Cell Phone Camera, Vol. 1

When it came time to upgrade from my first cell phone I wanted to find a phone without a camera. It was 2006, and I had theretofore never felt my cell phone's lack of a camera was a hindrance in any way. At the time, you may have heard me say something like "pshaw! To shoehorn the functionality of a camera, great though it may be, into the convenient package of a cellular telephone would be to ensure that neither performs its best. Furthermore, I see as much in having a photographic device on my telephone as I would in having a phonograph on my toaster*."

Fast forward to present day where I have a phone upon which I can access my personal and work calendar, my personal and work email, run an ongoing chat session, play any number of games, read and compose documents, navigate via online map service using GPS, stream music, browse the internet, and yes, take pictures. Shit, I can point the camera at a bar-code and it will scan that bar-code, then tell me what I scanned, then tell me where I can get that thing and for what price. Damn.

It does so much, but it doesn't do that camera thing very well. The Droid's camera is only happy under ideal lighting conditions, and there are no user tools to help decide how to expose. In the dark, the camera's sensor goes crazy with noise and you end up with 5 mega-pixels worth of picture that looks like a capture off a turn of the century webcam.

Still, I use it, and the best thing about taking photos with a phone is that I always forget about the pictures I took. The means that I get to have moments like yesterday, when I realize my phone is filled with a lot of little gems. Though I'd venture to say only one or two of these is what I'd consider a "good photo", here are my favorites, touched up from "crappy" to "eh" as well as I could manage.






















































* I call trademark on Toasty Trax!