Camera Phones vs. Pocket Digital Cameras
The number of camera phones is far greater than the number of pocket digital cameras. But, I still have and use my (Canon Powershot) pocket digital camera (sometimes called point-and-shoot cameras) and will likely continue to do so for a long time. My camera phone is more convenient since I carry it around with me every day; however, most pocket digital cameras are far more capable. This difference in capabilities is narrowing though (good for owners of camera phones), and, although the gap is not likely to close anytime soon, I believe that the camera phone will eventually kill the pocket digital camera. Here’s why.
Almost all SmartPhones have a camera (although some enterprise owners disable it in their environment) and many feature phones have a camera as well. According to Frost & Sullivan, the US camera phone penetration is more than 60%, i.e., more than 60% households have a camera phone. US consumers buy 200 million phones every year. Thus, there are more than 120 million sold each year. According to the Camera and Imaging Products Association (CIPA), the size of the pocket (compact) digital camera market is much less, more like sales of 25 million a year in the US.
The major features of digital cameras and the differences between camera phone and pocket digital camera capabilities are:
1. Size of the Lens. The size of the lens dictates how much light can be captured from the image. Larger lenses are able to capture more light than smaller lenses. It’s basic science. It’s obviously challenging to put the lens from a digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera that is measured in inches in diameter inside a small, thin SmartPhone. At the present time, it’s virtually impossible. Camera phones have smaller lenses than pocket digital cameras.
2. Image Quality. All digital cameras have an image capture chip that senses the light (or absence thereof) and retains it in digital (flash) memory. These chips keep getting better each year and are composed of two main features:
a. Image Resolution. The digital photo industry used to focus on the number of megapixels (MP) that were in the image capture chip. In years past, the MP wasn’t very large and, hence, seeing the MP resolution go from .5MP to 1MP was a big deal. Now, however, most new digital cameras have 8-12MP which is more than enough to capture an image and allow reproduction (and enlargement) of the image up to a 20”x30” sized poster. Recording more megapixels is marginally useful. Since most image capture chips in today’s digital cameras have enough MP, the industry is moving away from the earlier MP wars and, instead, focusing in image quality in varying lighting and environmental situations.
b. Image Quality. It doesn’t do any good to have the image capture chip that can record an image with 10 megapixels if the image original image being captured is blurry or out of focus. High resolution only makes it look more out of focus. Much of the effort in digital cameras technology today is focused (pun intended) on achieving a better image quality. This involves a lot of fancy hardware and software in such areas as making the image better in low lighting situations or making sure it is in focus or making skin tones more realistic. Today, pocket digital cameras have advanced image quality sensors and firmware that make better images than camera phones.
3. Auto Focus. Most pocket digital cameras have a feature to automatically focus the image. That’s become so standard that most people don’t think about focusing a camera any longer. But, if you’re taking a close up photo of a baby or flower, you need to set the camera in ‘Macro’ mode so the camera can adjust to a close up image. This is a feature that’s just now being added to SmartPhones.
4. Shutter Speed. All digital SLR cameras have the ability to change the shutter speed so you can (for example) stop the action in a sports shot (fast shutter speed) or show water flowing over rocks (slow shutter speed). Most popular pocket digital cameras and camera phones don’t provide a control over the shutter speed. The image sensor and lens shutter adjust to enable a good photo.
5. Aperture. The aperture is the opening in the lens to allow light to come through to the image sensor. Most digital SLR cameras allow for control over the aperture. This typically controls the depth of field such that a high aperture settings (e.g. f8 or f11 that have a smaller opening) will result in a large depth of field so that things in the background will be in focus along with things in the foreground. Low aperture settings (e.g. f2.3, f1.6 with larger openings) have a more shallow depth of field. Often, when you take a photo of a person and want them to stand out against the background, you’ll choose a low aperture setting. Telephoto and zoom lenses often compensate for telephoto feature by having a higher minimum aperture setting which means they have to be used in situations with lots of lights. The reason that you see all those big lenses used at sporting events is to get a really good telephoto but also get a low aperture setting to put the athlete in focus and the background out of focus. These larger lenses are required indoors to provide an image that doesn’t become distorted due to different (often low) lighting situations.
6. Film Speed. There isn’t any film, of course, in digital cameras but the concept has migrated over to digital cameras to provide for sensitivity of the available light. You used to buy 400 or 800 speed film to shoot indoors and 100 speed to shoot outdoors when more light was available. The film speed setting is available on most pocket digital cameras but not available on camera phones. It will become a standard feature on camera phones at some point.
7. Zoom. Most pocket digital cameras and almost no camera phones have zoom – the ability to enlarge a far off image and ‘blow it up’ so it you can see the detail close up. It takes the ability to have a large movement in the lens elements which is easy to do in pocket digital cameras but almost impossible to do in thin camera phones. It’s important to realize that optical zoom is far more important than digital zoom. Optical zoom truly magnifies a far-off image whereas digital zoom simply ‘crops’ off part of a total image and reduces the fidelity of the resulting image. Optical zoom provides for clear images through the range of zooming whereas digital zoom simply extracts part of an image and then enlarges it with fewer pixels which can often then become blurry.
8. Flash. SmartPhones have added an LED flash that improves image quality in low light situations but only for a range of 5-10 feet. Note: The hundreds, if not thousands of flashes taken by fans at night time sporting events such as the recent Super Bowl do not assist in the quality of the image because the range of the flash is only 20 feet at best. It is better to set the camera on Manual mode and take an image at a higher film speed to maximize the quality of the image. People continue to take the photos in Automatic mode which senses the need for a flash. The resulting image generally comes out OK because the settings for flash open up the lens and capture the image long enough for an acceptable photo in a well-lit stadium. It’s not as good an image as what’s possible — but not terrible either.
When you examine all the different features of taking digital images, it becomes clear (pun intended) that a pocket digital camera such as a Canon Powershot, Nikon Coolpix, Kodak Easyshare or Panasonic Lumix capture better digital images than all most all camera phones. However, there are some features in which a camera phone may exceed that of a pocket digital camera.
For example, the Samsung SCH-B600 camera phone includes a 10MP image capture that is greater than on some pocket digital cameras, but as I pointed out above, the number of megapixels in an image capture doesn’t necessarily lead to a higher quality image. The Samsung SCH-B600, while a great SmartPhone that includes an excellent camera phone, doesn’t have a large optical lens, as good of an image processor, nor as good a flash. The gap is closing but there’s still a sizable difference between the image quality of the average SmartPhone camera and the average pocket digital camera.
What will it take for the camera phone to equal the image quality of a pocket digital camera? The biggest challenge of all is size of the lens. It’s very difficult to include a large lens in a small, thin SmartPhone. But, innovative engineers may solve that before too long. Another area is image processing. Nikon, Canon and the other major digital camera manufacturers have spent a lot of time and money making their image processing chips take and refine the images that are captured.
On top of all the analysis about digital images, there’s the growing interest in capturing digital videos as well. The best digital camcorders have incredible optical zoom capability (typically ranging from 15x to over 30x) and can capture the video in true 1080p High Def (1920 pixels wide by 1080 lines high) at 30 frames per second or greater. Most pocket digital cameras can capture video at 640×480 resolution at 30 fps but without any optical zoom. SmartPhone video is lower quality (same resolution but less fps or lower image quality or both).
I believe that many people are still going to buy a digital camcorder for outdoor, sports arena, & auditorium settings in which they want HD video but need a high-powered optical zoom to get a close-up image. Camcorders – like the Canon Vixia HF200 which I have — take excellent HD images at 15x or greater optical zoom. This capability is worth the cost when you want to get a lasting memory of your child’s (or grandchild’s) performance.
I fully expect that we’ll see future SmartPhones like the BlackBerry or iPhone offer still image capture that will provide users with image quality almost as good as today’s pocket digital cameras. And, these future SmartPhones will capture video in HD. This will be good enough for most personal indoor situations.
Many people will find their SmartPhone camera is adequate for friends and family situations and no longer carry around a separate pocket digital camera. Instead, photo enthusiasts will skip the purchase of a separate pocket digital camera and acquire a larger digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera that will provide far better image capture and image quality for special ‘event’ oriented situations (e.g. weddings) that make it worthwhile to lug around a larger digital SLR camera and interchangeable lenses. Many of the newer digital SLR cameras can also take HD movies with some zoom capabilities. I believe that digital HD camcorders are still better, especially for enabling 15x-30x (or greater) optical zoom.
Thus, it appears to me that the market for the pocket digital camera is going to get squeezed out by the improvements in the camera phone’s image quality. Major camera franchises like Canon, Nikon, Kodak & Panasonic should work with popular SmartPhone producers like RIM BlackBerry, Apple iPhone and the Android community to bring their digital image capture experience into the camera phone before they are shut out of the market entirely.
Written by:
J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D.
Principal Analyst
Mobile & Wireless
MobileTrax LLC
gerry.purdy@mobiletrax.com
404-406-5309
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fizwoz iPhone Campus Challenge Contest
Earn $500 in advertising revenue for your student organization in Spring or Fall 2010 and a chance to win a $5,000 Grand Prize in December 2010 for the most innovative use of the fizwoz Assignment Desk by a School Media Organization!
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Apple moving towards forward facing cameras on mobile devices?
Apple recently filed a patent that would suggest that they are moving toward a forward facing camera on their mobile devices. For more information on this patent, check out this article from the Apple Insider.
Where this change could lead to an awesome video conferencing experience, how would the forward facing camera affect the users photo taking experience?
What do you think?
Are you Leaving Money on the Table?
It seems that everywhere you look today media companies; from massive global media organizations such as News Corp. to community newspapers such as The Evesham Journal, published in a quiet sleepy farming town in the west of England, are asking consumers to send them photos and videos to add to their stories. Some of these organizations, like CNN’s iReport, get thousands of submissions every day for free. Just look at their recent coverage of the earthquake disaster in Haiti as an example of how successful they are at soliciting free content from consumers.
In some regards it’s clear why every media company is asking for this free content. We all seem to have ‘news Attention Deficit Disorder.’ A story that could have been stretched out for a week in the past is now only a minute on the nightly news. Worse, the cost of traditional news acquisition has continued to climb steadily. News organizations are facing one of the most difficult economic downturns in history. Even in the Great Depression people read newspapers as they were the only news game in town; today the choices for news are so widespread it’s hard to make a differentiated impact.
Budgets for investigative reporting have been slashed together with budgets for traditional sources of content. One vice president of news at a Bay Area TV station indicated that where once the station had annual license agreements with both Reuters and Associated Press, budget cuts have forced them to cut back and subscribe to only one source. For the consumer who snapped the photo the story is not much better. 15 minutes of fame has been reduced to 90 seconds.
Media companies have marketed this consumer activity as a way for “Joe Public” to have a say in news reporting and get involved in what he or she sees as important topics. The idea, it seems, is the modern day equivalent of placing an engagement announcement in the New York Times and then buying a dozen copies to show your friends. Nowadays all you need to do is send a link of your work to your friends to receive their kudos. But these so called “bragging rights” are a bit misleading. During the recent flooding in the north of England, BBC news anchors solicited photos and videos from viewers showing the damage and destruction from Mother Nature. The BBC then featured viewer submissions without even giving a credit to the photographers.
When consumers create an account or simply email their content to their local TV stations they are agreeing to abide by the legal terms for submission. The language employed here changes little between sites and typically reads something like:
By submitting images and/or videos to the Site you accept and understand that you are granting us a royalty free, worldwide nonexclusive, non-terminable, perpetual license to display your Content and that we are entitled to edit, modify, or adapt the Content for display.
Translation – we get to do whatever we want with your content and don’t have to seek your permission or pay you for it.
Media companies have amassed a huge library of consumer-submitted content and have created destinations on their Web sites specifically to solicit this content. With some editorial oversight from their staff, typically the photo editor or assignment desk manager, media companies can create safe advertising inventory. That is, advertising positions adjacent to content those advertisers are comfortable buying. The media company assures advertisers that there will be no photos displayed that might be detrimental to their brand image. You may recall the infamous advertising faux pas depicting a cat food advertiser’s message and brand placed next to a video on YouTube of someone throwing their cat off the roof of a house.
Media companies are making millions of dollars by selling both display and in-stream video advertising against the content they have solicited from consumers and acquired for nothing. One TV station in California’s San Francisco Bay Area received 600,000 views of a video, captured on a cell phone and submitted by a consumer, depicting a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) policeman smashing an unruly passenger’s head through a window. Even if one uses the lower end of the in-stream advertising Cost per Thousand (CPM) rate of $10.00, the station made $6,000 on that one video alone. That’s only the tip of the iceberg; the same clip was used on the TV promotion of the nightly news as a way to get viewers to tune in. That promo was adjacent to an ad for a local mattress discounter and a trailer for a new movie release, making the station tens of thousands of dollars from that one free submission. How did the consumer who submitted it make out? He made nothing.
Media companies are constantly complaining about consumers using their copyrighted content without licensing or paying for it. But isn’t this simply hypocrisy? These same companies solicit free content from viewers and turn around and sell advertising and sponsorships against that content without compensating the person who submitted it. Understandable is the need for lower cost content but making money from content acquired from unsuspecting consumers for nothing seems unfair.
When you’re next considering uploading an image to your local TV station or newspaper think again, you could be leaving money on the table. Rest assured, the media company you send it to will certainly figure out a way to make money with your image, and sadly, they are unlikely to let you know about that.
Share Your Story and Make Money Too
The BBC recently posted an article about the role that Social Media sites like Twitter and Youtube would play in future elections.
Social Media sites can be a great avenue for public figures to connect with their constituents and fans. At the same time, Social Media sites can bring to light a mistaken remark or slip up that can turn that public figure into a notorious internet star. Either way you look at it, it would be a very costly mistake for politicians etc. to turn their back on Social Media.
What Social Media has done for the average citizen, is to give them a voice in public elections, news reports and an opportunity to share their opinion in a very wide open forum. Currently, people tend to share their content on sites like Twitter, iReport and Youtube. But, if you happen to be in the right place at the right time and capture a public figure in a news worthy event, don’t you think that you should be paid for the rights to use your photo or video? We do!
Why give your valuable content away for free on sites like twitter and youtube when you can sell your content on fizwoz? We think you should share your story and make money too!
Assignments for the Week of Feb 8th
Weather Central:
Weather Central is looking for images and videos of winter weather. See a house covered with snow? Take a picture and send it in! Big pile-up on an icy road? We want to see it!
Images: $2.00
Videos: $5.00
Contagion LLC:
Need a close up shot of two MLB fans donning either jersey’s, caps or both, having fun and high fiving.
Images: $50.00
For more assignments, please visit fizwoz Assignment Desk
Don’t Forget About the iTouch: Rumored Camera in 2010
With all the hype swirling around the new iPad and the iPhone, it is easy to forget about the Apple iTouch.
Having read the rumors that the next generation of the iTouch may come equipped with a camera, it goes without saying that we at fizwoz are very interested to see the new version of the Apple iTouch. Who knows, we may even be surprised with a LED flash, as Apple had been supposedly looking to purchase “Significant quantities of LED camera flash components” a little while back.
If the new iTouch does in fact come equipped with a camera, then it would be another great platform for which users would be able to capture relevant photos to sell to news media organizations using the fizwoz application. The fizwoz app makes it easier than ever to upload, market and sell your mobile media directly to local, national and international news media organizations.
Would you buy a personal use Camera ever again?
Most new cell phones come quipped with a 3 mega pixel camera or better, LED flashes, video capability and auto focus. With these features, the new cell phones sound more like a camera than a phone. Which brings us to our question:
Would you buy a traditional camera for personal us, when your cell phone has most of the capabilities that a camera would offer?
