The Amazing Smartphone Camera

CEBU, Philippines — The camera and the phone are undoubtedly two of the technological wonders of modern time. It’s no surprise, therefore, that these two inventions have easily captured the curiosity of many. People find it magical seeing themselves in a photograph and being able to converse with someone at a great distance away.

The camera has since been able to capture motion and the phone has come to free itself of the cable. What's more wonderful  is that the camera and the phone have merged in a piece of equipment that people can hold in one hand. It’s incredible how something so small can be so useful.

The smartphone is something beyond everyone’s imagination just two decades or so ago. Among many other functions, it is a mobile phone that is able to capture photographs and record video using one or more built-in digital cameras. It is a rendition of the basic camera phone, although it can do so many other things than simple camera and phone functions.

The first camera phone is said to have been sold in 2000 in Japan. Arguments have arisen as there was supposedly a similar gadget introduced months earlier in South Korea. But that’s all ‘water under the bridge’ now.

Most early camera phones were simpler than separate digital cameras. Their usual fixed-focus lenses and smaller sensors limited their performance in poor lighting. Lacking a physical shutter, some had a long shutter lag.

Photoflash was typically provided by a LED source which illuminated less intensely over a much longer exposure time than a bright and near-instantaneous flash strobe. Optical zoom and tripod screws were rare and there was no hot shoe for attaching an external flash. Some also lacked a USB connection or a removable memory card.

The smartphone, indeed, has come a long way. Now it has Bluetooth and WiFi, and can make geo-tagged photographs. Many of today’s smartphones have bigger image sensors, the photographs they take mimic the quality of those taken with higher-grade point-and-shoot cameras.

Most smartphone brands today upgrade their cameras every year or two. The latest smartphone models can direct their camera to focus on a particular object in the field of view, giving even an inexperienced user a degree of focus control exceeded only by seasoned photographers using manual focus. And yet, given its amazing capability, the price of smartphones has been consistently going down.

The principal advantages of smarth phone cameras are cost and compactness; indeed for a user who carries a mobile phone anyway, the addition is negligible. Inversely, the features packed into the smartphone – into the smartphone camera – have been increasing.  The result is a generation that’s going nuts about photographs – selfie, groupie etc.

Surely, the amazing smartphone camera makes life exciting, especially for the young. It’s so simple to operate that the only challenge left for the user is having control – no, not control over the gadget, but control over the user to limit his or her fixation on taking pictures with the smartphone. (FREEMAN)