mp).

[elessar78]

This is a professional photo shoot completely done with an iPhone 3gs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOoGjtSy7xY

The camera is a good enough. I art direct professional photo shoots and it's not the camera, it's the photographer.

One of the main problems with shooting with the phone is camera shake and keeping the lens clean. A phone, like all autofocus, shoots out a laser beam that determines distance to the possible subject and puts that in focus. But with face rcognition, sometimes that focuses on other than what you desire so make sure it's focusing on the correct area—you can do this by tapping on the spot you want to focus on.

Any autofocus will generally suck at shooting anything that moves. By that token make sure you keep the camera absolutely still or else you will get what is called camera shake and the image will be blurry.

[Leo]

I have a Google Nexus 5 which I think is one of the cheapest "high-end specs" (meaning comparable to Iphone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S5), bought it for under $400 unlocked after taxes about 1.5 year ago. I think the specs of camera if I'm not mistaken is 8MP rear-facing, 1.3MP front-facing

[elessar78]

Number of Megapixels is a poor metric of picture quality. All megapixels will tell you is how big of a high quality print you can make of the photo (approx 8x12 inches for 8MP). But a poor photograph will always be a poor photograph at 1 MP or 32 MP.

All photography is capturing light and the things that affect that capture are focus, aperture, and shutter speed. On the iPhone 6 it has manual controls for all these aspects, so you can control these things. If all you want is to point and shoot, like I said, keep the camera as steady as you can and make sure the lens is clean.

Oh and to learn to take better photos is pretty easy with a phone. Just google exactly what you want to take pictures of or how to use your phone camera optimally.

Thirdly, for Iphone and I'm sure android as well, you can purchase a 3rd party app from the app store/android store that lets you control all of the above.

[DoreneHanson]

I would suggest that you buy Motorola phone, they have pretty goof camera!

[Tabs]

For casual point-and-shoot use, any mid-tier to flagship smartphones today are more than up to the task.

Only thing to watch out for is that they perform typically poorly with low light shots. I mean, most any cameras would suffer from low light, but it's especially true with smartphone cameras.

Then again, any amateur photographer would tell you it's not really the camera that really matters, but rather, the creativity and the cleverness of the photographer in setting up the idea lighting and composition before taking the shot.

In other words, superior lenses and sensors only gives you greater margin of error and versatility in getting that ideal shot you want. However, nothing replaces setting up for that ideal shot in the first place. Take care of the lighting. Take care of the angle and composition. When done right, you can still take great pics even with a crappy camera... like this guy.

Edit: I just realized that this is a really old thread. My bad.

[chestynuts]

I think Samsung Galaxy S series have a nice phone camera compare to other brands.